Back on the chain gang

The brothers are into the fifth day of their big international meeting. There are about 200 delegates at the meeting, and a support staff of about 56, of which I am one. There are seven languages used at the meeting—English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish—so quite a few of the support staff are translators and interpretors. Since that is quite a specialized task, one tends to see many of the same people at each of these international meetings. The English speakers are fortunate to have probably the most talented interpretor here: Brother C. He is fluent in all of the official languages except Polish, and he can understand a little of that. He is so good, in fact, that we have nicknamed him, "Cunning linguist of the Order."

I have worked with or otherwise known very many of the delegates and staff here, and I am lucky to call some of them friends. It feels really good to see them again and renew old friendships. In fact, there is a very good spirit among all the delegates, at least at this early point in the meeting. That might change after the elections and after two weeks of slogging through reports, meetings, etc.

I have a blog dedicated to the meeting (called a "chapter" in ecclesiastical terminology). I invite you to visit the blog, but I must ask a favor of you. In order to be free to write the immoral, heretical entries found on this blog, I must retain a certain anonymity. Although I am writing under the pseudonym of Bro. Lawrence on the other blog, many of its readers know my real identity. In order to prevent those readers from tracing me back to this blog, I beg you not to include links to YOUR blog if you leave comments on my other blog. Promise? Okay, here's the link to Chapter Glossary.