Peace,
Dan

The Contemplative Society, Cynthia Bourgeault’s association (the Discovery Class has studied a couple of her books)

The San Francisco Zen Center, founded by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (author of Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind, a spiritual classic)?

Remember to hold one another accountable to the 20/40 Challenge (20 minutes of prayer/meditation/contemplative practice a day for 40 days of Lent)!

Peace,
Dan

I’ll have more to say about this later, but I wanted to get the news out to y’all as soon as I could.

Today?s proceedings began too early (for me, at least ? but I?m not used to early mornings) with the MFSA breakfast at which our own Beth Corrie addressed a gathering of about 30 kindred spirits. She discussed her personal story of growing awareness of peace and justice issues, particularly as related to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and her cousin Rachel?s death while serving as a part of a peacemaking team in Palestine. She talked about the need for and usefulness of targeted, selective divestment from companies that profit from war and from human rights violations, and she called upon us to renew our baptismal vows wherein we promise to ?resist evil, injustice, and oppression? in whatever forms we find them (I hope I have that quote right).

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Later in the morning during the first general session, we heard a moving report about the NGUMC?s contributions toward the construction of a children?s center in Sierra Leone, a desperately ravaged and war-torn country where orphans were often forced into military conflict at very young ages. A 17-year-old young man from Sierra Leone, who was a beneficiary of the missional work done there, addressed the Conference and told his story of being rescued from a situation that would almost certainly have led to his death, had there not been this facility to take him in when he was nine years old. Needless to say, this was a very powerful moment.

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Toward the end of the afternoon Beth received the Eleanor Richardson Award for lifetime achievement in the field of social justice. She also received a standing ovation from the roughly 2,000 delegates and guests gathered in the hall, and had the opportunity to address them for a couple of minutes about her passion for peace, justice, and the education of youth in the ways of peace and justice, and again cited our baptismal vows as a source of the theological imperative to resist evil, injustice, and oppression. As soon as I can get some photographs downloaded from Beth?s camera, I?ll be sure to post them here. Needless to say, we were very proud of Beth and her ministry, and were ecstatic for the entire Conference to hear her speak.

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No big elements of controversy today either. I think we?re just going to coast through tomorrow morning, passing a large budget and voting on mostly uncontroversial resolutions and get out of town. From a business standpoint it?s been an oddly low-key year ? lots of just getting through the necessary business and moving things along. I?ll be adding one more update after the close of the Conference on Friday, so stay tuned.

The morning session included a great presentation from Emory Healthcare (no, really!). Emory?s representative highlighted their advances in various medical research fields, and briefly discussed the plans to expand the clinical campus. Some of the research they?re doing there is quite remarkable, and it?s nice to know that we as NGUMC Methodists have a hand in supporting it.

The morning also featured the retiring clergy addresses, which as always were quite entertaining. There?s nothing like giving a preacher one more shot at addressing his or her colleagues to liven things up.

The afternoon business sessions were mostly routine. In case you were wondering, the Conference?s unfunded liability for potential retirees with pre-1982 service is roughly $40 million, which is actually down from $60 million some years ago. The actuarial projection has us making up that deficit by the year 2021 (probably because there will be so few covered pre-1982 retirees around by then?). The full budget will be discussed Friday, but the fiscal house seems pretty sound at the moment.

The Young Adult Task Force had a nice presentation, including two resolutions ? one to encourage the selection of more young adult delegates to AC, and another to recommend shifting the dates of AC to Wednesday-Saturday instead of the current Tuesday-Friday. The rationale behind this is that younger adults have less flexible schedules (and less vacation time), and thus it?s harder for them to take off more days during the week to attend AC. After some debate and discussion, both resolutions passed.

It definitely is true that the demographics of AC are on the older side. I think I?m safe in placing myself below the median age of the attendees. One thing that has struck me this year in particular is just how institutional the whole Conference and its proceedings are. The problem there, as with any institution, is that eventually practices grow to protect and enhance the institution itself, rather than the original underlying mission that the institution was founded to promulgate.

That?s really all I have to report today. Again, browse over to my personal blog if you?d like to read more opinionated commentary (although I don?t even have too much of that today). Tomorrow we?ll have the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) breakfast, and the MFSA will present their annual award to our own Beth Corrie during the plenary session in the afternoon. Beth will presumably have a minute or two to address the Conference?check back here tomorrow to learn what she said!

As promised, here?s your update on the North Georgia Annual Conference proceedings from the first day. I say ?as promised? because if I were writing this based solely on the proceedings themselves, I probably wouldn?t have much to say. It?s a very low-key year, particularly in comparison with last year?s election of delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences. One delegate I talked with today proclaimed this AC ?The Long Goodbye?, in reference to Bishop Davis? departure from North Georgia at the end of this episcopal term in July, and in fact we have already begun the tributes to Bishop and Mrs. Davis for their twelve years of service in North Georgia.

Perhaps the highlight of today?s proceedings (from my perspective, of course) was a brief presentation on the Nothing But Nets campaign ? go check out the website http://www.nothingbutnets.net. Hopefully many of you are already familiar with this great program (when I led a youth program earlier this year, several of our youth already knew about it), but for those of you who are not and don?t want to read the website, it?s a program that distributes insecticide-treated mosquito nets throughout Africa and other regions of the world where malaria is rampant. For $10 the program can purchase a bed net that protects a family of four as they sleep, deliver it to the family, and provide relevant instruction on how to properly use the net. This is a bigger deal than you may think (and bigger than I used to think before I learned about it last year) ? roughly 500 million people around the world are infected with malaria each year, and about a million people around the world die from malaria each year, or one person every 30 seconds! To put it bluntly and representatively, a $10 contribution means that four people in Africa probably DON?T DIE from malaria. How else can you save four lives with ten dollars? The afternoon turned into a bit of one-upmanship as various congregations and districts pledged $1,000 here and $2,000 there toward the campaign. By the end of the afternoon we had already raised over $100,000 in pledges. Although Rex and I did not commit Druid Hills to a specific amount, we definitely would like to see our congregation contribute to this program.

In other news from today, we heard a presentation on General Conference from our delegation?s representatives. Basically, the representatives congratulated our delegation on being strong leaders at General Conference, standing up for what was right and fighting back against the forces of reform and change. As you can tell, not so inspiring for me.

I would be remiss if I didn?t report on Monday?s NGUMC AC Golf Classic. Your Druid Hills team of me, Rex, Bill Duncan and Rick Marson acquitted itself admirably. In fact, we only finished a couple of points away from taking the prize?for last place. Nevertheless, we had much fun and good fellowship, and we contributed $500 to the Athens soup kitchen ministry Our Daily Bread.

Tomorrow should be a full day of business, although we do officially have the evening off. No real controversial resolutions to report on, although we do now have one before us that would call on United Methodists to resist efforts by the Georgia Legislature to allow the carrying of concealed weapons in houses of worship. I can only hope this won?t prove to be a controversial measure…

Peace,
Dan

Peace,
Dan

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