Orthodixie

As mentioned earlier on this Blog, my father passed away on August 4th. The following email was sent to me by a childhood friend who still lives in my hometown. I include it here as a remembrance (especially for the over 40 crowd :).

I will miss seeing your daddy at church. We always sat near each other … on one of the back rows of course, as is Baptist tradition. It was difficult seeing his physical changes from week to week, but also an inspiration. I’ve often thought how his being there probably took great effort, and how we should all consider this when we use the smallest discomfort as an excuse to stay home.

Having never left this area except to attend college, I am reminded daily of people and events that form my fondest memories. Memories of my 12th birthday party at Emerald Shores [Huneycutt family lake house] are more vivid than those of my last birthday. I doubt you still have the platform shoes, but if you do, your son would probably find them amusing. Your band played LOUD music. Yesterday I passed the house of Bill Baker’s Studio [where I took guitar lessons] and noticed that it is either being torn down or going to be moved.

I will always remember your parents taking us to the Big Ways Birthday Ball [Four Tops, Charlie Daniels Band, Billy Preston, Black Oak Arkansas]. We ate at Pizza Hut.

We ate at the drive in across the road from the Charlotte Coliseum when they took us to the “Country-Western” Show. When Tammy Wynette came out to sing, your mom said it looked like she had forgotten to brush her hair. I enjoyed going to those shows, riding in the back seat of the white Impala with the windows down. Thank you for inviting me to go.

As we grow older, we tend to remember the things we choose to, and maybe even embellish our memories with thoughts of how much better things were then. It feels to me that we are older than our parents because in my mind, I see them as they were back then, which makes it difficult to see them as they are, which is older and with physical frailties. That’s why it was so hard seeing your dad as his health declined. I will miss him. He was proud of you.

I remember in 8th grade, we had to write an essay on something futuristic. You volunteered to read yours aloud, and we all laughed at the part you wrote about going to a vending machine to buy a bottle of water. At that time, it sounded far-fetched, and I’ve since wondered how you even came up with the idea. But that’s just the way you were, and with the support and encouragement from your mom & dad, you were never afraid to reach out a bit further than the rest of us, not letting the confines of our little place in the world hold you back from your dreams.

I was so happy to see you at the funeral, and it was only after you turned to talk to someone else that I remembered not having told you how sorry I am for your loss. My prayers have been with you and your family.

People enter a new chapel consecrated by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II at the Belarussky railway terminal.

Thanks Directions to Orthodoxy

A gay Pentecostal church?

“It’s a big task, but thank God I don’t do it on my own strength,” Wood said. “I know God is with us, and he’s going to empower us to do this thing.”

H E R E‘s the whole article, which incudles:

Most if not all major English Bible translations — including the New King James Version that Jubilee Fellowship uses — contain scriptures strongly condemning homosexual activity.

Like many pro-gay theologians, Wood says the verses have been misinterpreted or were written by people who didn’t fully understand sexual orientation.

At one time, Wood believed the Bible condemned her, too. A believer who has struggled with her sexual orientation since she was 16 years old, she even attempted suicide once.

She now believes that the Scriptures, if correctly interpreted, don’t condemn sex between modern, committed, monogamous gay and lesbian couples.

If God opposes her lifestyle, Wood says, he hasn’t told her.

“He continues to answer my prayers, continues to bless me, continues to speak to my heart,” she said. “I can have a productive relationship with Jesus Christ as a gay Christian. I’m not a second-class citizen in the kingdom of heaven.”

Thanks Thunderstruck

Jesus! Yep, there! On my pierogi!

If an online casino is willing to pay $28,000 for a grilled cheese sandwich bearing the face of the Virgin Mary, how much is a pierogi with the face of Jesus worth?

An Ohio woman hopes to find out.

Donna Lee says the image appeared in a pierogi — a Polish dumpling — as she was cooking it for Easter dinner at her home near Toledo. MORE.

Catholic Women

Regina, a wife and mother of 63 years of age, has a family that supports her choices. “I thank God for allowing me to follow my calling. Many people, especially Catholic women, supported me. I’m convinced that the Holy Ghost, sooner or later, will change the attitude of the Vatican, and quite soon women’s ordination will be accepted by all. The Church needs renewing, it needs new life blood.”

Regina’s story is long and it includes unpopular choices and many rejections. “I have been wishing to become a priest since I was a young girl. I had to give up my vocation because I had no models to look up to. In 1978 my husband became a deacon and I followed his training, but I was barred from ordination because of that unjust rule that says women cannot be priests. I studied theology and worked in a reformatory for a long time.”

Then Regina had a decisive encounter. She read in a newspaper that in 2002 seven women had been ordered priests on the Danube. “Last October, I met bishops Gisela Forster and Patricia Fresen in Munich, and was admitted to the program for women priests. “Today I’m a deacon,” continues Regina, “and I’m getting where I wanted to go. The way is still long, but in a not too far future I will be ordered priest.”

The day Regina Nicolosi is awaiting will come next June, when she will receive her holy orders from a woman who, like her, is challenging a Church “still too masculine.”

Here ’tis.

Anglican Men

Gay priests surveyed by the Daily Telegraph said they would defy their bishops and refuse to give guarantees they would abstain from sex in their relationships.

One priest told the paper that he was “furious” with the way gay clergy were being treated. The paper said that LGBT rights activists were predicting widespread revolt.
“If a bishop asks me if I am having sex I will say, it’s none of your business.

Frankly, it is a breach of my human rights for him even to ask,” said the Rev Stephen Coles of London.

MORE.

Finally …

Another vapid argument spawned by shoddy scholarship

One of the sad signs of our times are the twisted metal “sculptures” put in front of public buildings at the taxpayers’ expense — obviously never intended to please the public, and in fact constituting a thumbing of the artist’s nose at the public.

It is almost impossible to go to a shopping mall these days without seeing some teenage girl’s navel. There was a time when a guy was not likely to see a girl’s navel except on some more memorable occasion than a visit to a mall.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

Why would anyone buy anything from a company that is inconsiderate enough to plant pop-up ads in their computer? Anything these ads are selling can be bought from somebody else.

A church in Monterrey, Mexico, has installed equipment that jams cell phone calls, so that church services will not be disturbed by phones ringing. This equipment should be installed in every school, restaurant, auditorium, etc. Incidentally, the equipment used by this church was manufactured in Israel. Let’s hear it for interfaith cooperation and the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Imagine that everyone in the older age brackets had to write two books — “Smart Things I Have Done in My Life” and “Dumb Things I Have Done in My Life.” Be frank. Which book do you think would be bigger? Even some of the smart things we did were a result of having done dumb things before and suffered the consequences.

A couple of readers in Michigan ask: Since death is defined by the cessation of brain waves, why shouldn’t life be defined by the beginning of brain waves?

If people who commit sex crimes against children are so dangerous that they have to be registered for life after serving their sentences, why are they let out of prison in the first place?

I do not like to see the future mothers of America becoming soldiers. There are plenty of men who are capable of becoming soldiers and who are not capable of becoming mothers.

Taken from various Radom Thoughts on the Passing Scene by Thomas Sowell.

Hoboken, N.J., Aug. 1 – While dozens of people continue to flock to Hoboken to see a statue of Jesus that many believe blinked its right eye, church officials aren’t claiming a miracle just yet.
HERE.

Jan Bear gives a concise history of the Great Church of Holy Wisdom along with notice of a petition that many of you may have seen floating ’round the Net.

She’s right, a visit to this site is worthy (for the pics alone).

The pic to the left is of domes, semidomes, and exedras.

Here’s a quote from her site:

At the height of its use as the preeminent church of Byzantine Christianity — indeed, at the time, of the entire world — 600 people served liturgical functions: 80 priests, 150 deacons, 40 deaconesses, 60 subdeacons, 160 readers, 25 chanters and 75 doorkeepers.

Its beauty is what so impressed the emissaries of Prince Vladimir of Kiev that he chose Eastern Christianity for his kingdom, engendering 1,000 years of Russian Christianity and the spiritual and cultural legacy that has entailed.

More H E R E.