Everything is going swimmingly until I’m ready to head out the door. The sky gods observe I’ve got a load to shovel into the car, and open up the pipes in a Noahesque deluge. I slip in a puddle, ruining my outfit and drenching all my stuff, ensuring a late start. Meredith is howling because I’m leaving and she has to go out in the rain to get Brother to school. It will be hours before I’m dry.

When we get to Columbus and I check in to my room, one flush and the toilet explodes in a cascade of water. There’s a lake where the floor ought to be. I holler for Maintenance. The air conditioner is caked with years of dust, emitting a strong tobacco odor in a nonsmoking room. It grinds to a halt. The Maintenance dispatcher now recognizes my voice. My folks, who live in Ohio, arrive to visit for the afternoon. They couldn’t care less what we Presbyterians decide to do with our week, but are delighted for a chance to spend a little time together.

As I maneuver around the maintenance guys in the bathroom and the airconditioner guy armed with a little spray bottle and toothbrush, I have the same thought I always have at the beginning of GA. In just 24 hours the streets will be clogged with people bearing presbytags. We will shake hands staring at one another’s chests, categorizing each other by nameholder color and official status. We begin beautifully in worship, but by the end of the week there’s a flood of hard feelings as living with one another wears thin.

What would happen, I always wonder, if we had a great big show-and-tell session, and let everybody describe what it was like for them to get out of town? Under the nametags are frayed moms, grandfathers who just got very bad news from the doctor, young men and old women with broken hearts inside the megatotebags. Oh, I want to shout to the hordes on the escalators, let’s be kind to one another. Oops, that’s from the play Our Town. It’s difficult to pull off that speech when you’re being Emily. Since I'm a middle-aged character from a cancelled sitcom, what with the running flood gag, I haven’t got a chance. The Flood metaphor is gonna get me noplace.

So here’s another image to end the opening day reflection. I get out and traipse around town. There’s a lovely riverwalk, with a park paid for by Italian-American immigrants. There’s some glorious pre-all-the-same-modern structures. My dad said the Planters peanut shop was there in 1940, when he was a little boy living in Columbus. During the Depression they used to pay a guy in peanuts rather than money to dress up like Mr. Peanut in front of the store. My dad would take the samples, but they couldn't afford to buy. There’s a glitzy downtown mall, with homeless people dotting the sidewalks in front like mannequins. Nobody is handing any peanuts out to them. It takes discipline to notice any of the scenery. It’s chilly and really, really windy. You know global warming is coming, but it’s hard to believe it, today. I'm freezing. Whichever direction I walk, I'm battling the wind blowing directly in my face. Head north, fight the wind. Head south, directly into the wind. Wind on the way to the river. Wind on the way back. Wind never at my back, always in my face.

From the premeeting swirl of publications, lots of folks are arriving feeling as if whichever way they're headed, it’s directly into the wind. How groups from all ends of the spectrum can all feel as if they’re the ones challenged by headwinds is a mystery to me.

My hope is that somehow, this time, we’ll be flooded by grace, and all of us find ourselves floating in the same ark, with the wind filling our sails for the common journey to someplace new. Maybe this riverside can be the one where we lay our weapons down, and refuse to study war any more. It’s as unlikely as a smooth Monday morning is in our home-based reality show, but I can dream. It's the beginning of the week.

Back in the room the floor is mopped; the mountain of petrified dust around the air conditioner is getting vacuumed up by a dedicated guy named Derek. I found a swirly Cinderella nightgown for the Princess and a video game with no redeeming value whatsoever for the Boy. I will wait, and buy my husband a chalice. How is it there? he wants to know. It’s windy, I say.