"A DECENT AND KIND MAN...."

Mr. Narayanan Krishnan. He searches out the homeless and feeds, clothes, bathes, shaves and loves them.

H/T to Ann Fontaine at The Lead.

PLEASE PRAY...

UPDATE ON AILEEN"

Today, 9:30 a.m.---Yesterday was a great day. Aileen followed the doc with her eyes, blinked on command and moved her right arm up and then back down again upon being asked. Her blood labs looked good, and yesterday's CAT scan came back with good news. The hemorrhage on the left side is beginning to resolve itself and the pressure is going down. However, kidney and liver lab numbers are not so good today and she spiked a temp overnight. Please continue prayers.---Her husband, Mike

From Ann.


From Brian R.:

My sister is to undergo Arthroscopic Knee Surgery tomorrow (Thursday) for a torn cartilege. While it is not serious surgery, I am worried about any general anaesthetic for a person in her mid 70's. She has been in a lot of pain over the last month so hopefully all will be well by Christmas.

For Counterlight (Doug):

It's been a rough month. As always in December, I'm very busy and ill at the same time. This year, I've been going through a royal succession of flu, colds, and respiratory infections that have left me miserable but functional at best, and completely bed-ridden at worst. On top of all that, on Saturday, the boiler in our building blew, and so it's 25F outside and there's no heat. I'm sitting in front of a space heater grading papers during the day, and shivering under blankets on the couch at night so that Michael at least can get some sleep without getting sick. We went through Sunday with no water as the old boiler was torn out. I canceled one of my classes this week because of illness, and I sent an email blast to students in another that I might not have their papers graded by exam time (it looks like I will after all).

And then there are so many people for whom things are so much harder.

I made a trip to the emergency room at Beth Israel in Manhattan last night that, fortunately, turned out to be unnecessary. Another respiratory infection that gives me a nasty rasping choking cough replaced my flu, and it was starting to set my asthma off, so Michael took me to the hospital.

Please read Counterlight's entire post to see what the emergency room visit was like. Congress critters who are against national health care should be required to spend time in emergency rooms.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, graciously comfort your servant, Brian's sister, in her suffering, and bless the means made use of for her cure. Fill her heart with confidence that, though at times she may be afraid, she yet may put her trust in you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O God, the strength of the weak and the comfort of sufferers: Mercifully accept our prayers, and grant to your servant Doug the help of your power, that his sickness may be turned into health, and our sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For those affected by the flooding in Panamá. See Padre Mickey's blog to learn more and find out how to help.

A SURPRISE 14TH CENTURY CARTOON

Your face doesn't fit ... who would expect to find a mischievious caricature on a revered scripture like the Bangor Pontifical? Photograph: Tom Service

As usual click on the picture for the larger view.

From the Guardian:

It looks like something Jake and Dinos Chapman might do if they turned their hand to the creative defacement of illuminated manuscripts: the Viz-style gargoyle just to the left of the plainchant notation on page 77 of the nearly 700-year-old Bangor Pontifical, one of the treasures of the Welsh medieval world.
....

And yet in the middle of this beautiful Latin hand – the meticulous gold-leaf decorations and square noteheads of the neumes looking as vivid as they must have done in the early 14th century, and every vellum surface of the book seeming to speak across the centuries – there's a cartoonish scribble of what looks like an unshaven 21st-century bloke with curly hair, a big nose, bejewelled beard, flat cap and shades. Except that it's not. According to Sally Harper, leader of the Bangor Pontifical Project...this is an original piece of medieval satire the scurrilous scribe included beside the chant, which would have been sung to consecrate a church bell.

What a delight to find such a clever, though mischievous, cartoon in the process of doing serious research.

Thanks to Cathy for the link.

UPDATE: From Lapin in the comments:

You've jogged me into photographing a couple of items that I own and uploading them to my Facebook page. Click on the left-hand image to see the full thing. There's a fun red dragon lurking up at the top of the page.

I clicked and copied, and here is!

JESUS AND MO

Click on the strip for the larger view.

From Jesus and Mo.

THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

Images set to Loreena McKennitt's music and vocals "The Dark Night of the Soul", inspired by the Words of St. John of the Cross.

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

The complete lyrics may be found at Loreena MeKennitt's website.

Thanks to Ann with a H/T to Jesus in Love Blog.

IRAQI CHRISTIANS FLEE

From the New York Times:

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.

This post is dedicated to the persecuted Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England, who are forced to flee to the Roman Catholic ordinariates. (Irony alert!)

From the Telegraph:

Rt Rev John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Fulham, on his defection to the RC ordinariate:

"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."

QUOTE OF THE DAY - ROWAN WILLIAMS

'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.

Drawing of Rowan Williams by Lesley Fellows.

H/T to Lesley Fellows at Lesley's Blog for the quote.

I'd have no post here without the awesome Lesley Fellows.

STORY OF THE DAY - STAND STILL

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.

From StoryPeople.

STRAIGHT NO CHASER - "THE CHRISTMAS CAN-CAN"

Thanks to Doug.

VIRGINIA JUDGE RULES MANDATE IN HEALTH CARE LAW UNCONSTITUTIONAL

From TPM:

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.

And there's this, also from TPM:

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."

Well, it seems to me that the judge should have recused himself, but what do I know?

The health care bill was such a patchwork job that individual sections will probably be challenged in the courts forever. It's a mess, and perhaps no health care bill would have been better than the bill that passed.

UPDATE: Hang on. There's a flaw in Judge Hudson's argument. From TPM again:

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.