SOUL-SHATTERING

This Yahoo news story about the congregants who attended the same small Wichita church as the BTK killer reads, if you were to strip it of the cold objectivism of the AP-style writing, almost as a short story:

Inside Christ Lutheran Church, neighbors and friends crammed into the pews Sunday, staring at Clark as the pastor made his way to a lectern. Latecomers, finding nowhere to sit, mingled outside in a hallway, peering through glass doors and straining to hear what was said.

Gerald Mansholt, bishop of the Central States Synod in Kansas City, Mo., spoke at the service and pleaded with the crowd for patience — to wait for the evidence. "We grieve with you," Mansholt said. "Words fail us at times like this. The very foundation of our faith is shaken."

Several women cried. One buried her face in her hands, bent over her knees and silently sobbed.

"The events that have unfolded over the past 48 hours have the power to destroy, to devastate us," Clark told the congregation. "These events have the power and energy to be a wedge that drives us apart, or they can be a force that will hold us together in these trying times. 'It makes no sense!' 'What has just happened?'"

I'll spare you my usual, painful attempts at humor - twice the effort for the half the laughs - and just say that this is damn interesting, damn dramatic stuff.