New tricks, same old dog

Someone asked me via e-mail how it was going with the Episcopal Cafe. Here is what I said.

I was the Monday newshound on the first day out of the new blog but I started pre-posting late last night. 

Remember that old Far Side cartoon of Rex the dog riding a unicycle on a high-wire in front of a hushed crowd while juggling, balancing a goldfish bowl on his head and using a hula hoop...? Well, just call me Rex. 

I am an old dog and this is a new trick! 

I thought I knew WordPress pretty well, but getting to know this new platform has been interesting... I know that good folks who are managing the back end are working hard and that Jon has my back. All day I saw improvements happening while I watched. 

As the day went on I either got (or muttered) comments like:

This is too slow...

Why does it do this?...

But it looked on fine on mine....!

Did you try clearing the cache?

huh?...

Well. Hmm. That was interesting....

404?!? Really?!?...

@#$%&!!!

Hmm. The old platform did this, how come we can't do that here...?

What's the HTML code for....?

Oh, what the heck! I'm going for it...!

In other words, normal stuff for the first day of a new platform. 

So we are learning and fixing things as we go. Already we've received some donations, and this helps because while we lived for years with an out-of-date publishing platform and had to hold together the old site with spit and airplane glue, now we have a platform that is both up to date and with which can (with the resources the donations bring us) make changes. 

It's been amazing how many people are really wrapped up in what we are doing. All the good feedback tells us that many in the Episcopal Church (and elsewhere) are rooting for us to succeed. I am praising God for that witness.

Godspeed, Farewell, Amen!

I only met Jim Naughton once.

We communicated nearly every day for seven and a half years, and with increasing regularity before that.

But we only met once.

It was March 1, 2014. I was chairing the Special Convention of the Diocese of Bethlehem that would elect Bishop Sean Rowe, the Bishop of Northwestern Pennsylvania as our new Bishop Provisional. As President of the Standing Committee, it was my job to chair the meeting, oversee the election and along the way I would preach and celebrate the Eucharist. The Standing Committee had contracted with Canticle Communications to handle the press work and help us communicate to the people of our diocese why the Standing Committee chose to undertake this unprecedented arrangement.

So there I was, behind a table at the top of the chancel steps and there all the way in the back of the nave was Jim, laptop open, live tweeting the proceedings with Rebecca Wilson, also from Canticle. I had to stop and give a shout out saying something like “in seven years of almost daily interaction, this was the first we were actually in the same room.”
And when we got to talking during a coffee break, we were having such a good time that neither of us thought to get a picture. Not even a selfie!

It was appropriate that we were together in a Cathedral, during a church meeting, while history (or at least news) was being made. And it was appropriate that we never let a good photo-op get in the way of relationship. 
I write all this because today, Jim finishes up his stint as editor and chief cat herder at the Episcopal Cafe. I will miss working with him.

Back before there was a Café, there was the Daily Episcopalian, and before that was The Blog of Daniel. That first blog was meant to be a running commentary about a short-lived TV show centered on an Episcopal priest. There was a lot of buzz about this in the Episcopal Church, and I remember how people (including in my parish) were at the time grousing about all the little details the show got wrong. So I wrote a thing for my parish newsletter that said, essentially, that the point of the show was not for NBC to do our job of communicating the Episcopal Church—or the Gospel—to the world, but instead it was our job to listen and watch the show for what the culture is telling us about how they perceive us—what they think we are like—and what we can be—what the writers and producers wish we can become. These were actors, directors, writers and producers imaging themselves in our shoes and wondering what they’d do in our place.

Anyway, Nick Knisely, now the Bishop of Rhode Island, but then a priest in Bethlehem, passed the essay onto Jim and it went on the Blog of Daniel. Then I wrote a few things for when the Blog of Daniel became the Daily Episcopalian. Then one day I get a phone call about this idea of an online magazine for the Episcopal Church that reflected a progressive, independent voice.

Back then, there was a huge variety in the Anglican blogosphere (I know…I was one teeny-tiny part of that) and while there was lots and lots of opinion, there was only a few places that was gathering and reporting Anglican and Episcopal News with any quality or consistency. Most of them are still at it: Anglicans On-Line (the grand-daddy of them all), Thinking Anglicans, and Titus One Nine. The printed diocesan and national papers were dying fast. An attempt to start a news-gathering blog from the Episcopal Church's communication office (“Episcope”) showed much promise but was not supported and went away.

I remember the conversations that led to the Café. The vision was for something visually attractive, that covered news, reflected theologically, and fed spiritually. The Episcopal Café was born out of that. 
When Jim asked me if I could be a regular contributor to the Daily Episcopalian and one of the newsteam at The Lead, I was both thrilled and humbled.

I’ve had an attraction to journalism for most of my life. But other than dabbling on my high-school and college papers, I never really followed that urge. Working with the Café allowed me to get to know the Church on a whole different level, it has made me think, and it has made me listen. Along the way, Jim patiently taught our happy band of cub-reporters/bloggers…all of whom had other jobs and work to do…how to report and write on the fly. He taught us about fact-checking, and about how to distinguish a real story from mere rumor, and how to know what out there was worth passing along.

He let us try stuff: like the “Saturday Coffee Hour” where we’d gather all the little good news stories that were left in the inbox unused and summarize them on Saturday morning. And when the experiment ran its course, he helped us let it go.

He let us put up our very first April Fool's Day post, which has become something of a Café tradition. I like to think of myself as the unofficial editor of the April Fool's Desk at the Café. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

One thing about the Café that tickles me is our fanatical adherence to baseball. Even if the Episcopal Church is not really the official church of MLB, it was certainly the official sport of the Episcopal Café . Somehow, I think that fits that we at the Café keep tabs on the Church of Baseball while The Other Guys (you know who you are) follow tennis. 

I wonder what, Jim, the real journalist of the bunch, thought of all that ecclestiastical silliness.

We did get to do some real reporting…sometimes we ended up being the only reliable news that ordinary Episcopalians would have on the ground of what was going around them. Jim led the way with his investigation of the Institute for Religion and Democracy called “Following the Money” before the Café was born. 

Just when we thought that this job might not be needed any longer—that maybe with the daily battles that marked church life a decade ago largely over, our job was done—then came the blow-out between the faculty and the Dean/Trustees at General Seminary. For a while, the Café was the only consistent news-source following that story. Big papers like the Washington Post were linking to us! Jim led us through. Not bad for a bunch of volunteers who only met by IM, Tweet or e-mail. 

This surely demonstrated that the need for an independent news and opinion “paper” with a progressive voice has not gone away.

And when Jim decided to put out to the world that he was stepping down and put out a call for interested people--I must admit that this made me nervous--I was amazed to see what a talented and gifted group of people stepped forward and asked to take this on!

I am very excited and confident about the future of the Café, and can’t wait to see what happens when we go live with the new version next week. I am very happy to continue to do what I have come to love doing. 

But I will surely miss Jim at the Café and thank him for all he brought to me, the Episcopal Church and to the work of the Gospel.

God go with you in all you do, Jim!

Read Jim's two farewell blog posts on The Lead of the Episcopal Café here and here.

The Martyrs of Uganda witness against sexual violence

The Martyrs of Uganda are celebrated on June 3rd. While the feast is not well known in the West, it is a big day in much of Africa. Martyrs Day on June 3 is a national holiday in Uganda. The men who were martyred were Anglican and Roman Catholic Christians and this year marked the 50th anniversary of their canonization by Pope Paul VI.

The story of their death is hair-raising. The Satucket Lectionary on the Holy Women Holy Men website says:

On 3 June 1886, thirty-two young men, pages of the court of King Mwanga of Buganda, were burned to death at Namugongo for their refusal to renounce Christianity. In the following months many other Christians throughout the country died by spear or fire for their faith.’

These martyrdoms totally changed the dynamic of Christian growth in Uganda. Introduced by a handful of Anglican and Roman missionaries after 1877, the Christian faith had been preached only to the immediate members of the court, by order of King Mutesa. His successor, Mwanga, became increasingly angry as he realized that the first converts put loyalty to Christ above the traditional loyalty to the king. Martyrdoms began in 1885. Mwanga first forbade anyone to go near a Christian mission on pain of death, but finding himself unable to cool the ardor of the converts, resolved to wipe out Christianity.

Their deaths was the spark that began a remarkable expansion of the Christian Gospel in eastern and central Africa. It is a story of remarkable faithfulness in the face of the violence and power of the state.

But the story of the Ugandan Martyrs has changed. Their witness is no longer remembered in terms of the resistance of the faithful to the demands of a human king. Instead, their story has been used to justify homophobia and violence . Because in addition to demanding that the thirty-two men renounce their Christian faith, King Mwanga also demanded that they submit to him sexually. As a result their story is used to justify both hatred of homosexuality in general and violence against gay and lesbian people in particular.

The transformation of their story from a story of sexual violence exercised by a king into a moralistic story against homosexuality is similar to how the church of the Middle Ages, the Victorian era and even in our time, transformed the story how many Christian women in the early church were martyred...women who were often called "virgins."

In the early church there was a strong connection between a woman's chastity and martyrdom with several examples of women choosing death over rape or forced marriages, and so on.

One the hallmarks of the early church was that it was a place that accepted "widows" and "orphans," who were not simply women or children whose husbands and parents predeceased them, but who were women and children cast off by society because their bond to that society was severed either by the death of--or very often the whim of-- a man. A woman whose husband put her out and whose father and brothers would not take back was a "widow."

Similarly, the children of a man who would not accept paternity--the child of a mistress or a slave or conceived through rape or simply not accepted in the family (like an expensive girl-child)-- were put out to fend for themselves in the society of the Greek and Roman world.

Slavery was one answer to this. Not the chattel slavery that we think of, but a high-order indentured servitude. People, in short, could and did become property.

The early church offered a place and a status to women and children by welcoming and caring for the widowed and orphaned. The idea that a woman could choose chastity over involuntary sex with a person not of her choosing, and this choice was considered not rebellious but virtuous was a radical aspect of the Christian gospel. Paul's affirmation that in Christ there is no "slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female" but that all are one in Christ takes on a particularly radical and poignant perspective in this context.

In this context, "virginity" was not so much about sexual restraint as the refusal to allow others to choose when, how and with whom a woman may exercise her sexuality. Early church saints and martyrs like Cecile, Agatha and Agnes were choosing not to participate in a society that made women the property of some man, in a world where sex was a sign of domination and power instead of intimacy.

The impact of their witness was lost when chastity and virginity became more about morals and regulating women's bodies in later times. Understanding the original context of these women can help us in understanding what to make of the Martyrs of Uganda.

For one thing, in the story of the king demanding sex with these Christian captives, there is very little connection with how we understand homosexuality (as an orientation) or marriage (as an equal partnership based on mutual love and mutual commitment) or even healthy sexuality today.

Like the early Christian martyrs, what the Martyrs of Uganda refused was the power of an earthly king who wanted to demonstrate his power over these slaves--and the powerlessness of the Gospel--by attempting to have forcible sex with helpless victims. What they refused was the use of sex as a expression of power--in this case political and religious--through the humiliation of rebellious subjects. Their refusal was an affirmation that in Christ each person has inherent dignity and worth. As they went to their gruesome deaths singing and praying, they proved that God's power builds up while human power degrades.

Their witness is a powerful example today where sexual violence is widespread in conflicts all over the world.

Participants at last week’s Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, agreed that faith communities can have significant influence to end the sexual violence that still takes place all over the globe.

Faith leaders and faith-based organizations have a vital role to play in engaging their communities in both the prevention of, and response to, sexual violence in conflict..

…faith communities are often at the center of communities and able to be first responders in times of crisis. They can challenge the attitudes associated with sexual violence and address perceptions that can lead to inequality and the spread of violence.

Those who use the witness of the Martyrs of Uganda to condemn homosexual persons, or to denigrate same sex marriage or as an excuse to persecute GLBT persons miss the power of the original witness of the Martyrs of Uganda. They reduce their deaths to a story of paranoia and social control. In short, they accomplish precisely was the Ugandan king failed to do in 1886.

Instead, the Martyrs of Uganda are a powerful example of how the Church can—and does—stand against sexual violence of all kinds and in all places.

This post first appeared on The Daily Episcopalian at the Episcopal Cafe on Saturday, June 21, 2014.

A visionary for reconciliation

 Corrected.

Roman Catholics aren't the only ones looking for signs and signals that indicate where the church is going next. While we didn't look for white smoke, we Anglicans have just gone through our own somewhat arcane process of changing spiritual leaders.  Looking at nothing more than what’s on the internet, here is what one American Episcopalian thinks of the new Archbishop of Canterbury and what might be ahead for the Church.

In the last month or so, Archbishop Justin Welby has posted exactly two blog posts on his new blog and announced that many appointments to his staff so far. We have heard him give a few sermons and, I am sure that some people read over everything he ever wrote or preached as Bishop of Durham or before.

I think we have learned a few things about Archbishop Justin so far, and I have some hunches about the man and his leadership style and where he would like to take the Anglican Communion.

We know about his business background and his conversion to Christianity. We already know that he is familiar with both Central Africa and North America, in particular Nigeria and the United States. This familiarity will be very useful in dealing with Christians from these countries who have at times been both partners in ministry and opponents in conflict.

But there are some hints as to his style and his values that allow us to form some hunches about his leadership style.

1. He thinks about systems and is savvy about how they work.
Both his business background and his theological interests indicate that he understands the church as an organic system and that he appreciates both the gifts and the challenges that this brings.

2. He thinks about the relationships within the system and understands how  relationships make organizational and informal systems work.
His first two appointments are very instructive. Choosing a Canon whose sole ministry will be reconciliation, and who has worked in Northern Ireland, a woman priest who has worked  in America and knows well both Episcopalians and members of the breakaway Anglican-related churches, along with his own African experience, tells us that he is not only interested in the nuts-and-bolts of running an organization or in simply getting people to agree on ideas, he is interested in that relationships that make organization not just tick but have a soul.

3. As an evangelical, he is very interested in redemption and salvation but he casts through the lens of reconciliation--that the work of the Gospel is reconciling God to humanity and that shows up in reconciled relationships and systems that promote healing.
When Americans hear the word “evangelical” one picture pops into our heads. We should put that aside. Certainly Welby is interested in people coming to a personal, living relationship with Jesus Christ that is intentional and life-changing. He is interested in a lived faith grounded in scripture. He is also interested in vibrant communities that communicate the Gospel and invite people into faith in Jesus Christ.  But what is interesting is his emphasis on reconciliation. An important role for the church is that we represent Christ and effect the reconciliation Christ brings in practical terms. If Christians live the reconciling love of Christ, then we will witness to the unity God brings to humanity through the cross and resurrections. Agreement, in this context, is much more than agreement to propositions, but the decision to live and pray with Christ as the center.

4. Because he values relationships and emphasizes reconciliation, Welby sees partnerships as the means to practically and effectively witness to the Gospel of Christ. 

4. He is an establishment guy...either because it's the starting point we have or because he believes in the essential goodness of system, I don't know. My hunch it is the former, his tip of the hat to the integrity of people he disagrees with indicates  that he sees that faithful people are doing the best they can with the tools, assumptions and experiences they have. But I am still waiting to learn more.

5. Because he is an establishment guy, he has not lost faith in the power of institutions, including the church, to do good. As an evangelical, he is aware of the power of personal faith, but like evangelicals of another era, he believes that society, not just persons, can be transformed and so institutions can and should seek to become agents of the Gospel, or put in other ways, God’s reconciliation.

I want to make some observations about implications for our common life arising of Archbishop Welby’s style and values by contrasting that a bit with what came before.

Williams is a deeply spiritual man but I think that he saw the Anglican Wars mainly as a contest of competing ideas. This is why he played into the hands of some conservatives because if only one idea can win, why would one compromise?  So he understood that the church was to stand for The Central Idea around which all other ideas are measured and organized.

At the last Lambeth Conference, Williams broke with recent tradition by eschewing legislation and attempting to build community by way of the “Indaba” process of listening and reflection. At the end of the day, though, he gave in to the need to control the outcome by allowing a final report to be issued that reflected less than the relationships being built and more on the disciplinary lens through which he still viewed the situation. Ironic since the Bishops most interested in punishment stayed away and those most interested in dialogue were still frozen out of certain communion functions.

“Communion as a consequence of our choices” was at the heart of the Anglican Covenant project—something we have heard nothing about since Welby became Archbishop. That project failed not only because it could not garner the votes. The Anglican Covenant hasn't worked as a means of clarifying relationships. If anything it has muddied the waters because some members of the communion and their bishops are punished for acting according to their church’s conscience while others have moved into their own circle and refused to commune with anyone with whom they might differ. The present archbishop brings a different sensibility and understanding of communion to his office.

Welby also appears to be deeply spiritual man who is interested in building relationships. He assumes that the issue that counts for the church is faithfulness to Jesus Christ. I think that the folks at Truro, Fairfax, VA,   who think that he is on “their side” because he speaks their language are mistaken, especially if they think that by waiting long enough that they will "win." My bet is that Justin will shock them by reminding them of what the apostle Paul had to say about staying in communion with people about whom you believe are just plain wrong.

Archbishop Justin, though, is more than a mere pragmatist. Both Williams and Welby share a vision of the church as a reconciling force in the world. Welby appears to bring to the task a different vision of the peace that  happens when people who were once far away are brought near by the blood of Christ how that distance might be bridged.

Stirring up God's power at the intersection of horror and hope.

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

--Collect for The Third Sunday of Advent

A little over eleven years ago, a little boy was watching the television and the only thing on was the blanket coverage of the 9/11 attacks. Over and over again he saw the image of those towers collapsing. Finally, his mother turned off the tv and tried to redirect him. But the enormity had set it and he was trying to find the words. As he was drawing a picture he finally asked “Mom, where was Superman?”

I remembered this story as I watched the news unfold on Friday of the mass murder of twenty first graders, their teachers as well as the mother of the shooter and the shooter himself. This is not supposed to happen. Schools are not places where violence is supposed to happen. Classrooms should never be places where children die. Teaching is a profession one gives one life to but it is not meant to be a job where one risks giving her life.

We have seen evil come to life. I want God’s power to be stirred up and to make this all better. Already there are people crying out for more laws and others saying things like we should routinely arm teachers. Both reactions get people riled up but they deflect us from what is really important. If the severity of trauma can be measured by the immediacy of the threat, the vulnerability of the victims and the degree of helplessness we feel then we are all at least a little traumatized even though we are far away from the epicenter—that is, if we have any heart at all.  And so it is natural to ask “then what can we do?”

Well, wouldn’t you know? That very question appears in today’s Gospel. John the Baptist is going around Galilee preaching Good News. But it doesn’t sound very good. He is saying that God’s judgment is at hand. He chides the religious leaders for their complacency and tells people they need to get ready for the coming of the Messiah. He says our history and heritage will not help us escape what is coming.

This has everyone shaken right down to their socks. “What should we do?” the people ask. I mean, if John the Baptist is right, if the most religious and righteous people in town can’t pass muster when the Messiah comes then who will?

If you think about it, this question is not so far from our lips either. If a rural-suburban town of middle-class folks far away from the traditional epicenters of crime and violence cannot escape evil incarnate then what can we do?

St. John Baptist’s advice is surprisingly practical. He tells everyone to bear fruit worthy of repentance. He tells the religious leaders to be faithful and don’t count on their status. He tells workers like tax collectors and soldiers to take only what they are owed—in a day long before unions and civil service. He tells people to be honest, to be good, and to care for one another.

But if getting ready for the Messiah is the picture of practicality, that doesn’t make it simple. If our faith is going to make a practical difference then we must choose to be intentional about our faith. Being faithful means being attentive to what is going on around us. Being attentive means being smart about our choices of not only what we do bur our choices in who we are. This kind of faithful living means being reasonable in our expectations of others and ourselves—cutting each other some slack. John taught that faithful living means taking responsibility for how we live out our faith and that kind of deliberate faithfulness grows out living as if we are in love with the life that God has given us and in love with the God who gives us life.

We get ready for the Messiah when we choose to live life making space for God. This was the point behind John’s baptism. John didn’t baptize people because it was cool or a fad. He baptized people because they needed to change. That change had to start from within and, at the same time, be obvious to everyone.

That’s the thing about the sacramental life. It is God at work in us alone and in community. God takes everyday things like water, bread, wine, and even olive oil and they become signs that God is at work in every part of our living. In our faith communities, God places us in the midst of imperfect people and changes us together.

As we try to make useful meaning out of random violence, we can learn from John the Baptist who prepares us for the redemption to come. If we dare to look through the lens of this tragedy, we too can find Good News, we will find the ground work of God’s grace and we will know what to do.

The first thing we can learn is that while this is a national tragedy with national implications, it is also local. Our pain is our pain. It is nothing like the pain that the people of Newtown are right now experiencing and not even close to the pain of the parents whose child was murdered or of the families whose parent or spouse or adult child was killed. Some of you may have some kind of personal connection to the event or else this tragedy may call up for you memories of your own losses. The feelings that go with that are natural and normal. At the same time, let what is yours be yours and what is theirs be theirs. Our pain and sadness allows us to build empathetic and caring bridges of support and that is very important—essential in fact. But on Monday, we will go back to work. They will have to re-knit lives torn open.

Because what’s theirs is theirs and what’s ours is ours, we have different work to do. For one thing, we can ask questions and frame meaning in a way that the people close to the crisis will not be able to do for maybe a long, long time.

This is where the issue of judgment comes in. But not in the way you think. We often think of judgment as something God does to a people for wrongs they have done. But we must be very clear here. God did not do this. Beware of platitudes and junk theology. God did not need these children more than their parents. While we believe that God is caring for the dead and that in Christ they are held in God’s loving embrace, this is not how God recruits angels.  God does not use the murder of children as an object lesson in obedience. God did not send a man into a school with a gun as an act of divine retribution. Please do not teach people to hate God for what God does not do.

No. We are looking at the fruits of the kind of world we have made and we are staring into the heart of human sin. We are being forced to look at the consequences of creating (but not talking about) a culture that enshrines violence and makes it easier to buy a gun than to rent an apartment. What happened Friday exposes the consequences of our choice as a people to make the right to bear arms at least as important as the right to health and education. This tragedy lays an axe to the tree of our assumptions that easy answers couched in simplistic media-ready ideologies will do a better job of solving our problems than the hard work of living in community.

But if the consequences of our choices convict us, signs of redemption are also near. If you look closely, God started signaling the solution even before we comprehended the horror of what was going on.

One man chose to do evil. That much is clear. But notice that when the chips were down hundreds of people chose to do the good.  One man did unimaginable evil. Many others performed compassionate acts of humanity—even bravery—beyond our imagining.

This is where we find God in the midst of horror: the teachers, principal and the therapist who put themselves between a gunman and children; in the people who rushed to the firehouse to find and care for their kids; in the first responders who came in droves to secure the school and care for the injured; in the police and the caring professionals who were paired up with families whose children died and shepherded them through those terrible hours. People who filled churches, synagogues and parks to keep vigil, write names, sing pray, and just hold and hug each other were at once tangible signs of good overcoming evil and the presence of God bringing life out of chaos. In the days to come, every funeral, each flower given, every casserole delivered, each child baby sat, every hug given and even the space given to allow for private grief will make real the ways that God pushes back darkness and reveal light. Much of what we will see will be very sad, beyond heartbreaking. God will be present to that heartbreak often in ways small, tender, and spontaneous.

Watch. God’s power is already stirred up. Good started defeating evil just when it looked as if evil won the day. We Christians believe that in Christ’s life, death and resurrection God has defeated sin, death and evil once and for all. Yes, after the empty tomb of Easter, evil still breaks out and still deals death in horrid ways, but everything evil does is now a rear guard action against God who has already reconciled creation and defeated sin. As we move towards Christmas, our job will be to hold that truth both close to our hearts and up for the world to see. It will also be on us to surround the people of Newtown…and all the people we know who have suffered a loss anywhere by death, or who are facing a dread illness, or who are the victims of injustice or who are poor and outcast… and hold these people in love, prayer and practical compassion.

John the Baptist was getting people ready for Jesus by telling them to repent…that we can choose. We can intentionally make room for God and that will change us and it will change the world for good.

The Episcopal Café is back!

The Episcopal Café is back! It appears that the server problems have been sorted out.

Whew! and Hooray!

Where is the Episcopal Café?

Those of you who read the Lead or Daily Episcopalian on the Episcopal Café site have probably noticed that we haven’t updated the site since Monday evening. It’s a server error. The Café was migrated to another server at the site where we get our donated space. But something seems to have gone wrong in the latter stages of the migration and the editors are not able to access the back-end of the website at the moment.

Things began to get a little dodgy on Saturday. I did my turn on Monday for The Lead, and it was on and off, but I was able to post stuff. Sometime Monday night things went really  ka-phlooey.

We’ve put in a plea for help. Hopefully we’ll be back up and running in short order.

In the meantime, members of the Lead’s newsteam are posting notes and articles (that would normally be posted to the Lead) over on our Facebook page.  I may post some news up here as well from time to time. 

Sorry for the disruption. But I suppose it’s inevitable. The Café has little or no budget, and we rely on donated server space (and donated labor) to keep the place running.  All of us Newshounds are posting this news on our own blogs, and we’ll post here again (and everywhere we can) as soon as we’re back online.