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...rather than like a bad bring and share supper, composed of various bits and pieces, some good and some not, thrown together with minimal planning and concern for proportion but justified by those who like that sort of thing on the grounds that people meant well.

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Originally posted by Gee D:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
I'm just wondering what Wilfrid and Hilda said when they were asked to act as patrons. Or whether they would have agreed on the subject, in life.

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Strange that you should ask. I was chatting to St Hilda the other day - she's patron of a school I have a vague association with and need her views from time to time. She told me that neither she or St Wilfrid was asked. Her comment was that she had spent her lifetime promoting reconciliation, indeed giving up her opinions on such matters as the date of Easter and matters of church governance to ensure unity. She was Not Pleased about the invocation. Apparently St Wilfrid was of a similar mind and while she preferred not to use his exact words, he had put his position very strongly.

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Originally posted by Leaf:

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Originally posted by Chesterbolloc: get better fucking positions

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Excellent advice. Happy Valentine's Day!

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Originally posted by Nigel M:
Mark's use of language is certainly relevant and he may simply be a man of action: “I will immediately slam myself down and cast out a Gospel and sprint with it to the church and wring extreme convictions out of people so that they rush into Jesus' arms by the Spirit's urgent power rather than mine I will have an urgent need to rush off I won't have time to completely finish the sermon for”

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Originally posted by Albertus:

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Originally posted by John Holding:
...The use of ... sodding as an all purpose alternative to fucking...

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That's pretty much what the French accuse us of, isn't it?

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Originally posted by Josephine:
... after you've done that, you can go to your prayer corner and say your prayers.

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Originally posted by Moo:
I missed church on Ash Wednesday because of a snow storm. I missed church last Sunday because of another snow storm.... An ice storm is predicted for tomorrow.

It appears that I am involuntarily giving up church for Lent.

Moo

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by RuthW:
Middle-class white female professors have goon squads made up of grad students living on ramen noodle packs and speed.

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Dang, that does it. I have GOT to make tenure.

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And Christ in shining white robes solemnly takes a seat before assembled mankind. He raises his arms and speaks:

"Welcome to the Great Judgement."

(dramatic pause)

"The universalist were right. This concludes the Great Judgement."

(stunned silence)

Suddenly a strange noise rises from somewhere in the billionth row of the multitude.

lolololololoLOLOLOLOLOLwheeeeeeeeeeBAM

(spacetime shakes as IngoB in his resurrection body speeds off at warp 20)

St Peter eagerly bounds toward Christ:

"Should I bring him back, O Lord?"

Christ looks St Peter up and down:

"Sure, Cephas. Fetch."

yourwordismycommandwheeeeeeeeeeBAM

(spacetime reverberates once more as St Peter hits warp speed)

Christ grins, places His hands on his forehead and makes a ripping motion. The world twists like a vortex around his head and suddenly everybody looks down on the galactic plane, and zooms in on the immense sea of stars in one galactic arm, and focuses to see....

... a spark hurtling towards a star, slamming through it, rushing towards the next star, while the first star begins to blow up into a supernova, leaving a trail of gigantic explosions ...

... wheeeeeeeeeeeee ...

... and then another spark in angry pursuit, dodging and weaving around the supernova explosions ...

Suddenly the view collapses into itself and there's just Christ again, with his hands closed to fists, slowly lowering his arms.

He grins again.

"In my Father's house are many mansions."

He looks expectantly. Nothing happens. Christ sighs.

"You can go now. ...uhh... At ease. ... hmm ... Have fun?!"

Rumblings as the multitude disperses to do all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. One can hear Christ's voice over the din fading into the distance:

"Yes, I would love to have some tea with you. What's tea?"

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There are few sights more alarming than a congregation of 80-year-olds interrupting BCP Holy Communion to wave their hands in the air for a couple of choruses of "Shine, Jesus, Shine".

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Yea and amen.

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I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music

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Originally posted by Golden Key:
We all live between our sins and our ideals.

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Originally posted by Macrina:
I have no problem with people BEING Republican - I mean there's evidence that conservatism is actually down to structural aspects of the brain so we can't judge them for that. I just think its wrong to act on it. Have you seen the disgusting things they do? Legislating against the poor and vulnerable, taking away healthcare, putting money before people? Any decent society can't function when people are allowed to act on their Republicanism - it destroys the social fabric.

So I love Republicans as people, I just want to bring them to the fullness of truth so they realise the damage their lifestyle does to them and those they love. I hold them to the same standards as any Democrat. We have exactly the same obligations be we Republican or Democrat after all and we know that Biblically Jesus condemned Republicanism so we can't support it being promoted using our tax dollars or taught to our children.

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I've no problem with allowing religions to descriminate, providing it doesn't affect other people.

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Dave isn't stupid but he has no idea what he wants power for and no settled political beliefs beyond a vague conception that the luckiest boys should have the jolliest time, tempered by an even vaguer sense of noblesse oblige.

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Originally posted by Nenya:
What if the shop only had blue ribbons for tying round the old oak tree?

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Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
Or what if the old oak tree had succumbed to a storm?

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Originally posted by Stetson:
Would the whole damn bus be murmuring with disappointment?

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Originally posted by Nenya:
What if she never received the letter telling her he'd soon be free?

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Originally posted by Nenya:
What if everyone else on the damn bus had fallen asleep?

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Originally posted by Stetson:
Or if they had been disinclined to listen to the stories of someone who introduces himself with "I just got out of jail..."?

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Originally posted by mousethief:
What if the bus lost its brakes and careened into the old oak tree, igniting a horrific inferno in which all the passengers died while the lovelorn girlfriend looked on helplessly?

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Originally posted by Stetson:
The girlfriend would head back into her apartment and knock three times on the ceiling.

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Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:
IngoB from the "Introducing me....." thread. A little bit of Heaven in Purgatory. Superb.

"Look into a mirror. Hold your own gaze.

You stare into the mirror, matter is staring back. What makes you be on the right side of the looking glass?

Breathe.

Way. Truth. Life. You like Way. I like Truth. We share Life. Don't knock what the other has, it's a Trinity."

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Nice catch.


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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.

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We all loved that it was set in Australia. From a literary standpoint many of us hadn't been there since "The Thorn Birds." It's changed a lot.

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Anyway, there's God, just done with creation and putting his feet up to have a nice cup of tea, when the front door bangs open and in comes his kid, Jesus, back from college - “Hi Dad, I'm home!” and of course he has all his clothes washing to be done and – what's that? What on earth has he done with his hands????

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Originally posted by balaam:

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Originally posted by Porridge:
The sheer number and range of weird names and weirder spellings currently encountered in job applicants I'm reviewing makes me wonder at allowing moms still possibly under the influence of medication from childbirth any voice at all in selecting names for their offspring.

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You have met someone called Ow?
Sorry, that one would have been no medication.

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Originally posted by Dafyd:
Furthermore, I think the subject on which anyone is most likely to be in error is the amount of humility and empathy they are exercising on any given occasion.

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
Seems to me perfectly obvious that God is rewarding Mr Cameron for bringing in gay marriage.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
There is a theological term for the sentiments expressed in the link in the OP - bollocks.

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Here in the US we have not one, nor two or three, but four presidential candidates as of this writing who have been assured by God that they are supposed to be President of the United States. (Stay tuned, I am sure we will get a few more in there.)
Logically they either
1). worship entirely different Gods
2). aren't listening to God accurately, or
3). (which I personally favor) God is jerking their chain. This is by no means, for instance, the first time that God has assured Mike Huckabee that he is to be president. One envisions the Deity like Lucy, holding the football for Charlie Brown. How many times will Huckabee fall for this? We shall see.

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

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Originally posted by RooK:

lilBuddha, I totally heard your frustration and reasoning.

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I acknowledged this.

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Originally posted by RooK:

It's just that it's stupid and lame, and in a prehistoric hunter-gathering community you would be left behind to distract the smilodons.

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Oh you chest-thumpers are sooo cute. Right up until you get eaten.

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
And those who fight the mighty smildoolywhatevers and live to tell the tale are lauded in story and song, while the clever ones who got away quietly mow their perfect lawns.

Until they get eaten.

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Originally posted by Firenze:
They had lawn mowers in the Pleistocene? Jings.

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Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
The ones in the suburbs did. Jeez, do I have to draw a picture?

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Originally posted by Ariel:

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Originally posted by Firenze:
They had lawn mowers in the Pleistocene? Jings.

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Yes, better known as the stegosaurus. Like many lawn mowers they were awkward, heavy and difficult to push, but once they got going they did a pretty good job on grass and even hedges. Of course, you can't get them these days.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
They were also rather tricky to obtain in the Pleistocene as well. The captive breeding programme that had managed to maintain a steady supply of stegosaurus lawn-mowers since the end of the Jurassic period 150 million years early was finally struggling to maintain the viability of this product line. Increasing competition from new products such as the megatherium eventually drove the stegosaurus breeders out of business.

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Originally posted by Porridge:[regarding the last]
It was actually worth reading this thread for this.

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Originally posted by Alyosha:
You can't embrace the machine/computer metaphor for the human soul and then look down on the idea of making lists.

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
A bit of fudge is good. A diet entirely of fudge is unhealthy.

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Mother frugging son of a pencil dicked bobcat.

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Originally posted by sabine:
Our society needs to have some very deep and difficult conversations about violence of this sort, and I'm not sure how many people are willing to engage in conversations that will lead to changes not more political polarization.

And there are many variables, guns, racism, and others. For example, I heard David Brooks (a New York Times columnist) mention on PBS that the US has an "alienated, lone young man" problem. Instead of thinking that these sorts of murders are not society's problem because they are the work of a lone person, we need to ask ourselves what causes such alienation.

Unpacking all of the things that lead to repeated situations of mass murders will take us places we don't want to go and will force ourselves to look at the idealized glow we put upon our narrative of who we are.

People in power have no incentive to start the conversation because it may well lead to a loss of power for them.

As long as we operate on a "what's best for me alone" philosophy, there will be no incentive to start the conversation.

As long as political operatives (seen and unseen) continue to politicize basic issues of the nature of racism, alienation, and violence, there will be no incentive to start the conversation.

As long as we cling to our fears or claim we will change if someone else changes first, there will be no incentive to start the conversation.

We need bold, prophetic voices to both illuminate the issues and assure us that we will be better for having engaged in the process of change.

As long as fear leads, we will not move forward.

sabine

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You therefore have several good reasons for a holy man like Jesus to refuse to have anything to do with 'dirty foreigners' like this man and his slave. The villagers are in effect pleading, "We know that he's a foreigner and an oppressor and a slave owner and a probable sodomite, but he's one of the good guys, honest!"

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To lose one Person of the Holy and Undivided Trinity may have been an accident, but to lose two implies carelessness ...

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Originally posted by Liopleurodon:
I think it's important that this isn't about "black music" but about black PEOPLE. Once you start trying to trace the lineage of a song it becomes impossible. Is Dusty's version of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" a ripoff of "black music" because it's pretty much a carbon copy of the Shirelles' hit version (if anything she pretty much tried to out-Shirelle them), or a "white" song because it was written by Goffin and King? Is it Jewish like Goffin and King, or Catholic like Dusty? I don't know and I don't care. I do care that black people in the 1960s faced far more barriers to success than she did.

Here's what cultural appropriation is. There's a playground with a bully kid (John) and victim kid (Ed). John takes all the toys but one - let's say a toy duck. Ed makes do with the toy duck and wanders off, and in time comes up with a fantastic duck-related game. Eventually, John comes along, sees how much fun Ed is having, and snatches the duck and the duck related game away, or throws a tantrum and demands that mummy buys him a bigger and fancier duck.

You can respond to this in lots of different ways that all massively miss the point:
"That duck does look pretty fun! Can't blame John!"
"John is showing appreciation of Ed's cleverness!"
"So you're saying that nobody called John should ever play with a duck again, huh?"

The duck is not the point. People are focusing on the duck rather than the moment in which John swoops in and snatches the duck away, and the reasons why John thinks this is acceptable, and the effect this has on Ed.

That is the dynamic of cultural appropriation. Black people, excluded from formal musical education, excluded from concert venues, wandered off and invented their own kinds of music. When white people came along and tried to take over, some of them probably did just love the music. But there's always an element of "Screw you - we get to decide what you can call your own" in this.

People who focus on the songs are focusing on the duck. When you zoom out and see the centuries of the relationship between white people and black people it puts this whole situation in context, and context is really really important here.

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* is an asterisk; Asterix is a Gaul

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--------------------
I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music

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You made a claim. Back it up or stick it somewhere where you'll break your religion's prohibition against pleasuring yourself.

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Originally posted by L'organist on the What would YOU tell them thread in AS:

...That sometimes a stiff G-and-T can make you a better parent.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
f5 f5 f5 f5... oh.

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Originally posted by Sipech:
His work is so far from orthodoxy, it makes The Shack look likes Calvin's Institutes.

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