PRAY FOR KIRSTIN AND ANDEE

From margaret at Leave It Lay Where Jesus Flang It:

Speaking of revealing the Kingdom --Courageous and Compassionate A sent me this response to the prayers I sent her yesterday:

D and I anointed Kirstin, using your prayers, this morning. She was sound asleep when we started, and immediately woke up, sat up, and said, "I want to be awake for this!" She loved it.

Truth be told, I merely took an ancient ritual of anointing --thanking God for every part of the body and sanctifying it, taught me by my teacher --and Kirstin's teacher too --and morphed the ritual a little.

I find myself this morning, doing more of that... taking the ancient bones in the garden.... There used to be whole books to guide one through the waiting for the time of death. Now, in our BCP, there is only a single paragraph --the only transition from Ministration to the Sick, to Ministration at the Time of Death. It reads (p462)

Almighty God, look on this your servant, lying in great weakness, and comfort him with the promise of life everlasting, given in the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Please read margaret's entire wonderful and beautiful post about our dear Kirstin and commentary on the readings in Morning Prayer.

I AM THE (KUDZU?) VINE....

From MYFox8:

KINSTON, N.C.—Some residents in Kinston are seeing more than just a vine in a growth of kudzu on a local utility pole.

Reporter Justin Hill of The Kinston Free Press reports people began noticing a utility pole last week with kudzu that they say resembles Jesus on the cross.

Kent Hardison runs Ma's Hot Dog stand and a half mile from the vine and says he was getting ready to spray it with herbicide until he noticed the resemblance.

Hardison and his customers think the vine can be seen as a symbolic reminder that God is watching over people.

Of course, the vine "can be seen" in whichever way we choose.

But wait!

ENCToday.com says the vine is not kudzu but a trumpet vine. Kudzu is such a pest of a vine that I'd prefer a trumpet vine which "can be seen as a symbolic reminder that God is watching over people."

Digtriad.com tells us: Kent Hardison's "first reaction, common here when it comes to kudzu, was to blast it with Roundup herbicide. But then he had second thoughts, according to The Free Press of Kinston.

"'I glanced at it, and it looks like Jesus,' Hardison said. 'I thought, `You can't spray Jesus with Roundup.'"

Years ago, kudzu was imported from Japan to prevent soil erosion. Ha, ha. Perhaps the vine prevented soil erosion, but it created a whole host of other problems. The lesson is don't mess with Mother Nature.

Make of the vine what you will.

THE FBI HAS SOME 'SPLAININ' TO DO

From the AP:

The FBI said Wednesday that members of an anti-gay fundamentalist group participated in the bureau's training of police officers and FBI agents — a move the bureau says it will take steps to remedy in the future.

The bureau extended the invitations to Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., for training this spring at two bureau facilities in Virginia: Quantico and Manassas.

Westboro has stirred widespread outrage with raucous demonstrations at the funerals of U.S. military service members. The group contends God is punishing the military for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.

Why Westboro Baptist Church? Why use a hate group to train FBI and police officers? The lawyers in the Phelps family know the laws, and they sue if the authorities don't follow the rules. Could that be the reason? Or does the group help to train officers to keep cool in the face of hateful behavior? Who knows?

H/T to Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin.

THE COUSIN OF THE DUCHESS WROTE THE BOOK!

Jezebel tells us that Ancestry.com reveals that Catherine, wife of Prince William and Duchess of Cambridge, and Jane Austen, the writer, are 11th cousins, 6 times removed.

Jezebel quotes lead historian Anastasia Harman, "Finding this connection between the Duchess of Cambridge and Jane Austen is very exciting since, in many ways, Catherine is the modern Jane Austen heroine: a middle-class girl marrying the future King of England."

Imagine! A heroine in a novel comes to life in the real world two centuries later, marrying up even higher than Elizabeth Bennet, to whom I assume the historian refers, when she married Mr Darcy. And the 11th cousin, 6 times removed, of the former middle-class lass and now duchess, wrote the book! What a gob-smacking coincidence......if you're digging really deep to find coincidences.

Thanks to Ann for the link.

MARCOS WENT AWAY TO REJOIN RUTH AND WALKER

Marcos

Leonardo at Eruptions at the Foot of the Volcano is bereft, but he takes joy in the reunion of his three friends, Ruth, Marcos, and Walker. Marcos passed on yesterday.

Please read Leonardo's beautiful story of the loving relationship amongst the four of them. Leonardo says of Marcos, "Marcos loved being picked up and petted but he would bite you if you put him down!" Ouch!

Gambol and romp with your old friends, Marcos, and all three of you send a thought and a prayer to your friends Leonardo and Juan Carlos and their other doggie companions here on earth.

I offer my sympathy and prayers to you, Leonardo, and to Juan Carlos. I'm sure you miss Marcos greatly. Remember...if you love them, they live in your heart.

NEWS ON OUR BROTHER GÖRAN

From James at The Three-Legged Stool:

Our very beloved brother, Göran, has been on hospice for a week. He has an aggressive form of prostate cancer. According to his niece, the does not have a lot of time before he joins the Communion of Saints. Please keep him in your prayers as he graduates from mortality. And remember his blood family and his adopted family one of whom I am privileged to be.

Growing up in the shadow of a Swedish Lutheran Church, I learned Children of the Heavenly Father at a very young age. It was always sung in times of distress and for funerals. The last verse of the English translation says:

Neither life nor death shall ever
From the Lord, His children sever.
His the loving purpose solely,
To preserve them, pure and holy.

Thank you, James, for giving us the sad news.

UPDATE: Today is Göran's birthday. If you're his Facebook friend, you can wish him Happy Birthday over there.

UPDATE 2: Here's the link to the post on our gathering in Leeds two years ago, which includes more pictures of Göran. If you click to enlarge the second photo down, you will see that Göran wears preaching bands. He looked like a character right out of an Ingmar Bergman film. He's a dear, dear man, and I'm privileged to have met him.

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP

From Inside Politics:

Rep. Michele Bachmann kicked off her presidential campaign on Monday in Waterloo, Iowa, and in one interview surrounding the official event she promised to mimic the spirit of Waterloo's own John Wayne.

The only problem, as one eagle-eyed reader notes: Waterloo's John Wayne was not the beloved movie star, but rather John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer.

The campaign should be fun, unless the electorate goes completely crazy and elects Bachmann.

In case you wonder, John Wayne, the movie actor, was born in Iowa but in Winterset, Iowa, so it's an easy mistake to make, right? Except it's best not to make the mistake in Waterloo. Will the mistake be Bacnmann's Waterloo? Of course not.

A HUMAN FACE ON THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

From NOLA.com:

A Harvey [Louisiana] native who returned last month to Afghanistan for his second tour of duty in the war-torn country was killed Sunday in the dangerous Nad ‘Ali district, the Department of Defense said.

Air Force Tech. Sgt. Daniel L. Douville, a 33-year-old career airman, died from injuries he suffered from an improvised explosive device.

Douville spent the last seven months with his family vacationing in the Bahamas and cheering on his three children at sporting events near their Fort Walton Beach, Fla., home before his redeployment.

Family was the only thing Douville loved more than his military life, said LaShana Douville, his wife of 14 years.

What a lovely family.

O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of your servant Daniel, and grant him an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of your saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

O God of grace and glory, we remember before you this day our brother Daniel. We thank you for giving him to his family and friends, to know and to love as a companion on their earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, console those who mourn. Give them faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence they may continue their course on earth, until, by your call, they are reunited with those who have gone before; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Book of Common Prayer)

STORY OF THE DAY - SPIDER PRINCESS

If I was a spider princess, she said, I
would spin webs the color of sky & catch
drops of sunlight to give to children who
watch too much TV & then everyone
would remember to come outside to
play. If I was a spider princess, she said,
things would be different.

From StoryPeople.

WHAT GOVERNOR JINDAL AND HIS HELPERS DID FOR LOUISIANA

From the Editor's Column in the summer issue of Louisiana Cultural Vistas:

Inventing America and Destroying Louisiana

It was Washington's generation that had to invent America and all its institutions and envision what a great nation ought to be. It was Washington and his contemporaries, foremost among them Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, who understood that a national government had to secure revenue for its institutions, and was obligated not only to provide for the national defense and the delivery of mail, but also to found libraries and universities, and to promote exploration, learning, and a civil society.

So how bitter it is for us to descend to the present political movement in Louisiana, of an infantile populism that imagines it can have a democracy and not and not have taxes adequate to provide for the commonwealth, that would savage by a loss of $300 million a year to a higher education system that had just barely gained the ranks of respectability, that incarcerates its own citizens at the highest rate in the free world, that has a high school graduation rate of of 59 percent, that slashes its arts programs 60 percent in a single year and completely eliminates funding for humanities? It is a barbarism we are imposing on ourselves, a dark that descends from the head of the stairs.

To put it in more colloquial terms, imagine that Louisiana was a football team in a 50-team league and finished perennially, year after year, in 49th or 50th place. Would we not be firing its coaches and running them out of town rather than even contemplating re-appointing them? Would the citizens really care that the tickets cost only a nickel and clamor to see such a team play? And yet politically, that is the low bar we have set for ourselves: in education, in health care, in literacy, in the humanities and culture. And it is not being imposed by Washington or people from New Jersey; we have done it to ourselves.

The complete loss of the state appropriation for the humanities, just recently at $2 million annually, will cost the state $14 million annually in economic impact, increase our illiteracy...and diminish the quality of life incalculably. I could delineate this in detail but I will suffice to illustrate the result as Laurence Sterne might have in his prescient post-modern novel "Tristram Shandy":

as a black hole.

Martin Sartisky, Ph. D.
Editor-in-Chief

There you have it. We have done it to ourselves. And Bobby Jindal is very likely to be reelected on his platform of no new taxes and ridding ourselves of the old taxes. Governance by slash and burn. Unfortunately, if I said, "Only in Louisiana!" I would not speak truth. We are surely at the extreme of the spectrum, but the same sort of madness is spread throughout the land.