ALL SAINTS DAY

St. Louie swings with his band and the dancing lady.

THEY DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS ABOUT THEM...

...until Jon Stewart told them.

From Politicususa:

Jon Stewart managed to do something with his Rally to Restore Sanity that hasn’t been done in a long time. He confused the mainstream media to the point of a near collective nervous breakdown. The media couldn’t figure out what this rally was about, and it was only when Stewart explained it to them that they realized that it was about them.

From NPR:

It wasn't until the very end of the so-called Rally to Restore Sanity that Stewart got a little serious.

"Now, I thought we might have a moment, however brief, for some sincerity," he told the crowd. "I know there are boundaries for a comedian pundit talker guy — and I'm sure I'll find out tomorrow how I have violated them."

Stewart went on to lay the blame for all the bickering, hostility and hyperbole in politics these days on the media — in part, at least.

"The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen," he said. "Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire. And then, perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected, dangerous ant-fire epidemic."

Don't you love it? I won't soon forget the flaming ant metaphor.

H/T to Rmj at Adventus.

THE COVENANT AS LEGAL FICTION?

Paul Bagshaw at Not the Same Stream writes with great clarity on Section 4 of the Anglican Draft Covenant, the objectionable section. As I said in the comments to Paul's post:

Paul, I commend you on the clarity of your breakdown on what I choose to call the awfulness of Part 4 of the Daft Covenant.

I've said elsewhere that while many of us see no need for an Anglican Covenant, at least some of us could perhaps live with the first three sections. Part 4, with its snatching away of autonomy from member churches and its punitive consequences for those churches who don't have their doctrinal and practical ducks lined up in a proper row, is the section that is unacceptable as it's now presented. That the Daft Covenant is declared to be not subject to amendment, means that only a yea or nay vote on the document as submitted is all that is possible.

The emblem on my sidebar clearly sends the message that I see no need for an Anglican Covenant. The Anglican Communion has held together without a Covenant since 1867. Why now? If common worship and the bonds of affection will not hold us together, if, indeed, the bonds of affection are already severed in the case of several churches of the Communion with respect to several other churches, how will the Covenant restore the bonds? Will expelling members from the Communion or demoting them to second tier membership serve the purpose? As I see it, the Covenant as is now written is a set-up for accusations by one or more provinces against one or more other provinces with the consequent wrangling amongst the membership as to whether the actions (and teachings?) of a particular province should result in expulsion from the Communion or demotion from full membership.

But I digress. Forgive me for taking off on my own away from the subject of Paul's post, the legal fiction of the Covenant. For me, the Covenant is one of the subjects about which I say, "Don't get me started!" To put it simply, those who will share Communion at the Lord's table are those who are in communion with each other.

Please read Paul's post. As he says, "The fiction is that no Covenant signatory is in any way subordinated to an external body."

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.