Tag: Religion

Going an extra mile or two

Blue Tilapia
This fellow is tasty.

Holy tilapia!

And let me put in a good word for fasting, and I don’t mean the minimal requirements of the church.

For years, I did longer fasts of five to seven days and it was easier to do than imagined because a little button in my brain related to food just clicked off. I was usually hungry the first day, but not after that. The energy usually given to the digestive process was channeled into a higher state of spiritual awareness. And fasting brought up emotional issues big time, causing psychological as well as physical cleansing.

Fasting is a powerful spiritual tool I urge you to consider. And youre not going to starve or ruin your health in a few days, as some would have you believe. Fasting is great for your health and is recommended many times in the Bible.

Tilapia because it’s the fish we had for dinner that set off the smoke alarm because we left the kitchen door open and set off neither stove nor ceiling fan.

If this be penance, make the most of making fun of us holy people.

This NCReporter lady has obviously given the matter some thought:

Results are what we should be looking for this Lent, lifelong habits and virtues nurtured through our chosen disciplines.

We live in challenging times just as Jesus did, and to be a disciple of Christ requires much spiritual maturity and strength. Following Jesus example, lets go the extra mile and really expose ourselves to the sometimes scary influence of the living God, which just might turn out to be unconditional acceptance and love.

She’s on to something.

P.S. Lady of house did the tilapia, FYI.

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Scripture for dummies

Title page of The Holy Bible, King James versi...
It's got poetry.

Deacon Tom preached from Isaiah 58 this noon, at the mid-day ashes service:

5
Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed, and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
6
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;
7
Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.

 

Thus New American Bible.

I followed along with my King James Version:

5Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?

6Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

7Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

NAB pedestrianizes it, to reach a new, I say lower, common denominator.

It gives up on the rhetorical questioning after verse 5, for one thing, and that lessens the impact.

Some phrases have the same effect:

5Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul?

becomes

5
Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance . . . ?

Another:

to loose the bands of wickedness

becomes

releasing those bound unjustly

A third:

that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

becomes

not turning your back on your own

Not good trade-offs, undue emphasis on the literal, the everyday.

Farrakhan out a billion, madder ‘n hell

Father Pfleger’s best friend Farrakhan has made an important list.  He is now one of the “World’s Top Ten Gaddafi Toads,” per Walter Russell Mead, who puts him at #6 position, between Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi.

Gaddafi toad <— A real toad

Mead:

Like the ever-faithful Hugo Chavez, Louis Farrakhan is a Gaddafi loyalist who loves true and loves long.  Bitterly disappointed when the Clinton administration blocked the transfer of $1 billion of money looted from the hapless Libyan populace to the Nation of Islam back in 1996 (and, worse, blocked the $250,000 honorarium promised to Minister Farrakhan), Farrakhan is still calling Gaddafi a friend, and predicting that America is on the verge of a Libya style uprising.  Sure, Gaddafi has his critics, says Farrakhan, but what leader can count on 100% support?

Distinguished company.  Father Pfleger must be proud.

Elsewhere in the news, in the Jerusalem Post in fact, which has a very big dog in this fight, are a couple of stories that predate Farrakhan’s more recent defense of Gaddafi in Chicago.

Last June, he fingered Jews as black people’s “worst enemy.” 

And in March of ’09, again in Chicago, he fingered Israelis as “liars, thieves, murderers” who have “taken the position of God” and are out to “kill everybody.”

He has a way with words, to be sure.  Still, what does Fr. Pfleger see in him?  What need does he fill.  Father figure?  Hard to figure.

Tags: , ,

Farrakhan on the Jews

Current Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan
What a friend he has in Muammar

There he goes again:

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said on Tuesday that Jews and Zionists are trying to push the US into war and that Zionists dominate the US government and banks.

Farrakhan, 77, made the comments at the Nation of Islams annual meeting near Chicago.

His friend Muammar:

President Obama, Farrakhan said, if you allow the Zionists to push you, to mount a military offensive against Gaddafi and you go in and kill him and his sons, as you did with Saddam Hussein and his sons… Im warning you this is a Libyan problem, let the Libyans solve their problem among themselves.

Farrakhan called Muammar Gaddafi my brother and my friend.

It’s a matter of religious belief:

Some of you think that Im just somebody whos got something out for the Jewish people, Farrakhan said. Youre stupid.

Do you think I would waste my time if I did not think it was important for you to know Satan? My job is to pull the cover off of Satan so that he will never deceive you and the people of the world again.

Anti-Defamation League response:

ADL National Director Abe Foxman said in response that, Anti-Semitism has suffused the Nation of Islams message, and Farrakhan is the standard bearer and bigot in chief… Perhaps what’s more disturbing is that despite his anti-Semitic rants, he has not been made a pariah in his own community. What does it take for him to stop being a pied piper of hatred?

For starters, Fr. Michael Pfleger could disown him. Won’t happen, of course. What a reflection on Pfleger is his friendship with and endorsement of Farrakhan, including his anti-semitism. What a disgrace.

Helping Jesuits get their groove (back)

New v.p. for mission & ministry at the Jesuits’ St. Louis U. The post is not new. It caught my attention because the same appointment was made last March at Wheeling (WV) Jesuit U., where it is new, apparently in anticipation and certainly expectation of Wheeling Jesuit’s hiring its first non-Jesuit president.

The position allows educationally experienced Jesuits who do not want to head a college or university and/or would not be considered for such a job to help shape one in the Jesuit tradition.

This one at St. Louis U. held a similar position at Wheeling Jesuit, in fact, as director of campus ministry — maybe also as director of Mission and Identity, as the release has it. Hmmm. “Campus chaplain” begot “director of campus ministry” begot “director of mission and identity” in the ever-vibrant world of denominating people assigned to college or university.

Point is, the fellow is supposed to steer the institution — St. Louis U. has a Jesuit president, by the way — in direction of its “Catholic, Jesuit identity, character, history and heritage,” which by no means can be taken for granted in the ever-vibrant world of Catholic, Jesuit higher education.  Stay tuned, my friends, stay tuned.

Arrest those people, they offend me

Picture of Billboard put up by the United Amer...
Huh!

Sharia law NOT, says T. More Law Center.

The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) announced today that the City of Dearborn, its Mayor, John B. OReilly, its Chief of Police, Ronald Haddad, 17 City police officers, and two executives of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce were named as defendants in a ninety-six page federal civil rights lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court in Detroit this morning.

Thou shalt not rule Christian preaching out of order.

Give them your tired, your poor, your huddled masses . . .

Kenwood United Church of Christ
No troopers allowed in such a place

Dig this story:

Religious leaders offering sanctuary for Wisconsin Democrats

Leaders include Catholic, Jewish and Protestant faiths

Not kidding. It’s three AP paragraphs out of Madison, tantalizing uninformative. But do you remember when “sanctuary” meant beyond the altar rail for Catholics and the body of the church for Protestants?

Now it’s three hots and a flop for the wretched refuse of the teeming shore of the lake called Michigan and points west.

Wait, BizTimes.com for Milwaukee and SE Wis. has Rev. Jason Coulter, pastor of Ravenswood United Church of Christ in Chicago, and Rabbi Bruce Elder of Congregation Hafaka in Glencoe, Ill. as two of the plucky clergymen.

Light comes to the archbishop

Map of USA with Wisconsin highlighted
Looking for Wisconsin?

On the one hand this, on the other hand that, and why can’t we all just get along?

It is especially in times of crisis that new forms of cooperation and open communication become essential. We request that lawmakers carefully consider the implications of this proposal and evaluate it in terms of its impact on the common good. We also appeal to everyone lawmakers, citizens, workers, and labor unions to move beyond divisive words and actions and work together, so that Wisconsin can recover in a humane way from the current fiscal crisis.

It’s the archbishop of Milwaukee in a valiant attempt to find guidance in encyclicals.

Losing black residents

This Chicago Census Roundup: Why Is Chicago Shrinking? probably does justice to the housing-stock issue but like other analyses treats the black-loss matter in terms solely of migration. But what about the black abortion rate?

Blacks . . . have much higher rates of abortions than whites or other minority groups. In 2000, while blacks made up 17 percent of live births, they made up more than twice that share of abortions (36 percent). . . . . The comparison with whites and other minorities is striking. Whites made up 78 percent of live births, but only 57 percent of abortions. Non-black minorities had 7 percent of live births and 5 percent of abortions.

In other words, there are fewer blacks in general, especially in big cities:

. . . black flight isn’t solely a Chicago phenomenon. New York’s black population declined as well, while the black populations of major Southern metropolises grew.

Unreasonable?