I should be making dinner…

…but instead I’m sitting here crying. Finally. I think I’ve wanted to cry most of today.

The Episcopal Church finally made their choice–they decided to (functionally) reject Windsor and antagonize the situation in the process with their choice of Presiding Bishop.

There are a lot of options for a church like mine. I don’t have a strong belief that it will take one of the ones that would make it ok to stay where I am, but I don’t know yet.

So I grieve. I grieve for the hearts and souls of the people who make these decisions, for the ones who don’t know what they’re flouting, or who flout it in the name of truth, love, and justice. I grieve for what their choices say about God, who He is and how He acts. Mostly, though, I grieve selfishly. I grieve for the fact that, because they made this decision, I and many of those I love face loss. I don’t yet know for sure what I’m going to do. No matter what I do, though, I lose. If I stay at Blessed Sac, I lose those who choose to leave. If I leave, I lose those who choose to stay, and probably many of the others who choose to leave as I can’t imagine we’ll all go to the same place. More than that, I lose something more abstract, something harder to define. I lose through the experience of this, through having to make this sort of choice.

I think that’s what I hate the most, overall. This should not be. It just shouldn’t. It’s wrong on so many levels that I don’t even know where to start. I don’t even know where to start grieving. God’s children should not have to face choices like this because those who claim to be His children should not be making the choices being made. So it is wrong, on a level bigger than the decisions made at General Convention. It’s wrong on a cosmic, how-the-world-works level.

I also hate the way these decisions were being made. If I decide that I could abide with the decisions, this would be another obstacle. It’s like the ECUSA is run by a bunch of teenagers, dead set on making flagrant decisions that will set the rest of the Anglican Communion ablaze. I keep thinking about it this way: If I had a major moral disagreement with my boss, and we were in the process of trying to decide if we could still work together or if one of us had to leave, I would hope that I would not make any decisions that I knew would antagonize the issue before we decided. I might put some off, but I would hope that I would not act as they have–deliberately making choices they’ve been asked not to make, and not waiting until they knew if reconciliation was possible before throwing more wood on the fire.

So I don’t know. I don’t think I can stay, but I don’t know that I have what it takes to take a stand and go, either. I know, I have some time. But Blessed Sacrament means so much to me. It came along when I mostly felt betrayed by and therefore suspicious of Church and churches, and it snuck up behind those defenses and touched me deeply. To leave is like leaving a home, maybe one of the truest homes I’ve ever had. But it seems that my home may be leaving me. Once again, that should not be.