LIFE ON THE RANGE

Sven and Ole were talking one afternoon when Sven tells Ole, "Ya know, I reckon I'm 'bout ready for a vacation. Only dis year I'm a gonna do it a little different."

"Da last few years, I took your advice about where to go."

"T'ree years ago you said to go to Hawaii. I went to Hawaii, and Lena got pregnant."

"Den two years ago, you told me to go to the Bahamas, and Lena got pregnant again."

"Last year you suggested Tahiti, and darned if Lena didn't get pregnant again."

Ole asked Sven, "So, what ya gonna do dis year dat's so different?"

And Sven says, "Dis year I'm taking Lena with me!"

Don't blame me. Blame Doug.

ARE YOU WATCHING DOWNTON ABBEY?

The Downton Abbey estate stands a splendid example of confidence and mettle, its family enduring for generations and its staff a well-oiled machine of propriety. But change is afoot at Downton — change far surpassing the new electric lights and telephone. A crisis of inheritance threatens to displace the resident Crawley family, in spite of the best efforts of the noble and compassionate Earl, Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville, Miss Austen Regrets); his American heiress wife, Cora (Elizabeth McGovern); his comically implacable, opinionated mother, Violet (Maggie Smith, David Copperfield); and his beautiful, eldest daughter, Mary, intent on charting her own course. Reluctantly, the family is forced to welcome its heir apparent, the self-made and proudly modern Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens), himself none too happy about the new arrangements. As Matthew's bristly relationship with Mary begins to crackle with electricity, hope for the future of Downton's dynasty takes shape. But when petty jealousies and ambitions grow among the family and the staff, scheming and secrets — both delicious and dangerous — threaten to derail the scramble to preserve Downton Abbey. Created and written by Oscar-winner Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park), Downton Abbey offers a spot-on portrait of a vanishing way of life.

I'm watching and enjoying the series here in the US on PBS Masterpiece Theatre. If for nothing else, the series is worth watching for the presence of the always delightful Maggie Smith in the role of the Dowager Countess of Grantham, who steals every scene in which she appears. I was fortunate to see Dame Maggie on the stage in London some years ago in the wonderful play "Lettice and Lovage" from a second row seat, and I will never forget the experience.

But the series, a sort of Upstairs Downstairs redux, is not for nothing else, for all the actors do fine jobs. It's high-class soap opera with superior writing (Julian Fellowes, of "Gosford Park"), characters and acting. All is done properly, including the lavish sets, the lighting, which is sometimes quite dark. The series was filmed at Highclere Castle. What more could you want?

My favorite characters after Maggie Smith are Mr Carson, the butler, who is terrific in his part, and John Bates, Lord Grantham's valet. But all the characters are well-written and well-acted. None really disappoint.

You Brits have probably already watched the series if you cared to. For those of you who want more, ITV1 has scheduled a second series of the show for sometime this year.

STORY OF THE DAY - POTATO ARCHANGEL

This is how the Archangel Michael
shows up to potato people & you'll
notice he's the same in every way,
except he's a little rounder & he carries
a flaming potato peeler

From StoryPeople.

MPs PUSH CHURCH OF ENGLAND FORWARD

From the Telegraph:

A group of influential MPs will tomorrow call for Parliament to intervene over the historic reform as fears grow that the Church will reject plans allowing female bishops.

The cross-party group, including former ministers Frank Field and Stephen Timms, and Simon Hughes, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, is concerned that the General Synod, the Church's parliament, may not pass legislation designed to end the glass ceiling for women clergy.

Traditionalists believe that a rise in the number of opponents of female priests to the Synod has improved their chances of blocking the law, which can only pass if it receives a two-thirds majority in the houses of laity, clergy and bishops.

Many of them feel that the current legislation does not provide sufficient concessions to those who cannot accept women as bishops.

However, Mr Field has tabled an early day motion, which could abolish the Church's current exemption from equality laws relating to gender discrimination and ultimately force it to consecrate women.

Go for it, MPs! Nudge the church over line into something closer to equality for women.

Unlike the US:

In the United Kingdom and the rest of the English-speaking world, a motion to place upon the table (or motion to place on the table) is a proposal to begin consideration of a proposal.

ABC STEPS BACKWARD

From the Irish Times:

THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, reacted strongly to media questions in Dublin yesterday which queried the role of the Anglican primate of Uganda, Most Rev Henry Luke Orombi, in fomenting a climate in which gay activist David Kato was murdered there last Wednesday.

Bishop Orombi was one of seven Anglican Church leaders who boycotted the Anglican Primates Meeting in Dublin which concluded yesterday, because Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the US Episcopal Church, was attending it.

The absent primates do not approve of the US church’s ordination of actively gay bishops or its same-sex blessings.

Defending Bishop Orombi, Archbishop Williams, head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, emphasised that, as with other relevant Anglican primates, Bishop Orombi’s position concerned “exclusion from ministry on grounds of behaviour, not orientation”.

He continued that Mr Kato had been “named in this rotten, disgraceful Ugandan publication” – the Rolling Stone newspaper in Kampala – in which “effectively, his murder had been called for.”

It illustrated, he said, that “words have results . . . certainly a lesson all need to learn”.

Does Archbishop Williams really not get the connection? When will he learn the lesson that "words have results"?

UPDATE: Below is a snippet from the audio from the press conference following the Primates' Meeting in Dublin, which Lapin references in his comment:

"Does that not sound, if you pardon the language sir, Jesuitical?" - Irish journalist responding to Rowan Williams' defence of Henry Orombi at yesterday's press conference.

I don't agree with the headline at Audioboo, which reads: "Did you hear the one about the gay activist who was murdered because an Archbishop didn’t go to a meeting in Dublin?" Kato was not murdered because the archbishop didn't attend the Primates' Meeting.

WEARING HER MITRE

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and the Very Rev. Dermot Dunne, dean of Christ Church Cathedral

Christ Church Cathedral of the Holy Trinity
30 January 2011
Dublin, Ireland

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church

Can you remember back to Christmas? It seems a long time ago, yet it hasn’t even been six weeks. Today we’re remembering the feast of Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, which would have taken place 40 days after his birth. It’s an occasion for dedicating the child to God, once enough time has elapsed that one can be reasonably certain the child will survive. Think for a minute about what it must have been like in a world where a third to half of children died in infancy. That’s still pretty much the reality in some parts of the world, like Angola, where nearly 20% of children die before they’re a year old. Compare that to Hong Kong, where the death rate is under 3 per 1000, or Ireland, where it’s 3.5 per 1000 live births. In a context where children die so readily, parents struggle with how much emotional investment they can make in each newborn child – there has to be some real hesitancy for the first days and weeks: is this child going to make it?

There was a human interest piece in the New York Times the day I left on this trip, about a urologic surgeon who spends most of his time treating cancer patients. He decided some years ago that he wanted to be trained as a mohel, the minister who celebrates the bris, and circumcises newborn Jewish boys, usually on the eighth day after birth. Again, the tradition is to wait long enough to be reasonably certain this new son will live. The story was about a very sick newborn, whose bris was delayed. The parents did not want to subject this fragile baby to any more pain or stress. When it became clear that the child would likely die, the parents asked if the bris could be observed after the child died, and the mohel agreed. The child was circumcised, named and prayed for as a part of the family, and then given over into God’s welcoming arms.

Jesus’ bris and naming took place 8 days after his birth – and we celebrate it on 1 January. By the time 6 weeks have passed since the birth, the child should be nursing well and growing, and strong enough to leave the safety of home. That’s what we remember today – Jesus’ presentation in the Temple, his dedication to God. It’s also a time to be explicit about the hopes for this child. In Malachi and the letter to the Hebrews, we heard the great expectations laid on this child Jesus – the hope and dream for a savior of the nation.

What hopes and dreams are laid on new members of our families today? Will this be the child who will achieve more than her parents, the first one to go to university, or will this be the one who emigrates? We hear occasionally about later children whose parents hope they will provide healing for older, sick siblings through the gift of stem cells. This child Jesus is the hoped-for healer of his nation, and indeed, all nations.

We respond to new leaders in the same way. When we elect or install them, we load them up with quite phenomenal expectations. The United States invested amazing hope in our first African-American president – and President Obama bears the desire of generations for healing of prejudice, injustice, and the ancient wounds of slavery. Those hopes went far beyond the United States. At the service in the national cathedral the day after his inauguration, I spoke with people from Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, and Ghana who had come across the ocean for 36 hours, just to attend the inauguration. Yet when people discover that one human being cannot possibly fulfill those enormous hopes, disillusion follows.

What hopes is this nation laying on its next Taoiseach? Will your next prime minister be expected to solve the entire fiscal crisis in his or her first week in office? That person will take office overloaded with urgent desires for healing and resolving all the ills of this nation and maybe even larger parts of this world.

We already have a savior. Be gentle with your new leaders – but not too gentle. If we’re going to cooperate with God’s ancient vision for a healed and reconciled world, we have to have a sense of urgency. People are dying, including too many newborn children, because we haven’t been urgent enough. Lives are lost through sickness, war, neglect, and murder because we avoid the hard realities. Thirty thousand children die of preventable illness every day. Those deaths wouldn’t happen if there were clean water, effective health care, adequate food, and vaccinations – and another child dies every 3 seconds because we haven’t worked hard enough to prevent it.

We already have a cosmic savior, yet those who share God’s dream are all partners in healing the world. God can’t do it without us. As Desmond Tutu is fond of saying, when God said feed the hungry, he didn’t mean to stand around and wait for pizzas to fall from heaven.

Sometimes the partners in healing end up sharing Jesus’ road to Calvary. An Anglican was murdered in Uganda this week, a man who has been a strong voice for the basic human rights of gay and lesbian people. His voice has been silenced. We can pray that others will continue that work, or be challenged by the brutality of his death into some conversion of heart. Will we challenge the world to respect the dignity of every single human being?

The healing of the world needs the participation and leadership of all parts of the body of Christ. It starts with urgent voices, and changed hearts, our own conversion, and our challenge to systems that perpetuate all kinds of sickness and death around the world.

Saviors and leaders are all around us – in these disciples of Jesus, and in similar communities far beyond this one. When we came to the baptismal font, each one of us was presented and dedicated to God to share Jesus’ healing work. We’ve shown up here today to be fed and encouraged for that ancient work of healing the world.

Those urgent voices continue to show up. More than 30 years ago, one of those leaders was at work in El Salvador. He raised his voice to challenge the oppression and murder going on in that nation in the 1970s. When a reporter asked him if he was afraid, he said, “I have often been threatened with death. I must tell you, as a Christian, I don’t believe in death without resurrection. If I am killed, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people.” And indeed, his assassination lent enormous energy to the quest for justice in that land. To this day, when the people of El Salvador gather, they claim his presence by calling his name and answering for him: Oscar Romero, presente. Oscar Romero, present!

Most of us will never confront that kind of death-laced fear. Yet our names are being called all the time. We’re challenged in this very body to “show up,” to present ourselves ready, willing, and able to help heal this broken world. That is what it means to be part of the body of Christ.

Body of Christ, are you here? Will you answer?

Body of Christ?

H/T to Torey Lightcap at The Lead.

UPDATE: Bishop Katharine's sermon is better for the hearing and seeing of it, than simply for the reading of it. Watch the video posted by Jim Naughton at The Lead. Click on the "Presiding Bishop preaches in...." portion of the video. In my humble opinion, she is an excellent preacher.

ANGLICAN PRIMATES' STATEMENT ON KATO'S DEATH

From the Anglican Communion Office:

A statement on the murder of David Kato by the Primates of the Anglican Communion following their Primates’ Meeting in Dublin, Ireland, between 24th and 30th January, 2011.

We would like to express our support for the statement of The Archbishop of Canterbury in response to the horrific murder of David Kato in Mukono, Uganda.

We join him in saying that no one should have to live in fear because of the bigotry of others.

We reiterate that ‘the victimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us’ (Primates Meeting 2005).

We reaffirm that ‘any demonising of homosexual persons, or their ill treatment, is totally against Christian charity and basic principles of pastoral care’ (The Windsor Report).

We call on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and condemn irrational fear of gay people (1998 Lambeth Conference).

As is indicated in the statement, except for the reference to Kato's death, it's all been said before. Anyway, now is the time to live the words. We shall see. Still, it's a good thing the primates put out the statement.

TIME FOR A LAUGH BREAK...

...from the naughty Bruce:

1) Go to Google translate
2) English to Hungarian
3) Type in "cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese
cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese
cheese cheese"
4) Click Listen
5) Laugh like a little child
http://translate.google.com/

That Bruce! He's wicked, I tell ya. Wicked, wicked, wicked.

GENERAL AMOS, COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS - "CLASSY"

From Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin:

In the following video, Amos calls on Marines to look out for and respect each other and to value diversity. He makes the implementation of the change a matter of pride, a matter of the values of Marines, a matter of stepping up to do what they are called to do. Because they are Marines.

NOTE: Gen. Amos was the only member of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff to testify in Congress in opposition to the repeal of DADT. He a fine leader.

KATO'S FUNERAL

Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, who has been excommunicated from the Anglican Church of Uganda because of his support for LGBT rights, presides at the graveside service.

H/T to John Chilton at The Lead.