If you remember, our trip began in a Western PA cowfield. The pilot, surely not old enough to drive on the ground, also unloaded the luggage and wiped the windshield. The journey ended, of course, on an overcrowded smelly flight into LAX, that madhouse of mad travelers. If you want to have fun at this GA, introduce 2 people who got delayed in Chicago to each other. Ask how their flight was – then run. At the opening session all the delayed, sleep-deprived east coasters make the hall look like central casting for Night of the Living Dead.

There’s nothing like hustling through the baggage claim and trying to get on a shuttle at a major airport to teach you your place in the scheme of things. The lady with the blue neckerchief, which identifies her as a local volunteer saint, is the only reason we aren’t still standing on the curb, waiting for transport.

Our shuttle driver is driving a bus which says "Long Beach" on the front. He hasn’t got a clue where anything in Long Beach is. Neither, it turns out, do we. Kent and I both grew up in Southern California. His Aunt Clara used to live in a ladies’ residential hotel on Pine Street. Long about where Hooters is now. If you’ve been away, nothing is where it’s supposed to be. There’s a convention center where the Pike oughtta be. A henna tattoo artist where there ought to be a roller coaster. A glance at the skyline shows only three vintage Old California buildings. The faceless redevelopment may be good for the city, but it sure took away everything we knew and love. Even to my ears I sound like a grumpy oldster: "When I was a little girl, growing up, in February, all you could smell were the orange blossoms and the smudge pots." Now look at it. Indeed.

If you don’t yearn for California Lost, then Long Beach is a GA paradise. The sun is a perfect, non-humid 80. The breeze is warm. The sky is blue. If you look real close, there’s a beach out there, with sand and waves and everything. Not waves the way waves were when I was a little girl, now those were REAL waves, let me tell you.

Since we’re in the night before it all gets started, we have a leisurely dinner at a waterside place, with festive umbrellas and servers in shorts. They practice smart marketing: the food is cheap and the margaritas first thing you see on the menu.

We’re anonymous diners, not yet marked by our nametags. Nothing gives us away as Presbyterians on Important Business. So we get to eavesdrop on the real lives of the real people around us. And – Hello?? Church??? Guess what? Here we Presbyterians are: meeting, networking, debating, voting, politicking. In the meantime–in the very same time–out there are people who do not appear to particularly care what we decide at this Assembly. Whether we will or will not ordain them or bless them doesn’t appear to be at the top of their Friday Night Happy Hour Concern list.

I’m not saying I’ve got a clue how to solve our internal divisions.

I am saying there’s a whole culture out there, downing margaritas big enough to drown in, which can’t hear one blessed thing we’ve got to say over the clamor of our bickering.

The Church must change or die, we tell the churches struggling with the pain of revitalization.

Actually, it’s the Church must change or the World will die.

That’s why we will, one more time, put up with each other on this overcrowded flight we call the General Assembly.

It’s not about us; it’s about the world.

This is Erin Cox-Holmes for KiskiOnline, www.kiskipby.org,
still looking for the waves of my youth

Off to GA We Go
Opening Moves
Where's Waldo? Part One
Where's Waldo? Part Two
Noodling About Neckerchiefs
A Digital Digression