So Al Gore got the Nobel Peace prize.Â? This is so sweet on many levels.Â? I mean… he deserved it and all (and he’s donating ALL the proceeds to benefit climate change)Â? and… it’s going to drive the right-wing pundits berzerk.
I couldn’t be happier.
Now that Gonzo is gone, next on the to-do list is Dick Cheney.Â? Better yet… let’s get both Bush and Cheney out.Â? Impeach the shrub and get Cheney for giving Haliburton all the contracts in the Middle East.Â? (Isn’t it a crime when there’s no fair bid?)
What?Â? Comments don’t work?Â? I wonder why.
Yahoo! News: Passenger sues over Arabic t-shirt
This event last year actually prompted me to *purchase* the shirt. (You can order here.)Â? I love the shirt — it actually fits me well and it’s a reminder not to be silent about the abuses that are perpetrated by the current administration.Â? I even wore the shirt to my local Veteran’s Day pancake supper last year… though under a sweatshirt as I live in a community where I might have been hung/drawn/quartered if people had seen it at that particular event.
Yahoo News: Lutherans to allow pastors in gay relationships
As usual, the ELCA fails to actually take a stand on this and instead issues a tepid ruling suggesting that practicing GLBT pastors not be punished.Â? I have a feeling that this will be all the rage in metro and some coastal synods and places like Montana will tell CWA where they can stick their decision.Â? (One of the reasons I love Montana: people aren’t afraid to stand up to the authorities.)
I also noticed that Yahoo! News took out the statements from the Lutheran CORE pastors who opposed it and also failed to mention that it was a margin of 107 votes in an assembly of 1000.Â? Way to be fair and balanced!
(For those who are going to lambast me for pointing out the margin of votes, let me explain something. For something like this to work, there needs to be an overwhelming margin — like 85%, not 55/45 like this vote was.Â? Something like this on a margin that slim is just going to cause schism, not change.)
I can also just imagine what’s going to happen in the Lutheran World Federation when this news hits the fan.
Ah… where two or three are gathered, there WILL be politics.
Bishop Hanson got re-elected as presiding bishop on the 2nd ballot.Â? (He was 2 votes short on the first.)Â? I’m not amused because he’s a revisionist idiot (IMHO) but he’s also head of the Lutheran World Federation at the moment which is going to keep him (for the moment) from doing anything too stupid as pissing off the remainder of the world’s Lutherans is *NOT* a good thing to do.
All the social justice things passed (not even an issue in this church).Â? The same-sex marriage stuff is being sent to the sexuality taskforce which I’m not sure is entirely good because it seems like the taskforce’s job is simply to spin the changing of the social statement into something pretty.Â? (Basically, it’s a 50/50 split in the church which means that there is going to be pain and suffering in 2009 for at least half of the church with whatever comes out.)
The most amusing memorial/resolution/amendment/whatever was the whole adopting of the “Book of Faith: Lutherans Read the Bible”.Â? For a denomination that claims sola Scriptura, this should not be all that surprising that we actually, like, READ the Bible and, like, APPLY it.
Churchwide Assembly has started on Navy Pier in Chicago and already there’s controversy.Â? A list of 80 openly GLBT pastors has been distributed.Â? Said pastors/candidates put their names out in the open in protest against the rule that GLBT clergy must remain chaste and I do believe said rule is going to be HOTLY debated at the Assembly.
Pray for us in the ELCA that we can come to an agreement on something instead of this endless loop of dialogue that is making everything worse.
Did we make as much of a fuss over the levees breaking in NOLA as we have about the 35-W bridge collapsing in Minneapolis?
(Inspiration: Dreama)