Both the far-left gay/lesbian advocates and the far-right conservatives were very happy Tuesday, but for different reasons.

On Wednesday, both of them were very unhappy, and for the same reason.

Let me try to explain: The gay-rights activists were happy Tuesday because they felt that with the House of Deputies’ rejection of a resolution calling for a moratorium on the consecration of any more non-celibate gay bishops, as the Windsor Report asked us to do, the Episcopal Church was saying, “What we did in 2003 in consenting to the election of Gene Robinson was the right, good thing to do; it was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and we are refusing to move backward by effecting a moratorium.”

The far-right conservatives were happy Tuesday because, with the House of Deputies rejecting one of the key provisions of the Windsor Report, they had the smoking gun they were looking for -- final evidence that the Episcopal Church was thumbing its nose at the wider Anglican Communion, and a strong case that the Archbishop of Canterbury should recognize them as the true Anglicans in the United States because the Episcopal Church had chosen to walk apart from the rest of the Communion.

And they were both right.

But that was Tuesday. And boy what a difference a day makes.

Thanks to some courageous leadership from both Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori, the great big moderate center of the Episcopal Church finally asserted itself Wednesday. We overwhelmingly approved a new resolution, proposed by Bishop Dorsey Henderson of Upper South Carolina and endorsed by Bishop Lee, that called on standing committees and bishops with jurisdiction to “exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.”

The House of Bishops had approved the resolution just before noon Wednesday. Presiding Bishop Griswold was surprisingly assertive and bold as he steered the resolution through, resisting efforts to water it down. Presiding Bishop-elect Jefferts Schori gave a calm but passionate speech pleading with the House of Bishops to pass the resolution. It passed by a large majority and was then sent to the House of Deputies, which had to approve it as well in order for it to be the official position of the Episcopal Church.

And that’s when the most amazing part of the day came. Several deputies rose to the microphones to say that they felt they had been whipsawed legislatively by both the far left and far right, and wanted another chance to say what was on their mind.

Then Bishop Jefferts Schori was introduced as a special guest to address the House of Deputies. She repeated and elaborated on her earlier speech, saying that while she was committed to the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the life of our church, it was imperative that we send a strong signal to our brothers and sisters in the other parts of the Anglican Communion that we were listening to them.

“No man is an island, entire of itself,” I thought to myself as she spoke, recalling John Dunne’s reminder that we are interdependent. And to paraphrase the rest of that famous line, “every church is a piece of the wider communion, a part of the main.” Bishop Jefferts Schori had put herself way out there by pleading with the House of Deputies. She had made this personal – a referendum on her leadership.

But would the center hold? Was there enough of a moderate center, combined with gracious people on the left who had to hold their noses and vote “yes,” combined with gracious people on the right who had to settle for language they thought unsatisfactorily weak, to pass the resolution?

The vote finally came. An overwhelming majority – 77.4 percent of the laity voting “yes,” and 75.8 percent of the clergy voting “yes.”

After the vote, at spontaneous press conferences, there were some petulant voices from both the far left and far right -- single-issue advocates pouting because they didn’t get their way.

But there are more important voices. Some of those voices are from our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters who genuinely feel betrayed by their church. We need to listen to them. Some of those voices are from our conservative brothers and sisters who feel that we are still drifting from orthodoxy and are still not respectful of the wider Anglican Communion. We need to listen to them, too.

But the most welcome voice we heard today was that of the great big moderate center, which finally asserted itself, and said, in the final analysis, that this is relationship: relationship with one another, with truth, and with our Lord, messy and as complicated as those relationships might be.