Thursday, October 06, 2005

Apologies and Revisions

We hope that our gentle readers will note the revision to an earlier post on the Harriet Miers saga (note also that we have corrected our repeated misstating of Ms. Miers Christian name).

With this revision comes that rarest of events for SWNID: an apology.

In our brief and breezy chronicle of the recent problems at Valley View, we left one gentle reader with a very close connection to that church with an impression that we were assessing fault. This was not our intention, but on rereading our post in that light, it was certainly not an unfair conclusion for that gentle reader or any gentle reader to draw.

We repeat: assessing blame or assigning guilt was in no way our intention. SWNID has no dog in this fight. We've been there ourselves (not to Valley View, but in divisive situations in churches), from an early age, actually, and know that there are twelve sides to all such stories, that all involved are sinners, that all are saved by grace and most display that grace through such circumstances, albeit imperfectly.

For those actually involved in this situation, it's no joking matter, and we joked. We're sorry. We harbored no malice and meant no harm, but we created it anyway.

We've revised the posting to try to alleviate any sense of blaming. We will gladly revise further or remove the posting altogether if this first attempt at revision is insufficient or if all possible revisions are seen as subject to the same problems. Gentle readers who are not involved personally are asked not to post comments defending SWNID, as that is not the point of this exercise. Gentle readers with sensitivity are invited to comment, email, phone or speak to the blogger personally offering further suggestions or urging the postings' utter and final disappearance.

Humor, we are reminded continually, is dangerous. Those of us who go in for this kind of thing actually express and relieve our sense of tragedy by joking. But most rational and sensitive Christians have the sense to restrain themselves about this. We confess ourselves to have a penchant for recklessness in this regard. We never gave the first thought to the idea that anyone close to the situation would ever read our posting. That was foolish.

Again, SWNID was WRONG. We apologize.

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