Here’s how many people it takes to make a General Assembly go: 
558 Commissioners, elected by the 173 presbyteries. 
169 Youth Delegates, 25 Theological Student Advisory Delegates, 8 Missionary Delegates, 14 Ecumenical Advisory Delegates, 100 Corresponding Members, 90 Office of the General Assembly Staff, 740 national staff and members of PCUSA entities, 325 staff and stated clerks of presbyteries and synods, 7 Ecumenical representatives, 990 Registered Observers.

 Altogether, that adds up to well over 3,000 people who were milling about Long Beach.

On Monday and Tuesday, the Commissioners meet in Committees. While they are occupied in committee, the laws of physics dictate that everybody else needs a place to go. When you read the popular press news coverage, you might suspect that everyone scurries for locked back rooms to plot strategies for fighting about sexually-charged issues.

Actually, Presbyterians on the loose are a wildly varied bunch. Remember that Waldo picture? While there was only one Waldo to find in the castle, there was a multitude of rooms, teeming with figures during a thousand things. Once the committees got down to business, I did what everyone else does and went seeking rooms filled with people whose shirts stripe the same ways mine do.

At the Presbyterian Media Mission Luncheon, we heard about "convergence in the digital data stream." I don’t know what that means, but is sure floats my cyber-hearted boat. At the Presbyterian Writers’ Guild, we heard a writer’s version of a Treasurer’s Report: "We don’t know how much money we’ve got, but it isn’t much. Some of us paid our dues, but don’t know if it was for last year or this year. So if you’ve got any money, please leave it." Then we sang the Guild’s official hymn: "Glorious Things We All Have Written."

Other Presbyterians were on Mission Trips, and celebrating the Year of the Child, and going on 5K health runs.  On Monday and Tuesday, the energy swirls through packed rooms. Nobody is exhausted yet. 

Even the Commissioners locked in their committee rooms can get in on the act for the special interest breakfasts and lunches. There are as many as a dozen scheduled for each meal. What makes it so exhilarating is the remarkable fact that whatever you’re interested in, you don’t have to eat alone.

That Waldo image was very much with me. For one lunch I discovered that I had 3 different places I was supposed to be. I imagined hovering over all the buildings, at, say, noon on Tuesday, with an x-ray magnifying glass, watching a couple thousand Presbyterians, surrounded by the comfort of their sizable peer groups. When was the last time you had breakfast with 300 other people who share your interests?

Yes, I know. In mentioning the Writers’ Guild, and the Media Mission, and the Health Run, I am skirting one whole section of the castle. The throne room, shall we call it? Or the guard room? Or the moat?? In any case, for just one moment, I was pretending the other reality wasn’t in play. But you already know. One way to put it is that if it weren’t for the advocacy groups, the hotels would not do nearly the business catering that they do. The Lay Committee Briefing, the Witherspoon Issue Orientation, the Voices of Sophia breakfast, the Presbyterians for Renewal daily lunches, the One by One prayer meetings, and the Covenant Network impact hearings —they are a huge part of what fills the teeming picture. In my program guide I counted 21 advocacy events sponsored by groups on one side or the other of our jagged gulf. And those are just the publicized events open to the public.

For me, this creates a swirl of thought and feeling. I was at some of those events. And, I tell you, it is good to be in room with other people who think the way I do. It feels safe. It feels wonderful. It feels like Waldo is right there, sitting next to me at table.

But, there are all those other groups. Places I don’t feel safe. Rooms where I’m sure Waldo isn’t lurking. As I sat in one breakfast, I was with hundreds of people who applauded at all the right places. But there, in the next ballroom were hundreds of people clapping to a different beat. What concerns me is not our honest disagreements. If it weren’t for our diversity, we would be a boring lot. Like searching a picture where everybody is dressed exactly like Waldo. What would be the point?

But here’s what worries me. During a little bit of GA downtime, Kent and I went to visit the Long Beach Aquarium. We went to see the moon jellies–those dreamy surreal wisps which drift through their tank like a living lava lamp. Jellies are groovy. But it was another tank which struck me: a giant tropical tank filled with fish from Palau. (Where, coincidentally, Moderator Rhee’s Daughter-in-Law is attorney general, but that doesn’t come into this story.) Most were wafting through the coral with riveting neon beauty. But there in the tank were a couple of different fish. They looked just the same as the others. But these ones were just plain mean. For no good reason they chased and nipped the other fish. Where ever they were in the tank, you could see a swirl as the other fish scurried to get away from them.

At GA Presbyterians scurry from ballroom to ballroom–the only spaces wide enough to accommodate all the like-minded folk (and their sworn critics). The unnoticed servers magically make tasteful meals appear and disappear again. But once in a while a certain nastiness wafts through, like an undertone of dead fish.

We can afford no illusions that the civility with which those of differing stripes were motioned ahead on the escalator was shed like a too-tight shirt when the strategy teams gathered behind their locked doors. If you could reverse the peepholes to peer into the powerful rooms, there’s no doubt the down-n-dirty plotting would do the Worldwide Wrestling Foundation proud.

When I stepped back to view the swarming activity as a whole, and simultaneously focused in on one group or another, here’s what I saw: