Nov 11 2009
Pomplamoose = AMAZING!!!
My Brother-in-law Andrew, my wife, and pal Mike all recommended this to me and I took my sweet time to check these guys out. HOLY CRAP!
Archive for the 'General' Category
Nov 10 2009
Morality and Scents
So this is a really interesting article produced by, Adriene Hill, for Chicago Public Radio. Basically, it seems that there is a scientific correlation between pleasant or “good” smells and morality. Could this be?
Photo: © Bonnie Van Voorst
Sep 23 2009
Insult to Americans Everywhere
So here is a video that I am told is a real advertisement for Windows 7. If it is I could think of a greater insult to Americans everywhere then Microsoft Advertising department thinking this lowly of consumers. Please fire the person in charge and find out who invented the Mac vs. PC commercials and offer him or her double. Microsoft will still lose simply because their product no longer posses inherent value next to the competition, but it would be interesting at least see them put up a fight. (If this isn’t real, bravo to the person/persons who did make this being as this is the worst that I have ever seen Microsoft look in my entire life.
Aug 22 2009
“Push From the Pulpit”
I was horrified to read this article, by Joseph Abrams, on FoxNews.com. Now anyone who knows me knows that I hate both Fox News and CNN as much as the next guy. I read them both and I love to hate both of them. That being said, I will say that I still think that every story has a shred of truth that one can discern from it an I believe there is still at least one shred, decrepit as it may be, of moral and ethical respectability remaining in these two institutions. That being said, upon reading the following article, I was disgusted that there could even be a shred of evidence that any communication of any sort would have taken place between any clergy member or rabbi and President Obama concerning politics in sermons or messages. And why the heck was Islam left off of Obama’s list? Read for yourself:
Read the Original Article on foxnews.com
“Army Of the Lord: Obama Seeks Health Care Push From Pulpit”
Thousands of religious leaders got a call from on high Wednesday as President Obama reached out to Jewish and Christian clergy, asking some to sermonize in favor of health care reform.
By Joseph Abrams
FOXNews.com
Thursday, August 20, 2009
If President Obama has his way, you’ll soon be hearing about his health care package when you go to your church or synagogue to pray.
Thousands of religious leaders got a call from on high Wednesday when Obama reached out to Jewish and Christian clergy, urging them to push health care reform from the pulpit.
Obama spoke to about 140,000 people of faith in a conference call and webcast Wednesday evening. He and a White House official discussed the moral dimension of health care, telling the mostly Christian audience that “this debate over health care goes to the heart of who we are as a people.”
But earlier that day, Obama went much further, asking about 1,000 rabbis to preach his political agenda in their sermons on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year — one of the holiest days of the year.
The conversation was supposed to be off the record but was captured on the Twitter feeds and blogs of some rabbis who took part in the call, which was organized by the Union of Reform Judaism and included rabbis from other denominations.
“I am going to need your help in accomplishing necessary reform,” Obama said, according to Rabbi Jack Moline of Virginia, whose Twitter feed has since been scrubbed of the information.
Obama told the rabbis that “we are God’s partners in matters of life and death” and asked them to “tell the stories of health care dilemmas to illustrate what is a stake” in their sermons, Moline wrote.
Critics say Obama’s message seemed to “cross a line” and imply a kind of “scriptural or holy support for the program.”
“I can’t imagine why it would be appropriate for a president even to suggest a partnership with God somehow was connected to his ideas for health care,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
“Whenever politicians give a message that implies that God is on their side on an issue … this always troubles me.”
A White House official told FOX News that Obama spoke at the invitation of the rabbis, who had many questions about health care. Current events often come up in sermons, the official said, and during the highly attended holidays many rabbis and congregants are likely to be interested in discussing the topic.
“We are not asking Rabbis to give a political lecture — we don’t expect everybody will want to hear sermons on health care,” the official said.
Mark Pelavin, who organized the call from the Reform movement’s Washington office, said the president talked about why the health care system needed to be fixed, but Pelavin declined to discuss Obama’s specific remarks.
Pelavin, the associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said his office organizes one or two such calls a year with experts and politicians to discuss issues of great interest to Jewish leaders, and health care was a natural topic.
Rabbis may choose to discuss health care in their sermons but will “stay away from partisan politics, but certainly they’ll talk about issues that are facing the country,” he told FOXNews.com.
But other rabbis present noted their discomfort with the president’s message, and said they believed he was “using religious organizations to promote policy.”
“I find the blurring of church and state to be disconcerting, not only on political grounds … but also for competency,” wrote Rabbi Josh Yuter of Manhattan, who was also on the call.
“Rabbis have enough difficulty understanding the nuances and intricacies of their own religion to be promoting specific policies in areas for which they have no expertise.”
Lynn, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said that although Obama is a religious man, he generally avoids emphasizing the religious basis for his decisions, adding he was disappointed that the president had “clouded this debate” with an underlying religious emphasis.
“This seems to, unfortunately, cross a line,” he said.”
Jun 27 2009
The Dumbing Down of the Prayer Book
William F. Buckley, Jr wrote this 30 Years ago. @anglicansaints tweeted a link to this on the blog Anglicans in the Wilderness and I couldn’t resist reposting this on here.
The Original posting can be found at Anglicans in the Wilderness.
This 1552 edition of the Book of Common Prayer - University of Nottingham
“The Dumbing Down of the Prayer Book
By William F. Buckley, Jr. …. more than 30 years ago
New Liturgists: Lord, they know not what they do.
As a Catholic, I have abandoned hope for the liturgy, which, in the typical American church, is as ugly and as maladroit as if it had been composed by Robert Ingersoll and H. L. Mencken for the purpose of driving people away. The modern liturgists are doing a remarkably good job, attendance at Catholic mass on Sunday having dropped sharply in the 10 years since a few well-meaning cretins got hold of the power to vernacularize the mass, and the money to scour the earth in search of the most unmusical men and women to preside over the translation. THE NEXT liturgical ceremony conducted primarily for my benefit, since I have no plans to be beatified or remarried, will be my funeral; and it is a source of great consolation to me that, at my funeral, I shall be quite dead, and will not need to listen to the accepted replacement for the noble old Latin liturgy. Meanwhile, I am practicing Yoga so that, at church on Sundays, I can develop the power to tune out everything I hear, while attempting, athwart the general calisthenics, to commune with my Maker, and ask Him first to forgive me my own sins, and implore him, second, not to forgive the people who ruined the mass.Now the poor Anglicans are coming in for it. I am not familiar with their service, but I am with their Book of Common Prayer. To be unfamiliar with it is as though one were unfamiliar with Hamlet, or the Iliad, or the Divine Comedy. It has, of course, theological significance for Episcopalians and their fellow travelers. But it has a cultural significance for the entire English-speaking world.THE BOOK was brought together, for the most part, about 400 years ago, when for reasons no one has been able to explain, the little island of England produced the greatest literature in history. G.K. Chesterton wrote about the Book of Common Prayer: “It is the one positive possession, the attraction . . . the masterpiece of Protestantism; the one magnet and talisman for people even outside the Anglican Church, as are the great Gothic cathedrals for people outside the Catholic Church.”
What are they doing to it? Well, there is one of those commissions. It is sort of re-translating it. As it now stands, for instance, there are the lines, “We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”
That kind of thing - noble, cadenced, pure as the psalmist’s water - becomes, “We have not loved you (get that: you, not thee. Next time around, one supposes it will be “We haven’t loved you, man,”) with our whole heart, we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”
“Lead us not into temptation” becomes “Do not bring us to the test.” WELL, IF the good Lord intends to bring his Anglican flock into the test, he will not test it on this kind of stuff. One can only hope the Anglicans will reject any further attempt to vitiate their line of communication with our Maker.”
Jun 24 2009
The Most Useful Site Since Google
So this is definitely the most useful site that I have seen since Google. All I can see as click the picture and bask in the freedom that is:
Each dot shows all of the choice times to go. However, check the fourth dot for the new Star Trek. Oh yeah, there’s an iPhone application coming!
Jun 16 2009
Post-Doc Studies at IWS
I’ve been attending post-doc studies with my pastor Lou and my great friend Dr. Rodney Shores at the Institute for Worship Studies in Jacksonville FL. We have had the privilege of leading worship for the morning chapel services and we’ve been using some of my more adventurous arrangements which have been received very well for which I am grateful. The services are in Grace Episcopal Church and I thought I’d share a picture of the sanctuary.
- Posted using MobyPicture.com
