DOUBLE DOUBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Thanks to Ann at What the Tide Brings In, who put the video together with great skill in matching up real people with the words in the song.

While you're at Ann's blog, please read her splended sermon for XXIII Pentecost on the Gospel reading for today, the story of Zaccheaus, the man of small stature, and his encounter with Jesus.

FOGGY HALLOWEEN NIGHT

A man is walking home alone late one foggy night . . . when behind him he hears:

Bump . . . BUMP . . . BUMP . . . .

Walking faster, he looks back and through the fog makes out the image of an upright casket banging its way down the middle of the street after him.

BUMP . . . BUMP . . . BUMP . . . .

Terrified, the man begins to run toward his home, the casket bouncing quickly behind him.

FASTER . . . FASTER . . . BUMP . . . BUMP . . . BUMP . . . .

He runs up to his door, fumbles with his keys, opens the door, rushes in, slams and locks the door behind him. The casket, however, crashes through his door, with the lid of the casket clapping

clappity-BUMP . . . clappity-BUMP . . . clappity-BUMP . . .

at his heels, so the terrified man runs.

Rushing upstairs to the bathroom, the man locks himself in. His heart is pounding; his head is reeling; his breath is coming in sobbing gasps. With a loud CRASH the casket breaks down the door, bumping and clapping toward him.

The man screams and reaches for something, anything, but all he can find is
a bottle of cough syrup! Desperate, he throws the cough syrup at the casket . . .

and . . .



The coffin stops.

Don't blame me. Blame Paul (A.). He went that way ---------------->

DO I NEED AN UMBRELLA?

TRY IT .......... NO JOKE

Before you go out the door in the morning......Click Below
This is really neat!

Do I Need an Umbrella?

Thanks to Doug.

CHURCH GROUPS AGAINST ANGLICAN COVENANT

From Ekklesia:

Two major Church of England groups, Inclusive Church and Modern Church, have joined together to campaign against the proposed Anglican Covenant.

In November 2010 the Church of England’s General Synod will be asked to approve the Covenant, which has emerged from attempts by the Archbishop of Canterbury and others to resolve the wrangling in the Anglican Communion over sexuality, authority and related issues - and from the lobbying of conservative hardliners, say critics.

The Covenant was first proposed by the Windsor Report in 2004 to put pressure on the North American churches, after a diocese in the USA had elected an openly gay bishop and a diocese in Canada had approved a same-sex blessing service.

"Many Synod members do not realise it, but it could be the biggest change to the Church since the Reformation," say Inclusive Church and Modern Church (formerly the Modern Churchpersons Union).

The groups charge that the Church of England, if it signs, will become subordinate to a bureaucratic structure and will thereby become more centralised, dogmatic, backward-facing, inward looking and clerically dominated.

Here's the pdf link to text of the ad in the ChurchTimes.

How anyone expects that the Anglican Draft Covenant, or as someone in the comments at Thinking Anglicans called it, the Daft Covenant, will serve to bring the members of the Anglican Communion together is beyond me. The ratification of the Covenant will enable any province to accuse another of breaking the terms of the Covenant. The accusations will need to be addressed by whatever powers are assigned to the task, and it seems to me that the result will be endless wrangling about whether a province is assigned a place in first tier membership, second tier membership, or banished from the Communion altogether.

Modern Church provides excellent background information on the proposed Covenant here.

UPDATE: Credit where credit due. It seems that Tobias Haller coined the phrase "Daft Anglican Covenant" in the comments to this post at Thinking Anglicans from 2007:

Perhaps what is really needed is a Daft Anglican Covenant. ;-)

Posted by: Tobias Haller on Friday, 30 November 2007 at 8:55pm GMT

I should have known Tobias was the clever (or guilty?) author. How has so apt a phrase remained hidden for years? No matter. I shall do my best to make it famous.

UPDATE 2 CORRECTION: Tobias Haller is not the clever (guilty?) party.

At Ship of Fools:

Maleveque said: Posted 18 June, 2007 17:48
I really, really don't want a covenant. Covenant churches prescribe particular belief in a way that I find oppressive. If it happens, I don't know that I'll stay - and I am such a die-hard Episcopalian that I don't know where I'd go.
Anne L.
ps - am I the only one whose aged eyes read "Daft Anglican Covenant"?

Thanks to John Chilton and Ann Fontaine for the correction.

I may have the attribution right now, unless I receive a reference to an earlier use of the phrase.

UPDATE 3: As of this moment, Tobias Haller gets credit for the first publication of The Daft Anglican Covenant.

Further updates may follow.

MALCOLM+ ON THE COVENANT - A FABLE

Malcolm+ at Simple Massing Priest shares an Aesop fable with us, which works well as we consider the Anglican Daft Covenant.

Count me amongst the resisting frogs. I'm just saying.

CLINT SAYS HE'S SORRY AND WILL RESIGN

From Pink News:

The US school board official who wrote on his Facebook page that “queers” and “fags” should kill themselves says he will resign.

Clint McCance, who is the vice-president of the Midland school district in Arkansas , said last night he was sorry for his “hurtful” remarks.

Speaking to the openly gay journalist Anderson Cooper on his 360 CNN programme, he said: “My posts I made that were very hurtful, very ignorant in nature. Looking back on it right now and getting to, you know, scrutinise my own self and what I did. It’s horrible. And what I wrote was horrible.”

Yes, your comments were despicable, Clint. The Midland School Board is well rid of you. Perhaps if your example doesn't teach a few other bigots to rethink their hateful attitudes, it will serve to suggest that they should keep their hateful opinions private, so that the rest of us, especially the most vulnerable amongst us, won't be plagued by them.

Thanks to Cathy for the link.

JESUS AND MO AND MORE

Click on the picture for the larger view.

From Jesus and Mo.

Quite often, I post "Jesus and Mo" comic strips, not simply because I think they're funny, but because the comics make me think about my faith and my church from a different perspective.

Today, John Chilton at The Lead links to the reports of a recent study by Empty Tomb Inc, which shows that charitable giving to religious organizations, such as the Salvation Army and World Vision, has increased, even as giving to Protestant churches has fallen. Why?

From Grand Rapids Press:

A new book, “The State of Church Giving,” says congregations have waning influence among charitable causes because their focus now seems to be on institutional maintenance rather than spreading the gospel and healing the world.

Ronsvalle called the findings “unintended side effects of the ‘seeker’ mentality” that creates a consumer mindset within U.S. churches, one that says “‘We’re here to serve you,’ not ‘We’re here to transform you into somebody who serves others.’”

While church spending on operations has fallen 15 percent since 1968, the amount spent on benevolence has dropped 47 percent.

Lots of food for thought here. The costs of health care and energy hit congregational budgets particularly hard, and I'm not pointing a finger in this post. I don't have solutions to offer, either, but I foresee great changes approaching in how we do church, and we'd do well to be prepared for the changes, rather than be blindsided by them. However, I think we've seen enough already, and if we are blindsided, then the fault is ours because we look away from the reality.

AUSTIN AND HIS EPISCOPUMPKIN

Austin Hays carved the pumpkin. He is a member of The Episcopal Church of St. Simon & St. Jude in Irmo, South Carolina, which has had a pumpkin patch for 17 years.

H/T to John Chilton at The Lead.

FRIDAY JOKE

A Doctor was addressing a large audience in Tampa.

'The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. However, there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have eaten, or will eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?'

After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said, 'Wedding Cake.'

Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

TIMELY WITCH

Have a happy

~doug~