Last year I became a member of a presbytery committee—sort of the uber-committee, if you know anything about presbyterian government. I learned two days ago that I’m also on uber-committee’s leadership team, by virtue of chairing one of the subteams. Confused yet? What it means is that I attend the meeting-before-the-meeting. You can't make this stuff up.

We met this afternoon. Since Wednesday is not a child-care day, I let the group know that I would have my pint-sized assistant with me. There had been some e-discussion this week about needing more diversity on the leadership team. Sure enough, when I stumbled into the presbytery conference room at 2 p.m. sharp, my stroller’s huge wheels getting caught on the doorjamb, the sulfurous smell of poopy diaper wafting up from my child, I saw sitting at the table five old white guys. I said, “Your diversity’s arrived!”

The meeting went fine. Other folks showed up after me, including a couple of women. Our general presbyter came in, a great, quirky guy who’s really sharp but sounds like Jed Clampett. He plopped a bunch of papers on the table related to some other ministry and said he was multi-tasking. Eh, I know from multi-tasking—I was juggling agendas and PDA and soft crinkly toys—I've seen better.

We finished our business by 3:40, then kept talking for another twenty minutes. Meanwhile the divine miss m was getting really tired of being on the uber-committee’s leadership team and could only tolerate it while on my shoulder as I stood and swayed. Finally we adjourned. After the meeting several of the men complimented her on her good behavior, but it was the women who stopped to flirt and interact with her.

The committee is working on a huge clergy compensation policy, a thick stapled nightmare of roman-numeraled paragraphs and appendices. Each presbytery has minimum salaries for clergy that each church must endeavor to pay, but beyond that it’s up to the church session and congregation. As you might expect, there is a huge range, even between the pastor and the associate pastor(s) at the same church. And of course, if you give everyone percentage raises across the board, the gap only widens over time. The rich get richer and the poor get… rich much slower. (I’m pretty good at math, but this fact had eluded me until today.) During the discussion one man seemed to have a lightbulb moment: “So senior pastors, many of whom have been here for years and who bought homes before things got really expensive, are at one level. Whereas small-church pastors and associate pastors, many of whom [gesturing towards the woman with drool on her shoulder] are relatively new to the ministry, perhaps younger, with families and much more in the way of expenses, are at a much lower level and stay there because of the percentage system.” Bingo!

I talked several months ago with a clergywoman who works part-time in this presbytery. She has a daughter around kindergarten age and admitted to never attending presbytery meetings, nor serving on any presbytery committees. When you’re a working mom, something has to give.

And yet, and yet—Cheesehead articulates it well—

I look around my Presbytery, and I see the voices that get the most airtime, the demographic that gets the most attention, and I wonder if it is because women like me don't step up.

Some of you may have read the articles recently lambasting well-educated women who “opt out” of paid work in favor of staying home with their children. The articles suggest that these women, who presumably have the education and connections to get good jobs in influential fields, have somehow betrayed feminism by not staying in the workforce to advocate for family-friendly policies that would benefit everyone, not just women. The response to this in much of the blogosphere has been, essentially, “Up yours. I’m just as much a feminist as I ever was, because isn’t it about having the choice? Well, I choose to stay home with my kids.” (I think this was the article that started the whole kerfuffle.)

OK. I don’t begrudge them that. We each have to make the decision that works for us.

Still, I keep showing up. And sometimes I bring my poopy-diapered kid with me, to say I’m here, and there are other people like me out here. And what we put within these roman numerals and appendices actually matters to a whole mess of people. Diverse people.