Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
courtesy of MadPriest‘s MadDad:
Mother Superior was on her way to late morning prayers, when she passed two novices just leaving early morning prayers on their way to classes. As she passed the young ladies, Mother Superior said, ‘Good morning, ladies.’
The novices replied, ‘Good morning, Mother Superior, may God be with you.’
But after they had passed, Mother Superior heard one say to the other, ‘I think she got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.’
This startled Mother Superior, but she chose not to pursue the issue.
A little further down the hall, Mother Superior passed two of the Sisters who had been teaching at the convent for several years. She greeted them with, ‘Good morning, Sister Martha, Sister Jessica, may God give you wisdom for our students today.’
‘Good morning, Mother Superior. Thank you, and may God be with you.’
But again, after passing, Mother Superior overheard, ‘She got out of the wrong side of bed today.’
Baffled, she started to wonder if she had spoken harshly, or with an irritated look on her face. She vowed to be more pleasant. Looking down the hall, Mother Superior saw retired Sister Mary approaching, step by step, with her walker. As Sister Mary was rather deaf, Mother Superior had plenty of time to arrange a pleasant smile on her face, before greeting Sister Mary.
‘Good morning, Sister Mary. I’m so happy to see you up and about. I pray God watches over you today, and grants you a wonderful day.’
‘Ah, Good morning, Mother Superior, and thank you. I see you got up on the wrong side of bed this morning.’
Mother Superior was floored!
‘Sister Mary, what have I done wrong? I have tried to be pleasant, but three times already today, people have said that about me.’
Sister Mary stopped her walker, and looked Mother Superior in the face.
‘Oh, don’t take it personally, Mother Superior. It’s just that you’re wearing Father Murphy’s slippers.!!
Seems like February 16th was a bit hectic for the constabulary in Marblehead. Here’s the police log for that day:
· Caller reports neighbors have their outside radio on and the whole neighborhood can hear it on Gregory Street at 12:36 a.m.
· Caller reports someone in her backyard at Highland Terrace at 1:36 a.m. She said that she did not see anything; she was just reacting to her dog reacting and the sound could have been an animal.
· A power outage vehicle was reportedly parked in a bad spot at the corner of West Shore Drive and Jersey Street at 7:49 a.m.
· Report of a restraining order violation on Evans Road at 11:14 a.m.
· Report of a man carrying an Elmo doll and appearing reportedly whacked out on Pleasant and Maverick streets at 11:19 a.m.
· Assisting in the transportation of a man on Pleasant Street to North Shore Medical Center to treat a history of mental illness at 12:01 p.m.
· Report of a lottery scam on Auburndale Road at 12:24 p.m.
· A purse was found on School Street at 12:49 p.m.
· Report of a green light cover blocking the traffic light on Ocean and Atlantic avenues at 1:54 p.m.
· Caller reports motor vehicle blocking her driveway on Pleasant Street at 1:58 p.m.
· Caller reports a motor vehicle parked in the middle of the road on Barnard Street at 2:59 p.m. Caller said the owner of the car was staring her down and trying to bully her, but would not move the car.
The man carrying the Elmo doll is a very nice touch; I do hope that no Elmos were harmed while apprehending him.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
comes from my friend Michael.
A GOOD NURSE
A motorcycle policeman was rushed to the hospital with an inflamed appendix. The doctors operated and advised him that all was well; however, the policeman kept feeling something pulling at the hairs in his crotch. Worried that it might be a second surgery and the doctors hadn’t told him about it, he finally got enough energy to pull his hospital gown up enough so he could look at what was making him so uncomfortable. Taped firmly across his pubic hair and private parts were three wide strips of adhesive tape, the kind that doesn’t come off easilyif at all. Written on the tape in large black letters was the sentence,
‘Get well soon.. from the nurse in the Jeep you pulled over last week.’
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
The Kindle has only been around for about 3 years or so (maybe more, maybe less). Etch-A-Sketch has been around for 50 years. Does that mean that there may be some copy-catting going around that would attract the attention of m’learned friends?
Thanks to
After the nurse left this afternoon, having given me my IV antibiotics, I went out to collect the post. Oddly enough, for this postal area, there was actually post to collect. The post in the SE1 postal zone is pretty erratic. There is much labour union unrest here, and many of the letter carriers go out on wildcat strikes. Some seem to only deliver to half their route, then bring the post back to the sorting office.
In the middle of the magazines and letters was an ominous brown envelope from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Even though I haven’t been working for more than two years, such envelopes always fill me with dread. But this one, surprisingly, was good news. In the last year that I worked, 2008-2009, I had overpaid tax (because I was made redundant before the end of the tax year) and am now due more than £1,500 refund, plus around £9 in interest.
This will allow me to put away enough money to visit Marblehead when my feet have been sorted out. I will probably also use the money for a piece of computer kit, but I know not what just yet.
Now all I have to do is win the EuroMillions lottery this evening and I’m good to go.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
comes from that impeccable source of news, the Onion. Ever considered what teenagers 75 years from now would think about the great gay marriage controversy of our time?
This story reminds me of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, where one character, observing something odd, would remark “Now that’s not something you see everyday.” This couple in Paris were taking a walk, but were arrested during the walk because they were taking the air perhaps a bit more extensively than they should have.
HWMBO and I contracted our civil partnership at Southwark Register Office. I had suggested February 15th but HWMBO said to the Registrar: “How about February 14th?” I scoffed. “Everyone will want to be married that daythere won’t be a slot.” But the Registrar smiled and said, “We have plenty of slots available for the 14th.”
And so it happened. The report, with pictures, is here.
I decided that instead of buying a card I’d buy some tulips at Tesco. When I got them home I discovered that they had not only been out of water a bit too long, but I would have to cut them down quite a bit to keep them in the vase I could find. No matter, HWMBO liked them anyway.
I am the luckiest guy on the planet. I hope that all of you who celebrate Valentine’s Day had a very good one, and those of you who have yet to find your Valentine do so, if you want to.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
I always read the Family section of the Saturday Grauniad, but I don’t know why, as it’s mostly about children. I always get something out of it, though. This week’s section’s feature story is of three couples who met on trains. You might think this is a bit dull, but, believe me, the stories are heartwarming at a time when hearts need to be warmed.
Now, you may or may not be familiar with the TV game show Family Feud. If you aren’t, worry not! It’s self explanatory. A studio audience was asked to complete a sentence, then their answers are tallied and two family groups are asked to complete the same sentence. But when the sentence is “Name something that is passed around.” the fun starts.
For those who are a bit unclear on where I live and what it’s part of, this video is for you. If by the end of it you are not able to name the constituent parts of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, those countries which recognise the Queen as head of state, the Crown Dependencies, the British Overseas Territories, and Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all, you were not listening.
It’s a Windows 7 computer, mini-sized, with an Asus motherboard. I haven’t connected up speakers or such to it, but I suspect it’ll do fairly well.
Next step is to plan out how to transfer all my material from my current desktop to that machine. Once that is done, I’ll move the current machine out of here and put the smaller one in its place.
Then I’ll probably reformat the current machine and perhaps install another version of Windows 7 64 bit and see how that works. Perhaps HWMBO will get it.
This computer stuff is so complicated. Thanks to our Singaporean friend BK, who put the computer together in record time.
Thanks to Whispers in the Loggia, I have just read a grand jury report on clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. (.pdf file). One would have thought that after the problems in Boston, New York, Milwaukee, and elsewhere the American Catholic hierarchy would have pulled up their purple or red socks and tried to put things right. This report seems to demonstrate that, in Philadelphia at least, priests were continually reassigned after credible accusations of child sexual abuse and the victims were ignored or prevented from reporting their abuse to the authorities.
A first for the US, I believe, is that the Grand Jury recommended that the clergyman responsible for assignment of priests in the Philadelphia Archdiocese also be charged with endangering the welfare of minors, through his policy of moving those accused priests around. While the Grand jury would have liked to have charged the retired Archbishop of Philadelphia on the same grounds, Cardinal Bevilaqua, in his late 80’s, is now said by his doctors to be quite ill and suffering with dementia. The Grand Jury “reluctantly” did not recommend that he be charged.
What can be learned from this sad sorry tale?
First, any organisation which has charge of children or vulnerable adults and finds that an adult responsible for the welfare of the children or vulnerable adults has been accused of abuse of any kind must immediately suspend that adult and report the allegations to the authorities.
Second, support of the victim must be independent of the organisation and must trump any other considerations.
Third, ensure that all previous cases of abuse are fully investigated, reported to the authorities, and the victims listened to and action taken.
…courtesy of MadPriest‘s MadDad. Blame them both.
An 80-year-old Scot went to the doctor for a check-up. The doctor was amazed at what good shape the old fellow was in and asked: “How do you stay in such great physical condition?'”
“I am Scottish and I am a golfer,” said the old fellow: “and that is why I am in such good shape. I’m up well before daylight and out golfing up and down the fairways. I have a wee glass of whisky, and that’s it.”
“Well,’ said the doctor, ‘I’m sure that helps, but there has to be more to it. How old was your dad when he died?”
“Who said my Dad died?”
The doctor was amazed. “You mean you are 80 years old and your dad is still alive? How old is he?”
“He is 100 years old,” said the old Scottish golfer. “In fact he golfed wi’ me this mornin, and then we went to the topless beach for a walk and had anither wee dram and that is why he is still alive. He is a Scot and he is a golfer, too.”
“Well,” the doctor said, “that’s great, but I am sure there is more to it than that. How about your dad’s dad? How old was he when he died?”
“Who said my Grandad is dead?”
Stunned, the doctor asked, “You mean you are 80 years old and your grandfather is still living! Incredible, how old is he?”
“He is 118 years old,” said the old Scottish golfer.
The doctor was getting frustrated at this point: “So, I guess he went golfing with you this morning too?”
“No. Grandad couldnae go this mornin’ because he is getting married today.”
At this point the doctor was close to losing it. “Getting married!! Why would a 118 year-old bloke want to get married?”
“Who said he wanted to?”
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
I just finished watching a TV program on Channel 4 called Fr Ray Comes Out. In it the Rev’d Ray Andrews, Priest in Charge of St. George the Martyr with St. Alphege & St. Jude at the Borough, just up the road from me, agonises about coming out to his parishioners in a Sunday sermon during Advent.
Ray is a truly nice guy, a good priest, loved by his parishioners, and very effective in what is a mixture of deprived council estates and luxury housing for stockbrokers in the City.
There is no official reaction from the Diocese shown in the film: Archdeacon Michael and Bishop Christopher weren’t interviewed. It was a very personal journey for Ray.
Now you couldn’t show something like this that didn’t have a happy ending. He comes out of it a bit nervously, but the parishioners who were interviewed seemed to be positive, even though many of them had difficulties with the notion of homosexuality from a theological standpoint. It’s always different when you know a gay person.
My networks in the deanery must be deficient, or else the news was kept very quiet. I shall have to ask Ethel, my friend who goes to weekday services over there, about it. (She got a cameo role for a moment or two.)
I’m having lunch with the Archdeacon on Tuesday so will ask about it. I know that Michael is comfortable with gay clergy, and the Diocese in general is comfortable with them. But will look for any fallout from the program and report.
If you aren’t into geekery, then perhaps you might want to skip this post.
For a while now, maybe a week, I have had difficulties with Thunderbird, Mozilla’s email program. Up until the time I finally got my emails off the main computer and onto my netbook, I was doing OK. I had difficulty in transferring those emails, and did some tinkering with a Thunderbird file called profile.ini. Those of you who are as ancient as I will remember when DOS programs (remember DOS?) always came with an .ini file, which controlled various initial states of the program in question. config.ini was perhaps the most famous of these files.
So Thunderbird still uses a profile.ini file to control where it finds its, um, profile. The profile is not stored in the Program Files folder, it’s stored in an area under Users, which would allow for several people to use Thunderbird on the same machine without falling all over each other.
In the course of my tinkering I found that there is a line in that file that looks like this:
Profile={profile address}
Now the people at Mozilla were crafty. They thought that people might want to place their profiles somewhere other than in Users. So, they had the possibility of two ways of entering the profile address. One was absolute, and one was relative. So, if my profile were in C:\Profiles\chris.profile, I would enter the line:
Profile=C:\Profiles\chris.profile
after telling Thunderbird that I wanted an absolute path to the profile.
However, if I wished to say that the profile was in the Thunderbird profile directory, and not use an absolute path, I would use a relative one:
Profile=.\Profiles\chris.profile
after telling Thunderbird that I wanted a relative path.
All of a sudden, last week I found that it was difficult to move emails into folders in groups. If I selected ten emails to move into a folder and then tried to move them with the mouse, nothing happened. Nada. Rien. Nihil.
If I downloaded emails from the server, I could not open them unless I exited Thunderbird and restarted it. I could not compact folders, and the Inbox folder (which needs to be compacted regularly) showed that it was holding something like “367% of 35.6MB”.
Not good.
I stewed about this for about a week, but today I got a brainstorm. Instead of typing the relative path as I did above, I typed it:
Profile=Profiles\chris.profile
You will note that I removed the “.\” after the “Profile=” keyword. You will be delighted to know that this now works. It seems that while Mozilla believes that DOS-style .ini files are a good idea, it does not go so far as to parse DOS-style pathnames. Worse, instead of refusing to run and saying that it can’t find the profile, it goes ahead and finds it but then doesn’t allow certain operations to happen in it while allowing other things to happily continue to happen.
Is this a bug? Is this a feature? The jury’s still out on that. I do know that this behaviour is not very intuitive and needs to be documented somewhere so that other people who are trying to bring their profiles over from another machine can do so without stumbling over this anachronism.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
You will all remember the Senator from the great state of Idaho who was caught in a stall in a Minneapolis airport men’s room, legs planted wide on the floor and tapping away to attract the attention of men in the next stall over, won’t you? I call former Senator Larry Craig Tapper McWidestance and I now see that the Tapper McWidestance Award for Miscreants in a Legislative Body has been won by former Representative Christopher Lee (R-NY), a married man with a family, who used Craigslist to post a personal ad with a shirtless picture of himself. He described himself as a lobbyist and shaved a few years off his age in correspondence with a woman who contacted him from his post on “Women Seeking Men”. When she googled him and found out that the goods weren’t as represented, she sang to the news media and made the picture public.
Former Rep. Lee voted against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. He obviously was applying it in his own life.
I do not rejoice that people who make wrong choices in their personal lives get bitten back from it. I have made wrong choices too, and have been duly bitten. Even people in public life have the right to a private life as well.
However, people in public life, especially those who advocate a moral code of some sort, should not break that moral code in private unless they are prepared for that to become public.
I’m not gloating (a male Democratic representative from NY had to resign a year or so ago when he was caught groping a male House page, so goose’s sauce is gander’s sauce). But what I’m continually learning in my own life as well as in reading the news is that consistency in one’s public and private lives is so much easier than doing one thing and advocating something entirely different. This cognitive dissonance in one’s life really makes it difficult to be authentic. It also makes it difficult to be a legislator.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
I have never eaten a kebab—and I have little desire to eat one. However, for one man, having a kebab for dinner made the difference between life and death.
Perhaps I should use a kebab as part of the dressing on my foot.
The people I normally see at the Foot Clinic are podiatrists who specialise in diabetic foot treatment. They are all very nice and professional (although they do tend to raise their voices when they talk to patients, assuming we’re all deaf—and many are, of course, but that’s just an aside).
If I lived in Peterborough, I might have been treated by this guy, who seems to have let his Christianity get in the way of his professionalism. Of course, it doesn’t seem to have gotten in the way of his taking on private patients without informing the National Health Service. Funny, that.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Last night I was rattled enough that I didn’t actually pull my entire Thunderbird profile over from the desktop machine, including the all-crucial Mail database. When i got back from the quack this afternoon, I made a complete copy onto my thumbdrive and copied that to the netbook. Aside from a few glitches, it seems to be working and I can now send, receive, and file away emails.
The quack has put me on IV antibiotics again. There is a new pesky bug in the bone under my second right toe. The rest of the ulcers are healing nicely. They will be doing another X-ray next Wednesday and then have a consultation (yet again) with the orthopedic surgeons. I now have to wait at home every day until the district nurse comes. I may have to give them another box of biscuits. This is for two weeks and we will see what transpires.
Yesterday was Lunar New Year’s Eve. I spent the early part of the evening wishing HWMBO in Singapore, along with my many friends out there, a happy and prosperous New Year. Then everything collapsed.
My system was comprised of a desktop computer, currently usable in safe mode but not otherwise, a network storage box, and various other components. I was composing an email to a friend last night when the email program crashed. A bit of investigation showed me that something was wrong with the power supply to the network storage box, and it had fried the disks inside. On those disks were backups, but, more important, my email archives and the active part of my email system were stored on it. All fried.
Now I can recover all emails before January 7th, as they are still on the desktop computer. I am having some difficulty transferring them to the netbook, and will investigate this further later on today. But this incident highlights some issues in life that I have had difficulties with in the past.
First, I keep all emails. Does this matter? I decided last night, after a bit of swearing, that it doesn’t. I would not be happy to lose all the past emails, but losing at most one month’s worth out of the past 14 years will not kill me. I’ve gone through the emails I have still on the mail servers up in the cloud, and stopped emails from groups that I don’t need to get and unsubscribed from a few sales email lists that I never intend to buy from. I shall leave all the emails up on the cloud until I have a working copy of Thunderbird with my previous emails on it. And life will go on.
Second, what’s important in my life? Not keeping emails, that’s for sure. It’s making sure that my health is stable, that my feet recover, that HWMBO remains the most important person in my life, and keeping the spiritual side of my life in my mind, heart, and actions. Keeping emails helps none of these things in particular. My life will go on (or not) independent of whether I am saving (or even getting) emails.
So now I can rationally and slowly figure out what to do here. I think that what is necessary is some sort of daily DVD-RW backup of the email database so that it can easily be reconstructed should my netbook go down. I don’t think that NAS is necessarily the best solution, especially with flaky power supplies that depend on wall warts rather than internals.
I shall be searching teh Intarwebz this afternoon for specific guidance on moving Thunderbird email databases from one machine to another; I didn’t seem to be able to do it last night but it could just have been nervousness. Now that I’ve had a good night’s sleep and a cup of coffee and a bagel, I’m better equipped to face the problem. I also need to migrate my iTunes to the netbook short-term, and to a new computer when that happens.
Long term, one of HWMBO’s and my friends in Singapore offered to construct a computer for HWMBO to bring back with him. It must be a compact one, but I hope that it will be stable and, if so, be a way back to relative eventlessness in my personal computing.
Ho hum, now to concentrate on the foot clinic visit today.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
From News of the Weird comes the redaction of a story from the Orlando Sentinel:
In a December incident near Orlando, a former Ku Klux Klan “Cyclops,” George Hixon, 73, and his son, Troy, 45, and Troy’s girlfriend fought, resulting in Troy’s allegedly firing gunshots toward the woman’s feet and the subsequent arrests of the two men. According to Osceola County deputies, the altercation was precipitated by the girlfriend’s unhappiness that she got the “cheap beer” while the men kept the “good beer” (Budweiser) for themselves.
There is so much wrong with this story. First, there is a Biblical reference (by default) of cheap vs. good beer. This is reminiscent of the Wedding Feast at Cana, where Jesus changed water into wine, not only into wine, but the very best wine. The host of the feast was then commended for keeping back the best wine until last, contrary to the usual custom of starting off with the best wine and then carrying out the rotgut when everyone was too drunk to care.
However, most important, the lady in question seems to believe that Budweiser is the “good” beer. What must they have been serving her?
Foolish legislators in Malawi have introduced legislation that, among other things, will ban farting. This will put many low comedians out of business and severely inconvenience the majority of people who eat from time to time. Church bean suppers will be a thing of the past, garlic will be banished from the nation’s tables, and fart-filtering underwear will be in great demand.
In other news, King Canute is preparing to order the tides to reverse, bears are defecating in forests worldside, and the Vatican is preparing a news release confirming that the Pope is indeed a Catholic. Or was it that the bears are preparing for their First Communions and the Pope was seen bearing a roll of Charmin into a stand of trees? I get confused occasionally.
I preached at St. John’s this morning. I really should have preached about the Ugandan martyr David Kato since the Beatitudes lend themselves to talking about such a meek and gentle man. But, to my shame, I preached something else instead.
However, the odd thing was that after the sermon was finished, the ministers on the altar (including me) lined up to proclaim the Peace. Father John started out, “Christ is our peace ” and then stopped dead. He’d dried up (he doesn’t use a book for this). Afterwards he said that the story I told at the end of the sermon was so deep for him that he was thinking of that instead of what he was supposed to be saying.
I am not boasting, as it’s not honourable to boast that your sermon knocked the words right out of a priest’s mouth. But this is the first time anything like that has ever happened to me.
In addition, there was an Asian couple (may have been Chinese but more likely to be Japanese) in the congregation, so I had to be careful to pronounce feng shui correctly (sounds like “fung shway”). The husband thanked me for the sermon afterward with many bows and handshakes.
30th January 2011 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 AM.
First Reading: Zephaniah 2:3;3:12-13; Ps. 145; Epistle: I Cor 1:26-31; Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
A major cultural mark of Chinese society is the practice of feng shui. You may have heard of it before, but in brief its the belief that the placement of items in your house or office must harmonise with the energies of the earth in that location. So, for example, Chinese houses often have entrances which twist and turn so that there is no direct path to the street. Or, if youve ever seen a Chinese movie, youll note that there is often a courtyard with a wall and a door in it in front of the actual house. This is to ensure that the luck of your family will not take a direct path out of the house.
There are feng shui experts not only in Chinese towns and cities, but even here in London and many other Western cities. These people, for a fee, examine your house and make recommendations on where to place your potted plants or your furniture in order to make your house more harmonious with the earth and more conducive to your familys wealth and status.
We may think that this practice is harmless at best. Our Western (and, dare I say it) Christian sensibilities say that the placement of items in our homes and offices have nothing to do with the success of our businesses or the happiness of our home life.
At worst, we may find this practice to be superstition, and foolish in the extreme. After all, the feng shui master makes quite a good living by seeming to be wise and advising people on where to put the sofa and the spider plants.
Its interesting that Paul talks about wise things being accounted as foolish by the world. His take on the followers of Christ at that time in Christian life was that the wise of the worldthose who were powerful, important, and learnedwere shamed by those who were unimportant in worldly eyes. Christians of those days were largely what Leona Helmsley in the United States used to call the little people.
Leona Helmsley was jailed for tax evasion in the US in the 1990s, and famously said that only the little people pay taxes. The government helped her to understand that, in the matter of taxes, everyone is a little person.
For Paul, God did not choose the rich and famous as the people whom he favoured. He chose the poor, the penniless, the indigent as his special care. The Beatitudes put this in a particular light. The translation we use says that those who are favoured by God are happy, whereas the traditional word used in English is blessed, thus the Beatitudes.
Whether we are blessed or happy, the contrast that Jesus wishes to draw is the same one that Paul draws (and, you may recall, Paul wrote before Matthew). Those who are unfortunate in some way here on Earth will find that the tables are later reversed.
Jesus could easily have reversed the Beatitudes into something much darker. How unhappy are the rich, for they shall not see the kingdom of heaven. Unhappy are those who are proud, for they shall lose all that they have. He might have ended, Unhappy are the persecutors of the righteous, for Heaven will never be theirs.
Jesus chose to be positive. He does not want us to dwell on negativity, he would prefer to bring his message to those who are most despised in society. Poor people are not valued in societythat is why when times are tight they are the first to suffer. When you are gentle (I really prefer the traditional word meek to gentle but what can one do?) you get ridden over roughshod by the strong, the proud, and the rich.
Jesus is fond of reversals. When the wine ran low at the wedding feast at Cana, jars of water suddenly become wine. And not only wine, but the finest vintage. He might have turned the water into plonk; after all, why waste your power to help a host who was so negligent that he didnt bother to buy enough wine for the wedding feast? But Jesus provides the best wine, and reverses the usual practice of starting out with the best wine, then providing rotgut later on when the guests are too sodden to care.
During his ministry, Jesus sometimes associates with the rich. A young man asks what to do to have eternal life, and Jesus reverses the usual order of things by telling him to sell all he has and follow him. The young man went away very sad, as he had many possessions.
However they are arranged in our life, possessions are not what makes us happy. What makes us happy is doing those things that Jesus mentions in the Beatitudes. Be poor in spirit, be gentle, mourn those whom you have loved, be avid to ensure that righteousness triumphs, be merciful, make peace, stand with those who are persecuted. Do these things, and you will be happy, even if the world around you conspires to do you in.
These are wise words, but the world believes them to be foolish.
I said at the beginning that many think that feng shui is foolish. While the world may think it foolish, some wisdom can be found in almost every philosophy, even though the philosophy, taken as a whole, isnt productive of happiness or a good society.
A feng shui master set up shop in Chinatown. For a fee he would advise people on how to arrange their houses or offices so that they would become prosperous.
A rich woman came to his office and asked for a consultation. Master, she said, I want to build an altar to the Buddha in my house, and Id like you to advise me on the best place to put it.
The feng shui master sat in his chair and looked at her. After a long pause he replied, Madam, the best place for an altar to the Buddha is in your heart.
He did not want any fee, so she went away thinking he was a fool. AMEN.
I told a friend in Australia the story about the master and the rich woman, and he asked, “Did you change the Buddha to something else?” I said that the Buddha is centuries older than Jesus and his teachings can be very valuable to usI felt no compulsion to omit him from the story and the end results bore me out.
Don’t blame me; blame Michael. I had nothing to do with it.
A tough looking biker was riding his Harley when he sees a girl about to jump off a bridge so he stops. “What are you doing?” he asks. “I’m going to commit suicide,” she says.
While he did not want to appear insensitive, he didn’t want to miss an opportunity. So he asked “Well, before you jump, why don’t you give me a kiss?” So, she does.
After she’s finished, the biker says, “Wow! That was the best kiss I have ever had. That’s a real talent you are wasting. You could be famous. Why would you want to commit suicide?”
“My parents don’t like me dressing up like a girl.”
I am about to go and preach a sermon at St. John’s Larcom Street. It’s well-balanced, addresses the readings, and should go over well.
I am heartily sorry, however, that instead of being about to preach a sermon on foolishness vs. wisdom, I am not about to preach a sermon concerning the recent troubling events in Uganda, culminating in the bludgeoning death of David Kato, a gay human-rights activist there.
When I return, for my penance I think I will write the sermon I should have delivered. If I were good enough at extempore preaching I would preach that sermon instead of the one I wrote. Unfortunately, I do not have the strength and presence of mind to preach off-the-cuff.
May David Kato’s soul rest in peace and rise in glory.
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com
Don’t blame me, blame Fr. MadPriest‘s dad; actually, I blame Fr. MadPriest. He didn’t have to tell it again.
A blonde calls her boyfriend and says, “Please come over here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I can’t figure out how to get started.”
Her boyfriend asks, “What is it supposed to be when it’s finished?”
The blonde says, “According to the picture on the box, it’s a rooster.”
Her boyfriend decides to go over and help with the puzzle. She lets him in and shows him where she has the puzzle spread all over the table. He studies the pieces for a moment, then looks at the box, then turns to her and says, “First of all, no matter what we do, we’re not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a rooster.”
He takes her hand and says, “Second, I want you to relax. Let’s have a nice cup of tea, and then,” he said with a deep sigh, “let’s put all the Corn Flakes back in the box.”
Tweets copied by twittinesis.com