Oh God, who hast made the coffee bean and infused it with caffeine for our enjoyment; like Thy blessed saint Arbucks vouchsafe to keep us awake to Thy beauty, infuse us with the riches of the cream of Thy heart, and at the end bring us to Thy heavenly café, where Thou livest and reignest with your Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
I know that everyone is praying so incredibly hard for Aileen, I just ask one more time that everyone PLEASE PLEASE pray harder Aileen has taken a turn for the worse and is now battling an infection in her body as well and all of her responses to people and stimulus had stopped she is no longer responding to us. Please just another big round of prayers. -Mike
May God the Father bless you, God the Son heal you, God the Holy Spirit give you strength. May God the holy and undivided Trinity guard your body, save your soul, and bring you safely to his heavenly country; where he lives and reigns for ever and ever.
(Book of Common Prayer)
Aileen seems to have stabilized a bit today, she's not better but atleast she not getting any worse, need to find out what this infection is from so they can zero in on it with antibiotics instead of taking the shotgun effect and hoping they hit something.---Mike
Zoe was euthanized today at 4:30. She had gone down considerably in the last 24-48 hours. Will miss here sorely.
Frank
Prayer for the Death of a Beloved Pet
O Lord our God, we come before You this day in sadness. Zoe, who brought us so much joy in life, has now died. Her happy times in our family’s embrace have come to an end. We miss Zoe already.
Help us, O God, to remember the good times with Zoe. Remind us to rejoice in the happy times she brought to our home. Let us be thankful for the good life we were blessed to give to her.
We are grateful to You, God, for creating Zoe, for entrusting her to our care, and for sustaining her in our love for a measure of time. We understand that all that lives must die. We knew that this day would come. And yet, O God, we would have wanted one more day of play, one more evening of love with Zoe.
O God, as we have taken care of Zoe in life, we ask that You watch over her in death. You entrusted Zoe to our care; now, we give her back to You. May Zoe find a happy new home in Your loving embrace.
As we remember Zoe, may we love each other more dearly. May we care for all Your creatures, for every living thing, as we protected the blessed life of Zoe. May her memory bless our lives with love and caring forever. Amen.
By Rabbi Barry H. Block
It's been a rough week. Ireland got sold back into serfdom, unemployment benefits expired, and in a bid to bring the spirit of peace and generosity back to Christmas, Republicans threatened to filibuster the START treaty until tax cuts for the upper 2% of wealthy Americans were made permanent. Oh, and like a maraschino cherry high atop a lollapalooza of suck, we find out from Wikileaks that the Obama administration—with GOP help—basically has quashed the investigation into torture by slow-marching it to death.
....
And where, might you ask, was the religious left (such as it is) during all of this? Begging for scraps, I'm afraid. They were "urging" Congress to pass the DREAM Act and "urging" them to ratify START and "asking"(!) the House to pass the Child Nutrition Act. These are all fine and worthy causes, to be sure. Yet somehow I don't think they're going to be effective. Put it to you this way, it's one thing to go up against a giant with a slingshot. It's quite another to take your rock out and replace it with a crumpled-up piece of paper.
....
Yet, as I seldom tire of pointing out, the God of the Bible is quite partisan and quite divisive. You can't read about camels and the eye of the needle, let alone the Magnificat, without understanding that God is on the side of the poor.
Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.
(Jeremiah 22:3)
And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
(Luke 1:46-53)
Jesus looked at him [the rich ruler] and said, ‘How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’
(Luke 18:24-25)
For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work.
(2 Thessalonians 3:10-11)
My God is the God of the poor. You can be for the poor or you can go to hell.
There's nothing nice about that. But then there's nothing nice about the absurd, reactionary, vicious and apparently successful class war the rich and powerful are waging on the rest of the nation, either.
In my dream, the angel shrugged & said,
If we fail this time, it will be a failure of
imagination & then she placed the world
gently in the palm of my hand.
Where the film falters is through the calculated exclusion of anyone not already steeped in Harry Potter lore. You'll need to come in emotionally invested, though the chances of that are solid if you've read this far. Newcomers need not apply, as the whole affair would likely come off as a blustery exercise without prior knowledge of the books or films.
The trouble with Harry, as becomes clear from this seventh and penultimate installment, is not that we have lost the plot—the film is as tangled and as corkscrewed as Bonham Carter’s hair—but that we are in danger of losing everything else. The first words of the movie, which is directed by David Yates, are “These are dark times, there is no denying.” Actually, there is denying—that was the gist of the comic fantasy that used to prevail in Hogwarts, a place notably unvisited by our heroes on this occasion. Even allowing for the fact that we have followed Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson), and Ron (Rupert Grint) into the slough of puberty and out the other side, the whole thing does seem preternaturally stained with Weltschmerz.
Like a virgin's padded bra, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I is all tease, zero payoff. No investment banker left standing could fail to applaud the studio's initiative in halving the seventh and last book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series to squeeze the goose for more gold. But a movie that plays like a 146-minute trailer for the actual final chapter — Part II opens next July in 3D! — is a definite cheat.
From Fr John Dear in the National Catholic reporter: Dec. 2 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the abduction, rape and killing of four U.S. churchwomen in El Salvador -- Maryknoll Srs. Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sr. Dorothy Kazel, and Maryknoll lay missioner Jean Donovan.
....
So much has happened in the thirty years since -- beginning with the deaths of millions and millions of more poor people around the planet, the ongoing warmaking of the United States, and the ongoing collapse of the institutional church.
....
As we remember these great churchwomen and do what we can for justice and peace, I think...our lives too will be filled with meaning.
Almighty God, you called your servants Ita, Maura, Dorothy, and Jean to be voices for the voiceless poor, and to give their lives as a seed of freedom and a sign of hope in El Salvador: Grant that, inspired by their sacrifice and their example, we may without fear or favor witness to your Word who abides, your Word who is Life, even Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be praise and glory now and for ever. Amen.
Greetings, Episcopal Family---Prayers are needed for a young mother (37), named Aileen, who was in my sixth grade class many years ago. She is in ICU in Rapid and has been in a coma for several days. She has two little boys. Below is a Facebook update from her husband Mike Rodgers. Thank you for your immediate and ongoing appeal for her healing. Blessings to you all---Sally Boyd
From Mike- update on my sweet Aileen. MRI came back and was one blow after another. She suffered a heart attack and caused the blood, oxygen flow to not reach her brain for a portion of time, suffered 5 to 6 major strokes, 5 lesser strokes and many much smaller ones. her internal organs seem to be doing a bit better, still has a LONG way to go. I beg you all please continue to pray for my amazing wife and best
friend.
O God, the strength of the weak and the comfort of sufferers: Mercifully accept our prayers, and grant to your servant Aileen the help of your power, that her sickness may be turned into health, and our sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Book of Common Prayer)
Quick update: Aileen seems to be having a few more conscious periods going on today, she is still in a coma as that is her basic state right now but she is definately moving in the right direction, testing yesterday shows that her vision and hearing should be intact, her right side is making good progress, but she is losing what she had on her left and tests show that there is nothing happening in the brain in reference to her legs at all. These are fairly limited tests and all they are really able to do until she wakes up more, many many unanswered questions. From her husband, Mike on FB
We invite parents into the classroom to tell about family celebrations. Last year a parent taught us the "Ocho Kandelas" song, which is a Hanukkah song in Ladino, a Sephardic language that sounds like Spanish and Hebrew with a little Arabic in there as well. The native Spanish speakers in my class were pretty excited to get the idea of the song, even if the words weren't exactly the same as in Spanish. The video is us learning and practicing the song with the lyrics on the ActivBoard. We say "Kandelikas" a lot, it's pretty fun.
