Vote No On Proposition 8

I'm not from California. I'm not gay. I'm not lesbian. I can't vote, but I want to stand in solidarity with my brothers and sisters in California to ask those of you who can to vote "No" to the ban on gay marriage.

My virtual friend IT married her beloved only a couple of weeks ago. They want to stay married for more than a few weeks.

Here is a portion of IT's account of her marriage:

Our wedding last Sunday went off wonderfully, and we have just returned after a relaxing, and largely internet-free, honeymoon which we spent doing nothing in particular. During this time we of course contemplated the remarkable fact of being married and what it means to us.

Of course, it has not changed what we mean to each other. I have loved my beloved partner-spouse for many years with every part of my being, nothing different there.

But what HAS changed is something of our view of our relationship. We were rather surprised to find that we both felt this change.

Read the rest of IT's account at the link above.

What can you do to help in California and elsewhere? Watch the video at Vote No On Prop 8, and then hit the "Donate" button.


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Political Candidates & Phones

Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

Sorry. Sometimes I can't help myself.

Ann On Her Husband's Recovery From Surgery

[He who must not be named] just talked to his doc --- the path report came back all clear.

No more appt until next year in January. We are here [at the beach] - he is healing well.

Thanks be to God for the good news! Pray that his further healing is speedy and without complications. Thanks for letting us know, Ann. Say "Hi" to nameless from us all.

IMPORTANT HEALTH ISSUE FOR WOMEN

Do you have feelings of inadequacy?

Do you suffer from shyness?

Do you sometimes wish you were more assertive?


If you answered yes to any of these questions, ask your doctor or pharmacist about Margaritas.

Margaritas are the safe, natural way to feel better and more confident about yourself and your actions.

Margaritas can help ease you out of your shyness and let you tell the world that you're ready and willing to do just about anything.

You will notice the benefits of Margaritas almost immediately and with a regimen of regular doses you can overcome any obstacles that prevent you from living the life you want to live.

Shyness and awkwardness will be a thing of the past and you will discover many talents you never knew you had. Stop hiding and start living, with Margaritas.

Margaritas may not be right for everyone. Women who are pregnant or nursing should not use Margaritas.

However, women who wouldn't mind nursing or becoming pregnant are encouraged to try it.


Side effects may include:

- Dizziness, nausea, vomiting, incarceration

- Erotic lustfulness

- Loss of motor control

- Loss of clothing

- Loss of money

- Loss of virginity

- Attraction to the same sex

- Table dancing

- Headache

- Dehydration

- Dry mouth

- And a desire to sing Karaoke


WARNING #1 :

The consumption of Margaritas may make you think you are whispering when you are not.

WARNING #2:

The consumption of Margaritas may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.

WARNING #3:

The consumption of Margaritas may cause you to think you can sing.

WARNING #4:

The consumption of Margaritas may make you think you can logically converse with members of the opposite sex without spitting.

My addendum: Gay men are excluded from that last statement.

I'm not supposed to tell you this, but Jane's book was written under the influence and empowerment of Margaritas.

From my daughter.

Jane R. Will Be Famous!

Our dear friend, Jane Redmont (as we all now know) from Acts of Hope wrote a book. And it was published. Yes, that's true. She's quite a learned woman, and yet she deigns to visit and leave comments at this humble blog. One day, I hope to meet Jane in real life, but for now, we are virtual friends. She is already famous amongst her friends, but now the world will know her and love her as much as we do.

I have pre-ordered her book, so it should arrive any day now. The cover is lovely, and I can't wait to see what's inside. I encourage you to purchase or order from your friendly local bookstore, but however you buy it - just buy it. Once I've read When In Doubt, Sing, I shall tell all. I done art reviews, opera reviews, movie reviews, why not book reviews?

"Cozy, Kitschy, Kitchen"?

When Georgianne wrote about me at the Huffington Post, she mentioned that we talked in my "cozy, kitschy, kitchen". I had not thought of my kitchen as kitschy before. Dated maybe, but not kitschy. I looked around the kitchen. Could it be the decoys on top of the pie safe? The dated wallpaper?

 

Could it be the objects in and on top of my corner cabinet? All right, the teacup/pot combination, which my daughter gave me is kitschy. There's a wine glass, also from my daughter, just barely visible in the left bottom of the picture, which you can't really see, but one might say that it's kitschy.

 

But I think I have found the major kitsch in my cosy kitchen. The Tabasco placemats! - the result of one of Grandpère's rare ventures into house decorating. My daughter-in-law has placemats like those in the picture, and GP insisted that he had to have those very same placemats. He wants them out on the table whether we are dining or not. That's the very table where Georgianne and I talked. I suppose the placemats jumped out at her. Kitsch all right.

 

"Watch Us Go!

We went to breakfast at a restaurant where the 'seniors' special' was two eggs, bacon, hash browns & toast for $1.99.

'Sounds good,' my wife said. 'But I don't want the eggs.'

'Then, I'll have to charge you two dollars & forty-nine cents because you're ordering a la carte,' the waitress warned her.

'You mean I'd have to pay for not taking the eggs?' my wife asked incredulously.

'YES!!' stated the waitress.

'I'll take the special then.' my wife said.

'How do you want your eggs?' the waitress asked.

'Raw and in the shell,' my wife replied.

She took the two eggs home.

DON'T MESS WITH SENIORS!!!

WE'VE been around the block more than once!

That's right! Thanks to Ann.

A Homeless God?

From Under The Overpasses:

Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." Matthew 8:20 & Luke 9:58

Under There's job is to serve the homeless. He does not give a location, because he writes about real homeless people, and he wishes to preserve their anonymity. I check in at his blog from time to time, because I admire his work and his deeply respectful manner toward his clients and his gentle and compassionate words when he speaks of them. He cannot look away from the homeless as I am often tempted to do. He's there with them every single work day.

Under There goes on to say:

As a Christian, all of my God-talk is meaningless until I do business with the raw realities of what it means to be incarnated into a world that is full of bewildering obstacles to beauty, truth and goodness. I have a good friend who constantly reminds me that Jesus was not crucified between two candles on a beautifully adorned altar. The grammar of my faith is also incomplete if I ignore the fact that the life that led to the cross was not lived in the pristine jewel tones of stained glass, but the muted earth tones of those who are ground under the wheels of oppressive domination. Historically, there is a very long parade of Christian voices that speak of Jesus of Nazareth as God. I have no idea of just how that is possible, but I do know that if I take that confession of faith seriously, then it means I am about to drag the term God through the mud, and maybe over a dumpster or two.
....

Jesus was rejected, hungry, harassed by the authorities, transiently moved from town to town, called a drunk, glutton, and an associate of prostitutes and sinners. He was both deemed to be mentally ill and derided as being somehow under the influence of the devil. To say that somehow God is intertwined with the real flesh and blood conditions experienced by Jesus of Nazareth, is to break the sacred glass around the term God and allow Jesus to sully it ten times more than I am about to here. To speak of Jesus as God is to speak of a homeless God whose only registration in the system was an arrest and an execution warrant by the State.
....

Until we can come to terms with what is means to proclaim tangible good news to the people who live here, literally in the shadow of some of the most luxurious properties and respectable churches, all of our pieties are simply gilded abstractions divorced from the concrete realities that every atheist has an honest right to rage about.

I urge you to read his entire post and look at his pictures, although I have lifted a goodly portion of his words to post here.

In his comments, I said this:

Grandmère Mimi said...

"Lord, when did we see you?" Today, Jesus is under the overpasses in close proximity to the grand homes and churches.

Sometimes, I think we should sell the churches, give the money to the poor and have church in our homes, or better yet, under the overpasses.

Sometimes, I think we are playing at having church, in our fine clothes, with silk vestments, and gold and silver vessels. I've been here before with you, UT. I have no answers, but keep showing us the humble icons. If we look away, we look away from the face of Christ.

As I said, I have no answers, only questions, but I experience a dissonance between what I see in the churches and what UT talks of in his posts on the people under the overpass. I love my church. I fell in love with the liturgy of the Episcopal Church at my first visit. My church community is vital to my spiritual life. I know that churches reach out to the homeless in many different ways and that some actually have church where the homeless live. I wonder if that should be the norm, rather than the occasional activity.

"...Think About It"

Obama/Biden vs McCain/Palin, what if things were switched around?

Would the country's collective point of view be different? Ponder the following:

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage...including an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?

What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident?

What if Obama had met his second 2nd wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?

What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five?
(The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?

What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?

What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution?

What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?

You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.

From Doug, with minor editing.

Field Report From Mary Clara

"St. James of Jerusalem" - Tobias Haller

From Mary Clara:

Now, are you ready for a blogger field report? The following is a first-person account of another instance of actual contact between participants in the blogosphere.

I saw on his blog, “In a Godward Direction,” that Br. Tobias Haller was coming to Maryland this weekend to preach and to dedicate his wonderful icon of St. James of Jerusalem at the church in Parkton, so I thought I would attend as a representative of the blog congregation. Parkton is only a little over half an hour north of my home in Baltimore, in gorgeous rolling hills near the Pennsylvania border, and it turned out to be a sublime autumn day, perfect for the festive event. Tobias preached both services, and after the later service, over coffee and cake, he talked informally with parishioners about the purpose of icons and the process of ‘writing’ the icon. I of course introduced myself and took a number of photographs. I am sending some to Tobias, but I thought I would send a couple to you which (if you like) you could post. This would give me the chance to remark on how splendid the icon is ‘in person’, and also how fine a preacher Tobias is. From his blog we know he is erudite, wise, articulate, and wonderfully grounded in his theology, but hearing him preach in person one experiences how grounded he is in actual life. I would add that both in his blog postings and in his preaching he is always so much to the point.

When Rev. Orens first came to St. James over a year ago, it developed that no one was sure which St. James the church was named for. After considerable research, it was found to be St. James of Jerusalem. Commissioning the icon then became part of a process of self-discovery for the parish. As you can imagine, Tobias’s sermon on this feast day of the saint very much brought to life the role and significance of James the brother of Jesus. It was a joy and a privilege to be present.

It turned out also that Elizabeth Orens and I had been at Union Seminary within a year of each other, back in the 1960s. To my great pleasure, I was invited along for lunch and luxurious conversation at a nearby country inn with Elizabeth, her husband John (a professor of history at George Mason University), Tobias and his delightful partner James.

Of course, I'm jealous that I wasn't there, but I pretend that I'm happy for Mary Clara. Our pet name for Mary Clara is Sister Mary Clara, because if ever there was a name that sounded like a nun's name, it is Mary Clara, especially a nun's name from back in the ancient days when I was a convent school girl. Our Sister Mary Clara (who is not a nun) had her picture taken with Bishop Gene Robinson when he was in England, and she cut herself out of the picture before she permitted it to be published on the internet. This time she has graciously permitted me to include her in the picture with Tobias and the icon. This is a scoop, folks, a first - Sister Mary Clara's picture on a blog! And she's beautiful. Why was she so shy about having her picture "out there"?