When Ubuntu Isn't Enough

Day 6 - Four to go on this legislative Tour de Anaheim. My body especially my legs are crying for mercy. Now the tough slog is ahead.

Sunday, July 12 was the last day to pass any resolution with budget implications and in an unusual move, Holly McAlpin, the Co-Chair of the Joint Committee on Program, Budget and Finance requested prayer before asking Deputies to not pass a flurry of resolutions with dollars attached and that the committee was already seeking to close a $14 million budget gap. The Joint Session to receive the budget will happen on Wednesday.

I have no idea where we are on the legislative calendar. The special orders that led to the overwhelming passage of D-025, the resolution affirming that ordination is available to all baptized people and seen as the response to 2006 B-033 consumed significant amounts of well spent time. The consent to the election of Rev. Luis Fernando Ruiz Restrepo as bishop of the Diocese of Ecuador Central has been another major time consumer.

Today's chapter of this tragic opera featured the chair of the deputation from Ecuador Central urging his defeat and an Ohio deputy and the consultant to our Nominating Committee was urging his approval. I really don't know what to make of it. If the deputation from Long Island had urged the disapproval of Father Provenzano and deputies with no relation to the situation were urging something different, I just don't know if I would take kindly to that kind of decision making. This seems a bit paternalistic when deputies in their wisdom know more than the locals.

Adding to the consumption of precious minutes was the voting machine fiasco. If those machines can't get any better, the Convention should return to the red and green cards of days gone by. The Ecuador Central vote, after three misfires with the voting machines, 835 paper ballots were distributed. I seem to recall the machines having the same problem in Columbus. What I do know is that this is the kind of thing that saps everybody's energy. I hope the energy bars will be provided when the denominational health plan and mandatory lay pension come to the floor.

I passed Canon Scott Hayashi, Canon to the Ordinary in the Diocese of Chicago, in the hotel lobby and we exchanged greetings. Scott lamented through this day.
"Ubuntu just isn't enough -I need a Red Bull."

I don't know about a Red Bull but on this Day 6 I too need an energy lift.