FIRST DAY OF SPRING

Q:  Where do people go to learn about the change of season?

A:  At the School of Hard Vernal Equinox!


H/t to Bill in Portland Maine:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/20/1075795/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Super-Duc
k-Tuesday


Cheers,

Paul (A.)

Both Paul (A.) and Bill have been ordered off the stage.

INTO THE 19TH CENTURY

From News Thump UK:

As Dr Rowan Williams announced his resignation from the post of Archbishop of Canterbury, church officials began their search for a replacement sufficiently detached from reality to accurately represent their interests.

Williams is due to take up a post as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he will be able to foist his medieval opinions on the impressionable minds of thousands of young people every year.

However, the void left by his considerable personality will need to be filled swiftly, lest the church accidentally find itself dragged into the 19th century.

As one Church official told us, “We face a homophobic vacuum unless we move swiftly. Without someone to take a stance against the gays we could find ourselves overrun within weeks – like a better dressed scene from The Walking Dead.”

Ouch!  The spoof is very funny, but a bit too suggestive of reality.   Read the rest at the link.

H/T to Leonardo.

WHAT THE BRITISH SAY...

From English Teachers Collective on Facebook via Prior Aelred.

'MADPRIEST'S TOTALLY SERIOUS SUGGESTIONS'

 
...for the position of Archbishop of Canterbury.  I have my own favorite, but I won't say who it is, as I don't wish to influence you as you click on over to Of Course, I Could Be Wrong... to add your suggestions to the mix.  Once you see MadPriest's post, if you're very clever and observant, you may be able to deduce my first choice.

ARCHBISHOP OKOH RESPONDS TO ARCHBISHOP ROWAN's RETIREMENT

From the Church of Nigeria website:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd and Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Williams took over the leadership of the Anglican Communion in 2002 when it was a happy family. Unfortunately, he is leaving behind a Communion in tatters: highly polarized, bitterly factionalized, with issues of revisionist interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and human sexuality as stumbling blocks to oneness, evangelism and mission all around the Anglican world.

It might not have been entirely his own making, but certainly “crucified under Pontius Pilate”. The lowest ebb of this degeneration came in 2008, when there were, so to say, two “Lambeth” Conferences one in the UK, and an alternative one, GAFCON in Jerusalem. The trend continued recently when many Global South Primates decided not to attend the last Primates’ meeting in Dublin, Ireland.

Since Dr. Rowan Williams did not resign in 2008, over the split Lambeth Conference, one would have expected him to stay on in office, and work assiduously to ‘mend the net’ or repair the breach, before bowing out of office. The only attempt, the covenant proposal, was doomed to fail from the start, as “two cannot walk together unless they have agreed”.

For us, the announcement does not present any opportunity for excitement. It is not good news here, until whoever comes as the next leader pulls back the Communion from the edge of total destruction. To this end, we commit our Church, the Church of Nigeria, (Anglican Communion) to serious fasting and prayers that God will do “a new thing”, in the Communion.

Nevertheless, we join others to continue in prayer for Dr. Rowan Williams and his family for a more fruitful endeavour in their post – Canterbury life.

+Nicholas D. Okoh

Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of All Nigeria

Don't hold back, Abp. Okoh.  Tell us what you really think.

The Nigerian bishops use the phrase, "two cannot walk together unless they have agreed," time and again to justify their decision to "walk apart" from the churches in the Anglican Communion with whom they do not agree.  Is the quote from the prophet Amos in the KJV?  Not really.  The words that come closest to Abp. Okoh's quote are in the form of a question.

Amos 3:3-8

KJV

Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
 
I first heard of the phrase from Abp Peter Akinola, who said, "The Bible says that two cannot walk together unless they are agreed."  The Bible says no such thing that I can find, therefore it appears that Abp Okoh quotes his predecessor, rather than the Bible, when he uses the words.  The two other translations below wouldn't really make the case for walking apart at all.  Of course, people cannot walk together unless they agree to walk together, but they do not have to agree about everything in order to walk together.  I find the apparent misattribution of the words to the Scriptures annoying in the extreme.  Besides, even the GAFCONites do not agree on everything,

NRSV

Do two walk together
unless they have made an appointment?
 
NIV

Do two walk together
unless they have agreed to do so?

Abp Okoh's claim that the Anglican Communion was "a happy family" back in 2002 when Rowan Williams became Archbishop of Canterbury is absurd.  The beginning of the end of the "happy family" began at least as early as Lambeth 1998.

IN THE BLOOMIN' GARDEN

Azelea

Shrimp plant with St Francis

Petunias and gardenia

Hosta plantagenia
(Thanks to Bonnie)

Another azalea

Mock orange

Since the roses and bridal wreath flowers were fading, I took no pictures of them.

GUNPOWDER

A tough old cowboy once counseled his grandson that if he wanted to live a
long life, the secret was to sprinkle a little gunpowder on his oatmeal
every morning.

The grandson did this religiously, and he lived to the age of 93.

When he died, he left 14 children, 28 grandchildren, 35 great grandchildren,
and a fifteen-foot hole in the wall of the crematorium.


Cheers,

Paul (A.)

I know.  It's Lent.  But it's Sunday in Lent, and we are allowed to laugh on Sundays.  The joke passed my acid test - the LOL test, which is what counts.

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY!

Begorra!  I've not acknowledged the feast day, so I'll let Maxine speak for me.

A GENEROUS ORTHODOXY

From the Presidential Address of Bishop James Jones to the Church of England Diocese of Liverpool synod, in which he speaks against the adoption of the proposed Anglican Covenant:

...the Church has been born for mission. Two thousand years of church history tell us that the mission of God brings with it adventure and risks and takes us to new places that we never dreamed of. Right from the outset when the Jewish disciples of  Jesus engaged with a Gentile world they found themselves challenged, conflicted and more importantly changed by those encounters. The Church must be free to go into all the world and to engage with new cultures enabling us all to learn Christ. As we do we will find that we too are changed by this engagement with the world. Such change lies at the heart of repentance as we continually re-think, re-assess what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in a new context. The problem with the Covenant is that it introduces a dynamic which makes the Communion essentially introspective and resistant to change. Instead of setting us free to engage with a changing world it freezes us at a given point in our formation, holding us back and making us nervous about going beyond the boundaries and reaching out to God’s world. Indeed, just at the point that the church needs to be innovative and courageous against the forces ranged against us we will find ourselves constrained by fears as to whether our bold actions might mire us in procedures of dispute resolution.  There are bound to be times in mission when it is right to go out on a limb. If we hold back all bold initiatives until every Province agrees then we shackle the church in chains. The beauty of the Anglican Communion is that each Province can respond uniquely to its own cultural context within the triangle of Scripture, Reason and Tradition.

And the final paragraph:

The Church of England and the Anglican Communion have over the centuries developed a generous embrace allowing seekers to taste and see the goodness of God.  Within our borders, within the borders of what Cranmer described as that “blessed company of faithful people”, there is a generous orthodoxy. There is space for the seeker to breathe, to enquire, to ask questions, to doubt and to grope towards faith and to find God. That I believe is a space within the Body of Christ worth preserving. The Covenant will change the character of the Communion and, I fear, the Church of England.

What a splendid and eloquent address!  I urge you to read the speech in its entirety at the PDF link.  All three houses of the Diocese of Liverpool voted against adoption of the covenant.

H/T to Nicholas Knisely at The Lead.

BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH

La Morte di Cesare di Vincenzo Camuccini è un quadro che si trova a Roma nella Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna

Since I was scheduled for a medical test on the morning, I did beware the Ides of March, but the test result was good, so I bewore (bewared?) for nothing, but how was I to know?  For the rest of the day, I was a bit groggy from the anesthesia and took no note of the ides.

Actually, 'beware' has no past tense because it is a so-called defective verb.

As for Caesar, he should have paid attention to the soothsayer.

Caesar:
Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry "Caesar!" Speak, Caesar is turn'd to hear.
Soothsayer:
Beware the ides of March.
Caesar:
What man is that?
Brutus:
A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

PS: The ides refer to the approximate middle day of the month and thus do not necessarily fall on the 15th day.  I did not know that until today.

Image from Wikipedia.