I’ll call her Gertie, just because it seems to fit her.

She is impeccably pulled together. Her bright red polo shirt marks her as one of the volunteers, but the matching (and I mean perfectly) red blouse she wears under the polo gives her a more dashing air than most of the other volunteers. She is 85 if she is a day. She drove herself the two hours from her retirement community to be a volunteer at this assembly.

She has led a fascinating life…raised in the suburbs of New York City, an English mother a Scots Presbyterian father. A child of the church, whose bosom friend all through childhood was the Presbyterian pastor’s daughter. She was well educated, and I’m betting, a bit of a maverick 64 years ago when she went into the Navy. She met her husband there, they had a son, and in just another two years, he was gone. A single mother in the late 40’s she went to work for KLM in NYC and, later, in DC. Then for 30 years she owned a travel agency, only retiring after 9/11. She was a decades-long member of O. P. M., a capital area church brave enough to call itself old and only moved to Alabama to be with her late brother. More than twice she leans in conspiratorially when she decries how she misses the intellectual and cultural stimulations of DC and NYC.

I learned all of that before the bus even pulled away from the curb. Admittedly, we did sit there for almost twenty minutes. Gertie then reached her delicate, prim, tastefully bejeweled hand across the aisle and placed it on mine.

“Where are you from again?”

“Chicago.”

‘Didn’t one of your people speak on 5?”

“Yes, ma’am, the pastor of Nth Presbyterian Church, JB. He spoke with M.C.”

“That’s right…you know….[skipped humorous aside concerning her remembering the line in ‘Auntie Mame’ about Nth Pres.]…so how did your Chicago people vote on 5?

“I don’t really know…I’m willing to bet it was 6 to 2 in favor, or maybe 7 to 1.”

“The worst thing that ever happened, ever, was when two things became political and came into the church….abortion and homosexuality. Those are personal things, private things. I had many friends, men, homosexuals in the travel industry. And they were all very smart, always very well-dressed. One was, well, he had been a steward and I used to say he could fly all the way to London without the plane…he was so…you know.”

“Hmm….” I try not to show any expression, just look at her in that pastoral glance that means ‘go on.’

“Well, I know I wouldn’t want to have one as mine. I mean they may be fine preachers I suppose, but I know I wouldn’t want to have one for me….I feel the same way about gay marriage. It’s private. If the pastor wants to marry two women, fine…but please, not in God’s house, not there.”

Gertie went on to talk about how important it was that we remain together in the church. She went on to change the subject two or so more times to get to more pleasant topics on our long ride back on the bus.

There are lots of Gerties here this morning. People who are still spinning, still stunned at what the Presbyterian Church did yesterday. Some call it local option, some call it revival of the “scruples,” some call it “leeway in application of the ordination standards,” some call it “justice denied,” some call it heresy, some call it the end of the Presbyterian Church as a connectional church, some call it hope for LGBT persons who are called into service and ministry in our church…only time will tell.

Within an hour…hear me when I say this….Within an hour of the decision, the hall was peppered with signs announcing an emergency breakfast meeting of the New Wineskins Fellowship….sigh…

Twenty people worked for more than four years to find a way forward for the church…a way that many of us on the left felt was inadequate, a way that many on the right see as destructive, indeed even evil.

But so it is done. And I am tired. I’m tired of the fighting, I’m tired of hearing that the church is shrinking and it’s all the gays fault, I’m tired of people wishing I had “never come into the church” (though I know that is not what she means)…but then I’m already on the inside and many others are still excluded…many others will continue to be excluded even with this change.

Even as I sit here there are moves afoot to try and undo what was done last night…though I do not think those will be well received.

I know that many look to what happened yesterday as something HUGE…
though the reading of what was approved isn’t really that huge. Only time will tell what if anything is really changed….who gets ordained who couldn’t get ordained before.

I get on the plane in a few hours…and I’m ready to get back to being a pastor…to loving my people, to doing the work my church and my Presbytery needs me to do, to trying to have some sense of a private life, to enjoying the summer, to just being….

I hope Gertie would approve, but I can’t really be concerned with whether she does or not…