Disappointed on the day of judgment

photo credit-Richard Perry-NYTimes

There are lots of apocalyptic references in the readings for Advent, it can be hard to get your head around them, whether or not you are a fan of the Left Behind series!  So, I was amused to find the following quote at the start of a New York Times article yesterday on the Grand Canyon.


“I HAVE heard rumors of visitors who were disappointed,” J. B. Priestley once said of the Grand Canyon. “The same people will be disappointed at the Day of Judgment.”


Do check out the article - a fine one.  And, it is indeed true that the wonders of nature are wonders that we are to behold, and they do reveal a bit of the glory of God.  Do we have eyes to see them?  Are we so busy with our cares and occupations that we fail to see the brilliant sunrise, the gliding hawk above, the gray trees standing guard over a silent wood?


It is Advent, and we live into this time of expectation, of anticipation, of longing by taking time to notice, taking time to ponder the ways that God created the world, came into the world, and is still coming into the world.


May we not be so crazy-busy that we are disappointed at the wonders all around us!


~The Rev. Peter M. Carey

photo credit - Richard Perry - New York Times

"No one had a bigger tent than Jesus", says Bishop Gene Robinson

Bishop Robinson will not be offering a Christian Prayer, according to his interview in the New York Times. On the other hand, he said tonight on the Rachel Maddow show that "No One Had a Bigger Tent than Jesus." Amen to that!!



(Bishop Robinson, we love you, you have our permission to mention Jesus at the Lincoln Memorial - or at least to quote some scripture, really, we're all ok with it!)

Religious leaders from Islam, Judaism, and from the Roman Catholic Church will be offering prayers at the service on January 21st.

Will the other religious leaders be offering prayers that emerge from their own tradition, or some kind of a general "pluralistic" kind of prayer at the service at the Washington National Cathedral?

Hmmmmmm...what do you think?

~ The Rev. Peter Carey

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found on The Episcopal Cafe

AP:

The Inauguration Committee has only released one clergy name so far for the Jan. 21 National Prayer Service that caps the inauguration. The Rev. Sharon Watkins, the first woman president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a Protestant group, will deliver the sermon.

The Associated Press has learned additional details.

A prayer will be offered at the National Cathedral by Ingrid Mattson, the first woman president of the Islamic Society of North America, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. The Islamic Society, based in Indiana, is the nation's largest Muslim group.

Three rabbis, representing the three major branches of American Judaism, will also say a prayer at the service, according to officials familiar with the plans. The Jewish clergy are Reform Rabbi David Saperstein, Conservative Rabbi Jerome Epstein and Orthodox Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, sources said.

It is also traditional for the incoming administration to ask the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington to lead a prayer. The Most Rev. Donald Wuerl leads the archdiocese.

And like many incoming presidents before him, Obama will attend a service at St. John's [Episcopal] Church, dubbed the "Church of the Presidents," before his swearing-in.

Mattson's participation is unlikely to be without controversy.

In my humble opinion, "If you're a bishop, it's really ok to do a Christian prayer, people will understand"

First, I was really happy that the President-Elect chose Bishop Gene Robinson to offer a prayer...then, I read the New York Times..."this will not be a Christian prayer," says the Bishop.

In my humble opinion, "If you're a bishop, it's really ok to do a Christian prayer, people will understand"
...and, "exactly what is happening when you offer an inter-religious prayer, anyway?"

Free advice, and I know you do get what you pay for...

I just get kinda bummed that our leaders seem like we have to apologize for our beliefs, could this be why the Episcopal Church is losing membership?

~ The Rev. Peter M. Carey


Bishop Gene Robinson quoted in the New York Times

Bishop Robinson said he had been reading inaugural prayers through history and was “horrified” at how “specifically and aggressively Christian they were.”

“I am very clear,” he said, “that this will not be a Christian prayer, and I won’t be quoting Scripture or anything like that. The texts that I hold as sacred are not sacred texts for all Americans, and I want all people to feel that this is their prayer.”

Read it all HERE



I'm glad other people, who spoke in this location, have chosen to quote from the Bible, such as MLK, Jr.

Sydney Pollack

Two of my favorite movies are Tootsie and Out of Africa, so I was saddened to hear of the death of Sydney Pollack, the director of both of these fine films...may he rest in peace,

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From the New York Times...

LOS ANGELES — Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay as director, producer and sometime actor whose star-laden movies like “The Way We Were,” “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa” were among the most successful of the 1970s and ’80s, died Monday at home here. He was 73.

The cause was cancer, said the publicist Leslee Dart, who spoke for his family.

Mr. Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.

Hollywood honored Mr. Pollack in return. His movies received multiple Academy Award nominations, and as a director he won an Oscar for his work on the 1985 film “Out of Africa” as well as nominations for directing “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969) and “Tootsie” (1982).

“Michael Clayton,” of which Mr. Pollack was a producer and a member of the cast, was nominated for a best picture Oscar earlier this year. He delivered a trademark performance as an old-bull lawyer who demands dark deeds from a subordinate, played by George Clooney. (“This is news? This case has reeked from Day 1!” snaps Mr. Pollack’s Marty Bach.) Most recently, Mr. Pollack portrayed the father of Patrick Dempsey’s character in “Made of Honor.”

Mr. Pollack became a prolific producer of independent films in the latter part of his career. ...

read more HERE....

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From CNN....

(CNN) -- Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, who achieved critical acclaim with the period drama "Out of Africa" and the romantic comedy "Tootsie," died of cancer Monday, his agent told CNN.

Sydney Pollack's notable films include "Out of Africa," "Tootsie" and "The Way We Were."

1 of 3

Pollack, 73, died at his home in Los Angeles. He was surrounded by his wife of nearly 50 years, Claire Griswold, their two daughters, Rebecca and Rachel, and his brother, Bernie, agent Leslee Dart said. the Pollacks' only son, Steven, died in a plane crash in 1993.

Pollack, who often appeared on the screen himself, worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, according to the Associated Press.

"Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better. A tip of the hat to a class act," actor George Clooney said in a statement issued by his publicist, the Associated Press reported.

Last fall, Pollack played Marty Bach opposite Clooney in "Michael Clayton," a drama that examines the life of a fixer for lawyers. The film, which Pollack co-produced, received seven Oscar nominations, including best picture and a best actor nod for Clooney.

Pollack was no stranger to the Academy Awards. His 1985 film "Out of Africa," a romantic epic of a woman's passion set against the landscape of colonial Kenya, captured seven Oscars, including best director and best picture.

Read more HERE...

Article on Chimayo in the New York Times

The name of this blog, Santos Woodcarving Popsicles, came from a photo that I took in Chimayo, New Mexico in front of a shop that advertised selling these three items. The town is also famous for the shrine there, and for the healing properties of the dirt in the shrine .... an interesting article in the New York Times this week on Chimayo:



An excerpt below, read it all HERE...


February 20, 2008

Chimayo Journal

A Pastor Begs to Differ With Flock on Miracles

By ERIK ECKHOLM

CHIMAYO, N.M. — “It’s not the dirt that makes the miracles!” the Rev. Casimiro Roca said with exasperation.

True, discarded crutches line a wall inside the Santuario de Chimayo, a small adobe church in this village of northern New Mexico known as the Lourdes of America.

True, tens of thousands of pilgrims walk eight miles or more to the shrine on Good Friday, some bearing heavy crosses and others approaching on their knees. Scores of people visit every day the rest of the year, many hoping to cure diseases or disabilities with prayer, holy water and, most famously, the healing dirt, which visitors collect from a hole in the floor inside the church.

Now the disparagement of the dirt was jarring, coming from Father Roca, who has devoted much of his life to creating the present-day shrine and is its revered eminence. At 89, he wears a beret that reveals his Barcelona origins.

Some 50 years ago, he took over the abandoned, nearly ruined site of the church, which was first constructed in 1816. He oversaw the rebuilding of the sanctuary — holy hole included — into the spotless place it is today, with bright paintings and statues inside and giant cottonwoods out back that he planted as saplings. It has become a stop for tour buses taking the scenic route to Taos as well as for local residents in search of solace or cures, and was declared a national landmark in 1970. Visitors bring their own baggies or containers or can buy little plastic containers marked “blessed dirt” at the church’s gift shop.

Read the rest HERE...

"This Republic of Suffering" book by Harvard's President

Harvard's president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has written a book that looks at how American's dealt with death in the Civil War and its aftermath. I heard a great interview with the author on NPR, and am really looking forward to reading the book...the book is reviewed in the Sunday New York Times this week.

You can listen to the interview on National Public Radio, (NPR) HERE.

THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING: Death and the American Civil War.

By Drew Gilpin Faust Illustrated. 346 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.

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Death's Army

By GEOFFREY C. WARD

Published: January 27, 2008

During the Civil War, my great-great-grandfather, a Presbyterian clergyman, served as chaplain to the 104th New York Infantry Regiment. He was a man of stern moral conviction and in weekly letters to his parishioners back home allowed little to escape his censorious eye. President Lincoln’s erratic church attendance irritated him. So did mud and heat and the “intemperance” and “profanity” that he believed were the “great sins of our army,” and he was infuriated by the proximity of his quarters to the “tents of several of the most blasphemous, immoral persons I ever heard.” But in the aftermath of Gettysburg, words failed him. “Sad scenes!” was all he could write after two days spent officiating at the trench burials of Union and Confederate boys. “I have no time, strength nor heart to recall and narrate what I have seen!”

THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING
Death and the American Civil War.
By Drew Gilpin Faust.
Illustrated. 346 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.

Little wonder. Some 7,000 corpses lay scattered across the Pennsylvania countryside, alongside more than 3,000 dead horses and mules — an estimated six million pounds of human and animal flesh, swollen and blackening in the July heat. For weeks afterward, townspeople carried bottles of peppermint oil to neutralize the smell.

Americans had never endured anything like the losses they suffered between 1861 and 1865 and have experienced nothing like them since. Two percent of the United States population died in uniform — 620,000 men, North and South, roughly the same number as those lost in all of America’s other wars from the Revolution through Korea combined. The equivalent toll today would be six million.

Read the rest HERE.

Hidden Costs of War

This article in the New York Times is important, and also disturbing .. and points out just one of the most dramatic of the many hidden costs of (perpetual?) war:

Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles

By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Published: January 13, 2008

Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army....

This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja.”

Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it.

“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven”....

Read it all HERE.

Merry (Orthodox) Christmas!!

Orthodox Christmas dawned as a nun walked in solitude at the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where the holiday was celebrated at a Mass earlier that morning. Some Orthodox Christians observe Christmas according to the old Julian calendar. (From the New York Times, Online)

Benazir Bhutto

There is a lot of news coverage of the assasination of Benazir Bhutto - appropriately so, in my mind. I found the following article, posted here by Ruth Gledhill of the London Times to be particularly interesting and helpful as I try to understand her life and work more fully. Below the excerpt from Ruth Gledhill's article I've posted a bit from the New York Times obituary.

Clearly she was an incredible woman and we have much to learn from her life and work. I pray for Pakistan and those who knew and loved Benazir Bhutto.

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Benazir: 'I am not afraid of death'

'I am not afraid of death,' Benazir Bhutto told me when I interviewed her for the Daily Mail in November 1985. She was just 31 at the time. 'My religion teaches that I will rejoin my father and my brother when I die. It is the living who have to suffer the grief and the pain,' she said. In an attempt to pay tribute, although nothing I can say will ever be enough,








You can find the entire article HERE .

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Benazir Bhutto, 54, Lived in Eye of Pakistan Storm

Douglas E. Curran/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Benazir Bhutto in front of a poster of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, after she won first parliamentary elections in 1988. More Photos >

By JANE PERLEZ and VICTORIA BURNETT

Published: December 28, 2007

Charismatic, striking and a canny political operator, Benazir Bhutto, 54, was reared amid the privileges of Pakistan’s aristocracy and the ordeals of its turbulent politics. Smart, ambitious and resilient, she endured her father’s execution and her own imprisonment at the hands of a military dictator to become the country’s — and the Muslim world’s — first female leader.

You can find the entire New York Times obituary HERE.

Stephen Colbert: Running for President!? ;)

Stephen Colbert has "guest written" Maureen Dowd's New York Times opinion letter this week, and,...he's running for president (but only in South Carolina)...he cracks me up:

I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)

By STEPHEN COLBERT

Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(

I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

So why I am writing Miss Dowd’s column today? Simple. Because I believe the 2008 election, unlike all previous elections, is important. And a lot of Americans feel confused about the current crop of presidential candidates.

For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she’s actually easy to beat, or if I’m supposed to be scared of her because she’s legitimately scary.

Or Rudy Giuliani. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to support him because he’s the one who can beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I’m supposed to support him because he’s legitimately scary.

And Fred Thompson. In my opinion “Law & Order” never sufficiently explained why the Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.

Well, suddenly an option is looming on the horizon. And I don’t mean Al Gore (though he’s a world-class loomer). First of all, I don’t think Nobel Prizes should go to people I was seated next to at the Emmys. Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.

While my hat is not presently in the ring, I should also point out that it is not on my head. So where’s that hat? (Hint: John McCain was seen passing one at a gas station to fuel up the Straight Talk Express.)

Others point to my new bestseller, “I Am America (And So Can You!)” noting that many candidates test the waters with a book first. Just look at Barack Obama, John Edwards or O. J. Simpson.

Look at the moral guidance I offer. On faith: “After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up.” On gender: “The sooner we accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it and start having sex.” On race: “While skin and race are often synonymous, skin cleansing is good, race cleansing is bad.” On the elderly: “They look like lizards.”

Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.

Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’ nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.

Nevertheless, I am not ready to announce yet — even though it’s clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.

What do I offer? Hope for the common man. Because I am not the Anointed or the Inevitable. I am just an Average Joe like you — if you have a TV show.