There are elephants among us.
Have you ever tried to write down the sound of an elephant? And I'm not talking Babar here friends. What is the screeching, yolping, brash, hungry, haunting, trumpeting sound of your average local, (perhaps even Presbyterian) pachyderm?
As the committees begin their work here in San Jose, many elephants have wandered their Ringling way from the side shows and into the Big Top of the PCUSA.
I've just spent the last hour or so in Committee 5 -- the GA committee on Church Orders. This is the committee that will take up the various questions surrounding G-6.0106b, the provisions of the PUP report authoritative interpretation (established at the last GA), and other matters related to the ordination of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons in the life of the church. The Hudson River Overture (item of business 05-06) is before this committee.
The first order of business for most committees of the Assembly is to hold open hearings. Committee 5 is no exception. Most of this morning has been devoted to a full range of perspectives on these challenging issues.
Hearing is hard work. Hearing the pain of those who feel deeply excluded. Hearing the convictions of those who believe the ordination standard must stay. Hearing the stories of those who have found Jesus embracing them and their sexual identity. Hearing the stories of those who feel that Jesus called them away from their sexual identity. Hearing the hopes of those who love their church, no matter the side of the argument. Hearing can be heavy. To hear can be too close to heart.
And ah, the elephants. Bruce Reyes-Chow, our new Moderator, said he has a "no elephants policy." I think I disagree with him just a bit. I'm more inclined toward a "name the elephants" policy -- and in naming them, learning to listen to them, wondering how they got in in the first place, and working to bring them down to size.
Trouble is, we have polynonymous pachyderms -- elephants with many names, that are so heavy, and so heard to hear. I can't even write down the sound they make. Were I to try though -- were I to look for the letters of the word that no one knows quite what to do with, or quite how to hear -- I suspect I'd spell it "t-r-u-s-t." What a sound that grates on our ears! What a sound we so need to hear!
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2 comments:
Dear Chris,
Not much of a blog writer or reader, but did want you to know that I have been reading your GA blog and find it both helpful and enlightening. You are a very creative writer. While I may not post again, I am reading. Thanks. Keep it up.
John Miller
Good point about naming the elephants. It reminds me of the story of the elephant and the blind men, each of whom touches a different part of the elephant and is convinced that his is the correct approximation of what the elephant looks like. The moral, of course, is that we need all the perspectives. So it is when naming our elephant. We need to hear the name each of us, in our blindness, gives to the elephant. And as you have pointed out, "hearing is hard."
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