Greetings from your Vice President of Program

Cordelia Burt - Vice-President of Program

Well I’ve been home now from our wonderful first meeting in Washington DC and so much is going on in my head. We stayed at the Cathedral College on the grounds of the National Cathedral and couldn’t have had a better place to form community as a board. The beauty and spirituality of the place is overwhelming.

Our time was spent reviewing, reviewing, reviewing. We reviewed the job descriptions so that everyone was on the “same page” and knew what was expected of them. We reviewed the committee’s that we were assigned to. Each person has two committee assignments The committees are: Finance, Worship, Social Justice, Communication and Triennial Meeting. The only committee that needed to choose a chairperson from within was the Worship Committee all others had an elected chairperson.

We reviewed the Time line for the 2012 Triennial Meeting and BOY do we have a LOT to do. We also reviewed every evaluation that was turned in at the 2009 Triennial Meeting and we promise to try to listen to your concerns and desires. There are some things that we have no control over such as the placement of the Eucharist but you can bet your boots that we’ll have our input. We also have very little control over the temperature but we’ll do the best we can to have it comfortable. We did hear your remarks that you would like to have a hands on project and we will be looking in to something that is close enough to work with our schedule.

We talked about ideas for the 2012 Triennial Meeting and would like to hear some of your ideas about program, speakers, workshops, etc. Please be in contact with your Province Rep. and let her know your ideas. We want to have the people that you want to hear. Give us your ideas also about raising the money to get to the Triennial Meeting. One that I thought of was to try to put away $3 a day, and I know that’s a lot of money for some of us, we could make it.

Our Social Justice fund of Women to Women is very low at this time and we talked together about ways of increasing this fund to be able to fund the Social Justice requests that come in during this triennium. I’m sure that Irene Radcliff will have more to say about this as the Social Justice chairperson.

We did have free time when we weren’t in a committee or full board meeting to walk the grounds of the National Cathedral and some even got to meet Katherine of Tarragon, the Cathedral cat. We stood in the back balcony of the Cathedral to watch the procession of acolytes during the Festival of Acolytes. There were acolytes from 150 churches in attendance and this was a once in a lifetime experience for me. Two of the churches had been bringing their acolytes for 30 years. We also got to attend the services Sunday and six of us were honored to take the elements to the altar. There was an organ concert that evening that some of us attended–what an experience for this musician.

Well I hope this has made you feel that you were there with us during this time. Keep us in prayer please as we continue to work together for all of you to present the best Triennial Meeting ever.

Cordelia