First Person: Peter Frank
June 21st, 2006 by Peter Frank
This is the last first person of General Convention 2006. I decided after arm-twisting everyone else into doing it, I should offer one myself. I wrote this today.
Rain is falling on the Convention Center roof right now. The press room is quiet. This General Convention is quickly winding down.
As for me, I’m just happy that I’m still on my feet. Every one of us from Pittsburgh, bishops, deputies, alternates (and me) have worked more than one 16-hour day. We have worshipped together. We have eaten together. We have joked together. Now and then, we’ve gotten a little prickly. But through it all, I’ve been amazed as a General Convention first-timer how those around me have just kept going.
Spending time in the press room has been fascinating. Rumors run through this place like flash floods. This morning, the House of Bishops passed a very limited resolution responding to the Windsor Report. Bishop Duncan stepped out with a few other bishops for a moment after the vote. Someone saw that and all of the sudden the press room started whispering and people started heading toward the doors thinking there had been a walk-out. The funny thing is that people here assumed I knew what was going on. They reacted rather oddly when I told them that I didn’t know what is happening.
All and all, I have been amazed by the grace and good humor shown by most here. We are in a desperate disagreement about things that matter most. With many others, I am less convinced after General Convention than I was before that this gap is bridgeable. I’m not sure I have ever seen so much political maneuvering and spin control (it makes me weep when I really internalize that this is a church convention).
But all those things said, these people are not my enemies. I do not hate them and they do not hate me. We are by and large doing what we think we must do to be true to what we think we must believe. It is such a sad thing that our understanding of God is different enough for that action to bring us into such deep conflict.
Whenever I get an email from someone “on the other side” who has obviously been hurt by something we in Pittsburgh have said or done, often part of my response to them is simply to ask them to keep praying for us, even though they think we are terribly wrong. As we drive away from Columbus tomorrow, I think I’m going to take my own advice. Whatever else all who gathered here for the last week and-a-half may be, they are all those for whom Christ died.
That is, someone just like me.
For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8 NKJV)
May God redeem the time.