Marilyn’s Musings, The Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley

15 October 2026

Early in my career I was at lunch with some colleagues when I felt a painful thunk on my head. We sat at a table in the middle of a restaurant, and, with my body suddenly on high alert, I whipped around to see who had entered my bubble without warning or permission and hurt me.

I was angry, ready to explode if whoever was behind me did not immediately apologize for accidently hitting me. I thought a server might have bumped me with a loaded tray as they passed, or another guest might have hit me in the head with their purse or briefcase.

But when I turned around, already half out of my chair, no one had obviously passed behind me. I turned back around to the table to see a mid-council leader smirking and taking a seat at our table.

This did not make me feel any better about the situation. My colleague, someone I had vowed at my ordination to treat as a friend and colleague in ministry, had willfully hurt me.

Worse yet, he seemed to think it was funny, or some kind of practical joke. A 60-something man hit a 20-something woman in the head hard enough to make her feel threatened where she sat, and to him it was all a joke.

My brothers, sisters, and siblings in Christ, it ought not to be so.

I open this musing with this story, to show you what my own reactivity will do to my mindset. I can tell you right now, on high alert for danger and with a deep feeling of unease with one of my new colleagues, I was not capable of faithful, considerate, kind, discernment during the lunch that followed. Reactivity makes us wonderfully able to deal with a real threat, but it rarely makes us able to faithfully, communally, listen for the movement and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

As part of the packet for the Stated Meeting of the Presbytery of Sheppards and Lapsley on November 19, 2026, commissioners to Presbytery will find a 102 page document presenting all of the proposed amendments to the Book of Order. I myself am still sifting through all of the information in this document to make sense of it, and to prepare to facilitate our Presbytery’s discernment around these proposed amendments.

I cannot tell you what in that document you make you reactive, what you will think is an obvious no-brainer, and what you will have not initially strong feelings about, one way or the other.

But I ask, as your Stated Clerk: if ever there were a time to have the same person(s) serving as Ruling Elder Commissioner(s) at two Presbytery meetings in a row, this would be a very good time.

At our meeting next month, we will take some time to do a “first reading” of these proposed amendments. (I promise we will not actually read the entire 102 page document on the floor of Presbytery.) We will have time to ask questions, and begin our process of discernment together.

Then, at our stated meeting in February, we will vote on these amendments.

If it is not possible or practical for the same Ruling Elder Commissioner(s) to participate at the next two meetings, then those of you who participate in November, I urge you to discuss these amendments with whoever will be serving as the Ruling Elder Commissioner in February.

I am a proud Presbyterian, because I firmly believe the Holy Spirit speaks most clearly to us through the faithful discernment of the body of Christ gathered together. So let us do the assigned reading, let us be in faithful discussion, and let us come with hearts and minds open to the movement of the Holy Spirit, so that we are able to vote from a place of faithful response, and not fearful reactivity.

Grace and Peace,
Marilyn