Welcome to Coffee Hour!! This is Prophecy Street's place where we grab a cup of something hot - or cold - and something sweet - or savory - to eat :-). But most of all, we get to chat with one another!! So pull up a chair, and tell me what's going on in your life!
I need to tell you all that I was almost the Worst Mother In The World. I mentioned last week that swim team starts "soon". Well, a half hour after I took Kid Brillig to school, I get the reminder notice that practice starts today. At 4PM. Meaning I have to retrieve KB from her afterschool program two hours early. On the one day of the week that her best friend attends the program and they get free play. I called the program and asked them to break the news to her, but they forgot... so when I arrived and said "time to go", she broke into tears. Yup, I am that bad.
But by the time we got to the car, she'd thanked me for getting her, since the first practice is where the coach makes intros and gives all the useful information. I knew she'd hate to miss it, and that if I'd not gotten her, she'd have thought me the Worst Mother In The World.
It's nice when it all works out that way. When have you ever had to do something that you knew would go over initially like a lead balloon, but would be appreciated later?
As always, this is an Open Thread, and we do care what you're having for dinner :-)
I recently sat down for a one on one interview with Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky. Instead of my typical interviews that are done by phone or email this one I was able to record it and would like to share it with you.
In the first part of the interview we spoke about faith in politics delving into how her Jewish faith informs her political values as well as Senator Obama’s active faith outreach. So take a look.
In later parts we discuss the war in Iraq, the 2008 elections and poverty which I will post on Faithfully Liberal in the coming days.
[editor's note, by PoliSigh] Last class for this semester--see you tomorrow!
Please join our community in prayer. Just leave your prayer requests and pray for the requests of the community. I welcome all people to join in as the power of prayer/good energy is undeniable.
If you have any favorite prayers or passages or quotes or meditations, please send them to me to share, meeshka1@msn dot com
Please do not argue about the requests of others--you may do that elsewhere!!! If you wish to offer comments of support--please do so! If you choose to rate prayer requests, I like to use a "4" as an AMEN! If you disagree with a request, please just refrain from rating--this is a place where people need to feel they can reveal and unburden their hearts without being criticized. Should any trolls come our way, just surround them with prayer.
Prayer requests remain on the list based upon my judgment. Removing requests is my decision. I have no hard and fast rules--I simply act when the list seems to get too long or it seems the request no longer applies. If I take one off which you would like to remain, please simply request it again. If the request can be removed earlier, please let me know. I'm sure we all would appreciate an update.
As Americans focused on the Jenna Bush - Henry Hager wedding in Crawford this weekend, many began to realize just how much they had fallen in love with the First Family’s beautiful and fun loving twin daughter.
They thought about how unpretentious she is. That she doesn’t take herself too seriously, as when she impishly stuck her tongue out at the White House press corps. That she is industrious, getting her education and writing a book while still in her twenties. And that she has a heart, that the subject of her book was another young lady in need.
The Bushes will soon be passing into private life after the White House, But the memories of this weekend will linger and they will be happy ones of a White House kid who made it good, married well and came through the tough years in the public fish bowl just fine.
Blech. Nevertheless, we wish the Hagers well. They deserve to have a happy life together, despite any treacle from her dad's supporters.
Some U.S. Christians are not reconciled to McCain's candidacy but instead regard the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as "God's candidate" for president in 2012. Whether they can be written off as merely a troublesome fringe group depends on Huckabee's course.
McCain and Huckabee were friendly rivals in this year's Republican competition, sharing contempt for Mitt Romney. Indeed, McCain would not be where he is today had Huckabee not mobilized born-again voters to upset Romney in the Iowa caucuses. All of Romney's efforts to overtake McCain in conservative Southern state primaries were stifled by Huckabee's success in those contests. Huckabee quickly endorsed McCain once he clinched the nomination. They bonded publicly in Little Rock on April 24 during McCain's tour.
Nevertheless, the word is that some evangelicals dispute Huckabee's support. One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me that Huckabee, in personal conversation with him, had embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals: that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible's prophecy.
I'd want way more information than a single Bob Novak column before venturing any opinions as to how this might play out. Could be a major or minor civil war within the Republican/Evangelical nexus - or it could amount to a hill of beans. We'll see.
But I do know what this means:
Even taking Huckabee's professions of support for McCain at face value, he is not leaving politics for the lecture circuit. He has formed the Huck PAC to back Republican candidates, his supporters have established a Web site (Huck4America.com), and Huckabee backers are behind the Government Is Not God PAC, which aims to discourage McCain from naming Romney as his vice president.
It means sign the petition. A politician with ambitions is a politician we can pressure.
I have been steeped in words lately. Of course, with my job as an English teacher, that’s kind of all in a day’s work, but we are wrapping up our study of Emerson and Thoreau. Every year when we read through Walden or Self Reliance, some kid will announce, "Hey, I’ve heard that before." It does seem like nearly every line brews up some new, supremely quotable, single-shot of wisdom. I think the students are surprised to see these lines come from some rational, fully realized source, and not just bumper stickers, inspirational posters and yearbook quotes.
I have to disagree with Emerson though-- I love quotations. There’s just something fun and economical about such great ideas so prettily wrapped in a small package. Collecting quotations has been a hobby of mine since way back. As a little kid, I used to keep a notebook of song lyrics and poetry that had grabbed my attention, and I was even known to rifle through my grandmother’s canister of Salada tea bags, just to read the quotes on the tags. So I have a lot of fun whenever I get to teaching the Transcendentalists, and unlike much of the work my students produce, I never complain about grading the assignments from this unit. I have them jump into the words with both metaphorical feet. They draw visual images from the quotations, create sensory collages, invent characters based on them, and wrap up with writing their own philosophy statements. Great words and deep thoughts are so much fun to share and to ponder.
So what are some of your favorite quotations? Do you find you draw from religious sources, secular sources, or both? What was printed under your yearbook picture?
And as always, what are you drinking, and what’s for dinner? This is an open thread.
In his alleged rant yesterday, dirkster asked how it was that we as a community could get focused around specific issues. It's a decent question, one that I've asked more than once.
But while I certainly wouldn't want to take away from the concrete forms of activism we aspire to, I also don't want to deny that the act of being a community is itself a form of activism. I found this bit from Walter Brueggemann while hunting around for something else last night:
Elaine Scarry wrote a book entitled The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. The book is in two parts. The first long part is a description of torture. Her thesis is that when governments or movements torture people they never do it in order to obtain information. They do it to unmake persons so that they cease to exist as identifiable agents. The most remarkable thing about Scarry's book is that the second half, partly informed by the Bible and partly informed by Marx, claims that the only counter to torture is speech. As torture unmakes persons, so speech makes persons.
That's what we do here. We make persons, or make them whole. It would be better on the issue of torture if we were a forum for torture victims to speak out, but that's actually not strictly necessary. By providing a platform for speech at all, we strengthen the community against torture. Because it's not strong communities that torture, but weak ones, dominated by authoritarians and cowed into silence.
I don't want to overstate the importance of that form of activism, but it's something, incremental as it may be.
Update: Thank you all for the thoughts and prayers. My mom just informed me that Steven died about midnight last night.
You may remember me mentioning my Uncle Steven in "Brothers and sisters". He was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer five weeks ago.
Today we got bad news: nothing more that can be done. The family's moved Steven to an inpatient hospice center, and according to my dad, things are starting to shut down already. I don't know how long exactly they think he'll live, but it can't be very long.
Please, if you would, pray for Steven tonight, for his wife Debbie, and for all those afflicted with cancer. This is just a damn shame.
The attempt to pull in "swing Evangelicals" has never been one of my favorites. Obviously, it seems like a pretty low-percentage shot to me.
But I have always liked the Vanderslice/Common Good Strategies tactic of having Democratic candidates more or less invade hostile territory. Ted Strickland advertised on Evangelical radio stations, and Bob Casey appeared at some conservative Evangelical or Catholic events. In both cases, it worked.
What the tactic does is keep a Democratic candidate's negatives down. The conservative voters won't necessarily vote for him or her, but they'll give some grudging recognition to a liberal brave enough to take them seriously. That can make a significant difference when the Republicans have nothing to run on and have to pin their hopes on tearing down their opponent.
It's not a universally applicable strategy, but it is one that would work well for somebody like Obama, whose charisma forms a major asset, and who's demonstrated some skill in telling audiences things they don't particularly want to hear.
I predict that before the convention, he'll appear at a conservative Catholic function somewhere in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. Progressives will freak out and want to know why their candidate is pandering to the Religious Right, the sky will fall, and then we'll all get over it and get on with the campaign, Obama's "centrist maverick" credentials well established for the fall.
Prayers needed 900 Students Buried, Thousands Feared Dead in China Earthquake
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake buried hundreds in central China on Monday and killed at least 107 people, according to state media. The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, some 930 miles to the north.
So for reasons that are too complicated to explain, I've been trying to match up Walter Brueggemann's "scripts" with political issues. I've got most of them worked out, but this one has me stumped:
I use the term therapeutic to refer to the assumption that there is a product or a treatment or a process to counteract every ache and pain and discomfort and trouble, so that life may be lived without inconvenience.
Any ideas as to how this script might correlate with national politics?
"Cup of Wisdom" Edition. 