BobSchaefer.com

a work in progress

Growing into the largeness of marriage

May 24

Posted by Bob in Bible | No Comments

Came across this in my daily reading… I really like how Eugene Peterson rendered Mt. 19:11-12 in his translation, The Message:

Jesus said, “Not everyone is mature enough to live a married life. It requires a certain aptitude and grace. Marriage isn’t for everyone. Some, from birth seemingly, never give marriage a thought. Others never get asked—or accepted. And some decide not to get married for kingdom reasons. But if you’re capable of growing into the largeness of marriage, do it.”

I’m still growing into the largeness of marriage. But I’m deeply grateful I was given the chance to grow into it in the first place. God is good.


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The Bunny-Puppy Love Nexus

Oct 22

Posted by Bob in personal, pics | 2 Comments

Well, that was pretty cool…

Since Ellie and I moved into our new bunny-filled house, we’ve had to establish routines in order to make sure that all the pets get quality time with their humans.

One bunny, Riley, has the upstairs to himself, and seems to be pretty happy being the lord of his domain.

Willow and Duncan have a pen downstairs where they spend most of their days, while Ellie has the run of the rest of the first floor. During the evenings, we put child gates up and limit Ellie to the first floor hallway, while the pair is allowed to come out and play in the living room, dining room and kitchen. They get several hours, and then everyone’s back to their usual spots.

Willow and Ellie 1Tonight I accidentally put Ellie’s gate up higher than normal. Willow noticed it, and wiggled right under – despite the fact that there was a puppy flopped out on the other side of the gate! I was standing on the stairs at the time, and got a good view of the whole thing. Gretchen crept over to see how it all played out, too.

And, I have to say, I’m happy with our pets! Things went well enough with Willow’s little experiment that Gretchen took down the gates, and Ellie had her first unleashed, ungated interaction with a bunny. (Of course she was being very carefully supervised!) Both pets were mostly calm and nonchalant about each other, although Ellie got a little too wiggly for Willow’s taste once or twice.

There was just one instance where Ellie started to chase Willow, but we put a quick stop to that, and nobody was the worse for the wear. Willow was actually playing, and was possibly binkying, to which Ellie didn’t understand how to respond – she just doesn’t have a frame of reference for binkies. So she did what dogs do… she played tag.

Willow and Ellie 2Three weeks of living in the same house has gone a long way toward desensitizing the animals toward each other. I’m very hopeful that if we try this a few more times, and are careful to make sure Ellie’s calm and relaxed when we do, that maybe we can have some supervised pet integration. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to spend the evening!

(Duncan, by the way, spent the whole time in his pen, which is usually how he seems to prefer things. I tried to steer Ellie clear of the dining room where the pen’s at, although the one time she wandered through, she didn’t pay any attention to Duncan.)

Many thanks to our good-natured pets for being so good together!


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Star trails: Grand finale

Sep 19

Posted by Bob in church, pics | 2 Comments

I almost didn’t go out tonight – I wasn’t sure the sky was going to be clear enough, for all the clouds we had throughout the afternoon. That, and I was kind of looking forward to an evening at home. But I’m glad I ventured out one last time. I think I got a keeper:

SJLC-Startrails-3

Some fun stuff going on here. :-D

  1. You can see that a few cars went past while I was shooting – the red tail lights give a nice base to the pic, I think!
  2. My “tripod” is clearly visible in the lower right and left corners. Yes, my Subaru has a roof rack. I suppose this pic would be better if I could eliminate those black pyramids, but this gives it character. Maybe someone else in Evansville (who has a tripod handy) will feel like taking a stab at this shot and one-upping me.
  3. I did a separate exposure with the lights on in the sanctuary, and then blended it in using Photoshop, in order to light up the clerestory and stained glass windows. I think it really makes the building come alive in the final pic.
  4. I forgot to do a “dark frame” – that’s where you pop the lens cover on and do one or two more exposures using the same settings. In night photography, digital cameras will almost always have “hot pixels,” which will show red, green, or blue regardless of what was in the actual exposure. By doing a dark frame, you can create an image that is entirely black except for those misfiring pixels, and then subtract them from the final image. Since I forgot to do that, there are a goodly number of random, colorful dots in this pic. They’re not stars (or else they’d have trails), but again, it gives the shot a little personality. I’m OK with it.

This was a longer series. Here are the technical details:

Composite of 254 individual exposures. Primary exposures – 20 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400. Window exposure – 1/8 sec, f/8, ISO 400. Total exposure time: 84 minutes, 40 seconds, spread over 96 minutes, with 12 minutes of write time to the memory card.

This may be my last star trail photo of St. John’s. It’s been a fun experiment, taking this pics. Looking forward to some new scenery in PA to point my lens at!


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More star trails

Sep 17

Posted by Bob in church, pics | 3 Comments

Here’s the result of tonight’s efforts:

cross-trails

Ran into some interesting technical difficulties tonight, even as I compensated for the ones I ran into last night! ;-)

  1. Most noticeably, my lens began fogging up about 1/3 of the way through this image. I think this wasn’t an issue last night, because I started later then, and the night had already cooled off. I’ve read that it helps to have one of those camping hand warmers rubber banded around the lens in order to keep it warm. Might need to try that. Still, since I had a number of sharp pics of the cross to start with, it comes out much more distinctly than I thought it would when I looked at the last pic in the series! Also, the fogging of my lens gives the trails unique “fading tails” that I actually like.
  2. The framing isn’t great, because it’s hard to frame shots using the roof of your car and a beanbag! That was less of an issue last night, when I was taking a more or less level shot of the church; the camera’s screen was accessible so I could check my framing. With this shot, the camera was leaning back against the beanbag, which meant I had to move it quite a bit in order to view the display, and then hope I set it back in close to the right position. Didn’t really nail it this time. My tripod will help, if I want to do some of these out in PA.
  3. I had the darndest time getting the shutter release to stay pressed! If you’ve been following my star trail saga the last few days, you know that my method involves taking a large number of short exposures and then combining them digitally after the fact. Serious star trail photographers have a cable release that’s connected to a timer in order to automate all those exposures – me, I don’t have a budget for this, so I have to improvise. That means that I set my camera for burst mode, and then try to tape the shutter release down. Last night I used wads of Kleenex to depress the shutter release, and Scotch tape to secure them, but tonight, things weren’t working for me. The tape wouldn’t stay stuck, and the Kleenex squished down so that it stopped applying enough pressure after several minutes. I probably lost about half an hour due to several false starts of this sort. Eventually I found a pebble and managed to get a good stick.

I shot this series using JPEGs, which prevented the dashed-line look from last night (although it still took 3-4 seconds to save each file before the shutter fired again – strange). I used a custom white balance that did a great job of removing the orange glow. RAW is still great because you can make all those tweaks after the fact, but for this particular job, JPEG is the right way to go for me. Plus, you can fit a whole lot more on your memory card!

Another thing I’m learning is that this is hard on a DSLR’s battery, so it’s nice to have the battery grip that doubles the power supply.

It looks like I’ll get one more night of clear skies tomorrow before some clouds and rain settle in over the weekend. Gonna try to do another shoot while I still can.

Tech specs for this pic: Composite of 200 exposures over 64 minutes (50 minutes of actual exposure, and 14 minutes of the camera writing to the memory card); each exposure is 15 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400.


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Star trails at St. John’s

Sep 17

Posted by Bob in church, pics | 2 Comments

After 30 minutes of prep, an hour of shooting, and 90 minutes of processing and merging, I’m calling tonight’s shoot finished. Here’s the final merged photo. Techie stuff below.

sjlc-star-trails

The photo is a composite of 92 individual exposures, 30 seconds apiece, at f/8 and ISO 800. I shot the series using the RAW format, which allowed me to get better colors, at the expense of processing time – I needed to convert all 92 images to JPEG in order to complete the merge, which took maybe 45 minutes.

A few interesting glitches in the pic:

  1. There’s an unexplained 4-minute gap in my sequence: 7 or 8 exposures about a third of the way through the shoot that didn’t get taken, or weren’t saved correctly by the camera somehow. You can clearly see the gap in the final photo.
  2. If you look closely at the full-size image (click on it), you’ll see an unfortunate consequence of shooting RAW (at least on my setup): For every 30-second exposure, my camera spent an extra 6-7 seconds writing the file to the memory card, before it was able to begin the next exposure. You wouldn’t think the stars move at all in such a short time, but you’d be wrong. You’ll notice that, when it’s zoomed in all the way, the star trails are actually dashed lines, with the space between the dashes exactly 1/6 the length of the dashes themselves! :-?

Tomorrow night’s supposed to be clear – I think I’m going to try setting up a shot with JPEGs, and see how that goes.

Tonight was a good experiment, and the composite technique clearly is a viable way to do star trails even with quite a bit of ambient light.

Wonder if the police will stop by again tomorrow to check me out, and make sure I’m not up to something nefarious? :lol:


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Late night photography

Sep 16

Posted by Bob in church, pics | 2 Comments

It’s 3:00, and I’m just wrapping up for the night. I wanted to share what I’ve been up to before I head off to bed.

I’ve got just shy of three weeks left in Evansville, and I realized that before I leave here I want to take a star trail picture of St. John’s. Tonight was the first clear night this week, so I began digging out my photo gear. Alas, I’m pretty sure Dad must have boxed up my tripod when he was helping me pack, so I had to settle for the roof of my car (hence the crooked pic below).

At the church, I did a couple of test runs. I knew that star trails require a long exposure – no less than 10-12 minutes and half an hour or more for decent ones. A trick I read about let me take a shortcut, though: If my intended exposure is 12 minutes at ISO 100, I can take a test shot at ISO 1600 in just 45 seconds which will show me how the scenery (in this case, the church) will look. Obviously, the stars won’t be streaking in such a short exposure, but that’s OK for this purpose.

It’s particularly important because there are two street lights that are pretty much unavoidable when photographing St. John’s, and I was afraid their light would spoil the picture. You can judge for yourself:

Test shot: 30 seconds, f8, ISO 1600

Test shot: 30 seconds, f8, ISO 1600

Argh! That’s approximating only an eight minute exposure! I drove off wondering if there’s any way the City of Evansville might be persuaded to turn off their street lights, or whether I’d have to resort to an act of vandalism in order to get my picture. Things seemed pretty hopeless.

Enter Google.

Out of curiosity, I tried searching for information about urban star trail photography, and came across a technique that just might work. Rather than take a single long exposure that shows the stars’ path across the sky, it’s possible to take multiple short exposures and combine them digitally after returning from the field. The exposure time can be set short enough so that the ambient light is kept under control. And a simple downloadable tool called (appropriately enough) Startrails merges the pictures effortlessly. (Sorry, Mac friends – it’s Windows only, although there are Photoshop scripts out there to automate the process for you, too.)

Not wanting to sit out on the road for half an hour just to see if this works, I stepped outside and set up my camera in the driveway, aimed straight for the lightpost down the block. I set my camera for 30-second exposures at ISO 400 and f8, put the camera in burst mode so that it would fire continuously while the shutter release was depressed, and applied a bit of tape and some wadded Kleenex to hold it down. Then I left it alone for 35 minutes. The result, after merging 71 photos and adjusting the colors to get rid of the obnoxious sodium orange:

Composite image, 40 minutes total exposure

Composite image, 40 minutes total exposure

Success! Tomorrow night is supposed to be clear, so I plan on doing a longer run over at the church – maybe an hour or two. I’ll share whatever results I get. And now it’s almost 3:30. If that’s not time for bed, I don’t know what is. A long, but very fruitful night it’s been!


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Murder at the altar

Aug 27

Posted by Bob in church, current events, personal | 2 Comments

Pastor Carol Daniels

Pastor Carol Daniels

I was taken aback when I saw the tweet from a journalist I began following last week, during the Churchwide Assembly:

Reward offered in pastor’s “horrific” killing. (via CNN) #ELCA http://tinyurl.com/md6h6b

Following the link, I read the gut-wrenching news of Pastor Carol Daniels’ murder, in her Oklahoma church, on Sunday morning. A murder on holy ground is always diabolical, fouling a place devoted to the worship of the God of life and tearing the soul of the community of faith that calls that place home.

But this is something different. Something worse.

Authorities are tight-lipped – due both to the ongoing nature and the pure awfulness of the crime scene – but what has been shared with the public is deeply disturbing: After inflicting “multiple sharp force injuries” on Pastor Daniels, her killer staged her body. That is, her body was posed in some way, apparently somewhere in the vicinity of the altar, according to reports.

District Attorney Bret Burns told reporters, “I’ve prosecuted over 50 murders. This is the most horrific crime scene I’ve ever witnessed.”

Authorities in Anadarko, where the murder took place, met yesterday with clergy from the area, warning them to  consider taking security precautions at their own churches.

Meanwhile, the bizarre and gruesome nature of the crime, as well as the official warnings given to religious leaders in Anadarko, suggest that Pastor Daniels’ murderer has grander ambitions:

Jack Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University in Boston, said the fact that Daniels’ body was staged is highly unusual and generally indicates that a killer is seeking attention.

“The killer wants the notoriety,” Levin said. “He knows that by staging the victim’s body, that it will freak out a population of people, terrify them.”

Levin, who has written several books on serial killings, murder and hate crimes, also said posing bodies is a ritualistic “signature” that can be used to connect several crimes to a single perpetrator.

“The killer poses the bodies because he wants credit,” Levin said. “He intends to do it again and wants credit for what he’s done.”

Having taken all this in, I suddenly understand what Gretchen goes through with every school shooting to hit the “breaking news” ticker. There’s all kinds of ugliness in this world, but some places are supposed to be safe from violence and evil. Some places are supposed to be sacrosanct. Schools. Hospitals. Houses of worship.

Gretchen and I each have found our life’s calling working in one of these venues, and we operate comfortably in the worlds of academia and ecclesia. It’s unnerving to know that violence can and does occur within the cloisters of the church and university; it’s distressing to think that we could personally be targets. What Virginia Tech was to Gretchen and her colleagues in the academic world, the unfolding story of Pastor Daniels’ murder is to those of us called to serve Christ’s church.

Please lift up in your prayers the family and loved ones of Carol Daniels, those touched by her ministry, the churches and leaders of Anadarko, and all who boldly serve the gospel of Jesus Christ, wherever their field may be.

I’ll be following this story with great interest and deep concern. Above all else, my prayer is that Carol Daniels’ killer will be apprehended and brought to justice before any more blood can be shed.


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Respect for bound conscience (#CWA09)

Aug 21

Posted by Bob in church, current events, personal | No Comments

Our social statement calls us to respect the bound consciences of those who have prayerfully and faithfully come to conclusions different from our own. What might this look like in practice?

Lutheran CORE would say: “Out of love for you, we will no longer oppose the changes you seek.”

Goodsoil would say: “Out of love for you, we will no longer seek the changes you oppose.”

Each side understands it has a right, but each side lays aside that right in love and respect, being unwilling to create a stumbling block for their neighbor’s faith.

Anything less would be hot air and empty rhetoric.

So are we committed to this? In action and deed as well as in claim and promise?

We’ve said we are. I pray that it’s so. THAT would be the kind of witness of love that stuns the world – the kind that Jesus said would be our calling card.


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Strib doesn’t get sexuality statement (#CWA09)

Aug 20

Posted by Bob in church, current events, personal, rants | 6 Comments

The headline in today’s Minneapolis StarTribune reads:

ELCA validates ‘chaste’ same-sex relationships.

It goes on:

The vote on recognizing gay relationships came down to the thinnest of margins. One vote. That was the margin Wednesday by which the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America churchwide assembly approved a social statement that, among other things, acknowledges the validity of same-sex relationships that are “chaste, monogamous and lifelong.”

Having actually read “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” and having been at the Assembly yesterday, I want to know what reporter Jeff Strickler was smoking? Let me enumerate the ways in which his article in the Strib is cracked:

  • The word “chaste,” which is used both in the headline and in Strickler’s lead paragraph, doesn’t even appear in the 20-page social statement, much less as regards to same-sex relationships. I have no idea where he gets the idea that the Assembly voted on “validating” “monogamous and lifelong” relationships. As for “chaste,” well, let’s think about that…
  • Current church policy would have no issue whatsoever with anyone in a “chaste same-sex relationship.” Chastity is abstinence outside of marriage and fidelity within it. I have all kinds of “chaste same-sex relationships” – I had lunch with a couple of guys with whom I’ve been in that sort of relationship since high school. The sexuality statement did speak in passing to the high value of friendships, so I suppose in a crazy kind of way, the Strib accidentally got this right…
  • The article claims: “Convention-goers had spent the afternoon arguing about amendments.” If that’s arguing, I wish every argument were as polite and dignified as the CWA’s “argument” about this statement and amendments to it!
  • Strickler also implies that the final vote was in some way shady, noting that “some delegates who had dinner reservations started to drift out of the hall” before the vote, because the session ran long. Sorry, but if dinner reservations are more important than your duty to vote, you don’t get to complain about the outcome. Same with the “quick succession” of events that led to the final vote. If you walk away from your seat during a contentious issue, and happen to miss the vote, dem’s da berries. Things at Assembly can move very slowly, but they can also go in a flash. Voting members (not “delegates”) have a responsibility to be there and be prepared to vote on any motion that comes up. Nothing shady there. And the bishop’s ruling on the vote was well-considered. No one complained that their voting device had malfunctioned, as they had in earlier votes. Hearing no complaints, Bishop Hanson called the vote. As far as I’m aware, no one has yet come forward and said their vote didn’t get counted.
  • The vote was in no way on “recognizing gay relationships.” I don’t understand how people have gotten this idea. Consider a few excerpts from the actual statement:

We have come to various conclusions concerning how to regard lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships, including whether and how to publicly recognize their lifelong commitments. [Emphasis mine throughout.]

[C]onsensus does not exist concerning how to regard same-gender committed relationships, even after many years of thoughtful, respectful, and faithful study and conversation. We do not have agreement on whether this church should honor these relationships, uplift, shelter, and protect them or on precisely how it is appropriate to do so.

Recognizing that this conclusion differs from the historic Christian tradition and the Lutheran Confessions, some people, though not all, in this church and within the larger Christian community, conclude that marriage is also the appropriate term to use in describing similar benefits, protection, and support for same-gender couples entering into lifelong monogamous relationships.

I need to go back and look over the statement one more time before I blog my thoughts on it, but the poor quality of this report and its tendency toward sensationalism turns my stomach. If you’re not going to take the time to understand the issue, don’t report on it, friend. You do more harm than good!


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Assembly Reflections, Tuesday and Wednesday (#cwa09)

Aug 20

Posted by Bob in church, current events, personal | No Comments

The Internets are restless – I noticed that one of the search queries that brought people to the St. John’s web site was “where is Bob Schaefer’s blog for August 19″ :lol:

Confession: The Assembly is taking much more than I expected, both in terms of time and energy. I’d intended to post nightly wrap-ups like the first one, summarizing the key arguments and discussions, but it’s clear that hasn’t worked very well for me. So rather than a wrap-up that tries to be thorough (of which there are probably much better out there), I’m just going to share the things that have stood out for me personally in the last few days.

Tuesday

Tuesday was a slow day.

Well, no day at a Churchwide Assembly is actually slow. You’re in session or at worship for all but two hours between 8:00 and 5:45, and during those two hours there are handouts to be read, caucuses to attend, and networking to be done. And that’s just the official business that I, as a visitor, have been here for. If you’re a voting member, and staying right downtown, there are other fun and/or helpful items on your calendar to keep you occupied until you drag yourself to bed.

So let us say that Tuesday was a relatively slow day at the Assembly, then. No major controversial votes taken.

Which is not to say that there was no controversy, nor that there were no important votes!

Key Matters

  • The Assembly considered two programs of mission related to disease and poverty. In the morning, we were introduced to the ELCA’s HIV and AIDS strategy the Assembly would be asked to fund. In the afternoon, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support the Lutheran Malaria Initiative, a partnership between The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, Lutheran World Relief, and our own church to fight a disease of poverty that takes more than a million lives each year – that’s one preventable death every 30 seconds.
  • Bishop Hanson gave the report of the Presiding Bishop – you’d do well to watch it online. He’s a good preacher, and this was more like preaching than reporting. In a good way. :)
  • There was an introduction to the budget. Not so ho-hum… it included a helpful video highlighting some of the many ways in which mission support dollars from our congregations spread the good news about Jesus in places we couldn’t reach effectively as congregations on our own. If I can find a copy, I’d very much like St. John’s to see it – we have a hard time joyfully supporting the work of the synod and the churchwide organization, and I think seeing some of these ministries would help that.
  • The president of the Lutheran Youth Organization challenged the Assembly to more fully include young people in the life of the church – urging that at least 10% of the voting member seats at the 2011 Churchwide Assembly be designated for youth. They are not merely the future of the Church – they are our present. Are we willing not simply to minister to them, but to minister with them… and to be ministered to BY them? I hope the Church says a resounding “YES!”
  • We spent an hour in a “quasi-committee of the whole.” This is a parliamentary move that allows for more freedom to discuss challenging issues: in this case, the Social Statement on Human Sexuality. Voting members expressed many views, but it kept coming back to a debate about homosexuality, which disappointed me. There’s so much more in that statement!

Reflections

I’m proud of a couple of things: the way Lutherans support social ministries as part of our mission to proclaim good news to the poor, and the way this Assembly has considered the difficult questions of human sexuality with dignity. When you compare our proceedings to the craziness of the town halls taking place around the country regarding health care reform, I think we Lutherans look like a pretty civilized and thoughtful bunch. There’s no consensus, to be sure, but we’re doing a good job of living with each other apart from that consensus, and loving each other apart from it.

Also of note (at least to me): My web site went through the roof on Tuesday. My counter normally registers anywhere from a handful to maybe 30-40 views each day, but Tuesday’s count was up around 170. Maybe not huge traffic for a major blog, but for my little bit of the web, it was substantial. Weird thing was, although the counter said many of the hits were coming from blogs.elca.org/assembly, I couldn’t find a link anywhere on that page to my own site!

The mystery was solved yesterday in a conversation with another blogger here – apparently the ELCA had linked to a number of blogs from their own Assembly blog earlier in the day, but then thought better of it. They chose to have only official speech linked from the Assembly page, in order to avoid the appearance of endorsing these other sites or their viewpoints. Probably smart, but I miss the extra traffic! Please keep visiting, all you who popped in on Tuesday! I promise I’ll write something interesting for you! ;-)

Wednesday

Now here was an interesting day! I mean, holy cow – how often is a building full to the gills with deliberating Lutherans hit by a tornado?

Yes, in case you hadn’t already heard, the Minneapolis Convention Center was gently tapped by a passing tornado yesterday just after 2:00. In the picture at right, you can see the tornado approaching one of the the domes of the convention center, and passing over the parking lot of Central Lutheran Church. Both buildings received minor damage.

The tornado came out of nowhere – the skies were cloudy, and it had been raining steadily, but there were no predictions of severe weather. I was sitting in a quiet area upstairs at the convention center, reading through the sexuality statement before debate began, so that I’d be prepared. As I was packing up, a staffer rather aggressively began telling those around me that we couldn’t stay on this level, and needed to move downstairs now. I thought it was just their way of clearing the area out to be cleaned or something while the plenary session was taking place… it seemed strange.

Once I got downstairs, red-vested Assembly volunteers were herding everyone into the meeting hall, which again was weird. It’s not as though the ELCA has a sergeant-at-arms, who is able to go out and forcibly drag voting members onto the floor when the time comes! (Gotta love Congress.) Once I had been ushered into the hall, it quickly became clear what the general issue was, as there was a good deal of chatter. At that point, the building would have already been hit and the damage done (by the time the weather services figured out what was going on, it was all past us, at least).

Lots of discussion, both tongue-in-cheek and in serious, about whether this was a literal “act of God” to express his displeasure with the ELCA. I don’t buy that any more than I bought that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on the US for putting up with gay people. But it makes for a good story!

I haven’t gotten to the business of yesterday’s meeting, and we’re gathering to start today’s plenary session, so that’ll have to wait. Use the time to actually read the sexuality statement (it passed, in a dramatic fashion perfect for the day), because it’s easy to understand and worth your time. Then check back here for my thoughts, if you care. ;-)


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