FInding God in the Choir Loft

On Wednesday I went to St. Alban's in Annandale for one of the Listening Sessions that the Diocese of Virginia has been having to let people share their thoughts about the blessing of same-sex relationships.  I thought there might be a couple dozen people there and figured they'd probably be the most strident voices from both sides of the issue.  But I was pleasantly surprised.  First, by the turnout.  There were hundreds of people there.  A lot of priests and a lot of lay people and they seemed to come from all over this part of the Diocese - churches big and small.  But second, and more importantly, by the tone of the gathering.  We started and ended in prayer, which always helps.  And then we broke up into smaller groups (mine was up in the choir loft) to discuss 3 given questions using the Indaba listening process.  Indaba is a Zulu word for the process of decision making by consensus and I'd only heard about it but hadn't seen it in action.  After each question, there was a period of silence and then each person in the group had the opportunity to share our thoughts about the question for two minutes.  (Our personal thoughts -- using "I" statements.)  We were asked not to share the questions, since there are still a few more listening sessions left and part of the process involves hearing and thinking about the questions together.  But suffice it to say that they weren't what many of us expected.  And that was a very good thing, because right from the start we were all forced to walk a little bit away from our entrenchments and look into our heart to hear what God might be saying to each of us, and to our larger community.  It isn't a quick way to get things done, certainly, but I think our small group, at least, was surprised by how close we felt to a consensus by the end of the process.