I went to Mass today, and encountered scripture readings that were a direct follow-on to Pax's Give Me Shelter diary over the weekend.
Deuteronomy 10:12-22
Psalm 147
Mt 17:22-27
Unfortunately, the homilist chose to focus on obedience even when God asks you to do strange things, so I thought I'd roll my own social-justice homily:
This discussion started over in Expat's
John Edwards' thread, but I thought it warranted its own diary because it is an
important and complex topic.
He questioned how someone can support a law permitting actions which that person considers to be immoral.
This raises the question: what is law for?
I saw this story over on Big Orange today, and loved the idea. It's not getting much response there; maybe it's more our kind of thing.
The Shalom Center has put together a campaign called "Seven Lights for the Green Menorah: Policy Changes to Avert Global Scorching."
While forgiveness is a crucial concept in Christianity, it does not stand alone; and in particular, being forgiven isn't enough to get you a clean slate.
Jesus often taught about forgiveness in economic terms, and in these terms, "forgiving a debt" means writing it off, so you don't owe the money anymore. So look at it this way: if you borrowed $1000 and never paid it back, and your creditor eventually forgave your debt, you wouldn't owe that money anymore. You wouldn't get dunning letters or harrassment by bill collectors.
But your credit history would still stink.
This is a shocking story. I can't do much other than excerpt and post links. I hope other people will be able to find more to say about it, but I wanted to at least bring it to the attention of the community here.
It started in September 2006 when some black kids sat under the white kids' tree at school.
The next day, nooses showed up hanging in that tree.
We? The church. Specifically the Roman Catholic church.
Another what?
Another priest who has killed himself over allegations of sexual abuse.
It breaks my heart.
(This may sound from the title like a diary that has relevance only to Christians, but it's not.)
Koinonia is a Greek term used in the New Testament and in some patristic writings. It is most commonly translated into Latin as communio, and into English as communion. But other terms that are used more or less interchangeably with it are peace (in the active sense of a pact or alliance), harmony, unity, love (agape), society. Most fundamentally, koinonia seems to mean "participation in a shared reality".[1]
The recent diary on the KJV got me thinking this would be an interesting survey and maybe discussion.
Which version(s) (translations, editions, etc) of your sacred scriptures do you use, and why?
Do you use different versions for study, worship, devotion?
What about online versions or other software tools?
Did you have a children's version when you were little?
Me, I'm a huge fan of...
I popped over to BuyBlue.org tonight and was shocked to find the following message:
The BuyBlue team would like to thank you for all of your support over the past 2 years, unfortunately we are shutting our virtual doors.
We hope that we've been able to educate consumers and inspire people to take action and vote with their wallets. Maybe another group will take up this charge in the future, but for now we can no longer do so.
If you are preaching this weekend, or preparing intercessory prayers, or anything of a similar nature:
please, please remember -- and acknowledge -- that sitting in your congregation there may very well be men and women whose experience of "mothers" is not exactly something to celebrate.
Catholic feminist theologian Rosemary Ruether will be leading a 10 day spiritual pilgrimage through sacred sites in Mexico in June 14-24. The trip is sponsored by GATE: Global Awareness Through Experience, and is open to women and men.
According to an email I received today, the trip is in danger of being cancelled for insufficient registration - they need about 5 more people.
In order for GATE to plan the trip, they need to know names and have deposits of $150 from individuals ideally by Monday.
The cost of the trip (exclusive of airfare) is $1250, plus a $150 registration fee.
A bit more info below the flip.
I knew the price of stamps was going up again. What I didn't know was that this time, the proposed rate hike was a comprehensive change to periodical rate structure that benefits high-volume periodicals and penalizes small presses.
I think it's fair to describe this as a postal equivalent of "net neutrality": high volume customers seem to have negotiated preferential rates.
More below...
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