TWO NEW BLOGS

OCICBW... has today launched two new websites St Laika's (a totally inclusive worship blog) and The Anchorhold (about prayer and stuff). Please do me a great favour and advertise
both sites on your own blogs.

Oh, and please, please, please do pop over
there yourselves, of course.

The Rev. Jonathan Hagger (aka MadPriest) and Sister Ellie Finlay administer the new blogs.

"THE SIN OF HONESTY"

Umm, umm, good! And I'm not talking Campbells's Soup. Benny Hazelhurst's post at Benny's Blog with the title above, which I "borrowed" for my post, is excellent.

From Benny's "About Me":

Benny is a husband, father, and a Rev in the Church of England. More controversially, he is an Evangelical Christian who beleives that homosexual relationships and partnerships should be welcomed, nurtured and blessed. He is a founder member of Accepting Evangelicals with his wife, Mel, and they beleive that God has a place for everyone in his/her Kingdom.

I see nothing controversial about Benny and Mel's views, but I'm sure not all will agree.

Benny says:

Over the last week there have been a number of Blogs pointing out the culture of secrecy that exists in the Church of England and the Anglican world over sexual orientation.
....

So the Archbishop's now famous phrase from last week's interview in the Times that "He has no problem with gay bishops' clearly needs another caveat placed alongside celibacy - the caveat that "He has no problem - as long as no-one knows!"

Ouch! Benny says further:

Is honesty the main issue then? Is it the honesty and openness of Jeffrey John that is the real cause of his awful treatment at the hands of the Church? And when is there going to be a sustained challenge to this way of doing things?

Is it the honesty of Gene Robinson and Mary Glasspool that makes them and the Episcopal Church such a focus for disapproval in the Anglican Communion? If they had just kept quiet? If they had just lived a lie? If they had hidden behind a veneer of acceptability? Would everything have been ok?

The answer, of course, is a resounding "No!" If we, as Christ body here on earth are to convince people that God is real, we need to be real. If we want people to find abundant life in Christ, we need to live real lives, not carefully crafted veneers of acceptability.

Wise words, indeed. Please read Benny's post in its entirety. Benny's Blog is most certainly a blog I'll want to keep an eye on.

I am so pleased when clergy in the Church of England speak out on the matter of inclusion and equality for LGTB persons. The few voices which have been heard in the past have suffered and borne the brunt of the backlash from those who prefer an exclusive, pure church, which is not at all the example that Jesus set in the types of people he invited to be his followers, and which is a church that never existed, except in the fantasies of the purists and the exclusionists.

Go, Benny!

NOT AMUSED - AMUSED

Lapin said I would like this. Do you like the 5 pound note trick? I do.

"...ALL LIFE IS 6 TO 5 AGAINST"

Today is the birthday of, amongst other writers, Damon Runyon. From the The Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of the man who said, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong — but that is the way to bet." That's fiction writer and journalist Damon Runyon, (books by this author) born Alfred Damon Runyan in Manhattan, Kansas (1880). His mother died when he was young, and his three sisters grew up with various family members in Kansas. But young Alfred Damon was raised in Pueblo, Colorado, by his dad, who was a gambler, an alcoholic, a literature enthusiast, and a newspaperman.

The boy was kicked out of school in sixth grade for "excessive horseplay" and got a job for his dad's newspaper. By the age of 15, he was recognized as beyond his years in both his writing ability and his ability to drink and chain-smoke. He met all kinds of characters, and he wrote about them for the newspaper and also in his short stories. He spent a few years traveling around and working for papers, and one of them misspelled his last name as "Runyon" instead of "Runyan," so he decided to go with it.

In the olden days, that was the proper way to make a newspaperman. Each time I think of the reason given for Runyon's expulsion from school, "excessive horseplay", I burst out laughing.

He himself was an enthusiastic gambler, and he found other gamblers, as well as con men, mobsters, prostitutes, hustlers, and boxers. He made friends with these outsiders, and he spent his nights with them, fitting in easily with their lifestyle even though he had more or less given up drinking after moving to New York, sticking to coffee and cigarettes instead. It was said that he would drink 40 cups of coffee to stay up all night, and then show up for work at the newspaper in the late afternoon looking fresh and clean.
....

He said, "I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against."

Also, in the olden days, not a few newspapermen led similar lives to Runyon's, and those who wrote for newspapers were not treated with the extreme deference as the members of the top tier today. The opinion writers and reporters of the most prominent newspapers and the national TV news talking heads and pundits often hobnob with the high and the mighty in in positions of power in government, business, and lobbying. They attend the same dinner parties and cocktail parties and then claim to write unbiased stories and opinions about those same people.

However, certain opinion writers and reporters in the top tier are outstanding exceptions to the above description, and I highly respect their work. The less prominent writers and reporters and those on the local scene still work at their jobs.

Read the rest of Runyon's short biography at the website.

I thank Cathy and other friends for sending me links to the website and urging me to sign up for the feed to the "Today's Poem" feature.

Today's poem is "Small Boats" by Steve Kowit.

Picture from Wikipedia.

MAXINE SAYS COLOR IS GOOD

 

 

 

The M&Ms look yummy, don't they?

Thanks to Ann and Doug.

ELOQUENT WORDS FROM COLIN COWARD

From Colin Coward at Changing Attitude:

I am utterly fed up with being talked about as if I don’t exist, by which I mean don’t exist authentically as a gay man as if I am mistaken in my awareness of my own identity. I am utterly sick and tired of having Genesis 2 (male and female he created them), Leviticus 18.22 (you must not lie with a man as with a woman) and Romans 1.27 (and men, giving up natural relations with women, too burn with lust for one another) quoted and thrown at me as defining me as a corrupt, inadequate Christian.

For 55 years I have known my identity and I have never wavered in knowing my identity despite the 55 years in which the church has tried to undermine, chip away at and denigrate my own self-knowledge and self-confidence. For 50 years I have been maturing in faith and prayer. The constantly corrosive narrative of doubt about LGBT identity, gay maturity, gay love, gay fidelity, in the Anglican Communion and other faith communities sickens me every day (and at times in my life, literally sickened me).

Colin Coward's eloquent words deserve to be read in their entirety. The shame lies in the necessity that his words be spoken. No more quotes. Read for yourselves.

H/T to Thinking Anglicans.

FURTHER UPDATE ON MARK'S KATZIE

Mark posted once again on his cat Katzie's progress after the first part of her surgery. Once Katzie returns home, Mark promises pictures.

JESUS AND MO - SHINE

As usual, click on the picture for the enlarged view.

From Jesus and Mo.

BUTTERFLIES ARE COMING! - PART 2

Following up on my original post on the caterpillars on our parsley plant, the caterpillars ate themselves plump, and then each wondered off to form a pupa or crysalis. If conditions are favorable, lovely Swallowtail butterflies, as pictured above, will emerge.

 

The caterpillars, which you see in the photo above if you click on the picture for the enlarged view, ate our plant nearly bare, down to the stems. I neglected to take a picture of the bare stems, but in the photo below, you can see that the stems at the bottom of the plant remain bare, but, in the center, new parsley leaves are growing...

 

...which only goes to prove the truth of the axiom (which I just now coined): You can share your parsley and eat it, too.

This link to a learning site for children on the life cycle of a butterfly, also serves grown-ups well.

NAMING YOUR CHILD

A psychiatrist was conducting a group therapy session with four young mothers and their small children. "You all have obsessions," he observed.

To the first mother, Mary, he said, "You are obsessed with eating. You've even named your daughter Candy."

He turned to the second Mom, Ann: "Your obsession is with money. Again, it manifests itself in your child's name, Penny."

He turned to the third Mom, Joyce: "Your obsession is alcohol. This too shows itself in your child's name, Brandy."

At this point, the fourth mother, Kathy, quietly got up, took her little boy by the hand, and whispered, "Come on, Dick, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. Let's pick up Peter and Willy from school and go get some dinner."

Do not blame me for this one. Blame Doug. He made me do it.