The Commissioners have picnic lunches reserved for them at the Northern Market: they can choose one of 5 ethnic varieties. Many of those lunches will go begging, I fear. Sunday lunch is the beginning of the great flowchart of advocacy, affinity and interest group meals. The stream divides into a hundred individualized tributaries. This is the genius of the General Assembly. When the Commissioners gather again, no one will have had the same experience as their seatmates.

For those who have trouble making choices, there’s a price to pay. When you choose to enter Ballroom C to attend the Ministers Uttering Groovy Words Under Mighty Power (MUGWUMPS), you also make the choice not to attend Presbyterians Using Skateboards (PUS) or Sopranos Nodding Off Together (SNOT).

I find the forced narrowing of my possibilities downright painful. Since I’m a member of the Presbyterian Media Mission Board, it’s a no-brainer. Off to the PMM Lunch I go. Our keynote speaker is Anthony Griggs, who apparently is recognized in some activity called football, for some team known as the Stillers. My confession: when it comes to sports I am without hope in this world or the next. Any enterprise involving a group of grown men jumping each other in order to move a ball from one mythical point on the field to another is incomprehensible to me. That D- I got in high school basketball had something to do with the book poking up out of the patch packet of that powder blue snapup jumpsuit. If it’s that important, why not give each team their own ball? Then they could move it back and forth across the line as often as they please. Granted, the initial outlay in balls for both teams would be rather steep, but just think of the money you’d save down the road.

My point: the speech is lost on me. We are exhorted to hone our swords by:

1) Understanding
2) Attitude
3) Perseverance
4) Rewards

A.G. is an appealing speaker with celebrity cachet. I would give a great deal to have the same speech delivered to my son and his 8^th grade buddies. My heart breaks over other matters than the Big Game which Got Away, so perhaps I can be forgiven for yearning that at the same time as we are agreeing that if you want to win the game you gotta play it, another speaker is addressing another group on the Capaciousness of God. You can’t be in two places at once. Oh, how I wish I could.

Sometimes happenstance throws 2 groups into such near proximity that they almost are in one place while being in two places. Even if they don’t want to be. On one of the mornings which have all blurred together, I’m at an early morning breakfast of an affinity group where I feel at home. Right next door is another group, honing different swords than the edges we’re straightening. Since the divider between us blocks sight, but not sound, our speaker and the band next door are pretty much in each other’s laps. At one point both groups are singing. The words are different; the tunes are not the same. We find ourselves singing wholeheartedly, so we can rise to the volume level on the other side of the divider. The other side matches us decibel for decibel. You might call it cacophony. But I remember the story about Haydn, the Prince’s musician. Every morning the royal family was obligated to attend Mass. The Prince was not a particularly religious fellow. He decided the directive to hear Mass didn’t mean he had to hear mass linearly. He directed the composer to construct a Mass in which all the elements are sung at the same time, the Credo layered on the Kyrie, layered on the Benedictus. Since it was Haydn putting the scheme together, what should have been ugly chaos is a complex interweaving of harmony into beauty.

As I happily warble away, I remember: the last time I’ve sung this lustily was when I was holding up the Sanctus with the other chesty altos while the normally dainty tenors, being entrusted with the Confiteor, strove mightily with us for the choral upper hand. Zest. Our palms were sweaty and hearts pounding by the time we all tumbled on the final amen together. It was mudwrestling in cassock and surplice. Zest. The conductor’s job was to ensure that all sections competed, but that no part overpowered the others. Oh, Zest.

At breakfast I can barely restrain my self. I long to sprint over to the divider, fling it open, and let our choral battle be face to face in one capacious room. Both sides are singing with such fervor surely we could stand up to each other; could carry our own parts; could rise to harmony. I read a poem once on the sweaty pleasure Jacob felt contending with the angel. . Not all battles need to be for blood; not every contest has to end with a winner. Sometimes the game, not the outcome, is the point.

When I was busy failing basketball, one of the books in my pocket was Carol Gilligan, writing on Moral Development through Play. Gilligan noted that when little boys play ball and one of them breaks the Rules, they will take their balls and go home, rupturing their play rather than recasting the rules. When little girls play, and things fall apart, they change the game, preserving relationships rather than rules. Both ways lose something–the boys’ way produces winners and losers, but too often ends in ruptured games. What good is being right if you’re alone? The girls’ way keeps them playing, but the thrill of competition –giving yourself to the game -- gets muted taking care of feelings.

My lips are singing the words to our song. Not softly. At the same time, my early morning caffeinated brain is wondering: maybe our problem is that we have lost the way of striving with each other, for the pleasure of it. What if there is a way to be in two places at once? Is it possible to contend with each other, not giving in, not giving up? Maybe we could schedule a face-to-face sing-off and have a ball. Maybe our understanding, attitude, and perseverance could result in the reward of capaciousness.

We have finished singing. They’re done next door too. The order of the day calls for Worship, where nobody asks in which room you had breakfast.