This is the Queen for whom the Title 'Gracious' most assuredly Fits

One More Tuesday With Mitch (probably time well spent)

From an interview with Mitch Albom author of 'Tuesdays With Morrie' and the new book,'One More Day'. 

Do you have any sort of notions about what waits for us after death?

Mitch:

Hey, when you’re the guy who wrote "Tuesdays with Morrie" and "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," you’re gonna hear stories. People have been told me that they’ve been visited by someone they’ve lost, or that when they almost died they saw their mother come and hold their hand and say, “It’s not your time yet.” I’ve been told about visions of Jesus, conversations with Jesus. It’s just too much for it to all be hallucinogenic or coincidental. So, yes, I do.

I truly feel that there’s something beyond here. I see it in the sparks of divinity I see inside everybody, even bad people. And I mean, we’re not here on Earth to be worm food. I have an internal belief that there is something beyond here. My hope is that it’s better and that it rewards the good that people have done and takes care of the poor, and the sick, and the suffering, who have not had a fair shake here on Earth.

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/227/story_22738.html

Come let us worship Him.

The Annunciation

IT IS A PRETTY GOOD STORY ISN'T IT?

Crazy for God (and that ain't neccessarily a good thing)*

(I used to like this guy when I was younger. I thought he might be able to bring some intellectual integrity to the religious claims of evangelicals.  Now that I am older I prefer his son's perspective which acknowledges the goofiness and tries to live and speak authentically even when it doesn't support the "God said, I believe it, That settles it" mentality that so distorted my own early 'born again' training.)

Even Schaeffer's father said the powerful preachers they hobnobbed with were "not our sort of people." Schaeffer goes further in "Crazy for God": "In public they maintained an image that was usually quite smooth. In private they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. [James] Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement."

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2007/12/18/frank_schaeffers_roundabout_journey_to_find_faith/

That sort of talk has made the book a hit with the left, including a long review from novelist and onetime L'Abri tourist Jane Smiley in The Nation. But Schaeffer emphasizes that he was trying to tell his own story, not simply become a culture-war turncoat. And he has not turned away from religion, having joined the Greek Orthodox faith.

"At one point in your life, you think faith is an actual thing in itself that you've made some conclusion about. You say things like 'I believe.' I think what Mother Teresa woke up to maybe at some point and that certainly would describe my own journey too, in terms of faith, is that you can't really say 'I believe.' What you say is, 'I hope' something. 'I hope this is true.' And to me that's what faith is."





Crazy for God (and that ain't necessarily a good thing)*

* contrary to what many preachers and evangelists might tell you.

good counsel for melancholics such as 'moi meme'

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness.
The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast.
The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life,
the more we analyze them out into strange finalities
and complex purposes of our own,
the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, and despair.
But it does not matter much,

because

 
no despair of ours
can alter the reality of things,
or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.

Indeed, we are in the midst of it,
and it is in the midst of us,
for it beats in our very blood,
whether we want it to or not.
Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose,
cast our awful solemnity to the winds
and join in the general dance.

- Thomas Merton
New Seeds of Contemplation

see being peace in video section

www.beliefnet.com/features/peace/test2/container01.html

Our Hope.......His Glory

Many find Jesus’ teaching on enemy love and forgiveness a stumbling block to faith. Because we find it too difficult to practice, we dismiss it as unrealistic and utopian. We should think again, and we should pray that it is not unrealistic, because this congruence of Jesus—the consistency between his teaching on forgiveness and his action on the cross—is really our only hope. It is all that stands between us and the consequences of our monumental frailty. Thank God today that Jesus died as he lived, because with those words, "Father, forgive..." he forgives us all, and he forgives us still.

- Peter Storey
Listening at Golgotha: Jesus’ Words from the Cross

"God Bless The Child"

"God Bless The Child"
(Single), Shania Twain
Written by Shania Twain and Mutt Lange.

Hallelujah, hallelujah,
God bless the child who suffers
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
God bless the young without mothers

This child is homeless,
That child's on crack
One plays with a gun,
while the other takes a bullet in his back
This boy's a beggar,
That girl sells her soul
They both work the same street,
The same hell hole

Hallelujah, hallelujah,
God bless the child who suffers
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Let every man help his brother

Some are born addicted and some are just thrown away
Some have daddies who make them play games they don't want to play

But with hope and faith
We must understand
All God's children need is love
And us to hold their little hands

This boy is hungry, he ain't got enought to eat
That girl's cold and she ain't got no shoes on her feet

When a child's spirit's broken
And feels all hope is gone
God help them find the strength to carry on

But with hope and faith
Yea, we can understand
All God's children need is love
And us to hold their little hands

Hallelujah, hallelujah
Let us all love one another
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Make all our hearts bilnd to color
Hallelujah, hallelujah
God bless the child who suffers

Saved By Hope (Pope Benedict xvi)

   Holy See: Benedict XVI
"We must acknowledge that modern Christianity, faced with the successes of science in progressively structuring the world, has to a large extent restricted its attention to the individual and his salvation," he wrote. "In doing so, it has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognize sufficiently the greatness of its task."

The Christian concept of hope and salvation, he says, was not always so individual-centric.

Quoting scripture and theologians, Benedict says salvation had in the earlier church been considered "communal" — illustrating his point by using the case of monks in the Middle Ages who cloistered themselves in prayer not just for their own salvation but for that of others.

"How could the idea have developed that Jesus' message is narrowly individualistic and aimed only at each person singly? How did we arrive at this interpretation of the 'salvation of the soul' as a flight from responsibility for the whole, and how did we come to conceive the Christian project as a selfish search for salvation which rejects the idea of serving others?" he asked.

While seeking to provide answers, he also says there are ways for the faithful to learn and practice true Christian hope: in prayer, in suffering, in taking action and in looking at the Last Judgment as a symbol of hope.


"Saved by Hope," which Benedict largely penned this past summer while on vacation, follows his first encyclical, "God is Love," released last year.
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi