Anaheim

My trip to Anaheim was blessedly uneventful. PDX was very quiet and my Alaska flight was only about 1/3 full. I suppose most people were already where they wanted to be on a holiday afternoon. I took the shuttle from the airport to the hotel and it was great to see a huge blue “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” banner hanging from the Convention Center as we arrived. Also on my shuttle were two members of the staff from the General Convention Office in New York City. One of them is responsible for publications and we had fun visiting about the massive job of putting together the Blue Book (the big thick book of convention reports and resolutions). She is an Episcopalian originally from the Diocese of South Carolina. We discovered we had another connection in that both of us had children who attended Dartmouth. As Bishop Sandy often says, the Episcopal Church is just one big family.

Things may have been quiet in the airport, but our hotel was booming. People were lined up all over the place. I later learned this was the last night of an international Barbershop Chorus competition. They are now leaving and the Episcopalians will start arriving in force. Anaheim provides a different ambiance than the previous two General Conventions I have attended which were held in downtown Minneapolis (2003) and Columbus (2009). This is very California (lots of palm trees, big buildings, concrete, and parking lots) and very convention-oriented. Everything will be convenient here, but I will miss the life, vitality, and variety of the big cities.

I know of four people from the Diocese of Oregon who arrived on July 4. Arlene Ullman, who graciously came back from retirement to serve as a member of the Diocese of Oregon administrative team during our time of transition, continues to volunteer at General Convention as part of the secretariat for the House of Bishops. My colleague Steph Wight and I came to set up the Discovery Center, the large interactive Christian formation area in the Exhibit Hall. More on that later. And my fellow deputy, The Rev. Robert Morrison, likes to arrive early for events and get the lay of the land. Bob is wonderful to have in a group for many reasons, but one of them is because he always knows where everything is. Bob did some exploring yesterday afternoon and watched the Disneyland fireworks last evening which he said weren’t much more spectacular than the show that Lincoln City puts on every year. I could hear the fireworks from my room, but since I arrived late, I opted to unpack and get settled in a bit. It’s going to be a very busy two weeks!