Here's my caption ...

... for a particular Craption over at cracked.com ...

GRUELING PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE FLATTENS IL DIVO.

What's the Bible in 15 words?

I just found a most fascinating meme at Eileen's Episcopalfem blog. The invitation is to describe the Bible in five statements that total 15 words:

1st statement: one word.
2nd statement: two words.
3rd statement: three words.
4th statement: four words.
5th statement: five words.

I couldn't resist. I haven't studied the Bible in about 25 years, although there are passages ("Be still and know I am God") that are embedded in my bones. I jotted down my immediate, intuitive responses as a very lapsed Christian ...

1. Creation.
2. Jesus wept.
3. Lots of blood.
4. The Song of Solomon.
5. Love ... hate ... everything in between.

Wise and beautiful rage ...

... fires through this essay by Adrian Worsfold, via the Episcopal Café.

Somehow the heart is dying inside Christianity, Adrian writes, so that it becomes a pointless husk, where some of its core messages are tossed aside in order to promote one institutional fantasy or another.

Yes, a fantasy ... and a delusion. How is it that our institutions tend to do everything in their power to crush the love out of human hearts?

I left the Anglican Church about 25 years ago, in part because of institutional bullshit that had nothing to do with the love of Christ. That included a priest who stared at my chest, rather than gazed into my eyes, when I was stammering away about my inability to pray and my sincere desire to be what I thought was a holy person.

I've no idea if Jesus actually walked this earth. The question's become moot to me. What matters is the example of the man ... what he chose to reveal and radiate in his relations with others.

In so many ways, religious institutions try to legislate and prohibit our expressions of love -- our natural instinct to relate, bond and be with one another.

This is wrong ... so wrong.



Thanks to the holy mischief of MadPriest, who posted a link to the article. Sigh ... I wish there was one like him in the pulpit of every church ...

Climate change in your neighbourhood ... ?

It's December 1st ... and a big, blue bottlefly was buzzing around my balcony this morning. The grass is naked and ... green ... The wind's out of the southwest and the sky looks July-ish -- big, fluffy, soft-edged cumulus clouds. Last month was the sunniest November I remember in all of my 50 years ... and I read yesterday that in Toronto, where records have been kept every year since about 1847, 2009 stands as the first year ever in which there has been no snow in October or November. Canada's no longer the Great White North, eh?

What are you noticing in your neck o' the woods?

HILARIOUS cartoon for those of a certain age ...

Last Friday was "Red," alright ... (a repost in anticipation of Black Friday)

... Red with blood.

I've just seen an article, titled "Red Friday," that discusses retail profits taken during last week's "Black Friday," -- the day after America's Thanksgiving, the kick-off to the Crassmas shopping season when people seem to boomerang from gratitude to greed ...

... To quote:

There was a lot of positive reaction to the fact that Black Friday retails sales in the U.S. were up about 3% vs. last year.*

I'm sure the loved ones of the two men who shot each other to death in a Toys 'R' Us, and the Wal-Mart greeter who was greeted by being crushed to death by MUST-GET-THAT-DEAL shoppers, are just thrilled.

I can't help but wonder at the stories and legends about the first Thanksgiving on what became the American continent -- I remember, as a child, gazing on pretty picture books that told me how the nice new Americans and the nice old Indians sat down together for a feast that expressed their thanks for earth's bounty; how they stuffed themselves silly then sat back and burped at the stars and that's what Thanksgiving was all about. Just as the baby Jesus, awash in honey-gold light and the goodest baby in the whole wide world, was Christmas.

How wrong I was.

Hot on the heels of baby Jesus came Santa with his sack of toys, and we all know the rest: Baby Jesus ends up being a plastic doll in a stage play and Santa's the real deal. Santa puts the toys under the tree. Santa's got the loot!

So whether we're conscious of it or not, we end up worshipping Santa ... and all that he represents to contemporary North Americans: Toys! Presents! Stuff for me! O Stuff, we sing Thy praises!

About the American culture's Thanksgiving and Black Friday ... I need to learn more. I can't help but wonder if that mythical (?) "first Thanksgiving" was soon followed by the first massacre of the new nation's original inhabitants. I can't help but see some archaic link between the shopping stampedes of now and the pioneers' need -- to put it bluntly -- to stay alive on unfamiliar land, an ocean away from home. Who knows what roared through their minds when they first laid eyes on other humans who looked like nothing they'd ever seen. What they did in reaction to this colossal strangeness ... Well, they did what most creatures do when confronted by strange, utterly unknown others: they react; ultimately, they kill or are killed.

And how do they kill? ... They fight. One side injures and kills more than the other side, and then the winning side goes on to do, in one way or another, the same thing to the losers' side -- to their children, mates, elders, sisters and brothers ...

The one goes on to dominate the others who are left, and so it goes ...

... and voila, we arrive at Black Friday 2008.

But hey, folks, we've got more than enough. We've got more than anybody else on this planet.

Here in Canada, we don't (as far as I know) "celebrate" Black Friday. I don't think we have a Black Friday, and for that I'm grateful.

Perhaps people who refuse to participate in Black Friday -- how aptly it's named -- could start wearing a black and red armband on that day, in rememberance of their fellow citizens who were stampeded, shot, or otherwise killed so somebody could get a deeply discounted TV.

Perhaps the day could be renamed ... Red Friday. Bloody Friday. Greed-Is-Good Friday. Stomp All Over Your Fellow Humans Friday. CRUSH CONSUME & DESTROY Friday. Shake, Rattle & Roll ... and Croak Friday. Shop 'Til Someone Drops And Dies Under Your Feet Friday.

I'm seriously thinking about never shopping for Christmas again. I'd never negate the holiday itself because it really is a holy day ... and I have to admit that this year, I'm falling in love with Advent -- the feeling of it, the light-bringing of it ... the way it both brightens and hushes the world ...

All of my sweetest Christmas memories, I realize, are about light ... Red-and-green blinkers that trailed waggedly through the maple branches outside my bedroom window when I was six ... a gentle pink and blue glow from the lights and sparkly snowflakes on the little bedroom tree that sat in front of my favourite northward window when I was twelve ... candles, and their light touching faces I've loved ... the eerie, alluring wash of moon-blue fields ... snow-duvets ... Aurora Borealis ...

... Sudden sun! after weeks of murk and sleet ...

[Go here right now before you read any more :-) --> http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryan7077/2269694317/in/photostream/ ... I couldn't upload these pics but you have to see them...]

... My memories also sound ... like Anglican boy-choirs whose hymns of praise -- to a child! -- bathe and balm the world ... like snowfights, -angels and -forts, and laughter to rival any North wind coming our way ... like a snowflake clicking against its neighbour while they fall, and the click again when the gem alights ... the quietude of deep snow, and how lulled you have to be to hear it ...

Stuff is not what we need to be giving to one another. Stuff is not what we really want.

(Do these folks look like they really want more stuff?)

Why don't we get grateful, and act to stay that way. Why don't we get over our greed ... "de-stuff" ourselves of what we don't need ... Why don't we give, simply, of kindness ... ?

!! -- Why don't we wear an armband that looks like Light; like Grateful ... like Grateful And Light ...

... and carry that light gift into our days ... give of it ... alight it on others ... and think of that one day after Thanksgiving as The Friday Of Light ...

(Arm-banners, start your engines!)

(*Link: http://theamericanscene.com/2008/12/02/red-friday. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan, on whose site I first read the piece.)

(My thanks to all the photographers ... Credits are in comments section ...)

She's baaack! #2

Oh, Sarah ... Sarah Palin. I can't stop reading about you. I won't be reading your book, but I'm gobbling up the thoughts of writers like Richard Cohen and Tina Brown, who ponder your value as a celebrity vessel "for the sale of something: a book, a magazine, a TV program or a diet regime" (Cohen), and as a purveyor of "stringent vitality" and "pert victimology" (Brown). Your life would make a fabulous musical (Brown again) -- Tina Fey, of course, would play you ... and perhaps that hunk from Twilight could play Levi and take his shirt off for the screaming, fainting masses. Christina Ricci could play Bristol, and Todd? -- I haven't a clue. (Readers: ideas?)

Sarah, you're a hot little number -- as you've said, "a pit bull with lipstick."

I'd love to see you take on Pierre Trudeau in a debate. He was a political, intellectual and rhetorical magus ...


Now that would be entertainment!