And Good News From Arkansas!

From ABC24-CW30 EyeWitness News:

CLARKSVILLE, AR (AP) - Arkansas Presbyterians have endorsed a church constitutional amendment that would allow non-celibate homosexuals to serve as ordained ministers, elders and deacons.

The 116-64 vote for the rule change within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) took place after a debate on Saturday, February 21, 2009 and was greeted with silence.

The denomination's national General Assembly approved the amendment in June; the measure goes into effect if a majority of the church's 173 presbyteries approve it.

The Presbytery of Arkansas has roughly 15,300 members. It narrowly rejected a similar proposal in 2001.

The times they are a-changin'.

Thanks to Keakin, who is from Arkansas, in the comments.

Best Oscar Speech Award To Sean Penn

As he took the stage to accept his prize for playing slain gay-rights pioneer Harvey Milk, Penn gleefully told the crowd: "You commie, homo-loving sons of guns."

He followed with condemnation of anti-gay protesters who demonstrated near the Oscar site and comments about California's recent vote to ban gay marriage.

"For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think it's a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect on their great shame and their shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that support," Penn said. "We've got to have equal rights for everyone."

From the AP via The Advocate.

Note: The video stopped and started for me on the first play, so, if that happens, I suggest that you let it play through once, go do something else, then come back to watch without interruptions.

“Life Is Uncertain”

From Georgianne:

I am sending this to a few friends just because it is a great story.

Those of you who know me well know that I don’t really believe in a benevolent god or even a sense that there is a balance of good and bad in the universe that puts things right or helps us make sense of insanity. I have gone 'round the world and god is nowhere to be found.

“Life is uncertain”

But, every now and then just being alive and in the right place at the right time makes sense.

Where do I begin?

My good friend’s daughter has been waiting for a heart transplant for three years. I have known the family since the children were babies. They are my soul family. One of the kids came down to Florida to watch my dog while I went to Folk Alliance. Of course, the insanity is that as soon as I am unavailable and the youngest daughter is out-of-town, a fatal accident occurs in Chicago, the heart is alive and beating, and the match we are waiting for is rushed to the transplant center in Minneapolis. I am in the air and out of comms, Carla is alone in Florida…you get the picture. Carla had been afraid to leave Minneapolis for the last three years for obvious reasons, but she came down to Florida to watch my dog...

The good news is that I get back to Florida just as Sunny is being prepped for surgery and we are all in touch, and in the emotion of the horrible moments of waiting, Carla (whom I have known since she was 4) tells me that she cried for a year after I got married, because she really believed I would end up lost to the family forever. Of course that never happened, but kids worry, and here we are 30 years later going through the most intense experience ever.

We are still waiting and Sunny is not out of the woods, but we are all together, even though some distance is separating us right now. Carla has decided to stay with me for a few days until Sunny wakes up. She feels too fragile to travel.

But the circle is even wider.

My daughter had suggested I go see a singer at the folk conference that she “knew I would love.” So, I go hear this singer, and my daughter was correct. It is music that is not self-centered, but life affirming and loving in every sense of the word. It is “god-like.”

This singer reaches out to me as I am leaving, stops me, and says she is “moved somehow” to give me her CD. I do not know this person, but a connection is made. I explain about my daughter and she knows her because of the music business.

It gets better.

While Carla and I were waiting for news about Sunny’s new heart, we play the CD.

Here you go:

“Before You Leave”

by Ellis:

“Every star at night is a beating heart
That someday will fall
Young and old they are bright
And make a grand exit

I know life is uncertain
Nothing’s turned out like we planned
I want to do something
Maybe just hold your hand

I know life is uncertain
Things don't turn out like we planned
And I want to do something
I'm not sure if I can"


Sometimes life makes sense and we all meet up in the right place and at the right time.

GN

UPDATE: we are still waiting but heard sunny opened her eyes and smiled and she is PINK now!!!

Thanks be to God! Please pray for Sunny and her family and friends.

UPDATE 2, from GN in the comments:

Thank you all so much. Update is that Sunny is on "slow recovery," but all OK so far.

I looked on Ellis' site and here are lyrics..turns out she is giving song away because it was written for friend of hers who died of cancer...I did not know this. ~GN

US Military Advisors In Pakistan

From the New York Times:

BARA, Pakistan — More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.

The Americans are mostly Army Special Forces soldiers who are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops, providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics, the officials said. They do not conduct combat operations, the officials added.
....

Despite the political hazards for Islamabad, the American effort is beginning to pay dividends.

A new Pakistani commando unit within the Frontier Corps paramilitary force has used information from the Central Intelligence Agency and other sources to kill or capture as many as 60 militants in the past seven months, including at least five high-ranking commanders, a senior Pakistani military official said.

It seems to me that we fight the same wars over and over in different countries. Is the secret involvement in Pakistan really paying dividends? Are they truly capturing or killing the leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda? I don't know. I have very little trust in reports of this sort. The 70 advisers and specialists are, I'm afraid, the thin-entering wedge to a war in another country.

Yet the main commanders of the Pakistani Taliban, including its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and its leader in the Swat region, Maulana Fazlullah, remain at large. And senior American military officials remain frustrated that they have been unable to persuade the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to embrace serious counterinsurgency training for the army itself.

We can't police the whole world. Seems to me that I've had that same thought quite a few times over the years.

Scenes From The Parade In Thibodaux

Float


Another Float


Thibodaux High School Band (My children's Alma Mater. My daughter was in the band.)


One Twin With Loot


Other Twin With Loot


Can You See Me? (My hat was woven out of strips from palmetto leaves by a Houmas Indian woman.)


Grandpère's Bad Photography (I'm reaching to strangle him for taking my picture twice with half my head cut off.)


A Replica Of Our Humble Cabin Home On A Float


UPDATE: I forgot to say the parade passes on the street right in front of my church. After the 10:30 service, we have a potluck lunch and then watch the parade from there.

Is There An Editor In The House?

Cruel!


He Loved His Wife.


Help This Man.


Help!


If It's Only Slight....



Thanks to Lapin.

Roseann Is Home!

You can talk to Roseann at her blog now. She is so glad to be home, and she's quite emotional, which is understandable, and I have to say that I am, too. Please continue to pray for her and for her husband who has much to do as he works two jobs and takes care of things at home, too. Roseann can't do much now. I am so happy for her!

In A Desperate Search For Redemption

One dark night in the small town of Garfield , NJ, a fire started inside the local sausage factory. In a blink the building was engulfed in flames. The alarm went out to all the fire departments for miles around.

When the first volunteer fire fighters appeared on the scene, the sausage company president rushed to the fire chief and said, "All of our secret sausage recipes are in the vault in the center of the plant. They have to be saved, so I will donate $50,000 to the fire company that brings them out and delivers them to me."

But the roaring flames held the firefighters off. Soon more fire departments had to be called in because the situation became desperate. As the firemen arrived, the president shouted out that the offer to extricate the secret recipes was now $100,000 to the fire department that could save them.

Suddenly from up the road, a lone siren was heard as another fire truck came into sight. It was the fire engine of the nearby Lodi , NJ volunteer fire department composed mainly of Italian firefighters over the age of 65.

To everyone 's amazement, the little run-down fire engine, operated by these Italian firefighters, passed the fire engines parked outside the plant and drove straight into the middle of the inferno. Outside, the other firemen watched in amazement as the Italian old timers jumped off and began to fight the fire as if they were fighting to save their own lives.
Within a short time, the Lodi old timers had extinguished the fire and saved the secret recipes.

The grateful sausage company president joyfully announced that for such a superhuman accomplishment he was upping the reward to $200,000, and walked over to pe rsonally thank each of the brave elderly Italian firefighters.

A TV news crew rushed in after capturing the event on film. The 'on camera' reporter asked the Italian fire chief, "What are you going to do with all that money?"

"Wella," said Chief Pasquale De Luccine, the 70-year-old fire chief, "de fursta tinga we gonnna do isza fixa de brakes on dat a soma a bich."

Or does Doug just dig himself deeper into a hole with this one?

Notes On A Lovely Book

Glory had often reflected on the fact that Boughtons looked very much like one another. Hope was the acknowledged beauty of the family, which is to say the Boughton nose and the Boughton brow were less pronounced in her case. All the rest of them male and female, were, their mother said, handsome. They all passed from cherubic infancy to unremarkable childhood to gangling youth to that adult state of Boughtonhood their mother soothed or praised with talk of character and distinction, Hope being the one exception. So adolescence was a matter of watching unremarkable features drift off axis very slightly, of watching the nose knuckle just a little and the jaw go just a little bit out of square. So Glory's face had transformed itself in its inevitable turn. She remembered her alarm.

From Home, a novel, by Marilynne Robinson. When I began to read the book, I anticipated a pleasurable experience, because I'd read Gilead, by Robinson, a beautifully written story, with characters so alive that they become people whom you care about in the course of reading the book and even afterward. Characters in Gilead reappear in Home. On Bishop Alan's Blog, he and I discussed Gilead in his comments, and he said, "I thought Gilead was one of the most beautiful novels I've ever read — clear simple and profound..." I agree, and I'd say the same about Home. The girls in the family are named Glory, Hope, Faith, and Grace. If I remember correctly, the Reverend Boughton considered Charity for one of the girls, but his wife drew the line.

Home is the story of two siblings, of eight, who return to the family home in a small town in Iowa, where their father, a retired minister, who is old and ill, still lives. One, Glory, goes to help her father after a period of adversity in her own life, and her brother, Jack, returns out of desperation. It's a story of faith, of father, daughter, and son, with all the accompanying missteps, doubts, and hesitations. Biblical references and quotes abound, but not in a beat-you-over-the-head manner. They appear naturally, in the course of conversations, en passant. Many of the references are permeated with irony as Jack, the black sheep of the family, speaks them.

About Glory:

For her, church was an airy white room with tall windows looking out on God's good world, with God's good sunlight pouring in through those windows and falling across the pulpit where her father stood, straight and strong, parsing the broken heart of humankind and praising the loving heart of Christ. That was church.

The church could be a description of my church, except that the sunlight does not fall across the pulpit.

A conversation between Glory and Jack:

"...You're worried about seeing Ames tonight at dinner."
"Yes, well, it seems I've done as much as one man could do to make the experience embarrassing."
"Nonsense. Really. If he did see you on the street, what of it?"
"Good point, Glory. Perspective. Just what is called for here. Would he have noticed my discomfort with myself from that distance? Well, so what? A law-abiding citizen has a perfect right to feel wretched on a public sidewalk, on a Sabbath morning. Even to pause as he does so. Near a church, too. There's poetry in it, of a sort."

The father is a giant of a man, shrunken by age and illness, but still a force in the lives of his children. Jack, the black sheep of the family, is one of the most endearing and heartbreaking fictional characters that I've come across in quite a while. He lingers with me and, I suspect, he will continue with me for a long time.

There's no way that I can do justice to the book with my words. I was moved to tears more than once by the story but also by the beauty of the prose. I'd go back to read the lovely words again, and I'd weep. I urge you to read it and see for yourself. And then, if you haven't read Gilead, go read it, too. I get no commission from sales.

UPDATE: Listen to or read about the NPR interview with Marilynne Robinson.

Psychiatric Dinner

A noted psychiatrist was a guest speaker at a dinner where George W. Bush, the recent president, was the honorary chairman. In introducing the psychiatrist, Bush took the opportunity to ask him a question with which the psychiatrist would be at ease.

"Would you mind telling us, doctor," he asked, "how you detect a subtle mental problem or deficiency in somebody who appears completely normal?"

"Nothing is easier," he replied. "You ask a simple question that anyone should be able to answer with no trouble. If the person hesitates, that puts you on the track."

"But how do you know that the person should even know something about that subject?" asked Bush.

"Let me give you an example. There are questions that everybody can answer. For instance, 'Captain Cook made three trips around the world and died during one of them. Which one?'"

Bush thought a moment, and then laughed. "Well, everybody knows from my presidency that I don't know much about history. You wouldn't happen to have another question, would you?"

Has Doug redeemed himself after the Chinese joke?