Some Thoughts Upon a Convention

No, you didn't get daily updates from the Convention.  And you know why?

Well... I'm cheap.  Internet was $14 a day at the hotel.  So, here, you will get it in one fell, semi-stream of consciousness lump.

Oh, things were so much nicer than 6 years ago.  Really, they were.  There was so much more levity, so much more laughter, so much more... freedom to not take everything so seriously.  President Harrison was funny, VP Mueller was funny... sometime unintentionally.  There was a good rapport with the fellow delegates.

...

Really, Brown?  That's going to be the first and biggest thing you note.  That it was fun?

Yes.  You see, even though some might have tried to make this a dire, dramatic convention... it wasn't.  And it shouldn't have been.  There weren't that many difficult resolutions, and most of those were pretty much fixed by floor committees (who by in large did a fantastic job -- although when the one chair almost rejected the 1986 translation of the Small Catechism and replaced it with the 1943 as a friendly amendment, that was sort of crazy and awesome).  And things... passed.  Easily.

Apart from a few of the elections, I think there were only maybe two items that passed with less than sixty percent of the vote.  IT wasn't a fixed 52-48 sort of vote on everything... it was more 86-14.  Which is good.

Which is good.  This wasn't a convention to suddenly try to "fix" everything from the last 50 years.  It wasn't one to right every wrong or browbeat folks back into line.  It was a convention that was designed to set a direction.

And you know what -- brace for disappointment some of you -- that direction is not "We Must Crush All Liberals and Utterly Destroy Them!"

No - the direct is to... well... strive for collegiality and a better and more faithful confession.  It is, I guess a way of "destroying" the libs... not by casting them out, but by being patient and teaching and... well... over time making them less liberal.  Which, well, is the approach we should have started taking 70 years ago. 

So, I am well pleased. More that some, I'm sure.  But then, some thrive on faction, on being the hopeless crusader.  That's not going to be encouraged... either by open support or by vilification.  For either the conservative or the liberal. 

And that is a good, good thing.