RAPTURE AND END OF THE WORLD COMING SOON

From WKRN.com:

The estimated 40 billboards were put up by Family Radio, a national Christian radio group.

A spokesperson for the radio station said they are very confident that their prediction is right.

"This date was developed from only Bible scriptures from the King James Bible and a lot of it are parts that people tend to overlook," Allison Warden told News 2.

From the website of Family Radio who sponsor the billboards:

This web site serves as an introduction and portal to four faithful ministries which are teaching that WE CAN KNOW from the Bible alone that the date of the rapture of believers will take place on May 21, 2011 and that God will destroy this world on October 21, 2011.

What about the children? Do these groups truly frighten their children this way. And that's not to speak of other people's children! And gullible adults!

Well, my readers, you can't say I didn't warn you - you know - just in case....

PS: Be careful when you drive on May 21, 2011. Perhaps those who are confident that they will be raptured will be thoughtful enough of the rest of us to stay off the roads. I hope so.

Thanks to Ann V. for directing me to the story.

UPDATE: Go to Ship of Fools. Jesus is furious about the leak. Read it all. There will be consequences.

Thanks to Ann for the link.

SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT

A Song of the Wilderness

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
It shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God.
Strengthen the weary hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to the anxious, "Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God, coming with judgment to save you."
Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened,
and the ears of the deaf be unstopped.
Then shall the lame leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert;
The burning sand shall become a pool
and the thirsty ground, springs of water.
The ransomed of God shall return with singing,
with everlasting joy upon their heads.
Joy and gladness shall be theirs,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

(Isaiah 35:1-7, 10)

Collect: Second Sunday of Advent

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Image from Wikipedia.

BISHOP CHRISTOPHER - THE DESMOND TUTU OF UGANDA?

From San Diego Gay & Lesbian News:

SAN DIEGO – The Right Rev. Christopher Senyonjo could have retired in 1998 as Bishop of the Diocese of West Burganda, Uganda, with his pension and the satisfaction of serving the Anglican Church faithfully for many years.

But in 2001, he felt a calling to help the young people who came to his private counseling service for advice on how to deal with coming out in this east African nation of 33 million people where homosexuality is illegal and where gays and lesbians are routinely tormented and harassed.

So Bishop Christopher, as he is fondly known and who is often referred to as the Desmond Tutu of Uganda,, was compelled to help the confused and frightened young gays who had mustered up the courage to seek his counsel.
....

A scandalous tabloid in Uganda called Rolling Stone even put his image on the front cover of a recent edition that called for the hanging of LGBT people, putting his life in danger. Never mind that the bishop is straight, and is a husband, father and grandfather.

To his enemies, Bishop Christopher turns the other cheek. He believes he is doing God’s work – and so do many of his supporters across the globe.

The bishop is in San Diego this week to accept California Senate Resolution 51, which will be presented to him by state Sen. Christine Kehoe on Thursday, Dec. 2, during a reception at Eden in Hillcrest.

Senate Resolution 51 commends Bishop Christopher’s work and calls for government to be more stringent in monitoring abuses by churches that are supporting the false claims of so called “ex-gay ministries” and exporting homophobia to countries like Uganda. It also encourages faith-based organizations in the U.S. to support the creation of policies in other countries that do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Ever the humble man, Bishop Christopher says he feels honored by the resolution.

“Thank God there are people who appreciate what I am doing,” he says. “I didn’t think, in my lifetime, that I would be recognized for what I am doing. … It encourages me to go on serving to the end of my life.”

H/T to MadPriest, who called my attention to the article and the video of the courageous Bishop Christopher. MadPriest himself also speaks powerful and true words about God and God's love:

There is one credal statement of which no greater can be imagined. It is never provisional and it cannot be subject to any other statement. All other statements are subject to it and are untruthful if they do not fully agree with it or give rise to anything that is not of it. There are no exceptions. Scripture, the Church and God cannot add to, lessen or change it in any way. It is of itself as God is of Godself, because it is God. It is the greatest truth from which all reality flows.

God is love.

Read the rest of MadPriest's words at the link above.

THE REV. RAYFORD RAY ELECTED 11TH BISHOP OF THE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF N. MICHIGAN

From the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan:

On the second ballot of today's electing convention, the Rev. Rayford Ray was elected as the eleventh bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan.

Results:

Delegates: 88 present, 59 required to elect. Metz: 6, Ray: 59, Tharakan: 23
Congregations: 25 present, 13 required to elect. Metz: 1, Ray: 16, Tharakan: 6

According to the bylaws of the Diocese, to have an election, a nominee must receive two-thirds of the delegate vote and a simple majority of the congregational vote. To achieve a congregational vote, delegates from a congregation meet and caucus--a simple majority of those delegates is considered a congregational vote.

Thanks to Ann Fontaine.

UPDATE: From the Google cache of the biography of Bishop-elect Ray by Nicholas Knisely at The Lead:

ESCANABA, Michigan, December 4, 2010--The Rev. Rayford Ray, a member of the Episcopal Ministry Support Team in the Diocese of Northern Michigan, has been elected as the diocese’s 11th bishop.

Ray, 54, a four-time deputy to General Convention who serves several parishes in the south central region of the diocese, was elected on the second ballot from a slate of three nominees at a convention held at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Escanaba.

“We are a life giving people here in this diocese,” said Ray, who visited the convention after his election. “It is an exciting time as we will partner together as we look at the possibilities that stand before us. We have much to do, but we will do it together as we proclaim the Gospel as we know in in Jesus Christ.”

During more than 20 years in the diocese, Ray has worked as a ministry development coordinator and collaborated with parishes across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He was recently an adjunct instructor at Episcopal Divinity School. An alumnus of Nashota House, he lives in Rapid River, Michigan with his wife, Suzanne Ray. They have three grown children and four grandchildren.

ST. ARBUCKS - PATRON SAINT OF COFFEE

Thanks to Ann V.

UPDATE: Chris said...

Collect of the day:

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.

Thank you, Chris. The collect is perfect.

UPDATE ON AILEEN

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

Aileen's story is here.

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)

The latest on Aileen from Ann:

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

GOOD-BYE, ZOE

From my brother-in-law:

Zoe was euthanized today at 4:30. She had gone down considerably in the last 24-48 hours. Will miss here sorely.

Frank

We prayed for Zoe earlier. Please pray for 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

"GOD DOES TAKE SIDES"

From Daniel Schultz (aka Pastor Dan) at Religious Dispatches:

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.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! A thousand times yes, Pastor Dan. Read the rest of Dan's column.

To you who scream loud and long that the US is a Christian nation, I ask what about Jesus' teachings about the poor? I ask you people of faith who, even as you claim the Judeo-Christian heritage as the foundation of our nation, why you ignore the golden thread of God's justice that begins in the Hebrew Bible and runs right through the New Testament? How do you forget passages like this:

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 the words of Mary, the mother of Jesus:

The Magnificat

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)

And the words of Jesus to the rich ruler:

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)

But somehow, some way, the most vocal of those who want to take back our country for Jesus always seem to remember Paul's words to differentiate between the worthy and unworthy poor:

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)

Now, I'm all for getting the idle, sound-of-mind-and-body "busybodies" to work, every last one of them, if they can find a job! I'm sure that a good many of the "idle busybodies" would like to be back at work this very moment. Unfortunately, the unemployment rate rose from 9.6% to 9.8% since last month.

As Pastor Dan sums it up:

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.

Daniel Schultz, a.k.a. pastordan, is a minister in the United Church of Christ. He serves a small and very patient church in rural Wisconsin. He is the author of Changing the Script: An Authentically Faithful and Authentically Progressive Political Theology for the 21st Century, forthcoming from Ig Press.

Thanks to Cathy for the link.

STORY OF THE DAY - IMAGINING WORLD

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.

From StoryPeople.

"HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 1"

From Laremy Legel at Film.com:

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.

Yes to all but "if you've read this far", you're emotionally invested.

From Anthony Lane in The New Yorker:

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.

Yes, again.

From Peter Travers at Rolling Stone:

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.

Once again, yes.

Last night, Tom and I went to see the latest Harry Potter film. I'd read the review in The New Yorker and was not enthusiastic about going, but we had not been to a movie together in quite a while, so since Tom wanted to go, I went along.

We'd missed five four of the movies in the series, having seen only the first two. I loved the first film, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", because, along with the darkness, and the action, and chases, the special effects were terrific, and the movie was great fun. I'd read the book and looked forward most of all to the special effects for the broomstick team game of Quidditch, which turned out to be all I expected and more.

Before I read the second book in the series, I saw the movie, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", and did not care for it nearly so much as the first. I didn't read any of the other Potter books, and, as I've said, we missed the next five four movies.

I knew that Dumbledore had died, but Tom and I were pretty thoroughly lost in the first scenes of the movie. Although we never really caught up, we tried to follow along with the intricacies of the plot, as best we could. Tom enjoyed the action and special effects, but I was mostly bored.

I discovered that Daniel Radcliffe is short, 5'6" as best I can discover, since a good many of the other actors in the film seemed to tower over him, and not just Hagrid. I got caught up in the scenery, some of which was quite beautiful. According to Wikipedia, "The crew also shot on location, with Swinley Forest and Freshwater West as two of the main outdoor filming areas, along with the village of Lavenham in Suffolk and the streets of the city of London."

One scene that I loved was of Harry enticing the mournful Hermione (Ron having left them) to dance, in an attempt to lift her spirits - a sweet moment to savor for a romantic such as I.

Near the end of the movie, I had to make a run to use the facilities, and I missed all but the very last scenes of the film, which led to a to-be-continued ending. That I didn't mind not seeing the scenes I missed, says a lot about how much I cared about the movie. I missed the fun in the first movie, which was perhaps more due to my expectations than a fault in the movie.

On the plus side, we were given MovieWatcher rewards of two free small bags of popcorn, but, on the minus side, the theater discontinued discounts for seniors.

The wrath of true-blue Potter fans will probably descend on me for what I've written, but, what I have written, I have written.

UPDATE: See Bishop Alan's review of "Potterdammerung".