Report from Day 4 of annual conference
The final day of annual conference began for MIND with an early breakfast meeting with Bishop Talbert for LGBTQ people of color and allies of color. About 25 people came to share food, experiences and ideas for organizing. People in the room brought unique perspectives to our struggle, from both the vantage point of the intersection of oppressions – not-straight and not-white – and the perspective of people who have experienced different forms of prejudice and discrimination – allies of color committed to standing in solidarity with LGBTQ people. As Vicki Flippin, who along with Nehemiah Luckett organized the event, so eloquently told the MIND lunch the day before, our movement is not whole without the voices of all of our communities. Saturday’s meeting ended with a commitment to convene another gathering in September.
The ordination service began, as it has every year since 2005, with dozens of volunteers handing out armbands to both the assembling clergy and the incoming audience members. The armbands are blue to symbolize tears: tears of joy as we celebrate with those being ordained, and tears of sorrow as we mourn with those who are also called by God but rejected by the church, namely LGBTQ people living open, whole lives. On Friday at the MIND lunch, Rev. Sara Thompson Tweedy summarized the importance of the armband witness by saying “to the oppressed, it offers hope.” That hope was evident in the stream of blue armbands on many clergy robes as they processed into the service, on the stage where several of the ordinands wore them, and in the sight of Bishop Talbert wearing an armband.
Talbert, who was not wearing a robe because he had to leave early to catch his plane, was asked by Bishop McLee to offer a few words of greeting. “Take authority – to do the right thing,” Bishop Talbert told the ordinands, harking back to his speech at the MIND lunch Friday. For his part, Bishop McLee at one point asked the ordinands, “how many of us get excited by the Jesus who overturned the tables in the temple?”
All in all, it was a watershed year for MIND at annual conference. A new bishop, the advance of rights and public opinion in civil society and the inspiration that Tom Ogletree has sparked in people served as the backdrop for an increasingly bold call to “do the right thing” and embrace the constructive conflict that God is using to do a new thing in the New York Annual Conference.