Our plane was jampacked with Presbyterians. That didn’t make us any less likely to grumble at the new "service" being offered by the airline: $10 lunches promoted as "gourmet" but actually airline food in disguise. It did mean the passenger compassion quotient for the flight attendants forced to hawk the scam, ummm, meal was higher than you would expect, and the deplaning process had the hospitable feel of filing from the pew to join the communion line. If you have to wrestle your bag from the overhead compartment and keep the line behind you waiting, it’s good when the ones behind you are Presbyterians.

As we were descending into Denver it looked like we were coming down into the tundra outback. The Presbyterian at the end of our row ogled the great flat plain bounded by the mountains way off in the distance and said with hushed awe, "We are descending into a Vast Nothingness."

Whenever I arrive at GA, one of the first things I do is scope out the physical characteristics of the convention center. I believe you can predict the direction of the Assembly by the layout of the building. Last year, Columbus was chopped up into bizarre territories of different colored carpet. This had theological portent.

Now, Denver. To get what is shaping up, you need to see this in your mind’s eye: The outside of Convention Center looks like some kid took a giant building set made of white PVC piping and constructed a tinkertoy facade. It’s clunky and boxy, and rather like the entrance to It’s a Small World (the Disneyland, not Walt Disney World one.)

On the outside, the Convention Center is surrounded by 3 colliding architectures. There are the sleek hotels and office buildings, reflecting money (or what remains of it) like blue sky off their angled windows. They betray no evidence of stock market crashes or local drought. Back at ground level, structures decay and a cotillion of panhandlers for every glitzy building prick the conscience of Presbyterians. The "Welcome to Denver" packet has an entire page devoted to the reasons not to give money to panhandlers and ways to offer Real Help instead. If you can’t offer money, what can you offer instead? Presbyterians on the go, including me, don’t seem to have figured that one out.

Corporate luxury, corporeal poverty: the third architecture is that of the street. The 16^th Street mall is a funky blend of "Real Colorado" tourist traps, the Virgin megastore with a very slim likelihood of real virgins inside, restaurants, cafes, a drugstore to buy bandaids for the blisters on your feet. It’s all linked by the free "mallride" busses, which whisk folks of every shape, color and agenda up and down the street as if distance did not matter. It’s held together by the rhythm of the street. There’s a panhandler type with garbage can calypso drums banging out the beat we Presbyterians so often miss. I slip him a couple of bucks in reckless defiance of prohibitions. There’s a street art fair on, with amazing art cubicled in tiny white booths. Not many Presbyterians appear to actually have the time in our busy agendas to stop and peruse, but the Holy Spirit is right there, pinned in pastel and unlikely bronze.

As I note in my first reflection every year, not one of the corporate highrollers or the societal bottomfeeders on the street actually gives a rip that Presbyterians are here to tackle Important Issues once again. Even with our officious nametags on, we’re invisible. Well, not to the merchants. All the businesses in the know display purple signs that say "Welcome to Denver: 215^th General Assembly." This makes me feel really special until I note one business with 4 of those signs stacked on top of each other. We’re here with mayors and Jehovah’s Witnesses and accountants, and Not That Special after all.

Heading inside the boxy structure which doesn’t match anything, the doors are tended by the most cheerful greeters I’ve ever seen, at GA or in church. They spring to open the door. They say "We’re so glad you’re here." They really mean it. They’ve got on sashes which look like my daughter’s brownie sash, except they’re purple. You can’t see the earned badges, but in the right light they shine like the sun: hospitality, greeting, warmth, welcome, gladness. They open the door for me, even though I’m perfectly capable of opening it for myself. I enter in welcome.

Inside. Oh, inside. A Vast Nothingness. The meeting rooms are laid out in concourses like an airport. No signs direct lost wanderers anyplace. Mostly the walls are bare. The carpet matches, but I can’t remember what it looks like. When I'm supposed to be Inside at the election of the moderator, I instead end up in a little band of lost souls wandering the convention wasteland. We’d gone the only direction we knew, only to discover the escalator was shut down and the door we knew barred. We tried one hallway, then another. No signs. No life. Lost on the outside. "There’s a parable to this effect," someone said. "It doesn’t turn out well," said another.

We retraced our steps all the way back to the beginning and finally found it: the Vast Somethingness of the Presbyterian-packed room, all weighing the moderatorial merits of the 3 candidates and generally behaving as if they believed the Holy Spirit were brooding over the room. Ever so faint, you could hear a beat.