General Convention - Day 10 The Day After

We continue to learn which of our colleagues are affected by the budget cuts. The tapes of yesterday's talk with the Presiding Bishop, and, I think, some of the other budget discussions we had, were shown to the staff who are not at General Convention. Some of them called their managers asking if they were affected. If they asked, they were told. Pretty rotten being told over the phone, but sitting and not knowing until Tuesday really wasn't a decent option either.

We don't understand some of the cuts being made, given what is still in the budget and plans going forward. Others make sense. Either way, it's hard. Most of our soon-to-be-departing colleagues are more devastated by work that will no longer be carried out than they are about losing their jobs. Some have continued their work here at convention, and others have withdrawn into angry isolation. I understand both actions.

There’s an old quote attributed to an anonymous author that I'm seriously thinking about having printed and framed for my office:

We the unwilling, led by the unknowing are doing the impossible, for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

That pretty much sums it up.

I was not impressed by Brian McLaren's so-called sermon at worship today. I found it particularly inappropriate given the immediacy of the staff cuts.

Both Houses passed the budget without amendment, though not for lack of trying in the House of Deputies. Three times supporters of Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, tried to amend the budget to take funds from the office of the Chief Operating Officer to provide her with two full-time staff people for the triennium rather than one-and-a-half. It failed all three times. There was also an attempt to take money from the General Convention Office to fund a study about moving the Church Center out of New York City. However, many deputies rose to speak against any amendments, pointing out that PB&,F had put in a lot of time and effort--not to mention tears--into the proposed budget, and that it was the best that could be done at this time given projected revenue.

There are other resolutions of importance, but I just haven't had the energy to track them. I spent the afternoon going through email and returning phone calls.

The Exhibit Hall closed at 2:00 this afternoon, and our staff office at 6:00 this evening. Here are a couple of pictures of the staff's "sanctuary" here at Convention for the past two weeks:



This has been the convention of Tote Bags. Here are five that I collected over the course of my time here. The large blue one is from the Children's Program, the red and black one from the Virginia Theological Seminary dinner, the tan from the Episcopal Church Center, the purple from the Episcopal seminaries, and the black from the Diocese of Los Angeles:

And these are the last of the buttons I collected at Convention. The large one with Convention's Ubuntu logo is for the Lifelong Formation Charter, which Ruth-Ann and I were able to start wearing yesterday (or was it Tuesday? Days run together...) once the charter had been passed by both houses. Before that it would have been seen as advocating, something staff is not supposed to do.

Peace,

Jeff