Another Setting of the Kenotic Hymn

Caroline Noel sang the Kenotic Hymn from St Paul's Letter to the Philippians in a famous setting (King's Weston) --and singing this version of the hymn is an experience of being caught up into the joy, the suffering, and the glory of Jesus Christ:

	Clyde McLennan - At the Name of Jesus
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

At the Name of Jesus
every knee shall bow,
every tongue confess him
King of glory now;
'tis the Father's pleasure
we should call him Lord,
who from the beginning
was the mighty Word.

At his voice creation
sprang at once to sight,
all the angel faces,
all the hosts of light,
Thrones and Dominations,
stars upon their way,
all the heavenly orders,
in their great array.

Humbled for a season,
to receive a Name
from the lips of sinners,
unto whom he came,
faithfully he bore it
spotless to the last,
brought it back victorious,
when from death he passed;

Bore it up triumphant,
with its human light,
through all ranks of creatures,
to the central height,
to the throne of Godhead,
to the Father's breast;
filled it with the glory
of that perfect rest.

Name him, brothers, name him,
with love as strong as death,
but with awe and wonder
and with bated breath;
he is God the Savior,
he is Christ the Lord,
ever to be worshiped,
trusted, and adored.

In your hearts enthrone him;
there let him subdue
all that is not holy,
all that is not true;
crown him as your Captain
in temptation's hour;
let his will enfold you
in its light and power.

Brothers, this Lord Jesus
shall return again,
with his Father's glory
with his angel train;
for all wreaths of empire
meet upon his brow,
and our hearts confess him
King of Glory now.

Prochoice pragmatism

I was recently directed to a reflection piece by Dr. Jacob Appel on harvesting organs from aborted babies. His pragmatism is telling.

"The first striking feature of fetal organs is that their supply, for all practical purposes, is unlimited. Unlike living kidney donors, who must then advance through life with only one functioning kidney, pregnant women who provide fetal kidneys could do so repeatedly without incurring the medical consequences of adult organ loss."

I think it's time for somebody to turn in their medical ethics license.

Dr. Appel is no doubt a brilliant academic. According to his biography, he has earned the A.B. and A.M. from Brown University, the M.A. and M.Phil. from Columbia University, the M.D. from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. No slug in the classroom, to be sure - either as a student or as a professor.

He has most recently taught at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was honored with the Undergraduate Council of Students Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. He publishes in the field of bioethics and contributes to such publications as the Journal of Clinical Ethics, the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, the Hastings Center Report, and the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.

I noticed that Dr. Appel is admitted to the practice of law in New York State and Rhode Island, and is a licensed New York City sightseeing guide...but he's not licensed as a physician.* Maybe you should have to have a license (and clinical experience - i.e., helping people wrestle with these issues in the flesh) to practice biomedical ethics.

As others have pointed out, once you give in to killing the unborn, no moral cretinism is too low for you to stoop...no matter how many postnominal letters one has.

*It appears he is serving a residency in psychiatry at Mount Sinai - very prestigious. Yet I don't see him listed under the AMA's finder for NY, which hosts licensing information for all MDs and DOs, whether AMA members or not. He may not have taken the USMLE yet...but then how is he doing a residency?

City Council Livonia MI Glenn Moon

This is a video so come to the blog to visit.


Okay...who wrote his speech? Bishop Bizarro?

Fire and Ice

video of ELE asteroid impact.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Frost, Robert. Miscellaneous Poems to 1920.

There, now you can have your cake and eat it, too.

Johnny Cash just got served

This is a video, so you need to go to the original post.

Zombie 900 Number

I can't imagine what demographic they're aiming at.

Government Health Care as Good as the Post Office

Repost with supporting arguments at the bottom.

Yeah, BHO...that'll win us over.

Seriously...where has the government forcibly taken over an industry and made it better?

Government has never reduced the cost of a service - it cannot - but it can redirect access through the use of force (in the end, the police power of the state to harm or imprison us). Seniors know this, and that's why they're being so patriotic right now. Here's comment from today's WSJ.

Obama's Senior Moment

Elderly Americans are turning out in droves to fight ObamaCare, and President Obama is arguing back that they have nothing to worry about. Allow us to referee. While claims about euthanasia and "death panels" are over the top, senior fears have exposed a fundamental truth about what Mr. Obama is proposing: Namely, once health care is nationalized, or mostly nationalized, rationing care is inevitable, and those who have lived the longest will find their care the most restricted.

***

Far from being a scare tactic, this is a logical conclusion based on experience and common-sense. Once health care is a "free good" that government pays for, demand will soar and government costs will soar too. When the public finally reaches its taxing limit, something will have to give on the care and spending side. In a word, care will be rationed by politics.

Mr. Obama's reply is that private insurance companies already ration, by deciding which treatments are covered and which aren't. However, there's an ocean of difference between coverage decisions made under millions of voluntary private contracts and rationing via government. An Atlantic Ocean, in fact. Virtually every European government with "universal" health care restricts access in one way or another to control costs, and it isn't pretty.

The British system is most restrictive, using a black-box actuarial formula known as "quality-adjusted life years," or QALYs, that determines who can receive what care. If a treatment isn't deemed to be cost-effective for specific populations, particularly the elderly, the National Health Service simply doesn't pay for it. Even France—which has a mix of public and private medicine—has fixed reimbursement rates since the 1970s and strictly controls the use of specialists and the introduction of new medical technologies such as CT scans and MRIs.

Yes, the U.S. "rations" by ability to pay (though in the end no one is denied actual care). This is true of every good or service in a free economy and a world of finite resources but infinite wants. Yet no one would say we "ration" houses or gasoline because those goods are allocated by prices. The problem is that governments ration through brute force—either explicitly restricting the use of medicine or lowering payments below market rates. Both methods lead to waiting lines, lower quality, or less innovation—and usually all three.

A lot of talk has centered on what Sarah Palin inelegantly called "death panels." Of course rationing to save the federal fisc will be subtler than a bureaucratic decision to "pull the plug on grandma," as Mr. Obama put it. But Mrs. Palin has also exposed a basic truth. A substantial portion of Medicare spending is incurred in the last six months of life.

From the point of view of politicians with a limited budget, is it worth spending a lot on, say, a patient with late-stage cancer where the odds of remission are long? Or should they spend to improve quality, not length, of life? Or pay for a hip or knee replacement for seniors, when palliative care might cost less? And who decides?

In Britain, the NHS decides, and under its QALYs metric it generally won't pay more than $22,000 for treatments to extend a life six months. "Money for the NHS isn't limitless," as one NHS official recently put it in response to American criticism, "so we need to make sure the money we have goes on things which offer more than the care we'll have to forgo to pay for them."

Before he got defensive, Mr. Obama was open about this political calculation. He often invokes the experience of his own grandmother, musing whether it was wise for her to receive a hip replacement after a terminal cancer diagnosis. In an April interview with the New York Times, he wondered whether this represented a "sustainable model" for society. He seems to believe these medical issues are all justifiably political questions that government or some panel of philosopher kings can and should decide. No wonder so many seniors rebel at such judgments that they know they could do little to influence, much less change.

Mr. Obama has also said many times that the growth of Medicare spending must be restrained, and his budget director Peter Orszag has made it nearly his life's cause. We agree, but then why does Mr. Obama want to add to our fiscal burdens a new Medicare-like program for everyone under 65 too? Medicare already rations care, refusing, for example, to pay for virtual colonsocopies and has payment policies or directives to curtail the use of certain cancer drugs, diagnostic tools, asthma medications and many others. Seniors routinely buy supplemental insurance (Medigap) to patch Medicare's holes—and Medicare is still growing by 11% this year.

The political and fiscal pressure to further ration Medicare would increase exponentially if government is paying for most everyone's care. The better way to slow the growth of Medicare is to give seniors more control over their own health care and the incentives to spend wisely, by offering competitive insurance plans. But this would mean less control for government, not more.

***

It's striking that even the AARP—which is run by liberals who favor national health care—has been backing away from support for Mr. Obama's version. The AARP leadership's Democratic sympathies will probably prevail in the end, perhaps after some price-control sweeteners are added for prescription drugs. But AARP is out of touch with its own members, who have figured out that their own health and lives are at stake in this debate over ObamaCare. They know that when medical discretion clashes with limited government budgets, medicine loses.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

From the Gipper

1. “My fellow Americans. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes.” - joking during a mike check before his Saturday radio broadcast
2. “I hope you’re all Republicans.” - Speaking to surgeons as he entered the operating room following a 1981 assassination attempt
3. “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting.” - Said many times during his presidency, 1981-1989
4. “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” - Said during his presidency, 1981-1989
5. “Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”
6. “Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.” - Remarks at a business conference, Los Angeles, March 2, 1977
7. “Thomas Jefferson once said, “We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.’ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.”
8. “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” - during a 1984 presidential debate with Walter Mondale
9. “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” - The New York Times, September 22, 1980
10. “What makes him think a middle-aged actor, who’s played with a chimp, could have a future in politics?” - on Clint Eastwood’s bid to become mayor of Carmel.

Death By Chocolatelessness?

A new report released by the AFP says that chocolate can actually reduce the risk of morbidity in heart attack survivors. When I was growing up, one of my favorite deserts was Death By Chocolate (at Bennigans?)

Anyway, I guess they're going to have to find a new name for it. But consider this a pre-emptive strike.

Psalm 8 tonight

Tonight is the annual Perseid shower. Don't miss it! It will put you in a Psalm 8 mood.

	Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist - The Majesty and Glory of Your Name
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

For more tips on viewing, go to Earth & Sky. There are several future showers, too. August is a happening month in terms of skywatching.

Londonderry Air Hymns

Some time ago, I blogged a musical setting of Philippians 2:6-11, the Kenotic Hymn. It's been popular, so I've been looking at other songs to that tune - Londonderry Air (meter 11.10.11.10D). Here's the tune so you can sing along.

	Clyde McLennan - I cannot tell why He
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Here are some of the treasures, just for your Worship Wednesday:

Lord of the Church, We Pray for our Renewing

1 Lord of the church, we pray for our renewing:
Christ over all, our undivided aim.
Fire of the Spirit, burn for our enduing,
wind of the Spirit, fan the living flame!
We turn to Christ amid our fear and failing,
the will that lacks the courage to be free,
the weary labours, all but unavailing,
to bring us nearer what a church should be.

2 Lord of the church, we seek a Father's blessing,
a true repentance and a faith restored,
a swift obedience and a new possessing,
filled with the Holy Spirit of the Lord!
We turn to Christ from all our restless striving,
unnumbered voices with a single prayer:
the living water for our souls' reviving,
in Christ to live, and love and serve and care.

3 Lord of the church, we long for our uniting,
true to one calling, by one vision stirred;
one cross proclaiming and one creed reciting,
one in the truth of Jesus and his word!
So lead us on; till toil and trouble ended,
one church triumphant one new song shall sing,
to praise his glory, risen and ascended,
Christ over all, the everlasting King!

Timothy Dudley-Smith (b.1926)
Text © Timothy Dudley-Smith in Europe (including UK and Ireland) and in all territories not controlled by Hope Publishing Company.

O CHRIST THE SAME, THROUGH ALL OUR STORY'S PAGES

O Christ the same through all our story's pages,
our loves and hopes, our failures and our fears;
eternal Lord, the King of all the ages,
unchanging still, amid the passing years:
O living Word, the source of all creation,
who spread the skies, and set the stars ablaze,
O Christ the same, who wrought our whole salvation,
we bring our thanks for all our yesterdays.

O Christ the same, the friend of sinners, sharing
our inmost thoughts, the secrets none can hide,
still as of old upon your body bearing
the marks of love, in triumph glorified:
O Son of Man, who stooped for us from heaven,
O Prince of life, in all your saving power,
O Christ the same, to whom our hearts are given,
we bring our thanks for this the present hour.

O Christ the same, secure within whose keeping
our lives and loves, our days and years remain,
Our work and rest, our waking and our sleeping,
our calm and storm, our pleasure and our pain:
O Lord of love, for all our joys and sorrows,
for all our hopes, when earth shall fade and flee,
O Christ the same, beyond our brief tomorrows,
we bring our thanks for all that is to be.

—Timothy Dudley-Smith, from A HOUSE OF PRAISE: COLLECTED HYMNS, 1961-2001, © 2003 Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188, ISBN 0-916642-74-7. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

A solid antecommunion from Susan Peterson:

“I am the Vine; My Father is the Gardener.
Each branch that bears no fruit, He cuts away;
While every branch that yields good fruit, He trims and cleans,
So that it will still more produce each day.
Now you are clean because of My Word’s work in you.
Remain in Me, and I’ll remain in you.
Just as a branch without the vine can bear no fruit,
So you must stay in Me if you would bear fruit too.

“I am the Vine; if you, like branches, stay in Me
And I in you, you’ll bear much fruit in turn.
Apart from Me, you can accomplish naught for God;
You’re like a branch that withers and is burned.
But if you stay in Me and I in you each day,
Ask what you wish; it will be given you.
God will be glorified because you bear much fruit,
For thus you show yourselves to be disciples true.

“Just as the Father loves Me, so I love you too.
Obey My Word, and you’ll stay in My care,
Just as I too obey My Father God above,
And in His love remain fore’er and e’er.
I’ve told you this so that My joy may be in you,
And that your own joy may now overflow.
Here’s My command: Love others just as I’ve loved you;
To die for friends—this is the greatest love you’ll know.

“You are My friends if you do what I now command;
You’re not mere servants, knowing not My will.
I’ve called you friends, for everything I’ve learned from God,
I have made known, and now I tell you still.
You chose Me not, but I have chosen each of you,
To go and bear much fruit that will remain.
Then God will give you all you ask in My own Name.
Love one another; hear now My command again.”

Here's one to sing whenever you remember Constantine:

Above the hills of time the cross is gleaming,
Fair as the sun when night has turned to day;
And from it love’s pure light is richly streaming,
To cleanse the heart and banish sin away.
To this dear cross the eyes of men are turning,
Today as in the ages lost to sight;
And for Thee, O Christ, men’s hearts are yearning,
As shipwrecked seamen yearn for morning light.

The cross, O Christ, Thy wondrous love revealing,
Awakes our hearts as with the light of morn,
And pardon o’er our sinful spirits stealing,
Tells us that we, in Thee, have been reborn.
Like echoes to sweet temple bells replying
Our hearts, O Lord, make answer to Thy love;
And we will love Thee with a love undying,
Till we are gathered to Thy home above.

Finally, this tune - London Derry Air - can appropriately be sung at funerals! Here are two offerings:

(Tune: Londonderry / Boyce-Tilman)

We shall go out with hope of resurrection,
We shall go out, from strength to strength go on,
We shall go out and tell our stories boldly,
Tales of a love that will not let us go.
We'll sing our songs of wrongs that can be righted,
We'll dream our dream of hurts that can be healed,
We'll weave a cloth of all the world united
Within the vision of a Christ who sets us free.

We'll give a voice to those who have not spoken,
We'll find the words for those whose lips are sealed,
We'll make the tunes for those who sing no longer,
Vibrating love alive in every heart.
We'll share our joy with those who are still weeping,
Chant hymns of strength for hearts that break in grief,
We'll leap and dance the resurrection story
Including all within the circles of our love.


Go Silent Friend

Go, silent friend,
your life has found its ending:
To dust returns your weary mortal frame.
God, who before birth called you into being,
Now calls you hence, his ascent still the same.

Go, silent friend,
your life in Christ is buried;
For you He lived and died and rose again.
Close by His side your promised place is waiting
Where, fully known, you shall with God remain.

Go, silent friend,
forgive us if we grieved you;
Safe now in heaven, kindly say our name.
Your life has touched us, that is why we mourn you;
Our lives without you cannot be the same.

Go, silent friend,
we do not grudge your glory;
Sing, sing with joy deep praises to your Lord.
You, who believed that Christ would come back for you,
Now celebrate that Jesus keeps his word.

© 1996 WGRG, Iona Community

A Mother Load!

Okay...I've not been blogging much. It's because I've been slogging through tons of flood backup in my basement.

The good Lord promised never to destroy the whole earth by floods again, but he said nothing about my computers and 20+ book cases. So imagine my delight when I found that my library - while physically diminished - is growing thanks to Google Books. The University of Birmingham has a fantastic bibliography of neo-Latin texts, including plenty of solid gold from the Reformation.

Almost makes you want to run out and sign up for the Cambridge or Oxford Latin course, huh?

The Gospel in the Prayer Book

THE GOSPEL IN THE PRAYER BOOK

by David N. Samuel

When we consider this subject, we must remember the circumstances in which the Book of Common Prayer was compiled. It took shape in the crucible of the Reformation. A new light had dawned from the Scriptures. That light was the message of salvation which had lain hidden for centuries previously in the dark ages of the Church in Europe.

It is difficult for us today to appreciate what really happened, and how new this all seemed to the Reformers, both on the Continent and here in England. The way of salvation in the Church of the Middle Ages was that of good works. Good works, it was taught, made a good man, made a righteous man. Good works made it possible for you to stand before God and to be accepted by Him. However, in order to do those good works you had to receive grace to strengthen you. Grace, at that time, was thought of as a sort of thing or substance that you received automatically, (ex opere operato), through the sacraments, through baptism, through the mass, through penance, and through the prayers of the saints. It was unlikely that anyone would go directly to heaven because he would not be good enough (only a few, exceptional 'saints', might do that), and therefore every baptized Christian would have to spend time, a very considerable time, thousands of years, in purgatory after this life, where his sins would be purged out by fire.

That was broadly the scheme of salvation taught by the medieval Church. Then came the dawn of the Reformation. That dawn came from the great light that shone from the Bible. It was as if a bright light suddenly illuminated a room that had formerly been in darkness. The central message of the Scriptures, which the Reformers discovered, was this: that we are justified by grace, that is, the free mercy of God, and not by our works, not by our merits. We are justified, that is, declared righteous before God, by grace through faith alone, not by works, lest any man should boast.

This is the great emphasis of the New Testament. The Reformers rediscovered it. They found, by reading the New Testament in Greek, that "to be justified" does not mean "to be made righteous in ourselves", which is what the Latin translations seemed to imply, but rather "to be counted righteous" before God, for the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. That put an entirely different complexion on things. "He [that is Christ] is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30). At the heart of the Gospel message is the concept of "the great exchange". Christ, as the innocent and righteous One, came into the world to take our place as the guilty, condemned sinner and we, by the mercy and free grace of God, take His place, and are seen in the eyes of God as justified and righteous.

Let me quote from a passage by Martin Luther in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians which, I think, sets this forth so vividly:

"The doctrine of the Gospel speaketh nothing of our works or of the works of the Law, but of the inestimable mercy and love of God towards most wretched and miserable sinners; that our most merciful Father sent His only Son into the world and laid upon Him all the sins of all men, saying, 'Be Thou Peter that denier, Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor, that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise, that thief hanged upon the cross; briefly be Thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men. See, therefore, that Thou pay and satisfy for them.' Now cometh the Law and saith: I find Him a sinner, One that hath taken upon Him the sins of all men, and I see no sins but in Him, therefore let Him die upon the cross; and so it setteth upon Him and killeth Him. By this means the whole world is purged. God would see nothing else in the whole world, if it did believe, but a mere cleansing and righteousness."

Now that is the Gospel as set forth in the Scriptures, especially in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. That is the Gospel that our Reformers, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, also rediscovered in the Bible: "The Lord our Righteousness", for we have no righteousness of our own. "He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness" (Isaiah 61:10). This is the robe of Christ's imputed righteousness, counted to us who are sinners. We are still sinners even when we are saved, we are still sinners in ourselves, but we are righteous in the sight of God, because Christ's righteousness is credited or imputed to us by faith.

Now that is the teaching of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and of the Book of Common Prayer. When Cranmer and the other Reformers found afresh this teaching in the Bible, they incorporated it into the official teaching of the Church of England. Article 11 Of the Justification of Man, which is one of the fundamental articles, on which hinges the doctrine of the Church of England, as reformed and catholic, states,

"We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings: Wherefore, that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholesome Doctrine and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification."

If you refer to the Book of Homilies, you will find that the title is in fact not the Homily of Justification, but the Homily of Salvation. Did Cranmer make a mistake in calling it the Homily of Justification? No, but by so naming it he intended to show that salvation is justification by faith, and justification by faith is salvation. They are one and the same thing. Justification by faith is not a part of what it means to be saved, but the whole thing. Justification by faith is not just the entrance or beginning of the Christian's life, it is the whole of it from beginning to end.

Iain Murray, in his biography of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones, writes that on one of the last occasions he saw Dr Lloyd-Jones, when he was dying, he said to Mr Murray: "I am nothing but an old sinner saved by grace." He was quoting the words of Daniel Rowlands, which underline this experience of the saints, that salvation is of grace, through faith, from beginning to end....

So you see, the Book of Common Prayer is full of the grace and salvation of God. It expresses clearly the Biblical Gospel, the Gospel of justification by grace through faith alone. The Book of Common Prayer is no random sequence of prayers and devotions, but through it all, undergirding it, informing it, and structuring it, is the Gospel of the free grace of God to us, in Jesus Christ. As a body is supported by its frame, by the bones, by the skeleton, which give it shape, beauty and strength; so it is with the Book of Common Prayer and its Biblical doctrines. It is the doctrines of grace that give it its real beauty, strength, and power. I am fully aware that it is composed in very beautiful language, and this has a special appeal, but its real strength and beauty, its lasting power, reside in the doctrine that informs and shapes it. The Book of Common Prayer and the true message of God's salvation in Jesus Christ are closely and inseparably conjoined.

Read the whole thing...

In Case You Were Wondering

This is a zombie post. If you're reading on facebook, select "view original post"


So this is what happened to turn Romero's shambling hordes into the fast running ghouls of late.

All it took was for Chairman Kaga to join the ranks undead, and then the excellence began.

Single Payer Spin

If you're reading on Facebook - click original post for youtube.


How anyone believes this man's claims to be a moderate - in spite of his own words - is beyond me.

Muppets Stop Making Sense

If you're reading on facebook, this is an embedded video. Go to the original post to view.

It was too good not to share.

Honor Christenings on the Rise in Some Churches

I'm sure this has been all over the media.

KINGSTON, Ontario: Police say they are investigating whether the soakings of three teenage sisters and a 50-year-old woman found in a car in a church parking lot last month were an "honor christening" by relatives.

Kingston Police Chief Stephen Tanner said Thursday a father, his wife and their son are charged with four counts of first-degree watering.

The three sisters and the man's first wife were found in the car in the Rideau Canal near Kingston, Ontario on June 30.

Tanner said one overseas family member believes it could be an "honor christening." Experts say such baptisms are still accepted among some Christians.

The family, originally from Shrewesbury, England spent 15 years in London before moving to Montreal two years ago.

The accused are Jeremy Upton, his wife Valerie and his 18-year-old son Ashley.

Mr. Upton had told police the baptisms occurred as the family was headed home after vacationing in Niagara Falls and had stopped for the night at a Kingston hotel.

He said the family was traveling in two cars and that he awoke to find one car missing. He reported the car missing to police and said his eldest daughter was known to take the family car without permission or a licence.

Police said their investigation proved that allegation to be false, and that in fact all three accused had operated the vehicle that wound up parked near a church.

"All shared the rights within our great country to live without fear, to enjoy safety and freedom ... and yet had their coifs ruined by members of their own family," Tanner said.

The victims are Meredith, 19, Lilly, 17, and Gwynneth, 13, along with Susan Epston.

Both parents described the eldest, Meredith, as a rebellious and secular young woman.

(source and another) I just "christofascianized" the regular practice for our children and placed it on the story of Islamic "Honor Killings" happening in increasingly secularized western democracies. Some people want to pretend that all religious extremism is the same, and that Christianity has no claim of better behavior in the modern world than any other religion. They assure us that this has nothing to do with the Muslim religion.

Amin Muhammad, a Memorial University expert who is preparing a paper on the topic for the federal Justice Department, says honour killing is not religiously motivated.

"Nothing in the Muslim religion would justify this. Nothing in any religion would justify this," he said. "It's based on personal agendas, personal egos, personal mindsets."

Sure...you see it all the time in Christian households.

The practice dates back hundreds of years to rural and tribal areas of Pakistan and is generally committed by family members against women who have engaged in illicit pre-marital or extramarital relations. In some cases, it can even target victims of sexual assault.

Right. You know...some religions that emphasize spreading the Love of God stamped that out of their rural tribal life a long time ago.

A man who feels such an act has dishonoured the family will kill the woman in question as a means of restoring that honour. Motives for honour killing, however, have started to expand beyond female adultery, targeting women for enjoying basic freedoms, Mr. Muhammad said.

Funny...most Christian parents in similar settings decide to help their daughters enter the bonds of holy matrimony instead. I guess these are equivalent...who am I to judge, right?

"In some cases, they just don't want the woman to have the liberty to choose her own lifestyle," he said.

The practice exemplifies a deeply entrenched gender bias against women, said Angela Henderson, an expert on domestic violence at the University of British Columbia. In most cases, men who similarly breach cultural norms tend to be subjected to less severe punishments.

Right...it's all about gender bias, which is why all those mouth-breathing, anti-feminist conservatoid Christian haters in the Southern Baptist Convention are doing it.

You know...it just might have to do with the fact that the religions of the world demand sacrifice and blood atonement for sin, and Christianity has already finished that in the work of Christ. You think?

But the intense public spotlight that follows killings -- which often focuses on the perceived clash between Western and Middle Eastern values -- deflects attention from a much larger issue, she said. "I don't think you can [simply] put it down to culture," Ms. Henderson said. "Eleven per cent of women can expect to experience some form of violence from somebody they know in their lifetime ... it's about power and control, a way of enforcing what a man thinks a woman should be doing."

Face it, folks...secularism isn't going to be able to stand up to the mind virus of Islamic extremism. Look at how we've bought into the narcissistic apocalypticism of anthropogenic global warming. From a purely secular point of view, Christianity serves as a mild inoculation against such radicalism - and has a proven history of transforming societies towards democracy and improving the lot of women.

Economics Fail

If you're reading on facebook, this is a youtube of the video I posted earlier from Maxine Waters.


I'd forgotten about this. Thanks to a facebook reminder.

Congress is making insane policy decisions because people are in charge who have no idea of the basics of supply and demand.

Starbucks, anyone?

In Defense of Liberty

"Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue."

— John Adams

"It is in the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. . . . degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats into the heart of its laws and constitution."

— Thomas Jefferson

"[In a republic, according to Montesquieu in Spirit of the Laws, IV,ch.5,] 'virtue may be defined as the love of the laws and of our country. As such love requires a constant preference of public to private interest, it is the source of all private virtue; for they are nothing more than this very preference itself... Now a government is like everything else: to preserve it we must love it . . . Everything, therefore, depends on establishing this love in a republic; and to inspire it ought to be the principal business of education; but the surest way of instilling it into children is for parents to set them an example.'"

— Thomas Jefferson copied into his Commonplace Book.

"If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the ends of government are accomplished . . ."

— Algernon Sidney

ANYTHING IN THERE ABOUT NATIONALIZED HEALTHCARE?

Finally, something old and something new.

"Today it would be progress if everyone would stop talking about values. Instead, let us talk, as the Founders did, about virtues."
— George Will

"Righteousness exalteth a nation."
— Proverbs 14:34

Martha Faith in a Mary Church

Today is the Feast of St. Martha. Some people snub her as a busy body...too busy to sit at Jesus' feet and listen to him. I think that's an unfair take on her dedicated service.

Something that's missing from so many "MARY vs. MARTHA" sermons is a respect for how Martha's dedicated service led to faith. The focus on the Lucan account would have us believe that Martha is unwilling to learn from Jesus - as Mary sits at his feet. The homiletic curve normally goes something along these lines:
a) Martha was so busy she forgot to spend time with the Lord.
b) Mary chose the better part by sitting down and spending time with Jesus in private devotion.
c) You should be less like Mary and more like Martha.

As far as it goes, it's not bad. We live in a world that pushes busyness on us as a virtue. (Multi-tasking, anyone?) But there's something uncomfortably privatized for me in that piety. And we see it played out in the next canonical encounter with Mary and Martha. Look at John 11:

11:1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. 3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” 4 But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

Notice that v. 5 explicitly puts Martha front in center in Jesus' affection. Is that just because she always fed him and his companions well? (The stomach being the surest route to a man's heart?)

No! It's because - like our Lord who put flesh on the Word - she was incarnating her belief. The next verses illustrate my point:

17 Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. 18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. 20 So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” 23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” 27 She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

Notice how firm Martha's belief is in her Lord! If she hadn't spent all that time sitting and listening, but had instead been busy working and cooking, etc. then how had she reached such doctrinal heights? After all, Peter's confession of the same was met by Jesus with an acclamation of divine revelation! So how is it that Martha knew?

Because of this great truth: We know Jesus to the extent that we follow him, and not one whit more!

Mary knew Jesus from learning at his feet. But had she walked the way of self-giving service that Martha had? Or had she thought that following Jesus was just about listening to the right lectures, contemplating his words, and discussing his teaching? Maybe...maybe not. But one thing is clear. When the rubber of one's faith hits the road of life's suffering, Martha's spirituality held up considerably better than Mary's.

28 When [Martha] had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” 29 And when [Mary] heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Martha's servant faith - an active walking after the pattern of her Lord's self-giving - was able to hold her up during the storm of suffering and grief. Her enacted faith was able to break forth in doxological, propositional truth when the push came to shove! There is something that we learn on a level deeper than logic - a reason which Reason cannot know - that is put into our heart of hearts when we walk the Christian road, instead of simply witness it.

When will the church realize that creedal assent without Christlike action is just as dead as Christlike action without creedal assent?

I invite you to throw all docetic, gnostic, intellectualized religion aside and to get into the trenches where Jesus walks today. Serve your neighbor as you would serve to honor Christ. Pray morning and evening, offering your day up to God and thanking him for the opportunity to glorify his Son in your daily service. Embody hospitality to others in the name of him who went to make a home for us with the Father. (Some practical suggestions are here, here, and here.)

And when the storms of life come, you'll find that Jesus - in the fullness of his resurrection power - has been walking beside you, teaching your heart in the stillness, and is closer to you than you could have possibly imagined.

Collect: Father, your Son honored St. Martha by coming to her home as a guest. Grant that we also may serve Christ in our brothers and sisters and be welcomed by you into heaven, our true home. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

On the new ACNA's Party Divisions

CS Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters features a senior devil called Screwtape writing to his nephew, a junior devil named Wormwood, giving him advice on how to entrap a human called “the Patient.” In my reading I noticed again this passage (from letter XVI) as relevant today as 67 years ago when first published:

I warned you before that if your patient can’t be kept out of the Church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it. I don’t mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more lukewarm he is the better. And it isn’t the doctrines on which we chiefly depend for producing malice. The real fun is working up hatred between those who say “mass” and those who say “holy communion” when neither party could possibly state the difference between, say, Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’, in any form which would hold water for five minutes.

And all the purely indifferent things-candles and clothes and what not-are an admirable ground for our activities. We have quite removed from men’s minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials-namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples.

You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the “low” churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his “high” brother should be moved to irreverence, and the “high” one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his “low” brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility,

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

If you've never read The Screwtape Letters, I highly advise it. There are reading guides aplenty, and a Sunday School discussion group would be excellent. This book will give you excellent insight into the ways the EVIL ONE uses our religious impulses against us, even in the true religion of Christianity.

The mainline denominations flagged and failed under the weight of making party distinctions the sine qua non of ordination - while ignoring whether the candidate for ordination was actually a Christian. Dogmas like the physical resurrection of the Christ, the Triune Godhead, and original sin could be thrown under the bus so long as you held to something sounding like a distinctive of your denomination.

So the Anglicans let in all sorts of poppycock in the name of the Oxford Movement (which also re-introduced plenty of fine practices). Just harp on the tactile succession of bishops and the place of the church as steering society, and you're in! You don't have to actually believe the faith of the apostles...just get in line and touch somebody who touched somebody who touched somebody that might have believed the witness of the Apostles and carried on that deposit. You'll be qualified to teach with apostolic authority (even if you teach contrary to their doctrine) and you may get to touch some special people yourself (when you aren't lapsing into alcohol abuse). Do enough of this, and you get to be the presiding bishop-ess and teach people about a new divinity known as mother jesus!

The Reformed allowed universalism to creep into their midst through an appropriation of God's sovereignty in the salvation of humanity. As long as you held that it was God who made the decision, you could attribute to him whatever decision you wished - ignoring Jesus' warning that not many will enter into eternal felicity or trod that narrow road. And of course the desire for a highly-educated clergy meant that often times the pastor could outwit the congregation into thinking that Church has been wrong about all sorts of things...as long as s/he footnoted enough and threw enough jargon at them. You may even get to start changing language about God, once you've skewed the whole concept of language in your favor.

Lutherans turned their confessionally robust Christ into a zeitgeist infused prophet by virtue of the kenotic theory. Once Christ is no longer Lord, you needn't reverence or obey him...that's "law" and not grace. And so you end up knowing God through a defanged Jesus, and suddenly God is no longer the Most Holy, Undivided, and Consubstantial Trinity, but a being of your own making...maybe even a Goddess! The resultant antinomianism speaks for itself.

Are we noticing a pattern that all of these wrong turns, mis-steps (which is another translation of the Greek word the New Testament uses for TRESPASSES and TRANSGRESSIONS) lead to the same place? Abandoning God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ for some strange goddess! Has the church - the new Israel - still not learned the lessons about dancing around the asherah (Ashtaroth / Astarte) poles?

All this is to say that if we are to serve Christ faithfully, and not simply seek to be bound to a party-line, then we must recover the fullness of the Catholic Orthodox Faith that has been shared by all Christians - especially as seen in the Apostles, Niceno-Constanipolitan, and Athanasian Creeds.

The Colonel

WARNING: Double entendre ahead.

Okay...so the canary fighting took me back to my roots in the foot-hills of Appalachia. We weren't fancy enough to have pet birds...unless of course your bird was for eatin' of fightin'! That's right...cock fighting was part of my growing up. I never did it, don't condone it, but I knew some ole boys that did their gamblin' that way. It meant they got to get together with a bunch of other guys and talk about whose was the best - was it size that mattered? Or did skill win the day? And at the end of the night (cock fighting is never done during daylight hours), you get to go home and tell your wife that she's married to the best in town.

A little racy? Yep...and you thought living in the South was all about gentility and manners.

What a lot of so-called civilized folk don't understand is that southern animosity for chickens is well-founded in our survival instincts. It goes back to the War of Northern Aggression. See this mini-documentary.
(NOTE: If you're reading on facebook or another viewer, click through to the original link.)

Having them kill off each other was a defense mechanism. That...and making them delicious.

Of course, you can have too much of a good thing.

Canary Fighting Ring BUSTED

I should probably TWEETy this over at Twitter, but I couldn't post pics and links...

Folks, you just can't make this up. In Shelton, Connecticut nineteen (19) people have been arrested for their participation in a CANARY FIGHTING RING. Granted, when I first heard the news, the kind of fighting canary that came to mind was different. But imagine my surprise when this turned out to be real!

Police said canaries and saffron finches were seized and 19 people were arrested at a Ripton Road address.

“There was 100 canaries fighting, and they were betting on them 'til they were dead. It’s absolutely shocking,” said neighbor Marion Sega.

Police said they served a search warrant at the home after receiving a tip that an illegal bird fight involving 150 canaries and finches was scheduled to take place on Sunday.

Police said 150 canaries and finches, their cages and $8,000 in cash was seized from the Ripton Road home.

Yes, it was a cage match.

“When canaries are bred, they’ll fight to the death and they don’t make the noise that typical roosters make and they don’t smell,” said Sgt. Robert Kozlowski. “They fall under the radar because we wouldn’t think it suspicious if people have a lot of canaries.”

So you mean the stereotypical "cat lady" is just a cover for an underground crime kingpin...er, queenpin?

Shelton police said the birds were discovered while executing a search warrant with the help of state police, state animal control, the Department of Agriculture and Fairfield police.

So far, 8 names have been released to public. At this time, their still unsure as to whether more will be released. They are checking to see if the defendants are [ahem] miners.

And in case you didn't get the joke, here's another gratuitous picture.


Source.

Zombie Rights

From 6dollarshirts...how can you go wrong?

Reading Habits?

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Copy this into your Blog or FB NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other "Book Nerds."


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 5

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Running Total: 10

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X

running total: 15

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X

Running total: 18

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Running total: 24

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X


Running total: 27

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy X
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X


Running total: 32

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante X
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

Running total: 35

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton


Running total: 39

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint Exeupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
x94 Watership Down - Richard Adamson X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole X
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

TOTAL: 47

To be fair, some of these are reduplications. Shakespeare's complete works are inclusive of Hamlet, as Lewis' Chronicles are of the L,W,&W.

And if you haven't read A Confederacy of Dunces...do. A friend once introduced it in an essay as "What if Holden Caufield grew up?"

PS - It's only fair to mention that my BA is in English Lit....so some of these weren't by choice.

PPS - If Pride & Prejudice seems too much to handle, check out the zombie version!

Corn Dog Boogie

This is from a friend's band. Seriously funny stuff.

First Person Shooter Disease

Hysterical. Brilliant!

Camping Fun Fail

Behold the abomination that is the

Microwave S'Mores Maker

Microwave S'mores Maker brings the fun of a campfire to your kitchen! Microwaveable dish makes two s'mores treats in just 30 seconds, allowing you to heat graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate evenly at the same time. Just add water, lift arms and assemble s'mores, lower arms, microwave and enjoy! Dishwasher-safe plastic. Includes instructions. 7 1/2" W x 6 1/4" D x 4" H.

Hey Harriet Carter...you're doing it wrong.

Hetero or not?

Online dictionaries define the adjectives "autological" and "heterological" as follows:

1. A word is autological if and only if it describes itself. For example "short" is autological, since the word "short" is short. "Sophisticated" and "polysyllabic" are also autological.
2. A word is heterological if and only if it does not describe itself. Hence "long" is a heterological word, as is "monosyllabic".

Since autological and heterological are opposites, all words are members of either the set of "autological" words, or the set of "heterological" words.

The paradox is this: is the word "heterological" heterological?

There is no consistent answer: if it is, then it isn't; if it isn't, then it is.

Dog Walks on Water

If you want to hear about God walking on water, go here.

Psalm 2 for the Christians of Iraq

For the persecuted Christians of Iraq, who have had seven churches bombed in the last three days. Christians...they don't hate you; they hate Christ.

From Archbishop Parker's Psalter, set to music by Thomas Tallis.

	Thomas Tallis - Third Mode Melody
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Hobbit House

My wife thinks I'm crazy for wanting to live under the earth. But I think it makes a lot of sense, ecologically and from a security standpoint. Now that I've seen this, I also have the aesthetic argument wrapped up!Some key points of the design and construction:

• Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
• Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
• Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
• Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
• Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
• Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
• Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
• Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
• Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring...)
• Woodburner for heating - renewable and locally plentiful
• Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
• Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
• Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
• Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
• Water by gravity from nearby spring
• Compost toilet
• Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.