As I rested at the hotel this morning I got a call from New Hampshire with news that a former co-worker from Henniker just lost a son in Afghanistan.  Is there nothing more we can do than to weep with mothers facing the news they have dreaded day after day, month after month?  Is there nothing more we can offer than prayers for peace, and for wisdom for our nation’s leaders?  Today thousands of pairs of boots line the sidewalk between the Ohio State House and Trinity Episcopal Church.  How many more empty shoes will be added before our hearts turn with the conviction that we must stop the carnage?

The convention is engaged in lots of careful conversation at the moment.  Despite the urgency to move the piles of resolutions, committees are taking their time with the tough issues and practicing sacred listening.  The hallways are full of anticipation and the hum of hope that somehow the Spirit will show us a path through the sea of issues on which we are of different minds.  We so yearn to be heading together toward the land to which we are called, the land where our mission of love and reconciliation calls us to be, the place where we can lean together into the wind.  Can you imagine us as a thick grove of Oaks of Righteousness?

This Convention’s Theme is Come and Grow.  May we each feel the Spirit of the Loving God who ‘birthed creation from the nothingness of space, kindling life where all was empty turning chaos into grace: when we feel confused and fruitless, dawn upon our restless night; give us faith’s imagination, hope renewing, love’s delight.”  Amen.