{"id":384,"date":"2012-04-25T07:18:36","date_gmt":"2012-04-25T14:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/gc2012\/?p=384"},"modified":"2012-04-29T19:38:26","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T02:38:26","slug":"rev-craigs-thoughts-on-the-first-day-of-gc2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/rev-craigs-thoughts-on-the-first-day-of-gc2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Rev. Craig&#8217;s Thoughts on the First Day of #gc2012"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Marcus Briggs Cloud of the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference addresses the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Fla. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was reminded again of a couple of obvious things.<\/p>\n<p>1. <strong>How easy it is look and not see.<\/strong><br \/>\nThis is especially true when it comes to people. The young man who blessed the conference space on behalf of the native peoples was a case in point. His presence alone was inspiring but his prayer and the song he sang touched me in the dry places of my soul, even though I could not understand the words. Then he is gone only to appear again playing trumpet with the band. He is gone again&#8230; Only to appear again with a violin. A man of great talent and depth of spirit who on a normal day I would have looked at but not seen. Oh &#8230; so much slips by unnoticed as I am focused on my agenda.<\/p>\n<p>2. Bishop Goodpaster&#8217;s message challenged the conference to <strong>act immediately<\/strong>, while delegates seems more and more <strong>uncertain and confused<\/strong> about all the restructure proposals and amendments. We will see how fast we act.<\/p>\n<p>3. The plenary report of the rules committee revealed an agenda of the conservative right. There will be a move to <strong>stop any form of demonstration<\/strong>, which is aimed at LGBT silent witness activities. If this move prevales I hope confrontation is not the byproduct.<\/p>\n<p>We are off to a great start adjourning at 10 pm.<br \/>\nMuch to look forward to.<\/p>\n<p>Craig<\/p>\n<p><em>Rev. Craig Parrish is the Conference Treasurer for the Pacific Northwest Conference and head of the PNW delegation to Tampa, Florida for General Conference 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marcus Briggs Cloud of the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference addresses the 2012 United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, Fla. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. I was reminded again of a couple of obvious things. 1. How easy it is look and not see. This is especially true when it comes to people. The young [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-conversation","8":"category-pnw-delegation"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/young-man.jpg?fit=600%2C403&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2l75j-6c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions\/824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}