RUTHIE FOSTER - "JOY"

I meant to post the video last night, but I never got around to it.  Enjoy.

STORY OF THE DAY - NEW AGE

We're already in the new age, she said to me. What
does that mean? I said & she laughed. It means you 
can stop waiting & start living, she said, but after she 
left I waited a little while more just to be safe  

From StoryPeople.

WEEKLY REMINDER

A LITTLE STORY ABOUT DESMOND TUTU

In his book Engaging the Powers, Walter Wink discusses the use of humor and wit in conflict situations and tells the following story about Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa:

Sometimes wit can have a barb, as when Bishop Desmond Tutu was walking by a construction site on a temporary sidewalk the width of one person.  A white man appeared at the other end, recognized Tutu, and said, "I don't give way to gorillas."  At which Tutu stepped aside, made a deep sweeping gesture, and said, "Ah yes, but I do."

Now isn't that just like dear Tutu?

HA HA HA

I don't know whom to credit, and I hope I'm not violating copyright.

Thanks to Paul (A.).

LITTLE LORD WILLARD

How little Lord Willard aspires to rule!
So proudly attended the plutocrat school
with Dad’s reputation and money in hand,
sharp pencils and spreadsheets assembled a band
of legal and fiscal finaglers supreme
to pillage and plunder and finance his dream;
outsourcing, bankruptcy and capital gain
with zero concern and a cold hard disdain
for regular workers, producers of goods
on low or lost wages destroyed neighborhoods,
called stealing “creating”, insisted on stealth
to cover the truth of raw arrogant wealth
despising “other,” not so clever as their own
at gaming the system, reaping seed once sown
with intent to encourage the average
to strive, help the poor to rise, not leverage
the risk of vultures too greedy even to wait
for the maimed to expire their hunger to sate.
With ambition not limited by conscience,
Lord Willard, now Mitt, purchased the governance
of an unlikely state full of blue Democrats,
“fixed” the budget with fees, a no tax technocrat
without learning the first rule political:
voters are people, not trends or cyclical
losses deleted with the click of a mouse,
a lesson critical to win the White House.
Public service not mentioned in this current
election, but Mitt, demoted to servant
might just be the ticket to inject something
humble into his bubble of pretending
his elitist view is best for a country
of equals humoring his kind, the fake gentry.

(Marthe G. Walsh - September 2012)

Marthe calls the poem doggerel.  I call it Romney to a T. 

SCATTER GARDEN AT ST JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Julie Green carving the cross

Residents will soon have a new way to remember their deceased loves ones in Thibodaux.

St. John’s Episcopal Church on Jackson Street is putting the finishing touches on a scatter garden, which will eventually be home to countless cremated ashes.

“We want it to be a place where you can come visit your ancestors who are there,” said the Rev. Ron Clingenpeel, priest in charge for St. John’s, which dates back to 1843. “It is a place where one can encounter God, holiness and a real sense of peace in their lives, knowing this is where their loved ones are.”

The scatter garden will be a space where families can spread the ashes of their loved ones and go to remember them in the following years, Clingenpeel said.

The cross that will stand in the scatter garden is beautiful.  Julie, a parishioner, is a true artist, and her carving is a work of art.  And what a fine idea to have the scatter garden at St John's.

Enclosure walls of the future scatter garden

The grounds of the scatter garden are unfinished. All that's complete are the brick wall segments that will define the garden area.

My family knows of my wish to be cremated...not yet, of course,...but I had not decided where I wanted my ashes scattered.  I knew I did not want them placed in a container on the mantlepiece, and with the advent of the scatter garden, my decision was easy.

UPDATE: The intention is to scatter the ashes, but if family and friends of the deceased would prefer burial of the ashes in a biodegradable container, then that will be an alternative.  Of course, the garden will be made beautiful with landscaping. 

JESUS HAD A WIFE?

Everyone else has, so I suppose I must talk about Jesus' wife.

Speculation that Jesus Christ might have married is an ancient one and, however often theologians and historians throw cold water over the idea, it will keep cropping up - most notably in recent years as a key element in the plot of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. No one would take that particular novel as gospel, but now a historian from the Harvard Divinity School has come up with what may – just – be the first ever reference to Jesus mentioning a wife.

The fragment of fourth-century Coptic writing on a rectangular piece of faded papyrus no more than eight centimetres by four contains eight lines written in black ink apparently including the words: "Jesus said to them, 'My wife …'" Far from being the start of a music-hall joke, the extract continues: "she will be able to be my disciple," before being cut off.

Karen L King, the Hollis professor of divinity – the oldest endowed academic chair in the US – who made the discovery, told the New York Times: "These words can mean nothing else."

All right then, the words can mean nothing else, but are the words true?  Professor King, the Coptic scholar, decidedly does not go that far.  The fragment is intriguing, and if it's provenance is verified, it will be of great interest to scholars and many others, but it will not prove Dan Brown is right.

What would it mean to me if it could be proved that Jesus had a wife?  I would not be shocked, nor would my faith be in any way affected.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Oxford professor and historian of Christianity, says, "Bloggers beware – it's not what you think."  But what do I think?  I don't really have an opinion.  I'm far behind others in blogging about the discovery of the papyrus.

MITT'S MAMA GIVES AWAY THE GAME

I was gonna post a music video, but...

Lenore Romney really believes in George Romney.

"He was a refugee from Mexico.  He was on relief - welfare relief - for the first years of his life.  But this great country gave him opportunities." 

I don't know about you, but it seems to me the son of George and Lenore Romney, Mitt Romney, wants to deny people the kind of opportunity this country gave to his own father when he came to the US from Mexico.

NPR has further information on the Romney family and their travels back and forth between the US and Mexico.

Andrew Kaczynski at BuzzFeed posted the video on YouTube. 

ULTIMATE FANTASY

Ask any man what a woman's ultimate fantasy is and they will tell you:  to have two men at once.

According to a recent sociological study this is actually true for most women.

Most men, however, do not realize that, in this fantasy, one man is cooking and the other is cleaning.


Cheers,

Paul (A.)

Ain't THAT the truth?