It's 5:30 dark time

It's 5:30 in the morning, dark as dark gets, and I'm up. We must leave within the next 30 minutes to drive a couple hours to spend 30 minutes or so with a man in prison in a place called St. Martinville. Jesus said something about freeing the prisoners. I can't get him out, but for 30 minutes I can listen to his dreams, apply some of the balm that Jesus has placed on my boo boos for so long, and maybe, just maybe help his mother heal as well.

I anticipated writing this morning, with it being 5:30 and all, so I dropped a piece on more than 30 United Methodist pastors from Eastern Pennsylvania agreeing to jointly officiate a same-sex marriage next month.
Schaefer's fellow pastors call that an act of love, not a prosecutable offense. They gathered Thursday at a Philadelphia church and, after more than two hours, agreed to preside as a group at a same-sex marriage, a step they hope jolts the larger church.

I was going to comment on this, but frankly, it's 5:37 a.m. and I must be moving on to do the Lord's business.

However, I will say this. We have, us United Methodists, a book of discipline. We have, us United Methodists, a method to our madness, and we meet ever four years to have a general conference in which that book of discipline can be amended. We had language in that book that makes this act they're committing a prosecutable offense, and calling it anything else is simply in correct.

By writing that paragraph it doesn't mean I agree with what they're doing or I don't agree. It simply states a fact.

I believe the language in that book will be changed at the next general conference or certainly in the one after that. I could comment on how I feel about that language, but at 5:40 in the morning, I couldn't give it proper time.

Except to say this: there are many thing I don't like about the book of discipline, including I guess the fact that we have a book of discipline when discipline is such a difficult commodity to find for me. But having one is part of, just part of, what makes me a United Methodist. If I don't like it, seems I can go become, oh, a Baptist or some such. I don't mean to type that easily. It's simply true.

To get things changed simply means to get enough votes. That's the way it works. Always has, even during the dastardly days of the Central Conference when the United Methodists weren't. At 5:42 in the morning, I won't take time to take on the idea of the Central Conference.

Bottom line is this. Protesting is a time-tested way of bringing about change in any denomination. But protesting only works in terms of change of a book of discipline or book of order or whatever the operating manual for a denomination is.

The book that the protesters must really work on is that book we call the Bible, and protests and votes don't really work there.

At 5:44 a.m., that's all I have to say.

The beginning of this day is dark, dark, dark. In prison and out.