Anticipation and the Denouement: Thursday and Saturday

Well these are days of anticipation and denouement. To see how bad it gets, click here:



No matter how we cut it, the anticipation will have its gaseous moments and in the end we will be fed ground meat and remainder, sugared over with something red.

It's Thursday night in American and do we know where our children are? Many too many people are likely to be viewing the Vice Presidential Debate and too few thinking about any future, for the children or otherwise. This thing will get more viewing than it deserves. There will be a lot of farting around and everyone will make of it what they will. In anything like a sane world this would not be called a debate at all. This is like going to a car race to watch and see if there are any crashes. What a mess.

If Governor Palin crashes and burns she is still the Vice Presidential candidate of the Republican Party but of course the real question will be not her judgment but that of the Presidential Candidate. We will see.


Meanwhile, on Saturday in Anglican Land the delegates to the Diocesan Convention in Pittsburgh will vote on changes which they believe will take the Diocese out of the Episcopal Church and into a bright future first in the Province of the Southern Cone and then in a new improved Anglican Province of North America. Whatever happens on Saturday in terms of debate, the talking is mostly over and the anticipated vote will be taken. There will be those who will be watching there as well for the crashing of cars and ready to take pictures of the mangled bodies, etc.

Bishop Duncan, now deposed, is none the less in the employ of the Diocese as a consultant. Saturday looks like a fine day for consulting and for post-Convention interviews. If the vote goes for separation, his role will rapidly change again, no matter that he has been deposed. In Anglican Land deposition of a bishop means something, but not too much. The deposed Bishop of Recife still gets a place to be bishop, even if not invited to Lambeth. The deposed Bishop of Pittsburgh still has Anglican Communion friends who insist they will recognize him as bishop. So which ever ways it goes on Saturday he has a place to hang his miter.

The anticipation is that these events are high points in some struggle for the cause of salvation. The fact on the ground will be less glamorous. The events will be made into ground meat and the blood spilt will transmogrify into sauce, and everyone will tell us how much better everything tastes.

In America Land, generally speaking, no one cares who is for Vice, only who is automatically the next President in the event of the need. It is the matter of being the heir that is the problem.


In Anglican Land, generally speaking, what happens to the Bishop of Pittsburgh is of little consequence. Bishops come and go. But in this case it seems that the claim is being made that the Bishop of Pittsburgh is the face of Anglicanism in North America and heir to the mantle of Primate-like authority in these parts.

The denouement is always about inheritance: we reap what we sow.


These are unpleasant times and tonight and Saturday will give me a headache. Fortunately we are being visited by a being of another order...the lady Lily, who while visiting St. Peter's (where I am allowed to work) immediately picked up a prayer book in Church and sat muttering to herself. A born Anglican and a truly intelligent woman.





Anglican, intelligent... wonderful. Maybe there is hope. Life is more than ground meat and remainder. By the time the debate is on she will be asleep. On Saturday she will be busy as well. Life goes on.