Winter in Chicago

Greetings everyone!It is snowing heavily once again and I am procrastinating from goingoutside from this computer lab, although my waiting unfinishedpapers are in an equally warm and snug room once I get there.Brrr...I have just finished a J-Term class on the Bible and Qur'an, andthis past weekend got to participate in a consultation on the ELCA'spolicies on Palestine and Israel. It was a good reunion of all the Lutherans I have known from working over there as well as here onthis issue, and I left the meeting feeling pretty optimistic that our church is getting on the right path for addressing the conflict. I am less optimistic about the state of our Lutheran-Jewish dialogue, because the groups that we dialogue with are the ones that support and justify Israeli violence, not the ones looking for nonviolent conflict resolution. Our Palestinian dialoguepartners actively support nonviolence. Something else to wrestle with, but I feel I made that point clear in the meetings. I am headed back to the church headquarters tomorrow for lunch (!) with a woman in the global ministries department who wants to hear all about what I was doing in the middle east. Free lunch, churchwide, talking about the mideast? These are all the components necessaryto my having a stellar day. Yippie!Alright, time to brave the blizzard. Have to carry the garbage out,down three flights of icy stairs, too. Grrr.peace,Le Anne