a most serious matter facing General Convention

I face a great dilimma at General Convention this year, and I hope via this blog to conduct a churchwide conversation to assist discernment.

As some of you know, at last GC I borrowed a travel electric guitar and performed a composition with original lyrics. The song's title was "I Will Survive (General Convention)." I am told that it was most inspiring. I can only thank our Creator and the angels for working through me to encourage the saints in this way.

I have been asked to do at least one other such song at this convention. Thus far, contenders include:

• "(You Say You Want a) Resolution"
• "Changes" (to the tune of David Bowie's great song; this one would have to be about TEC structure)
• "Episcopalians" (to the tune of Bowie's "Young Americans")
• "The Ones Who Sold the Church" (to the Bowie/Nirvana tune -- I think this one's probably too edgy)
• "Smells Like [something -- Sweet Incense?]" (I'm clearly on a Nirvana kick)
• "Tridium" (to the tune of Nirvana's "Lithium")
• "500 Miles" (the Proclaimers' song on the Shrek soundtrack -- a tribute to how much we have to walk at GC)

My instrument this year is a "mandobird" -- an electric mandolin designed like a Gibson Firebird guitar:

... and the mandolin is a particularly appropriate instrument for when I sing the Indigo Girls "Ozilline" as a tribute to Miss Lydia Wilkins of Pasadena, CA, who died two months' short of her 107th birthday in 2010 -- and who I can say from personal witness looked WAY better in my black leather motorcycle jacket than I did. My love to the whole Tatum-Harris clan.

But for the General Convention song(s), do any of the above stand out? Any other suggestions? I can easily make the mandobird sound like an electric guitar with effects, so the possibilities are staggering. Since I've only played mandolin for a few weeks, though, it probably should be too musically complex. (I told my committee chairs that our music for worship could not, unfortunately, include St. Patrick's Breastplate.)