This group of players represents all streams and extremes in The Episcopal Church. Bishops Lee and Lipscomb are moderates, though Lipscomb is personally more evangelical than Lee, but accepts non-celibate gays in the church and will administer Eucharist to them. He has difficulty seeing homosexual activity as sin. He's a nice guy however and will do his best to try and make it all work. Give him an A for trying.

Bishop Lee positions himself as a centrist but when push comes to shove is firmly in the liberal camp. You will see his true colors, if and when some 22 parishes in Northern Virginia decide to up stakes and flee his diocese. We will also see how he treats the Rev. Martyn Minns who shortly becomes an ordained bishop in Nigeria and comes back to watch over 19 Nigerian parishes in North America. As Minns is leaving Truro there is not a lot Lee can do about it, as Minns has put in his 30 years, will collect his pension about the same time he gets to wear a purple shirt. Lee is a pal of Irish Archbishop Robin Eames of Windsor Report fame, which should tell you everything you need to know.

Griswold and Schori are firmly pluriform thinkers, moral relativists, very pro-gay and believe they are being prophetic with an anything goes theology that is basically come-as-you-are-stay-as-you-are religion, and who believe the church's Millennium goals will save humanity. They would much prefer to sit down and talk pluriform truths with the Dalai Lama than absolute truth with Bob Duncan, largely because they don't believe in absolute truth unless you want a heated discussion about Islamophobia, homophobia and racism, then they will fall over their cassocks to make sure you get the relative anti-racism training and probably offer to pay for it.

Bishop Bob Duncan is a high church evangelical who believes in women's ordination, is Moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, and believes the middle has collapsed. He recently wrote: "For that part of the Network working constitutionally within ECUSA as over against the dioceses represented by the thirty progressive bishops who issued their Statement of Conscience, we are two churches under one roof." His "two church" theory will not be well received at this little soiree.

Jack Iker, Bishop of Ft. Worth is solidly Anglo-Catholic, does not believe in women's ordination, and both he and Duncan have asked for Alternative Primatial Oversight directly from the Archbishop himself. Bishop Iker has about as much use for Griswold as a lion presiding over a nine-day old carcass on the Serengeti plains which even the flies won't touch.

Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion Office is Griswold's lap dog because the TEC pays most of the budget of the ACO, and he will bend his spine in nine different directions to keep The Episcopal Church in the communion. He will need a chiropractor after this meeting is done. T'was he who came up with the "brilliant" idea of a full time "listening" post in London to listen to the whine of gays and lesbians and to promote a "covenant" that will take eight years (that's what he said at GC2006 in Columbus, Ohio) to make sure the TEC stays at the table, even if there are only a handful of bishops who believe in Spong's religion that are still extant by then.

The only person missing at this gabfest whose point of view and whose major whine they will not hear is gay New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, but Griswold will do a credible job defending him. After all he was the chief consecrator at his abominable, communion-breaking ordination so he will have the high, but not necessarily moral ground to defend both Vicky and himself.

If Duncan and Iker can stand being in the same room with Griswold (who hates Duncan for his alleged schismatic ways) it will, in itself, be something of a miracle.

There will be enough animosity and angst in this room that it will take months of therapy for Griswold to cope with the fact that all he has ever believed and spoken during the course of his nine years in office has been a house of cards that is now falling around his ears. The smoke and mirrors ended with eight dioceses telling him they were done with The Episcopal Church.

So VOL would like to take you inside this meeting for a glimpse of how it might go. Please bring a handkerchief for the tears (of laughter) and despair to follow.

KEARON: I just want to say how grateful I am for the very careful way you have taken seriously the requests of the Windsor Report, and you see this seriousness in the way that business was being conducted on this particular issue at Convention. I am glad to be here to "facilitate" this meeting. The Anglican Communion Office is a very proper and appropriate place to begin" a conversation of this importance, especially as The Episcopal Church is picking up the tab and I am staying at the Hilton at $250 a night...no breakfast.

GRISWOLD: Let us hold hands so we can all do the Circle Dance of Dispossession together...now breath out all that bad karma and breathe in good thoughts as we gather here today. Now I want each one of you to send out good thoughts into the universe ere we begin. That's it...breathe deeply.

IKER: Frank, you are completely full of it. Let's say the Creed instead, we could even do Morning Prayer if you still believe it, that is.

LIPSCOMB: I think we need time out to pray that God will bring us together in unity and love for one another so we can keep the Episcopal Church from imploding. Let us bow our heads.

DUNCAN: Now which God are we actually praying too John, I am not convinced that Frank, Katharine and I are on the same page about WHO God is. I think we need a Doctrine of God enunciated before we begin.

LEE: Aw come on Bob. Just bow your head and pray; who the hell cares anymore. You have your God and Frank has his. Move on.

IKER: This is a crock Mr. Kearon. No one has taken the Windsor Report seriously, what the hell do you think B033 was all about. It was a last minute rush to judgment to try and appease the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Global South Primates. At the end no one was happy, not even the TEC's liberals lead by Washington Bishop John Chane who produced a contra report signed by 30 bishops. Wise up. The gig is up....

SCHORI: I think we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. We are united by the church's Millennium Goals...

GRISWOLD: (interrupting)... the Church exists for the sake of the world...we need to go to a deeper place...

DUNCAN: (interrupting)...what about the Great Commission Frank, whatever the hell happened to converting people to Jesus?

KEARON:(interrupting)...I think we need time out. I think we all need to go out and see the movie World Trade Center to remind ourselves of just how bad some people REALLY had it.

GRISWOLD: I can't possibly see that movie. It reminds me of Mel's movie The Passion of the Christ...way too bloody, it will offend my sensibilities and I have this thing about Western Islamophobia and falling concrete...I've had nightmares for months since the towers toppled. I think someone is out to get me...

END