The River Runs Through It

The hotel most of our delegation is staying at is the Hotel Trinity. It's perched about 2 miles from downtown Fort Worth and the convention center in which General Conference is happening. The hotel is named for the Trinity River, which flows past us and on into downtown Fort Worth.
The Trinity River happens to be a 550-mile river that flows entirely within the state of Texas, making it the second longest river entirely in one state in the country. (Alaska has the longest: the Kuskokwim.)
Two of the Trinity's four forks meet very near downtown Fort Worth: the East Fork and the Clear Fork.

Right about now you might be asking:
"That's all very nice, but what on earth does this geography lesson have to do with General Conference?!?"

Well, dear reader, it just so happens that today I realized the environment around this General Conference is offering a most apt metaphor for what I see going on within this General Conference.

I see evidence that the two forks might be merging.

I have been thinking a little bit more about Bishop Hutchinson's sermon from yesterday (see an earlier post I wrote about it below), and about our need for the water and the spirit. Just as those two forks of the Trinity merge close to where we enter the downtown en route from our hotel to the Conference site; so I have seen the two great forks of our theological perspectives coming together in this downtown Conference setting.
One of my duties at this General Conference has been the monitoring of the legislative committee that is working on one of our perennial controversial favorites: homosexuality.
I saw people from both liberal and conservative camps working together to search for different lines of communication, and new language that could get them talking TO each other.
I heard young adults call on others to find ways to transcend the divisions that are not foundational for holistic thinking younger generations who are disinterested , disheartened, and just about done with the ceaseless debating.

Not everyone involved wanted to take the rapids down through the swirl of those waters coming together... but those that did began to take action (a key theme of this General Conference) towards creating a Future with Hope (THE theme of this General Conference).

I don't know how things will develop from here.
Water that is seemingly growing calm can suddenly come roaring down cataracts around a simple bend to the right or to the left...
or find itself going down a waterfall...
or crashing into a dam....

And even in those who are still refusing the trip into the whorls of uniting tributaries -- even in them I quite clearly heard hearts desiring to reveal the love of God and heads focusing on the acquisition of the truth of God.

And so the Spirit of God ran right through the middle of everywhere I went this day....
Truly I tell you, General Conference can be a thing of beauty, sparkling in the light of another new day, as the gleaming pathways of the Way of Christ meander across the sometimes parched grounds of bureaucratic meeting-rooms.

Pray that the beauty I have found here doesn't fade over the next few days.

And if it does begin to fade... I'll pray that the Great Physician gives an emergency facelift.
Or at least another drink of that water.

-Jon