day #6 (thurs)

The motion to study the Heidelberg passed!!! It was the same sort of debate heard in the committee but with new voices... an expert in French translation who spoke to the atrocity of adding personal opinion into translation, young adults who insisted that the confessional documents be as free from scribal error as possible.

I am wrestling with my own bias. Because I want the Heidelberg changes to pass, it is easy to see each person who speaks in favor as fairly reasoned and each person who speaks against as irrational ideologues who can't see it for what it it. Of course, it goes the opposite way from the other side as well. Again, I am reminded that I must still listen even when I don't want to or I'm sure of what I think... to be ready to embrace even when it means opening myself to something I don't like.

Our class is having a hard time keeping still. We are all deeply vested in these issues and are talking, engaging and sitting on the edges of our seats as votes come up on the floor. We keep getting in trouble by other observers, our professors, etc. :) Oh well... it is fun to care what happens especially for someone like me who could've cared less a week ago.

I continue to be moved by the vision of the Belhar and have some ideas to study it next year... it would be especially exciting to bring in some different racial/ethnic groups to study with us at the church. Or maybe a larger Presbytery study? I am drawn in by the confessions in a way I never thought possible (yet again) and excited about the possibilities that they can have on our churches, our lives and our world.