[In addition to blogging, I've been asked to contribute to the in-house newspaper about the proceedings at General Convention and ECW Triennial. This is taken from an article I wrote for the July 10 issue of The Daily.]

The Rt. Rev. Barbara C. HarrisThe Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris and Gregory Straub, executive officer and secretary of General Convention, and the other women and men who attended the ECW Welcome Dinner on Wednesday were reminded why the telling of our collective history can at once be liberating and soul wrenching.

Katerina Katsarka WhitleyAsked to produce a program for the dinner, Katerina Katsarka Whitley, an Episcopalian, author, dramatist and retreat leader, opted to write a play chronicling the history of Episcopal Church Women in order to “show how God worked through admirable Episcopal women in the course of long years and struggles to bring about the accomplishments taken for granted today.”

Nearly 140 years of history—from an early plea to the leaders of the Protestant Episcopal Church to seriously consider the contributions of women “who labor for their Lord” to the election of Katharine Jefferts Schori as presiding bishop—played out in under an hour, but still had people talking well into the following day.

An ActressDee Doyle, Triennial delegate from the Diocese of San Joaquin, said, “I thought it was great. It was, in a real way, the story of my life. I’m coming up on 80 years old. I’ve lived a lot of what they were talking about. I graduated from college with a degree in business in ’51, and all potential employers wanted to know was how fast I could type. The young men got the great jobs. The story of our church and the story of our society really parallel one another. The play last night showed that clearly.”

First-time delegate Sharon Massey of the Diocese of North Carolina said, “It was wonderful to see all that history so neatly laid out. I laughed. I cried. What a great gift.”