Upon a darkened night
the flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright
I fled my house while all in quiet rest
Shrouded by the night
And by the secret stair I quickly fled
The veil concealed my eyes
while all within lay quiet as the dead
A new wave of Iraqi Christians has fled to northern Iraq or abroad amid a campaign of violence against them and growing fear that the country’s security forces are unable or, more ominously, unwilling to protect them.
The flight — involving thousands of residents from Baghdad and Mosul, in particular — followed an Oct. 31 siege at a church in Baghdad that killed 51 worshipers and 2 priests and a subsequent series of bombings and assassinations singling out Christians. This new exodus, which is not the first, highlights the continuing displacement of Iraqis despite improved security over all and the near-resolution of the political impasse that gripped the country after elections in March.
....
The Christians and other smaller minority groups here, however, have been explicitly made targets and have emigrated in disproportionate numbers. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, these groups account for 20 percent of the Iraqis who have gone abroad, while they were only 3 percent of the country’s prewar population.
More than half of Iraq’s Christian community, estimated to number 800,000 to 1.4 million before the American-led invasion in 2003, have already left the country.
"I don't feel I have any choice but to leave the Church and take up the Pope's offer. The General Synod has become vindictive and vicious.
"It has been fascist in its behaviour, marginalising those who have been opposed to women's ordination. We have not been given any space."
'Hooker has this at least in common with Luther, that he is profoundly suspicious of conditions other than baptism as a test of belonging to the Church; and he is in effect saying to his opponents [the Puritans] that they are not Protestant enough, if the touchstone of Protestantism is witness to the liberty and the priority of God's act.'
Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past, p. 78.
The loss is not yours alone, she said &
you will see it in their eyes when they do
not think you are watching. How long
does it take? I said & she put her hand
on my chest & we did not speak.
A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that the individual mandate contained in the health care law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama this year is unconstitutional.
Judge Henry E. Hudson found in favor of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who brought this suit separately from the other state attorney generals suing the federal government over the law. Hudson was the first judge to rule against the law. Two other judges ruled in favor of the law, bringing the Obama administration's record thus far to 2-1. At least 13 other suits against the health care law have been dismissed on jurisdiction or standing issues.
Federal judge Henry E. Hudson's ownership of a stake worth between $15,000 and $50,000 in a GOP political consulting firm that worked against health care reform -- the very law against which he ruled today -- raises some ethics questions for some of the nation's top judicial ethics experts. It isn't that Hudson's decision would have necessarily been influenced by his ownership in the company, given his established track record as a judicial conservative. But his ownership stake does create, at the very least, a perception problem for Hudson that could affect the case.
"Is Judge Hudson's status as a shareholder coincidence or causation? Probably the former, but the optics aren't good," James J. Sample, an associate professor at Hofstra Law School, told TPM. "Federal judges are required by statute to disqualify themselves from hearing a case whenever their impartiality might reasonably be questioned. It's a hyper-protective rule and for good reason. At the very least, his continued financial interest in Campaign Solutions undermines the perceived legitimacy of his decision."
Legal experts are attacking Judge Henry Hudson's decision on the merits, citing an elementary logical flaw at the heart of his opinion. And that has conservative scholars -- even ones sympathetic to the idea that the mandate is unconstitutional -- prepared to see Hudson's decision thrown out.
....
Kerr and others note that Hudson's argument against Congress' power to require people to purchase health insurance rests on a tautology.
....
As a result of this error, Hudson never engages the key question in the case: whether the individual mandate is a reasonable way for Congress to implement regulations within its purview.
Brothers and sisters in Christ---First, let me thank you all for sending up prayers for Aileen during this long struggle. She has been up and down over the past several days. She has had continued bleeding in the brain, new bleeds in bowels and stomach. Mike wrote that she "crashed" twice on Saturday, but was brought back to us. A former doctor visited her and made suggestions which were agreed on. This was followed by her temperature going below 100 degrees for the first time since Thanksgiving. Praise God! I do not know yet about extended plans. However, a permanent tracheostomy tube was to be put in place today. Following is the Facebook message from her loving husband, Mike. Please continue to lift this young mother to the Lord for healing. Blessings to you all during this precious season of expectant waiting.---Sally Boyd
Aileen had an uneventful night last night and her day has been much the same. Her dialysis went well today. Her vitals and blood chemical numbers are pretty stable and show some good progress. Her color is good and she has at times had her eyes open a good bit. Thank God for good days!!!---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. Amen.
Sanctify, O Lord, those whom you have called to the study and practice of the arts of healing, and to the prevention of disease and pain. Strengthen them by your life-giving Spirit, that by their ministries the health of Aileen may be promoted and your creation glorified; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Book of Common Prayer)
O God, give to Mike and all who watch and wait with Aileen strength and courage during this difficult time. Surround them with your presence in the power of your Holy Spirit that they may trust in your everlasting love.
We pray for Sally as she stands with Aileen and Mike. Give her gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding as she ministers to Mike and Aileen. Fill her with strength in the power of your Spirit. We pray in the name of your son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I want to see a picture of St Kenneth the Good-looking.
I'll pass on incense-testing day. The smoke gets to me.
The pew-leaping should be a sight to behold.
"Presents for Peasants" Gift Day is noblesse oblige at its best.
How would you like to live in Bonk?
Who knew St Ursula was the Queen of Thighs? The Wikipedia article gives no clue, except that the Basilica of St Ursula in Cologne contains lots of bones, and presumably there could be thigh bones in the mix, although they are not mentioned. According to the article, the collection includes the following information:A surgeon of eminence was once banished from Cologne for opining that, among the collection of bones which are said to pertain to the heads, there were several belonging to full-grown mastiffs.
What is Advent? What is the hope into which we enter during this season as we move towards Christmas—not Christmas the commercialized phenomenon on the nation’s calendar, but the interruptive event of Emmanuel, God-With-Us?
It is the hope of Christ’s coming, that in him God meets us and that therefore we are not God, not the lords of the earth. It is the hope that in his coming to us, our will to mastery, our will to Lordship, our will even to good intentions, our will to usurp the position that only God can occupy, the position of the Judge and thus our willing to judging is overturned. For the narrative of power, in God’s coming in nakedness and as a helpless and vulnerable child and in strangeness, is what the naked Christ delivers us from. In short, salvation has come.
Bonhoeffer’s conversion narrative proves to be a Christmas narrative, a narrative that turned him from himself, from power and mastery, from bourgeois comfortability, and toward the weak and vulnerable, the “wretched of the earth” as Franz Fanon put it—toward those who in a world bent on the worship of power and security, wealth and prestige, are the despised and rejected.
....
Christmas, or the coming of God-with-Us as the man Jesus, is liberation—liberation first of all from the will to power and mastery that dogs us all and liberation in the world. God-with-Us means we are free to be for another, for their good, for their flourishing, for their well-being. In this sense, Christmas is liberation, which is love.
President Obama's tax deal with congressional Republicans may well turn out to be a defining moment in his presidency. This is less because of its content than what it tells us about Obama himself and his politics.
During the 2008 campaign, many observers compared Obama with Abraham Lincoln. Obama encouraged this, announcing his candidacy in Springfield, Lincoln's home, and taking the oath of office on the bible Lincoln used in 1861. (He trumped his predecessor, however, by having two preachers speak at his inauguration. Lincoln managed to be sworn in twice without hearing from a single minister.)
Obama's rather petulant response to liberal critics of his tax deal, however, reveals a fundamental difference between the two men. Obama accuses liberals of being sanctimonious purists, more interested in staking out a principled position than getting things accomplished. Lincoln, too, faced critics on the left of his own party. Abolitionists, who agitated outside the political system, and Radical Republicans, who represented the abolitionist sensibility in politics, frequently criticised Lincoln for what they saw as his slowness in attacking slavery during the civil war. In 1864, one group of Radicals even sought to replace Lincoln with their own candidate, John C Frémont.
Lincoln, however, was openminded, intellectually curious and willing to listen to critics in his own party – qualities Obama appears to lack. Lincoln met frequently in the White House with abolitionists and Radicals, and befriended Radicals like Charles Sumner and Owen Lovejoy. Obama has surrounded himself with "yes men". Alternative views – on the economy, the nation's wars, etc – fail to penetrate his inner sanctum. Lincoln saw himself as part of a broad antislavery movement of which the Radicals were also a part. Obama has no personal or political connection to the labour movement, or even, although it seems counterintuitive, the civil rights movement – the seedbeds of modern Democratic party liberalism.
