I have lived through three very intense and dramatic weeks.

My own emotional guide to the Conference runs as follows. To begin with, I was excited, anxious, confused and manic. I was the only person from the group with a car, and for several days I ran a taxi service, to and from the station, the university, and the two rented houses. Was I relieved when a second car arrived! Twenty-five members of the Changing Attitude group which had prepared material for Lambeth, spent a day or more in Canterbury - some stayed two or three weeks. Those who came were reasonably representative of lay and ordained Anglicans, lesbian and gay, with invaluable straight support.

For most of the first two weeks, I was on an emotional high. Between us, the members of Changing Attitude from the UK, and Integrity and Oasis from the US achieved a high level of visibility on the University Campus. We wandered around the main Conference thoroughfares and hung around before and after section meetings, meal and coffee breaks, worship and plenary sessions. We wore rainbow ribbons, smiled charmingly at bishops from Africa and the Far East, and engaged friendly bishops known and unknown from the UK, USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand in conversation.

Some of my feelings were shared with many of the bishops and with our group - the confusion and anxiety. The Conference venues were far flung and not well signposted, and bishops from distant outposts of the communion wandered around searching for their section meeting, prayer group, residence or dining hall. Grasping the geography of the campus more quickly than some, we became a valuable source of information about timetables and venues.

Gradually, new contacts were made and networks began to evolve. Whether the bishops of the Anglican Communion liked it or not, lesbian and gay members, lay and ordained, were a constant, very visible presence in their midst at Lambeth.

The refusal of the sub-section dealing with human sexuality to accept the presentation by Changing Attitude during the first week was a disappointing set back. The sub-section dealing with sexuality had a catastrophic first meeting, from which it took almost the whole Conference to recover. The venue, a college lecture theatre, created an atmosphere like a bear pit. Duncan Buchanan, Bishop of Johannesburg and chair of the sub-section, was verbally and emotionally assaulted by the more polarised and vociferous members of the group. He was shell-shocked. A change of venue was hastily organised, to a large room in the Franciscan Centre where the group was able to divide into groups of four. Painfully slowly, these small groups began to listen to one another's personal experience and stories and defuse some of the anger and prejudice.

Duncan was initially determined that the group would receive our presentation, but by the beginning of the second week it was clear that a minority in the group would block any presentation, or would want 'balancing' presentations from ex-gays, healed gays, celibate gays and those once gay but now happily married. The next few days were a roller-coaster of frustration and anticipation as we prepared for an open presentation, finally made after lunch on the second Thursday, before the bishops began the 24 hour vigil led by Jean Vanier.

We felt elated immediately after the presentation, but the following day I began to feel depressed. The second weekend was free for the bishops, and during my time in London I felt increasingly despondent. The sub-section was finding its way very slowly and tentatively towards a willingness to listen to the experience of others. But rumours were emanating from other parts of the Franciscan that an American reactionary conservative group was based there, with considerable financial and research resources and computer power. These were being used to brief hostile bishops on the line to take in arguing against any accommodation to the argument that bishops might just benefit from listening directly to the experience of lesbian and gay Christians. We had to be made non-persons for the biblical fundamentalism adopted by these groups to survive. We lurked around the front and back entrances of the Franciscan Centre, waiting to catch a friendly bishop who might update us on the tortuous progress of the group.The news was mostly depressing, with little glimpses of hope.

At the beginning of the third week, the energy and enthusiasm for the task seemed to have deserted us. The hostile bishops were in the ascendant and seemed to sense victory. The debate itself on the final Wednesday afternoon was preceded by an open air encounter between Richard Kirker and the physically, emotionally and spiritually aggressive Bishop Emmanuel Chukwuma of Enugu, Nigeria. It received wide-spread coverage in the press and on television.

We thought the debate might be equally intemperate and hostile in character. In the event, Archbishop Robin Eames' deeply measured chairing of the debate contained the extremes of emotion. The bishops were probably mesmerised by the motion and list of amendments, and the complex instructions for dealing with amendments outlined on the order paper. The first amendments listed were all negative.

For 90 minutes speeches and interventions were made, some filled with intense prejudice and blind ignorance, as the Conference voted repeatedly to strengthen the hard-line stance of the motion. The Archbishop of Canterbury's hand was reported to be first in the air as each vote was taken. A point came when I sensed the conservatives feared they might over-reach themselves, and 3 amendments were then passed of a more tolerant nature.

Finally the Archbishop of Canterbury rose to speak, leaving no doubt about the outcome he desired. The Conference voted overwhelmingly for the much amended motion. The following morning it was reported that the Archbishop thought the vote had been taken when he rose to speak. That night, many bishops felt traumatised by the debate, depressed and unable to sleep. I felt increasingly elated, as more and more bishops expressed their sorrow and their determination that this should not be the last word.

The pastoral letter drafted on Thursday by two American bishops initially gathered a dozen signatures. By Friday morning this had grown to 60, and to nearly 100 by the end of the day. Bishops were asking for copies to take around their colleagues seeking signatures. When Bishop Otis Charles of Oasis California returned to London on Tuesday 11th, 146 bishops, including 47 from the UK, had signed the letter.

The achievement of the un-holy alliance hatched between arch-conservative Americans, and bishops from Africa, the Far East and elsewhere was to create a determination on behalf of previously undecided bishops, to publicly commit themselves to listen to and work with lesbian and gay Christians. A breakthrough had been made. The American conservatives have tried and failed repeatedly at home to block the progress of lesbian and gay inclusion in the Church. They finally appeared to achieve a victory of sorts at Lambeth. It's effect may be very short-lived.

There are other stories from Lambeth which did not make the headlines, stories offering greater hope that a process of dawning awareness had begun in Canterbury which will be continued after the bishops return home. I had been talking in a college courtyard with Di Buchanan, Duncan's wife. As I rose to leave, a Ugandan bishop's wife revealed that she had been reading 'The Other Way'?, a copy of which had been given to every bishop. She had been deeply affected by the testimonies of lesbian and gay Christians. I wondered how many other wives had read the book and might broach the subject with their husbands back home. I also wondered how wives had been affected by their encounter with western styles and values and the differing marital roles modelled in the west, how many wives would now initiate conversations with their Episcopal husbands which would begin to challenge their culturally opinionated spouses.

A priest from Kenya, part of his province's support staff, asked to meet me privately. He was a tutor in a college where his students, enlightened by information filtering through from the west, were asking him questions about sexual identity and practice about which he had little information and few answers. For an hour he asked me the most basic questions about sexual activity. I gained the impression that whilst awareness programmes about HIV and AIDS had been effective, there was little positive sexual education, and nothing that touched on sexual pleasure, variety and satisfaction. I gave him a basic grounding in such topics as masturbation, guilt, what lesbians might do, what homosexuals really do, and what other things a man and a woman might get up to. The 25 representatives of Changing Attitude engaged in many similar conversations during the 3 weeks of Lambeth. For us, this is the real, effective story of the Conference.