We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
My church holds a Seder on the Thursday before Easter, with the traditional foods (but no Matzoh Balls or Gefilte Fish - I don't think our folks would eat that). A Seder in total silence.
The Last Supper is thought to have been Seder. Maybe the bread was Matzoh?
Alas, we do not serve wine in our church so cannot follow the Jewish tradition of drinking a little too much of it at supper.
The first seder ("order" of the prayers, recitation of the Exodus, and feast) of Passover begins tonight. Some find the printed "order" and its rituals long, especially when hungry. So, here's what the short version might have looked like, if Moses had the Internet.
For those interested in Passover and the seder, you'll find this cinematic telling and interpretations easy, informative and interesting. "Corresponding to the individual steps of the Haggadah, each short video offers unique, visual, commentary on the Passover story, allowing viewers to engage with this ancient and much revered text in new and compelling ways."
Lord Jesus, come Yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Take my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death, in Jesus' name.
The scriptures say that one man owed his lord a huge debt that he could not pay, and ask that the debt be forgiven. His lord forgave him. Soon the man demanded that a small amount of money that he had loaned to a friend be repaid, and when the friend could not pay the loan on time, he was punished. His lord heard about the injustice, and brought charges against him. The moral is that we should do unto others as we would that they do to us—and that we must practice what we preach before we preach.
If you are dealing with a problem where some other person has hurt you be sure that you pray to God that you will approach it in a Christian manner and never ask more than you would be willing to give. Look at your face in a mirror and make very sure you do not see a “better than thou attitude”.
Especially in my later years, I worry that I will slip along life’s way and ask you to do for Christ something that I am failing to do. I pray that God will not permit me to make this mistake.
From Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:
...from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sinfor us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We shall want to hold ourselves to the course of admitting the things we have done, meanwhile forgiving the wrongs done us, real or fancied. We should avoid extreme judgments, both of ourselves and of others involved. We must not exaggerate our defects or theirs. A quiet, objective view will be our steadfast aim. In all these situations we need self-restraint, honest analysis of what is involved, a willingness to admit when the fault is ours, and an equal willingness to forgive when the fault is elsewhere....that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness ... It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It happens to me each Lent, settles over me like a dark cloud of self-scrutiny and self-reproach. It's not deliberate. It just happens to me ever since I had my eyes opened.
I am no axe-murderer, but I have my human share of sins, irresponsibilities, cruelties, lazinesses, selfishness, insensitivities, dumb rationalizations, narcissistic defenses, lies, self-indulgences, and plain old unthinking stupidities. All of the flaws.
Unlike the Psychiatric depressions, my Lenten depression, I think, is a gift of sorts. A gift from the Holy Spirit. Painful, but I would not want to medicate it away because it tells me things I need to hear. Our Christian God is a God of Truth and Grace. The Truth part can hurt. God or Grace or something holds up that dark mirror for me, and it's all true and it's all difficult.
It's like the 4th Step.
Pastors advise us to leave it all at the foot of the cross, but I have to go through the dark journey to know what the "it all" is first, and I have to say it all out loud in prayer. I view it as my annual healthy depression.
Don't bother reading this unless you are on the same page, or pages, that I am on this Lent. My musings and meanderings will bore you, and I do not understand my own religion very well, despite trying to.
As I understand it, to enter God's Kingdom one must die (in a metaphorical sense) and be reborn (in the spiritual sense). By "God's Kingdom" I mean living in Christ today, not in any hereafter.
"He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it."Matthew 10:39
The losing is like a dying of Self, along with an abandonment of one's worldly idols. "Self" is the modern totem and object of psychological and material worship, so that part is fairly difficult for me and, I assume, for all of us. A sort of suicide, or partial suicide. Displeased as I tend to be with my self, I am sort of attached to the old darn thing too. "Self," "identity," individuality," - all that current narcissistic "special Me" psychobabble.
I know I am making it all too black and white, as if we could ever not be who we are, or become like the zombie Moonies in the subway stations. But Jesus understood very well that devotion to self was an obstacle to a connection with God.
John 3:3: Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
The Christian offer is to kill off one's self and to be reborn in Christ to live a Kingdom life. The endeavor is not for sissies.
From Matthew 12:
18And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.
19And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
20And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.
21And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them.
22And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him.
Leave my ship and my father? Can we discuss this, Jesus? And from Luke 9:
The tension between the practical, material world and the Kingdom is ever-present, and all rationalizations for loving this world as I often do sound like convenient and self-justifying cop-outs to me. Thus, I am unfit. Therefore, I require grace.
"...my eye caught The Gospel of John. Now this was the film I meant to see in February 2004 when The Passion of the Christ came out, but I missed the brief window of opportunity for catching it here in Fresno. Slasher flicks play for weeks and weeks and weeks at the monsterplexes, but at the brave art theater, gospel films (without Mel's name attached), sad to say, don't."
The Jewish Bible is full of miracles from G-d. Yet, in the Book of Esther, G-d’s intervention is not mentioned.Rabbinic commentary says that the hand of G-d is hidden but manifest in the saving of the Jews from the genocide plans of Haman.That may well be so. However, if there was divine intervention, it took the trembling will and the actions of a few of his earthly humans to bring about the good outcome.
Reminds me of this story. On January 1, G-d tells a very good, pious and observant man that in reward he will win the lottery that year. The man waits and waits, and on December 31 asks G-d why he hasn’t won the lottery yet. G-d answers, “meet me halfway, buy a ticket.”
It is up to us, each and everyone of us, regardless of religion, to buy a ticket, to speak and act for safety from sworn enemies and to further justice in this world. This year, the reading aloud in our synagogues of the Megillah, the scroll of the Book of Esther, is on Saturday and Sunday. Haman’s name is drowned out by noisemakers, groggers, and Mordechai and Esther’s names are cheered. Purim is accompanied by celebrations for the children – to fix the meaning of Purim in their minds, and the adults giving food packages to the needy and to friends – to build community and spread blessings of plenty and caring.
In an apparent connection made by Hitler between his Nazi regime and the role of Haman, he stated in a speech made on January 30, 1944, that if the Nazis were defeated, the Jews could celebrate "a second Purim".[51][50] Seconds before he was hanged, Streicher called out "Purim Fest 1946!"[51]
Haman exists in every generation, and must be confronted, or allowed to prevail. We are G-d’s hands.
Purim is a fun holiday, so here’s SpongeBob’s version of the Megillah.
It happens every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembles a giant orange and is starting to dip into the blue ocean. Old Ed comes strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand is a bucket of shrimp.
Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now. Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts....and his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier. Soon, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, "Thank you. Thank you."
In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place. Invariably, one of the gulls lands on his sea-bleached, weather-beaten hat - an old military hat he's been wearing for years.
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away and old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like "a funny old duck," as my dad used to say. Or, "a guy that's a sandwich shy of a picnic," as my kids might say. To onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant ....maybe even a lot of nonsense. Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida.
That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better. His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.
Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait......and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued. (after 24 days at sea...)
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull. And he never stopped saying, "Thank you." That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.
(Max Lucado, In The Eye of the Storm, pp.221, 225-226)
According to Rickenbacker, each person on the rafts converted to Christianity after the experience.
PS: By 1910, Rickenbacker was racing cars. Touted as the first man to drive a mile a minute, he received the sobriquet "Fast Eddie" (giving rise to a nickname borne by many men named Edward since his time). Eddie raced in the 1912, 1914, 1915 and 1916 Indianapolis 500. His only finish in the race was in 1914 when he finished 10th. In the other three races, he did not finish due to car failure. Notably, in the 1916 race, he started on the front row in 2nd place. Eddie was also an Ace in WW I with 22 enemy planes to his credit and started Eastern Airlines back in the 30's. Eddie left us back in 1973, but he was a pilot in two wars, an Ace, and received the Medal of Honor. He was also on the overseas air mail stamp some years ago. And he never forgot his debt.....
The Alpha course was developed in response to people who wanted to have the opportunity to investigate the claims of the Christian faith. Over ten weekly sessions, including a day or weekend away, guests hear the claims of the Christian faith. After the presentation, course attendees have a chance to question what they heard and discuss the validity of the claims. The support of all the major Christian denominations has enabled the Alpha course to spread rapidly around the world. Today, Alpha is run in over 160 countries and has been translated into more than 100 languages. Courses can also be found in many contexts including churches, homes, workplaces, military bases, colleges, schools, and prisons. There are many reasons why people enjoy attending the Alpha course. For some it’s the no pressure, non-judgmental atmosphere, others enjoy building relationships with new friends, while others appreciate the chance to discuss deep questions of life that they don’t otherwise get the chance to ask.
WHAT HAPPENS AT ALPHA?
Each Alpha course begins with a meal or refreshments providing a chance to relax and get to know others. There is then a short talk, which looks at a different aspect of the Christian faith each week. This is followed by a time of discussion in small groups of about 10 people. Everyone is welcome to contribute their opinion, ask questions and discuss with the rest of the group.
Alpha courses run in a wide variety of locations and at different times of the day. Courses vary in size, from one small group meeting in a home, to hundreds of people in a larger venue. Some courses are held over morning coffee or during a lunch hour, though most are evening courses, typically lasting 2 hours. Whatever the course size, people tend to remain in the same small groups for the duration of the course so they can get to know each other, continue discussions and deepen friendships.
The whole course usually lasts for 10 weeks, with a day or weekend away about half way through. The emphasis is upon exploration and discovery in a relaxed and informal environment.
The Alpha course consists of a series of talks addressing key issues related to the Christian faith.
TOPICS
Week 1: Who is Jesus? Week 2: Why did Jesus die? Week 3: How can we have faith? Week 4: Why and how do I pray? Week 5: Why and how should I read the Bible? Week 6 Full Day: Who is the Holy Spirit? What does the Holy Spirit do? How can I be filled with the Holy Spirit?How can I make the most of the rest of my life? Week 7: How does God guide us? Week 8: How can I resist evil? Week 9: Why & how should we tell others? Week 10: Does God heal today?
The course curriculum is the book Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel. Each talk reflects one of the chapters from this book. Please note: There is no obligation to attend all ten sessions.
WHAT THE PRESS SAYS
The New York Times "A novel approach to Christian education that has been catching on nationwide."
Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian "What Alpha offers, and what is attracting thousands of people, is permission, rare in secular culture, to discuss the big questions - life and death and their meaning.“
The Express London " Alpha makes Christianity relevant to modern life." Los Angeles Times “Alpha helps people navigate through Christianity.”
WHAT PAST GUESTS SAY
Anthony: "I didn’t expect the warm welcome I received, the interesting discussions or the lack of pressure to speak in the small groups that followed. I found that I could express any doubts about Christianity, and that my opinions would be respected. If I had an issue with something, I had a forum to voice it with no need to apologize."
Rebecca: “Our church was offering this course and my husband and I thought it would be a great opportunity for us to share in this spiritual journey. We go to church with our two kids, say our prayers, etc. but something was missing. We wanted to find out what was missing.”
Cynthia: I decided to take the Alpha course because I was unsure what it was I believed. I needed something to fill the empty place in my life. I started attending Alpha to seek answers to those basic questions about my faith and who God was.”
Heather: “I was the typical 20 something who had attended church as a child, but once I became an adult I stopped going. When I returned to church I felt like something was missing in my life. The Alpha course helped me understand more about God.
All about monotheism, Abraham, and a mental experiment creating religion amnesia: How Did God Get Started?
One quote from the lengthy essay by Colin Wells:
...faith is the unassailable citadel to which religion withdrew after reason had overrun much of its original territory. And, let’s be honest, storming religion’s territory is what rational inquiry came into this world doing. In the face of such relentless, even terrifying, psychological pressure, it makes sense that our collective embrace of the supernatural, if it was to persist without dissolving completely, would have to tighten to the point of obsessiveness.
But faith is also a mobile citadel, a portable fortress. Having evolved precisely to occupy the territory inaccessible to reason, faith evolved mechanisms to move fluidly with the boundaries of that territory, or, as with apocalypticism, to blithely revise its truth claims about the imminent end of the world as fast as they’re discredited by the world’s contrarian perseverence. Faith’s quicksilver essence can never be rationally pinned down: the harder you press, the faster it squirts out from under your finger. Like the alien monster in countless movies, faith only gets stronger every time you shoot at it.
If this model is correct in its psychology, monotheistic faith will spread across the globe together with reason—as indeed it seems to be doing already, whether through outright conversion or the subtle moulding of older traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism into more monotheistic forms. Faith and reason help define the package we call Western civilization. We might even say that they do define it, and that they also account for its stunning global success.
1 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" 2 And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them 3 and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless youturn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
It's never a good idea to go through an Advent without watching this version of A Christmas Carol.
To state the obvious, the story is a metaphor, using Christmas as the setting, in which a man is reborn in Christ by the mystical power of the Holy Spirit (as represented by the "spirits,") transforming his soul from a grouchy, self-centered drudge into a loving, generous, and joyful creature.
Many Christians, as I do, pray for some bit of that transformation and rebirth in our souls each Advent, as we remember and celebrate the birth of Christ.
I find that guides help me with this, and with many other things.
That's Fra Angelico's (aka Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, aka Guido di Pietro) Adoration of the Magi. When you're in Florence, take the bus ride 20 minutes up the hill to Fiesole and see his little chapel and monastery. It's an active convent now, so they might not let you in. Our thanks to the BD art fiend and art-finder pupette (now Wall-Streeter but still art-finder) who turned us on to that chapel.
BTW, we think it's more fun to stay in the pastoral hills of old Etruscan Fiesole when visiting Florence. The bus runs until late, it's a quick cheap one-Euro ride, you get to ride with the locals, and the views are great. On our last visit, I think we only needed to use a cab once. Our pupette's Georgetown abroad semester was out of the old Rockefeller villa in Fiesole. Cool place. I should revisit those pics one of these days.
I have a retired friend who spends around 6 weeks each year at Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina. Quite a few people do this sort of thing. It's a Trappist monastery (Cistercian, with strict rules) with guest houses for retreatants. (They do take in married couples as retreatants and you probably need to be Roman Catholic, but I'm not sure.)
He does whatever labor is assigned to him - from baling hay to cleaning toilets, observes the rules of silence, and makes it to all of the Masses (beginning after the morning bells at 3 AM).
He returns home "cleansed and refreshed by the Spirit." The guy was a drop-out seminarian, USMC in Vietnam, and, as he describes himself, a "kick-ass businessman." He is, indeed, a tough SOB who loves the Lord.
The Abbey is an old plantation on the Cooper River, north of Charleston, donated to the order by the Luce family.
All worship was to him sacred, since he believed that in its most degraded forms, among the most ignorant and foolish of worshippers, there has yet been some true seeking after the Divine, and that between these and the most glorious ritual or the highest philosophic certainty, there lies so small a space that we may believe the Saints in Paradise regard it with a smile.
Via Potemra, who says "It’s from Elizabeth Waterhouse’s Thoughts of a Tertiary, and it was used by Evelyn Underhill as one of the epigraphs to her classic book Worship"
Just returned from the second day of Rosh Hashanah services. We search within ourselves for error, correct it, and develop ways to be better. As the Jewish new year begins, the Torah reading for today is Bereshit Bara Elohim: In the beginning G-d created
A millenia ago, Biblical and Talmudic scholar Rashi wrote a homily in which bereshit could be rendered bishvil reyshit, For the sake of beginning did G-d create the world.The point is that weve been given our start, and then what we do with ourselves is in our power. Another famous Jewish Rabbi, Joseph Soloveitchik, wrote, The most fundamental principle of all is that man must create himself.
My Rabbi, then, passed out this quote from Harry Potter author JK Rowlings Harvard Commencement Speech: We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
Rosh Hashanah starts tonight. My ever-active boys sat still, watched, listened, learned, and had fun with this Lady Gaga inspired Rosh Hashanah performance. Who am I to argue with Lady Gaga anymore!
A few translations:
Days of Awe = The ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, for especially intense introspection, self-correction and launching on better behaviors toward others.
Mahzor = Special holiday prayer book
Shofar = Rams horn, usually, blown from Biblical times to announce holidays, and at Rosh Hashanah to trumpet the Rebirth of the World and of us. In the Bible the day is called Yom Teruah, the day of the sounding of the shofar.
Shanah Tovah = Our greeting to others for a good year, a shortened version of "May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year."
My men's Bible study group had a good discussion about prayer and worship early yesterday morning, but we ended up focusing on how we do, or fail to, make space to let God into our daily lives, and to open the door for guidance and inspiration from the Holy Spirit.
We discussed how, in Acts 13, they fasted and prayed as a way to invite the Holy Spirit to guide their missionary intentions. We discussed how quieting the mind and turning off the Blackberry can be a sort of "input fasting."
The discussion reminded me of what a friend once advised me when I felt my prayer wasn't "working" (I don't mean I wasn't getting the right answer: I mean that I didn't feel I was in communion). My friend wisely said "When conversing with God, you need to STFU some of the time. You're talking too much to be able to listen. That's not a relationship."
I am not a child. I do not need to be told what to do in life most of the time (except by She Who Must Be Obeyed, on occasion. eg: "Call the vet," and "Take your BP meds," and "Bring hence some mint from the garden," and "You can't go to town in those filthy wrinkled pants."). But I do want and need God via the Holy Spirit as my co-pilot to give me light in the tough times, to lift me up in the good times, and to help keep my life aligned, as best I can discern it, with God's will.
So I need to clear out the junk and make more mental space for that. Fall Cleaning. Otherwise, I'm just another animal, controlled by desires and interests, and constrained and regulated by ordinary reality. It's all really His space, isn't it?
My church holds a Seder on the Thursday before Easter, with the traditional foods (but no Matzoh Balls or Gefilte Fish - I don't think our folks would eat that). A Seder in total silence. 
Don't bother reading this unless you are on the same page, or pages, that I am on this Lent. My musings and meanderings will bore you, and I do not understand my own religion very well, despite trying to.
A Great Story (1973)
It's never a good idea to go through an Advent without watching this version of A Christmas Carol. 
My men's Bible study group had a good discussion about prayer and worship early yesterday morning, but we ended up focusing on how we do, or fail to, make space to let God into our daily lives, and to open the door for guidance and inspiration from the Holy Spirit.