After the joint effort yesterday between Stand Firm and this blog to draw attention to the proposed changes to TEO's Canons and some of the response from our readers to same, well, I guess I cannot say I'm surprised, but I do feel compelled to speak to one of the questions raised and debated. That question is, variously phrased, "Why Bother?"
In other words, many commenters voiced the opinion that there is no point to bother spending the time to review the proposed changes and post comments on them, because their passage is either (1) inevitable, and/or (2) irrelevant because the P.O. and her cohorts will do what they want anyway. One commenter tried to post a comment to the Canons website and said there is a message that the comments on there are being moderated, i.e., someone will read (or edit, or strike) them before they ever get posted.
So, why, indeed? I ask myself that same question sometimes in relation to maintaining and writing for this site. After all, I have left TEO and although I am still looking for someplace to be my church home, I have not looked back. I am thoroughly disgusted 
with TEO and want nothing to do with a denomination that rejects so much of my Christian faith. What do I gain by observing the various goings-on and writing about them, or from the hours I spent reviewing the proposed Canon changes and writing about them? Sometimes I truly wonder.
My best understanding of my purpose, and what I would suggest for others, is that I feel compelled to continue to throw lifelines to the many good people who have remained in TEO, many of my family members included. I am not a "cradle Episcopalian" and I recognize that my choice to understand that TEO has left me was much simpler to make than the choice facing many. I do not have those life-long connections and loyalties to a single parish nor to the people in it, at least not to the extent they would override my personal choice to place my convictions and faith ahead of them.
I am not in any way criticizing those who continue to attend TEO parishes. I try very hard to understand their feelings and for the most part do see the quandary in which they find themselves. My wife's entire Church experience has been in one parish; she has been in the choir since she was a mid-teen. I, on the other hand, have moved quite a bit during my life and do not have those deep local roots - my faith as a matter of necessity has been "portable" from congregation to congregation. She feels called to stick with the local TEO parish; I have not been so compelled in my choice. While it hurts to not be able to attend church with my spouse, I also made a personal choice as I felt called by my faith.
So, I think any individual is neither right nor wrong to leave TEO or go, and is neither right nor wrong in taking an active interest in the proposed Canons, regardless of one's standing vis a vis TEO. Some of do take an interest for the sake of trying to illuminate issues for others who read these blogs, and to generate informative discussions from which we all gain. Others see it, particularly as it relates to the proposed Canon changes, as a waste of time. Neither are "wrong" but we simply feel called to focus our energies in different directions.
Is it a "waste of time" to look at proposed Canon changes and talk about them? In the sense of thinking we can stop the P.O. from continuing to turn TEO into her own little dictatorship, it probably is a waste of time. I suspect that at least some of the comments they receive will be utilized not to enhance any "fairness" of the proposed changes, but to make their nefarious purposes more ironclad and canonically unassailable. On the other hand, in the sense of continuing to illustrate to the world just exactly what is going on in the saga of the hijacking of The Episcopal Church, exposing the dirty underbelly of the proposed Canon changes is probably not a waste of time. We shall know them by their acts. That's why I do this, and why I have encouraged others to discuss the proposed Canon changes.
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