THE TRINITY

PEREDA, Antonio de
The Holy Trinity
Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest

Trinity

Three in One.
One in Three.
The Father loves the Son.
The Son loves the Father.
The Father and the Son love the Spirit.
The Spirit loves the Father and the Son.
The Father, Son, and Spirit loved creation into being.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
....

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
....

And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.’

(Gospel of John, Chapter 1)

Image from the Web Gallery of Art.

THE VAUNTED VOUCHERS, OR IS OUR CHILDREN LEARNING?

As Gov. Bobby Jindal tries again to fund his controversial school voucher program, new test scores indicate that many of the current students educated with public money in private schools are not thriving. Or at least they aren't yet.

Released Wednesday, LEAP scores for third- through eighth-graders show only 40 percent of voucher students scored at or above grade level this past spring. The state average for all students was 69 percent.
....

[Superintendent John] White said the 2013 scores for voucher students were low because of the large influx of students from failing schools.

That's right, Superintendent White, blame the public schools for the less than stellar results of the brilliant plan by you and Governor Jindal to improve education in Louisiana by privatization.  I'm not at all surprised at the results.  At least some of the voucher schools teach junk science and junk history.  What do you expect?  Roman Catholic schools do a creditable job of educating children, but it appears that a good many of the new "academies" that sprang into existence when vouchers became available to private schools are not the solution to poor performance by educational institutions in Louisiana.

Public schools have been struggling from cuts in funding from the state since Jindal took office in his first term, and, were it not for the Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that paying for vouchers from public school funds was unconstitutional, the schools would have suffered further as more and more voucher money was siphoned away from their budgets.  Keep in mind that private schools can weed out troublesome students and students with challenges, but public schools must accept all who apply.
Why not focus on improving public schools?

"Anytime you start something new, it's going to take some time to grow," White said. "Nearly two thirds of the kids taking tests in those schools had only been there six months."

And he pointed out that the state did take seven schools off the voucher list. "After a period of time we cannot tolerate failure," he said.

Come now, Mr White, no more excuses for the poor results in the private school voucher program that you and Governor Jindal esteem so highly; take responsibility for the consequences of your grand plan.  If the two had their way, the end result would be the gradual destruction of public school systems in the state, and what would replace them?  More "academies"?

According to the article, White did not actually take seven schools off the voucher list; he merely stopped them from accepting new voucher students, so, in my book, he is still tolerating failure.

Oh, and lets not forget the earlier glitch in the effort by Jindal and White to provide quality online education by private companies to the students of Louisiana. 

When will Jindal and White have gone far enough down the road of poor results to give them a grade of  F in educational reform?   

AN EXCELLENT LETTER BY BISHOP ALAN WILSON

Alan Wilson, Bishop of Buckingham in the Church of England, responds to a letter he received in his post titled "Letter to a Saloon Bar Moralist".

Jesus also taught us to beware the leaven of the Pharisees within and among ourselves. Indeed, whilst he said absolutely nothing about what we call homosexuality (hardly surprising, since the concept was not defined until 1892) he said an enormous amount about using the law to lay burdens on others harder than they could bear, not treating others as you would have them treat you, failing to see the human being in need for the child of God they are, erecting the small matters of the law into crucial shibboleths that confound the purpose of the law, thinking that searching the scriptures in itself will bring life, supposing that people were made for the sabbath not the sabbath for people, and so I could go on. St John tells us that it is futile to think that we are loving the God we have never seen, if we do not love towards the person we have seen.

Read the letter in its entirety.  As I said, it is excellent.

LOUISIANA IS NO. 1 IN GUN VIOLENCE

Louisiana has the highest rate of gun violence in the nation and the weakest gun safety laws, according to a recent national study, and state lawmakers are moving to expand the already permissive statutes.

According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a nonprofit group that tracks gun regulations around the nation, Louisiana's push is contrary to a national trend toward strengthening firearm laws after the recent Connecticut mass school shooting.

"It puts Louisiana in the same category as a minority of states that spend time on largely symbolic measures," said Laura Cutilletta, senior staff attorney for the Law Center. "These laws clearly are not going to be upheld. It's something the courts will have to decide, not the states."

Correlation between weak gun laws and gun violence?  What are you thinking?   Our leaders will permit no such thoughts to influence legislation here in Louisiana.  Oh, and the lawmakers here rather habitually pass symbolic laws that will not hold up when challenged in court, and our tax money will be used to defend the legislation, to no good purpose that I can fathom.  Oh wait; I thought of a reason: To ensure that the voters of Louisiana will reelect the legislators to pass even more symbolic laws.

But in Louisiana, bills aimed at toughening regulations on weapons never made it past the first debate, including one that would have required owners to secure their weapons in a locked box or with some type of safety trigger when stored in a home.

When I consider the number of accidental shootings by children who had access to loaded firearms, such a law seems quite sensible to me, but that's just me.

FIRST FRIEND - RUDYARD KIPLING

 

For readers who may wonder if the words are truly Rudyard Kipling's, indeed they are.

THE MIRACLE OF PRIVATIZATION

The total operating expense associated with the privatization of nine LSU hospitals will hit $1 billion during the new fiscal year, Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols said Thursday.

That’s more than is in the current year’s budget — $955 million — for the state to operate the charity hospitals.

And more than the $626 million Gov. Bobby Jindal proposed for private companies to operate the public hospitals in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Nichols said the administration would submit amendments to the state Senate Finance Committee to close the funding gap, recommending using some money from hospital leases as well as other state and local revenues.

Kristy Nicholls says that the state will benefit in the long run, but I'll hold my applause until a source outside the Jindal administration breaks down the figures. As you may or may not know, in Jindal's plan to ditch personal and business income taxes and make up the difference in sales taxes, the math did not compute. I'm not sure what method the administration uses, but the numbers don't always pan out as presented.  When Jindal realized that his tax plan was DOA in the Legislature, he withdrew the mess at the last minute.

Further on Medicaid expansion:

Even though governors and lawmakers in five Deep South states oppose a plan to cover more people through Medicaid under the health care overhaul, 62 percent of the people in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina support expanding the program, according to a new poll.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/21/4248364/public-in-deep-south-supports.html#storylink=cpy

The level of support for expanding Medicaid – the state and federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled – ranged from a low of 59 percent in Mississippi to a high of 65 percent in South Carolina, according to the poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a leading research and public policy think tank that focuses on African-Americans and other people of color.
....

But the five states in the poll, all led by Republican governors, have decided not to participate. Ironically, Mississippi and Louisiana rank dead last among all states in the overall health of their residents, according to America’s Health Ranking, an annual report by the United Health Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the insurer UnitedHealth Group.

There you have it.  The voice of the majority does not prevail, and many of the citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi will go without health insurance, because their governors are ideologues who do not put the welfare of the citizens first.  Of course, when the governor has national ambitions, he has to keep one eye on the Tea Party and the other on Grover Norquist, with no third eye to look at the hardships he inflicts on the residents of his own state.

Thanks to Ann for the link to the poll.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/21/4248364/public-in-deep-south-supports.html#storylink=cpy

GILDA RADNER AS FRED ASTAIRE

What a treasure we lost with Gilda's untimely death.

AMAZING CREATURES

 

If Gilda said so, it must be true.

"THE PROMISE" - CHAIM POTOK

Whoever recommended that I read The Promise by Chaim Potok, thank you. Once I began reading the novel, I could hardly put it down.   A major theme in the story is the age-old conflict between fundamentalists, who read the Talmud literally, and those who engage in critical reading of the sacred texts - a conflict which continues throughout the history of Judaism and Christianity until the present day.   The people who adhere strictly to a literal reading of the sacred texts, Jewish and Christian, do so in the face of contradictory passages that appear impossible to reconcile.   Other passages in the text don't really make sense unless one assumes the possibility of a mistake in copying a manuscript and explores different wording that make the passage understandable.

The story unfolds through the voice of the narrator, Reuven Malter, an Orthodox Jew, who is very much a part of the narrative.  The principal characters - Reuven's father, David, a well-known teacher in a Jewish school, Danny Saunders, Reuven's good friend, a Hasidic Jew who chooses to study psychology rather than follow in the footsteps of his father and become a rabbi, Michael Gordon, a troubled adolescent, and Reuven's nemisis, his Talmud teacher, Jacob Kalman, a survivor of the Nazi death camps - are well drawn and believable and come to life in the course of the novel.  The fine writing throughout drew me into the story made me care about what happens to the characters.

The book was written in 1969, and I wonder whether the Freudian-influenced extreme type of treatment of the very ill young Michael would be used today.  If the experiment suggested by Danny and undertaken with the approval and supervision of Michael's psychiatrist as a last resort, does not work, the two believe the young man will very likely be institutionalized for the rest of his life.  Of course, today many more drugs are available to treat mental illness than back then, so perhaps this sort of treatment would no longer be acceptable.

Religious fundamentalists seem to paint themselves into a corner without a way out, except by pretzel-like reasoning that makes no more sense to me than the original contradictions or mistakes.  I understand that the texts are sacred to them, as they are to me, but humans were created with the ability to reason, and why would God expect us not to use the gifts?  With certain Jews and Christians, it seems that to allow that passages in the Bible may not be literally true or that the Scriptures may contain mistakes in transcription would result in the collapse of their entire faith edifice.

Abraham Gordon, father of the mentally ill Michael, a Jewish scholar, who no longer believes in a personal God, but who continues to observe the rituals of the Orthodox tradition:

"Of course, that's the problem,"he said to me once.  "How can we teach others to regard the tradition critically and with love?  I grew up loving it, and then learned to look at it critically.  That's everyone's problem today.  How to love and respect what you are being taught to dissect." 

One great benefit from reading the book is that I came away with the reminder that no one is "other" and that no matter how deep and broad the disagreements, our opponents are human, like us, and deserving of respect because of our common humanity and, if we are people of faith, because we are all of us God's creation and beloved of God.  In that sense, the novel was life-giving in a way that was completely unexpected.  I heartily recommend the book.

BRAVE AND COURAGEOUS TEACHERS

In the tragedies in Newtown, Connecticut, and in Moore, Oklahoma, teachers with children in their care demonstrated great courage and bravery in protecting their students, at times with their own bodies.  Yet here in the richest country in the world, we are less than generous in the wages we pay teachers, despite the fact that educators in the US spend more hours teaching than those in many other countries. 

American teachers spend on average 1,080 hours teaching each year. Across the O.E.C.D., the average is 794 hours on primary education, 709 hours on lower secondary education, and 653 hours on upper secondary education general programs.
....

American teachers’ pay is more middling. The average public primary-school teacher who has worked 15 years and has received the minimum amount of training, for example, earns $43,633, compared to the O.E.C.D. average of $39,007.

Why?

See the charts at the link.