Five Canterbury members attended the conference “Reconciliation at the Roundtable:  God’s Call in the 21st Century”, hosted by General Theological Seminary in New York City from September 10th to 12th. The many workshops and plenary lectures were designed to address the many needs for reconciliation in our world and church today;  the speakers offered moving experiences and pragmatic advice, making Reconciliation at the Roundtable a truly useful conference experience.

      Reconciliation at the Roundtable invited some impressive plenary speakers.  Desmond Tutu, who spoke Tuesday morning, needs no introduction – who doesn’t want to hear him speak?  He stood slightly hunched at the podium, with a buddha’s beaming grin and his head extended toward us like a turtle.  And like a wise old turtle, he spoke softly, gently, with the weight of wisdom and experience behind his words.  He took no questions and disappeared immediately after his talk, an old master’s blessing on the pupils who must now carry on the fight.  Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, leader of our church during a remarkably contentious and fraught time, closed the conference on Wednesday, repeating almost to the point of monotony the agonizing statistics of world-wide hunger, illiteracy, disease, and their disproportionate affect on the poorest of the poor (women and children).  She did not offer many practical suggestions—other than to support The Millenium Development Goals—but her presence is wonderful:  tall, collected, a truly lovely voice. And when I went to take communion from her, I felt an amazing glow of warmth and presence.  I have seldom felt so immediately and unequivocably welcome when I walked up to someone for the first time. Christopher Marshall, who started things off Monday morning, is the least well-known to me, and unfortunately remains so, as my plane was delayed and I missed his talk.  I am positively disposed toward him, however, as he is the only one of the three plenary speakers who attended the entire conference with the rest of the participants, and I heard glowing reports of his comments from my fellow Canterburians. 

      As impressive as this list of plenary speakers is, and as important as their words were, the real magnitude and inspiring work of this conference occurred in the workshops.  They are where things got down and dirty, where we dealt with the tough questions and heard realistic approaches outlined.  Of the five that I attended, two particularly stand out:  Gene Robinson’s workshop “The Crisis of the Anglican Communion”, and Maria DeCarvalho’s workshop “Reconciliation in Congregational Life.” 

      Bishop Robinson is an engaging and entertaining speaker, and one of the most conscientious and honest ones I have had the privilege to hear.  He outlined the debate in the Episcopal Church regarding homosexuality in clear terms and frankly revealed his own assumptions and stakes in the issue.  He gracefully and humbly reminded us that we are all involved in a great number of oppressions going on in the world today (involving, among others, issues of gender, race, sexuality, and class), and called us to acknowledge honestly that we are all on the oppressing side of most of them.  As we struggle with these difficult issues, we need people of different genders, races, classes, sexualities, and nationalities to remind us of how we are hurting each other, and to be present to hear the ways that they are hurting us.  Only in the midst of such conflict, through ongoing, faithful, loving, and honest conversations, can reconciliation occur.  Hence our deep need to maintain our position in the Anglican Communion.

      Maria DeCarvalho’s workshop took these concerns and realities down to the level of the parish, focusing on everyday interaction between the members of congregations and the ways in which we can promote reconciliation in our daily church lives.  DeCarvalho outlined a protocol for compassion to aide productive and loving communication.  We discussed the disruption of people’s needs and feelings that happens when people get hurt, and how our response to this situation often determines whether healing and reconciliation occur, or whether the hurts deepen into resentment, alienation, bitterness, and withdrawl.  She explained that intervention from someone outside the conflict is usually necessary for reconciliation to happen.  This workshop was empowering, because I felt I was given tools that could be put into immediate practice, not only in the parish and campus ministry of which I am a part, in but in my own interactions with everyone I know on a daily basis.  The path to reconciliation that she offers is a path of good interaction, plain and simple, and this was exactly what I came to the conference to learn.   

      There were several messages about compassion that surfaced continually in workshops and plenary speeches, in sermons and infomal conversations between events:  1.  the need for forgiveness;  2.  the need for both parties to come to the table, or the need for two-way communication.  This first message is perhaps the hardest.  It is unfair and it is extremely difficult, but the person or persons who have been injured by others must forgive them for that injury before reconciliation can occur.  This event is a necessary part of the process.  It does not mean that those who are hurt do not speak the truth about that injury, but that truth must be spoken with love, otherwise the search for reconciliation becomes a search for vengeance.  The second overriding message emphasized at the conference is also difficult:  once this forgiveness has taken place and the truth can be spoken, it must be heard.  Often the injuries go both ways, and so listening to each other and accepting the ways that each party has hurt the other is another fundamental step in the process of reconciliation.  But for this step to occur, both parties must be willing to come together to speak and listen.  And here we get to a difficult question, the one that no one, as far as I heard, was able to answer:  what do we do when someone refuses to hear us, refuses to come to the table to talk?  May this lingering dilemma give us all the courage and honesty never to leave the table, even when we are hearing about our own cruelty and having to face responsibility for the hurtful things we have done.

      I am extremely grateful to the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis for the financial support they granted me so that I could attend this wonderful event.  It has enriched not only my spiritual life, but also my daily interactions.  In the midst of a crisis between my parish and my campus ministry, I will use the skills and knowledge I have received to forward the work of reconciliation to the best of my ability.  And because no parish or campus is an island, I will use my greater awareness of situations and conflicts worldwide (within the church and outside it) to work for peace and reconciliation for all people.