it causes me to tremble...

Day two of our annual conference has completed.  We have voted on exactly 7 items of legislation. And we have celebrated and praised and prayed and remembered and sung and danced and ate and hugged and sat and walked and listened.

Some brief highlights for me so far:

• "Hi, I'm Fred."  Our "priest" for the conference introduced himself and welcomed us into a spirit of worshipful work and I truly have felt this particular time of conference has felt different because of it.
• advocating for young adults at our legislative section and dreaming up possibilities for community college ministries
• Rev. Doug Ruffle's challenges to be a sign, a foretaste, and an instrument of the Kingdom of God...
• crazy fast and delicious dinner at A Dong
• even though clergy session was inhumanely long - it had a wonderful spirit to it as we gathered to worship (thanks clergy band!) and celebrate the ministry we share... and have good conversation about itinerancy
• ordination!!!!!!  being surrounded by family and church members and friends, the weight of all of those hands upon me, the feeling of the bible underneath my fingers, singing with joy
• the reminders throughout the day of the gift of the scriptures:  Bishop Kulah talking about Jesus expounding the scriptures; Barbara Lundblad's take on radical love enfleshed in John's gospel (love that bends down, that reaches beyond, that puts people before rules, that is here in this moment, that renews itself as soon as you think it has ended); Bishop Job sharing what a day, a year, a decade's worth of living in the word can do for our lives; a friend's amazing rendition of a song from the musical Philemon during prayer;
• the Rethink Rock video
• the voices of young adults who stood to speak out of love for what they care about on the floor.
• sharing deeply with one another truths about things that have hurt us... so that we might give them over to God.
• our conference artist's work... and the poetic description of what God is sharing with us through it. The idea of being baptised into the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ being symbolized by a font filled with shards of glass... of chairs of hospitality inviting us to take our seat... the challenge that being radically hospitible brings... of the chair on the cross being an invocation - asking for God to enter our lives.