The Rev. Vosper Again

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Mendalla said:
Pretty much. Things in our makeup, the result of past events, learning, etc., that affect our thinking without us necessarily being aware of them.
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Is that strange, alien. or just weird? And you know how the definite is about strangers ... they're out of it ...
 
Luce NDs said:
Is that strange, alien. or just weird? And you know how the definite is about strangers ... they're out of it ...
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Nothing strange or alien about it. It's how humans work. We pick up traits and knowledge and they become so deeply ingrained in us that they become a part of us and we aren't always sure where they came from. In the end, everything we are came from somewhere or someone else (inherited through parents or learned in some way). It's how it is all put together and the choices we make based on all that that make each of us unique; that is our "soul" if you like.
 
Mendalla said:
Nothing strange or alien about it. It's how humans work. We pick up traits and knowledge and they become so deeply ingrained in us that they become a part of us and we aren't always sure where they came from. In the end, everything we are came from somewhere or someone else (inherited through parents or learned in some way). It's how it is all put together and the choices we make based on all that that make each of us unique; that is our "soul" if you like.
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In consequence ... what do we know while supported in a great void ... a large dark objection ...
 
chansen said:
Conference must have a stack of hilariously angry old-man-yells-at-cloud letters. Met's was just one they were willing to share.
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Every court of the Church, if it kept every single piece of correspondence sent to it would be able to produce stacks of angry letters. Sometimes the anger is about the Church doing something that somebody doesn't like. Sometimes the anger is about the Church not doing something somebody wants. Sometimes the anger is about something somebody else did and rather than go after that somebody they come after us.

Once, somebody who thought I should be getting tons of mail about what was going on at WonderCafe.ca did some spectacularly bad sleuthing and sent it to the then President of Hamilton Conference John Hurst rather than to me the current chair of Erie Presbytery. I wouldn't have known about that had John not mentioned it.

John asked if I wanted the mail. I told him I did not. I'm sure it was recycled responsibly.

Neither Hamilton Conference nor Erie Presbytery had jurisdiction over what went on at WonderCafe.ca anyway so the letters were not actionable in any way. I know that John never submitted for Conference to Consider. Now had the letter gone to the Secretary of Erie Presbytery and made a formal complaint about my behaviour here then that would have been an actionable item and I would have made sure that I recused myself from the discussion of response.

chansen said:
Have they ever said how many letters they got?
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Nope. Not really something Conferences tracks because each letter gets judged on its own merit. If the letter does make a legitimate request that the receiving Court has jurisdiction over there may be action beyond a blanket motion saying correspondence has been received for information from the following parties.

The court should not be swayed because of the volume of mail. The court should be swayed by any request that is a legitimate appeal to the court's authority. Swayed to some kind of action doesn't mean that the letter finds any support

One of my last adventures in Erie Presbytery was about a conflict within a congregation. It was my home congregation so I was constantly having to recuse myself simply because I had already formed long and deep opinions about some of the personalities in the conflict. It was a pretty nasty little fight that I honestly thought was long coming. A bully with decades of making life miserable for others finally got a hot serving of the same.

At any rate some of the criticisms made in the letter would have been serious issues if they were true so we had to examine.

It turned out that the complaints were, for the most part, baseless. So it represented a waste of time and energy. Had it not been examined and had it been true that would have been a tremendously huge problem.

Whether anybody else has ever written to Toronto Conference asking for an investigation into the Reverend Vosper's fitness has happened recently I do not know. That Metropolitan didn't is very clear from the text of their letter.

chansen said:
If Gretta got more angry letters than I got angry Facebook flags, I shall blame it on illegal immigrants.
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Maybe you aren't trying hard enough? Maybe you are getting soft? But sure blame it on illegal immigrants. Sad.
 
chansen said:
I wonder why I'm so inclined to actively push back against religion. I'm definitely not built to believe in that for which no evidence exists. I can't even choose to be a Christian, and I'm not the type to join a group because it's popular or expected.

I don't have a history of being religiously oppressed. I wasn't even forced to go to Sunday School. I've always hated it when people are taken advantage of, and I guess that's part of it. I have an overactive sense of fairness, and that gets me in trouble. I also hate saying what everyone is supposed to say, because it's some social norm. And religion is just something you're not supposed to talk about or criticize. I don't understand why, and just like Jesus dying for my benefit, I never agreed to those terms.
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I really liked reading this bit
Fair introspection
 
revjohn said:
Once, somebody who thought I should be getting tons of mail about what was going on at WonderCafe.ca did some spectacularly bad sleuthing and sent it to the then President of Hamilton Conference John Hurst rather than to me the current chair of Erie Presbytery. I wouldn't have known about that had John not mentioned it.
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Gee.... I wonder if I can guess who that might have been........................
 
GordW said:
Gee.... I wonder if I can guess who that might have been........................
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Clone of the same miserable guy who always haunts our current board chair about car lights too bright in his backyard that is adjacent to the church lot.
 
Church is a strange place to experience love the alternate (neighbour) because obviously, in the norm it is regular to hate strange wandering ideas in the mail volumes that arise to a point ... of being tossed out as too common ... like Johns ...

The enigma ... who's stranger than the alternate ... subject, or object ... implicit, or explicitly expressed ... so it is out there as common as can be while others contain it ...

Thus the Innis and odes ...
 
GordW said:
Gee.... I wonder if I can guess who that might have been........................
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*waves at Stephen*

We all know he lurks here.

You guys will be doing him a real solid if you DSL-D Rev. Vosper. He will be so happy, he'll create another dozen Gmail accounts to send his congratulations.
 
Do lurkers need lures or bait to be trolled for, over, or into the boat ... the good vessel Brea & Dan ... Dan being a prophet and thus hated as the devil by authorities ... authorities can do that ... just because of choice that is a result of desire without adequate clues ...

So much to contemplate in the chaos of life ... some see it simple!
 
chansen said:
He will be so happy, he'll create another dozen Gmail accounts to send his congratulations.
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And if she isn't placed on the DSL he will be so unhappy, he'll create another dozen accounts to send his complaints.

The takeaway is that he generates accounts faster than rabbits generate bunnies.

 
No date yet for Vosper hearing

The new bit that I saw in this Observer article:

The General Council Judicial Committee has 40 members from across the church, and its executive has the task of setting up a panel of three to five members to hear Vosper’s case. They will decide whether she should be placed on the church’s Discontinued Service List (Disciplinary), revoking her credentials for ministry and effectively firing her. Members of that panel are normally United Church members, says General Council Office’s head personnel officer Rev. Alan Hall.

So far, no one has signed up for the job.​

Fourteen months after given the task of assembling a 3-5 person panel, they have no one. Not a single person has agreed to be on the panel. Except...

Along with judicial and legal experience, panel members must have knowledge of United Church beliefs and bylaws, but also be impartial. “Panellists have been identified,” says Hall, “but it’s difficult for a panellist to commit until they know how much time will be required and when that time will be.” Picking a time means co-ordinating all the players involved.

“We hope it would be sometime in the winter, this winter,” says Hall.​

I don't understand this. No one has signed up, but panelists have been identified? Do they mean potential panelists have been identified but none have agreed? It is difficult for panelists to commit without knowledge of time requirements, but nothing about anyone trying to determine what those time requirements will be. If no concrete answer for panel duration can be given, but potential panelists need it, how will it ever go ahead?

I understand some people are going to complain about my next observation, but something isn't right here. There is no consistent message. There is nothing to indicate that anything is moving forward, or that it *can* move forward. "This winter" is a meaningless target when nobody appears to be working toward it. But they do "hope" it will be this winter.

They could come right out and say they have 3-5 panelists waiting, trying to coordinate schedules. But they didn't. I don't think there is any appetite to be on that panel., and indeed people are likely trying to avoid being on that panel.
 
Tis indiscriminate religion ... verily isolating the sense of God's all inclusiveness ... thus indicating we are on the broke n's Ide ... flawed? God is Vasti ... or vast eh in some tongues ... opposes the Swastika ... like a tilde of wind miles ...
 
This is pissing me off. I wish it would go away one way or the other. It is clear to me that the entire governance of this institution is just a right unholy mess, and no amount of "restructuring" is going to fix it.

If I were the moderator of the United Church, especially a moderator who challenged me to make friends of my enemies, I'd be meeting personally with Gretta Vosper, coming to common ground with her, and standing in front of the United Church of Canada saying that I respected her for her honesty.
 
The message is a complete mess. They "hope" it will go ahead this winter. After 14 months to prepare, they have no one signed up, but have "identified" panelists. What the hell does that even mean? They only need 5 people, max. I thought they needed a dozen, but five is half a discipleship. How long did it take Jesus to get 10 people together and what were the time commitments then?
 
And you don't want me feeling like this. I'm helping build the bleeding edge of the emerging community on the ground here, and if you're gonna declare heresy, well, I can just stop right here. Lots of communities, like the local food sustainability group, have asked for my freer time.
 
If I was in that group, I'm not sure I would do it. There's a high probability that you'll lose several months of your life to no good cause and make more enemies than friends. I am quite sure there are better ways to serve the church than jumping into the steaming pile that is the Vosper affair.
 
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