I’m just taking a little ‘time out’ from the meeting of our General Synod – the post-lunch ‘grave-yard slot’ proved a bit much. So I have slipped upstairs, plugged into one of the power sockets for the heaters on the wall and [Yes!] I’ve hitched a free ride on somebody’s WiFi nearby. I do hope they don’t mind a bit of episcopal blog-hiking.
Synods are funny things. Very friendly – we are a small church spread over huge distances. Because we are small, we find it quite difficult to disagree. So we sometimes find substitute or surrogate issues – commas in the liturgy, for example – which allow us to fall out without falling out. Because of the make-up of this church, we have many very capable and articulate people – so there are some very impressive things going on.
But the main reason why clergy have problems with meetings like this is that we are used to moving around all the time – to stay in the same place for more than an hour or two is nearly intolerable!
In my experience there are plenty of clergy who like long…long…meetings.
Perhaps we should give thanks that there were enough of them at the Council of Nicea!