Yesterday I left the hotel at 6AM to catch my plane home. Although it was a tad late leaving Indy, we arrived in Houston fine. Upon deplaning in Houston, I entered the gate area to see a mass of people, and most of them not looking happy. I had 3 hours until my flight to Jackson, so I wandered up the very  long corridor, which was full of people sitting, sleeping, looking exasperated. This was not a good sign. After finding some lunch, I sat down to catch up on emails. I checked my next flight and it had been delayed about 45 minutes. That’s manageable. If I only knew.

About 90 minutes before I was to leave for Jackson they cancelled the flight. I only discovered this accidentally, as I was in the long-corridor-of-hell, since there were no seats near my gate. I made my way to the customer service desk, where I joined quite a few other folks. While in line, I hear several other flights being cancelled. There were storms in Houston, but the main problem seemed to be planes couldn’t take off wherever they were due to weather, so we had nothing to fly on (or in?). Several folks on the Jackson flight were in line, including one poor woman whose flight had been canceled the night before, had spent the night in a hotel, was on my flight only to have it canceled. She was trying to make her brother’s 70th birthday party. She was not in a good mood. In front of me was a parishioner from St. James, and customer service ended up finding us seats on a Delta flight to Memphis connecting to Jackson, arriving around 8pm (5 hours later than expected). We took it and headed over to another monstrous gate area where hundreds of not-very-happy people were slouching around. Announcement after announcement of more canceled flights followed, our flight was pushed back two hours and then another hour. It was not looking good. Tom checked on Saturday flights and all were overbooked – Sunday was the only option. Other than this – we rented a car and drove 7 hours home.

Thank goodness for Tom and his idea to do this. We shared the drive and had great conversation, mostly about baseball. At the advice of another parishioner, we ate at a truckstop in Jennings, LA that was actually really good. And also….Tom got a call on the way from another parishioner about an article in the Wall Street Journal about the Episcopal Church and General Convention. It was a horrid article, full of outright lies and much sarcasm. I am really surprised the WSJ has lowered itself to allow such pathetic “journalism”, while it was an opinion piece shouldn’t they still be held to a standard of truth?

I have much to say in response to the article, but some people have already done so and done so quite well. So I encourage you to go to http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/media/impromtu_truth_squad_takes_dow.html . In this article you can link to the original WSJ article (please do, but you may want to wear gloves), and three excellent responses that take apart the crude and ridiculous opinion piece. I especially commend to you the blog post (linked in the article) of my friend Scott Gunn. If you have questions or concerns, or have been harassed by folks who read the WSJ article, please start with these responses, and then I would love to discuss any concerns or questions you have. We will set apart some time soon at St. James’ for an open forum on General Convention as well.

We arrived in Jackson at 11pm. I could have driven home from Indy and been back much sooner! It was great to see Jennifer after two whole weeks apart, poor thing had walking pneumonia and was really pitiful. Sleeping in my own (borrowed) bed and (borrowed) home was really great also. I am so glad to be back and look forward to conversations around mission and Jesus!

David