RMN Convocation- What I Loved

Earlier this month, I attended Reconciling Ministries Network’s biennial Convocation. This year’s event, Churchquake!, was held over Labor Day Weekend (hey, I’m trying to fit my thoughts in within the statute of limitations window!) in Chevy Chase, MD, and despite my long love affair with RMN, this was my first time attending Convo.

I loved it.

It wasn’t perfect, by any stretch (we’ll get to that in another post), but it was after all a reflection of people in beloved community, so how could it be?

Here’s what I loved most:

1. The People. They are, of course, the reason I went to Convo, the reason I’m part of RMN, the reason to do anything. The amazing, expansive, imperfect, deeply passionate, powerfully loving people of my progressive, queer, relational church life are incredible. Many folks I met for the first or second time at Convo, and in other cases it was like the best church family reunion ever.

2. Worship and Preaching. There is nothing quite like the gift of participating in worship rather than presenting it, and knowing that our shared understanding of the Holy is one where I can pray, sing, reflect, wrestle, and live before the God of my understanding without having to defend against language that erases me and my loved ones, distances me from the act of worship, or makes me feel like I have to defend God from the charge that “He” is a sexist, racist, homophobic, vindictive meanie. The preachers (some of whom I caught in person and some online after) were all good, but there’s something extra amazing about receiving the Word from a woman I know in person and deeply love and respect, as was the case for me with both Vicki and Karen. Beautiful.

3. Bible Study. Okay, I know this wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Our bible studies were a series of talks and monologues that were part scholarship, part art, and part entertainment. And yes, there were rough patches, and yes there are problems with suggesting that we rename the Book of Esther the Book of Eunuchs– but this is a great jump off place for talking about how minorities often compete for airtime in a majority-dominant place like the bible, and in a justice movement like RMN, so let’s look at how powerful women and sexual minorities vie for space and attention in Esther, and maybe how their struggles overlap and intersect and are at odds with one another (and maybe how powerful women are also sexual minorities?). In any case I like the approach, and I learned things I didn’t know.

I love that moment when the preacher is preparing to preach (Karen Oliveto)

4. Challenging Myself. I like learning new things and I like being pushed outside my comfort zone, because how can you learn otherwise? So it’s good that I’m not the most leftist, radical person at Convo, because I can learn new things. This came up especially when I was in a particular workshop, where I went to learn about post-colonialism in the UMC, because I think that’s an important topic in our quest to be a global denomination. But the workshop was a little on the 101 level for me and I got distracted looking at Twitter, where people were posting from the “queer sexual ethics” workshop. Some tweets intrigued me, some made me uncomfortable, and some were things with which I strongly disagreed, the latter two often about poly. I’m kind of all about monogamy, and I know that my approach to polyamory sounds just like the approach to homosexuality I fight against: “It’s just not what I think marriage/relationships/etc are.” So, I engaged in workshop polyamory, and decided it was time to spend time with the queer sexual ethics workshop because it was pushing the edges of my comfort. So that’s what I did. And I’m not going to go seek out poly relationships for myself any time soon (or ever, I imagine), but I learned a lot about new perspectives to me and I think I can be a better ally because of it. I love anything that encourages me to stretch myself.

5. Naming Intersectionality. This was tough, and is a growing edge, but I could really hear the awareness in the RMN leadership and in the way things were presented to try to address the intersections and overlaps of various kinds of oppression and of justice-seeking. It’s sticky and challenging, but we talked about gender and gender identity, sexuality and ordination, and a growing list of how these pieces overlap. We can improve on this, and I hope we do.

6. Coming Home. I don’t mean home to my house; I mean home to a church family I always had and where I was always welcome, but where I don’t get to gather in this way often (or ever before).

I have things I’d like to see improved (coming from a place of love and hope), and I’ll post those thoughts soon.