The Only Way to Travel

We are settling into sea life. If one must go trans-Atlantic, this is the only way to go. Each evening we advance our clocks one hour to compensate for the 5 hour time difference between New York and the UK. While it is only one hour, it is playing havoc with my inner Puritan self. When I awoke at 10:00 a.m. which was 7:00 in New York I became overtaken by guilt. It quickly subsided. Adjusting to the time change and not seeing light and darkness is one of the minor difficulties with an inside cabin. One can or at least I can lose all sense of time and day light. It is all so relaxing after a stressful run up to our departure.

People seem to be quite fascinated with Bishop Walker. I thought the British passengers would want to discuss the Lambeth Conference or the recently held Synod of the Church of England that approved on the first round of voting the consecration of women as bishops but instead everyone wants to discuss Barack Obama. Who knew that he would become a spokesperson for the Obama campaign - little does Obama know and little did Walker prepare for the task. No one has asked me about Obama or Lambeth either for that matter and I'm not a bit upset - can you tell?

Indaba Gifts

The Conference planners have decreed that the bishops should just meet and sit and talk - no resolutions, no statements, no position papers on the great issues facing the world - just sit and talk. They will be talking in groups of 40.

In group work speak they will be put into max-mix groups of senior bishops, junior bishops, multi-continent bishops, liberal and conservative and all in between - you get the picture. The theory goes if they talk long enough they will either all get along or run out of steam - which ever comes first. We'll see. If each bishop uses 5 minutes for an introduction and says something minimal about their diocese, it will take 200 minutes or 3 plus hours just to say hello. If you follow this theory, it will be about Christmas before they will be able to discuss the schismatic issues if ever.

I don't consider myself an expert in group or organizational dynamics - I was just the President of NTL Institute of Applied Behavioral Scienes - but 40 is too large a group for adequate and in depth sharing. Little beyond the surface will be mined in such a large group. But no one asked me.

40 presents another challenge. Each bishop was asked to bring a gift to share with the members of their Indaba group - the G-40. Funny how we can ascribe things African when it suits our purpose. The theme for the 2009 General Convention of The Episcopal Church is on Ubuntu - a Xhosa concept - Indaba is Zulu.

Back to the gifts. What to take? Aided and abetted by Violet deLagarde, we selected Lands' End canvas bags with the shield of the Diocese of Long Island . I think these are really hot looking bags but why didn't I consider how much 40 bags weighed.

I give thanks that they are only travellng one way and wonder about the 39 gifts that Bishop Walker will receive in return. We can only hope they will be light or that he will just receive gifts of the spirit.

Take Nothing for the Journey

With apologies to the Gospel writers. In teen speak OMG! (That's Oh my God for the rest of us). We are loaded down. Take nothing for the journey - no staff, sandals, coins in your belt and don't have two tunics. I have many more than two tunics and bags of bags but more about the Indaba gifts tomorrow. We have loads of paper and reports that should have been printed on two sides of the paper to save trees but alas they were not. I can't imagine what the founding fathers had in mind when they called together the first Lambeth Conference but I don't think they were anticipating the load that we are carrying. My cabin steward looked at my bags with some amazement and I sheepishly tried to explain they were gifts but he didn't get it.

So far we have seen Bishops Leo Frade of Southeast Florida and David Alvarez of Puerto Rico. I hope to interview them in the coming days to learn their hopes and fears for the Conference. This afternoon I followed behind a man wearing a purple shirt but after checking out his hands I realized that he wasn't a fellow pilgrim to Canterbury. I have started re-reading the Canterbury Tales to see if I can describe my fellow sojourners aptly but not quite so colorfully as Chaucer did. My goodness some of those tales are ripe. We completed UK immigration processing today so all our formalities are out of the way and nothing but smooth sailing is in the forecast.