FEAST OF JULIAN OF NORWICH

Stained glass in Julian's cell

The following was translated by -- Liz Broadwell:

And from the time that [the vision] was shown, I desired often to know what our Lord's meaning was. And fifteen years and more afterward I was answered in my spiritual understanding, thus: 'Would you know your Lord's meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love. Keep yourself therein and you shall know and understand more in the same. But you shall never know nor understand any other thing, forever.'
 
Thus I was taught that love was our Lord's meaning. And I saw quite clearly in this and in all, that before God made us, he loved us, which love was never slaked nor ever shall be. And in this love he has done all his work, and in this love he has made all things profitable to us. And in this love our life is everlasting. In our creation we had a beginning. But the love wherein he made us was in him with no beginning. And all this shall be seen in God without end ... 

From the Lectionary.

Lord God, who in your compassion granted to the Lady Julian many revelations of your nurturing and sustaining love: Move our hearts, like hers, to seek you above all things, for in giving us yourself you give us all; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

(Lesser Feasts and Fasts of The Episcopal Church.)

BROKEN LEG

"How did it happen?" the doctor asked the middle-aged farmhand as he set the man's broken leg.

"Well, doc, 25 years ago . . . ."

"Never mind the past. Tell me how you broke your leg this morning."

"Like I was saying, doc, 25 years ago, when I first started working on the farm, that night, right after I'd gone to bed, the farmer's beautiful daughter came into my room.  She asked me if there was anything I wanted.  I said, 'No, everything is fine.'  'Are you sure?' she asked.  'I'm sure,' I said.

'Isn't there anything I can do for you?' she wanted to know.  'I reckon not,' I replied."

"Excuse me," said the doctor, "What does this story have to do with your leg?"

"Well, this morning," the farmhand explained, "when it dawned on me what she meant, I fell off the roof!"


Cheers,

Paul (A.)

Ha ha ha.  I didn't see the punch line coming.

HOME GROWN MILITIA TYPE ARRESTED

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced on Monday that it had arrested a Minnesota man for plotting a “localized terror attack.”
....

Several guns and explosive devices were discovered during the search of the residence” on Friday. Buford “Bucky” Rogers, 24, was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. An Associated Press report said that he had previously been convicted for felony burglary in 2011 and a misdemeanor charge of dangerous handling of a weapon in 2009.

The FBI believes that a terror attack was disrupted by law enforcement personnel and that the lives of several local residents were potentially saved,” the FBI said in a statement.

Obviously, Rogers was not a well regulated militia type.  Is it absurd to suggest that militia type individuals and groups known to have large stocks of arms and ammunition should be a tad more closely observed by law enforcement authorities?

H/T to Charles Pierce at Esquire.

LOUISIANA SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN FUNDING VOUCHER PROGRAM USING PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDS

Bobby Jindal

BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that funding the state voucher program with funds intended for public schools is unconstitutional.
....

The Supreme Court ruling states "After reviewing the record, the legislative instruments and the constitutional provisions at issue, we agree with the district court that once funds are dedicated to the state's Minimum Foundation Program for public education, the constitution prohibits those funds from being expended on the tuition costs of nonpublic schools and nonpublic entities...."

Bobby and the legislators who went along with the voucher plan will now have to find another way to pay for the vouchers.  This in a state where there is a constant struggle to balance the budget, and where the rule is cut, cut, cut, because the governor refuses to raise any taxes at all.  I wonder if Bobby and the legislators even pay attention to the Louisiana Constitution when they write and pass laws.  When there is no money, it seems strange to pass laws that will almost certainly be challenged in court, with the state having to pay for litigation costs to defend the laws.  Or, in their arrogance, do  Bobby and his supporters in the legislature think the court will not notice, and they'll get away with the foolishness?

I love the picture of Bobby in the Shreveport Times in what appears to be a jaw-dropping moment.

UPDATE: More on the consequences of the court ruling at the Advocate.

The ruling, a setback for Gov. Bobby Jindal, upheld and expanded on a ruling last year by the 19th Judicial District Court Judge Timothy Kelley.

It sets up a late session battle on how to finance the aid, which triggered weeks of pointed arguments last year.

In addition, Michael Faulk, president of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents, said the decision will force the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to come up with a new plan to fund public schools for the 2013-14 school year.

The one approved earlier this year includes the use of public school dollars to fund vouchers. “It is going to have a big impact,” Faulk said of the ruling.

BS ON 24-HOUR CABLE NEWS

From The Onion. Far too close to the reality.

H/T to Juan Cole.

MEMO TO FISCAL CONSERVATIVES

The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner.

By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000, they say.

I'd like to hear Republican Senators Mitch McConnell, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham, and Republican Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, et al. huff and puff and justify the expense of maintaining the prison at Guantanamo in the name of protecting us from terrorism, even as the most vulnerable in our society, who were already suffering before the sequester cuts, suffer more pain.  Oh, I have no doubt they'll find the words, but I am confident that their words will make no sense.

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East (sic) To Use Feather Light Design

Also incredible.

"THE WRATH OF GOD WAS SATISFIED?"

Bosco Peters' post at Liturgy, titled "the wrath of God was satisfied?", has received over 70 comments.  The entire discussion is worth reading.

At our recent synod meeting, one of the songs was Stuart Townend and Keith Getty’s In Christ alone with the words:

“Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied”

Those words as understood by many (if not most) in that room are heresy. The understanding of those words by many (most) who enthusiastically sing this in services around the planet is heretical.

The understanding is that God (The Father) was angry at us in our sinfulness. And that God took out this rage on Christ instead of on us. And that this now enables God (The Father) to love us.

This understanding is heresy. 

My comment at Bosco's blog is rather long, and I thought it worth quoting here, even out of context, because the words reflect some thoughts of mine on atonement theology. 

 Bosco, the hymn you mention is not in the 1982 hymnal of the Episcopal Church in the US. In all good conscience, I could not sing the words about God’s wrath being satisfied by Jesus’ death on the cross.

What an interesting discussion. I’m reminded of my words to a friend who is in deep depression. I doubt whether my friend is able to take hold of the idea in a way that will help lift the depression, but, after I read my words over, I thought to myself that they express well my living experience of God’s salvation day by day. So. The words may or may not have been helpful to my friend, but they were helpful to me.

“Do you have inside yourself a sense that you are a person of worth? You are, if for no other reason than you are God’s wonderful creation, and God declared you to be good – not for your accomplishments, nor for the work you do, nor whether you’re crazy or sane, but simply for who you are before God, who loves you. I know I’m sermonizing, and maybe because of depression, or for some other reason, what I say doesn’t seem right, and you can’t or won’t take hold of the concept, but I believe it to be true, and it’s what gives meaning to my life. When there seems to be nothing left, I hang on to the knowledge of God’s abiding love, which rescues me time after time and is my salvation.”

My theological starting point is God is love. God loves God’s own creation unconditionally. God created us with the gift to choose, which means we can choose good, or evil, or make choices that are neutral – like what color clothing to wear. When God gave us the ability to chose, did God not know that we humans would make wrong choices? The allegory of Adam and Eve tells us God knew. Humans did sin, and God sent the Beloved Son to save us by his Incarnation, the example of his life, his teachings, his crucifixion, his death, and his Resurrection. God came down and became incarnate, fully human, like us in every way. By doing so, through all of his life on earth until after the Resurrection, Jesus’s words and actions, his whole life, are efficacious in drawing us into the very life of the Trinity and saving us.

God’s will cannot be divided. Jesus freely chose to become one with us and do the Father’s will here on earth. He was obedient to the Father in the manner in which he lived his life and in what he taught his followers, with the result that the powers of the day feared insurrection, and eventually put him to death. Jesus did not need to die the horrible death to satisfy the wrath of God for our sins to be forgiven. Humans put Jesus to death, not the Father.

There is no wrath in God’s love for us. God loves us without conditions.
...

The Incarnation is the biggie for me, that God came down to be one of us to catch us up in the life of the Trinity. I was taught that the greatest feast of the life of Jesus is the Resurrection, but I’m now inclined to think the children had it right all along to see Christmas as the great feast.

Let me add that I think we all make up our own theology, to one degree or another, after reading and prayerful reflection on the Scriptures, the writings of the Fathers of the church, and the writings of the great Christian theologians and philosophers throughout the history of Christianity. Now my idea may, in itself, be considered heretical, but there it is.

NO. STOP. PLEASE STOP.

As Stephanie Sparks cleaned the kitchen, her 5-year-old son, Kristian, began playing with a rifle he was given last year. She stepped out onto the front porch, poured grease out of a frying pan for the dogs and “heard the gun go off,” a Kentucky coroner said.

Authorities said the boy had fatally shot his 2-year-old sister, Caroline, in the chest.

In rural southern Kentucky, far removed from the national debate over gun control, where some children get their first guns even before they start first grade, the accident stunned the community.

Kristian’s rifle was kept in a corner of the mobile home, and the family didn’t realize a bullet had been left in it, Cumberland County Coroner Gary White said.

I read the tragic story the other day, and I had no words, only a broken heart.

“It’s a normal way of life, and it’s not just rural Kentucky, it’s rural America — hunting and shooting and sport fishing. It starts at an early age,” Cumberland County Judge Executive John Phelps said. “There’s probably not a household in this county that doesn’t have a gun.”

I'll let Charles Pierce speak for me.

Stop.

No.

Also, too: goddammit.

Up with this, I no longer have to put. If your "way of life" involves handing deadly weapons to five-year olds, your way of life is completely screwed up and you should change it immediately because it is stupid and wrong. (And, again, also, too: goddammit, "learning to use and respect a gun" means at least knowing that the fking thing is loaded when it's sitting in the corner of the parlor like it's a damn umbrella stand or something, and we should talk about that part, too.) It is not in any way "normal" to hand a kindergartner a firearm. If a mother from the inner-city of, say, Philadelphia did that, and the kid subsequently shot his sister to death, Fox News never would stop yelling about the crisis in African American communities and the Culture Of Death, and rap music, too. If your culture is telling you that children who have only recently emerged from toddlerhood should have their own guns, then your culture is deadly and dangerous and that should concern you, too. If your culture demands that, in the face of a general national outrage over the killing of other children, your politics work to loosen the gun laws you have, as they apparently did in Kentucky, then your culture is making your politics stupid and wrong and you should change them, too. I do not have to understand these people any more, and it is way too early in the day to be drinking this much.

Also Rmj at Adventus:

This gun fetishization has to stop.  "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" applies to the Second Amendment, too.

When I am too stunned for words, others speak for me.

I have no doubt the family is devastated, and I offer prayers for them.

Grant, O Lord, to all who are bereaved the spirit of faith and courage, that they may have strength to meet the days to come with steadfastness and patience; not sorrowing as those without hope, but in thankful remembrance of your great goodness, and in the joyful expectation of eternal life with those they love. And this we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Savior.  Amen.

And for their child.

O God, whose beloved Son took children into his arms and blessed them: Give us grace to entrust this child to your never- failing care and love, and bring us all to your heavenly kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

And I pray that many families will learn from the tragic loss in this one family.

AND WE THOUGHT THE REPUTATION OF LOUISIANA LEGISLATORS COULDN'T SINK LOWER

From Cenlamar:

For the third year in a row, the Louisiana Senate Education Committee deferred a bill to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows for the teaching of New Earth Creationism in public school science classrooms. And for the third year in a row, at least one member of the Louisiana Senate managed to steal the show.
....

...something tells me that State Senator Elbert Guillory is about to become an Internet star.

From The Times-Picayune (bold mine):

Sen. Elbert Guillory, D-Opelousas, said he had reservations with repealing the act after a spiritual healer correctly diagnosed a specific medical ailment he had. He said he thought repealing the act could “lock the door on being able to view ideas from many places, concepts from many cultures.”

“Yet if I closed my mind when I saw this man – in the dust, throwing some bones on the ground, semi-clothed — if I had closed him off and just said, ‘That’s not science. I’m not going to see this doctor,’ I would have shut off a very good experience for myself,” Guillory said.

I hate to break it to Senator Guillory, but the half-naked guy who danced in the dust and threw bones on the ground was lying to you: He was not a doctor. That thing he did: It wasn’t science.

Read Lamar's entire post. Please! Make it stop!

Senator Guillory, does your health insurance pick up the cost for the diagnosis by the semi-clothed man in the dust who throws bones?  Mine neither. 

That's the craziest damned excuse for voting against repeal of a crazy law that I've heard.  Does everyone present keep a straight face when they hear stuff like this?  Let's just go back to teaching real science in the schools, shall we, Senator?  If our youngsters are taught proper science, and they choose to visit a witch doctor or a traiteur after they've grown up, the door won't be locked.