It's been quite a night, not much sleep - the nominations committee were certainly not expecting to get an early night as they tried to work their way through the different regional gender and youth balances in the first round of proposals for nominations to the WCRC executive commity.
However the rest of us not on drafting committees or up doing late-night translating were expecting to have a good sleep before Tuesday's Pow Wow. We were wrong.
A loud piercing noise woke participants at about 1.30 am on the night of the summer solstice. Did the alarm mean there was a fire? Had someone's cell phone gone into overdrive? Was this some student high jinks maybe? One thing was for sure the alarm was unavoidable and completely deafening. Across the campus of Calvin College participants pulled on clothes as security staff knocked on doors and roused people:"It's a tornado warning, please go down to the basement." Fair to say that none of us had been expecting that.
Participants gathered downstairs in the corridors, the atmosphere was good humoured, people sat on the concrete floors. "There was nothing about tornadoes in the constitution" remarked one delegate, "here let me check" and she reached into her work bag to bring out all her conference papers! People sat patiently on the floors and hoped the wait would not be too long, some sang songs learnt. We laughed and joked about what each of us had chosen to take downstairs. Several tweeted their experience - some couldn't get out of Johnny's cafe because of the warning.
Fortunately the all clear came quite quickly and folk returned to their rooms hoping to sleep. Rain, thunder and lightning continued through the night. The next morning one or two delegates could be found who had managed to sleep through all that and the alarm as well. They had missed out on our overnight community building exercise. True Unity of the Spirit in the bonds of Peace!
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