Date: Saturday, August 13
Time: 1pm - until we clear out
Place: Meewasin Park (off Spadina Cres., near Lenore Drive)
Bring: yourself, anyone else you want (friends/family), your own BBQ/picnic stuff, lawn chairs, games, etc.

"Sometimes I experience God like this Beautiful Nothing," he said. "And it seems then as though the whole point of life is to just rest in it. To contemplate it and love it and eventually disappear into it. And then other times it's just the opposite. God feels like a presence that engorges everything. I come out here, and it seems the divine is running rampant. That the marsh, the whole of Creation, is some dance God is doing, and we're meant to step into it, that's all. Do you know what I mean?"

"The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual." according to the Washington Post. The legislation, which is being sponsored by John McCain and John Warner, is worth calling your senator over.

The Bush administration has also opposed legislation by Dick Durbin which prevents prisoners from being sent to other nations which are known torture states. This administration has also opposed an independent investigation into the conditions of prisoners at Gitmo and in other US facilities abroad. At what point can we begin to say that the Bush administration, is objectively speaking, pro-torture?

And what does it say about much of the evangelical community that silence or defense has been the response to this news? This is one of the central moral issues which future generations will look back on to see where we stood, as opposed to much the culture war issues which produce so much heat today. The mainline has spoken out on this issue but it's going to take Bush's religious constituency if there is to be an end to such practices.

From here.

History will indeed judge our actions (or inaction) on issues like these.

Me: [laughing hysterically]

Him: I'm really glad you don't have her powers -- 'Cause then you'd be constantly wiggling your nose, getting me into all kinds of trouble.

Him: Why does the husband always have to be a bumbling idiot, and the wife wise?

Me: Archetypes, baby. Archetypes!

Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. He found that water from clear springs and water that has been exposed to loving words shows brilliant, complex, and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water, or water exposed to negative thoughts, forms incomplete, asymmetrical patterns with dull colors.

The implications of this research create a new awareness of how we can positively impact the earth and our personal health. The success of his books outside Japan has been remarkable. Dr. Emoto has been called to lecture around the world as a result and has conducted live experiments both in Japan and Europe as well as in the US to show how indeed our thoughts, attitudes, and emotions as humans deeply impact the environment.

There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, 'Business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening. These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves.

Yann Martel
Life of Pi

• Well, it looks like my PR application is finally being processed in Alberta -- just in time for me to re-apply to extend my Student Authorization (with another couple hundred dollar fee). Good times.

• I've got two pretty lengthy chapters goin' on with my thesis -- the dreaded lit survey and the first analysis chapter (plus an introduction that is working itself into analysis chapters). Tonight I'm starting on the second analysis chapter. I'm also intermittently working on a paper to be published here in September.
  
  Page count: 35+
  Motivation count: ~50% (but plugging away!)

• Tonight I'm off to experience the newest Mexican/Latin restaurant in town with a good friend -- can't wait!

They Whose Souls Burn

Jalal al-Din Rumi

I look not only at tongue and speech;

I look at the spirit and the inward feeling.
I look into the heart to see whether it be lowly...

Enough of phrases and conceits and metaphors!
I want burning, burning...

Light up a fire of love in thy soul,
Burn all thought and expression away!

Moses, they that know the conventions are of one sort;
They whose souls burn are of another.

• Demonstrating "Grannies" get their day in court:
  
  Nine people are fighting trespassing charges after they were cited at a protest last week in which members of the "Tucson Raging Grannies" tried to enlist in the Army. The group is due in City Court on Monday, where members will argue they were not trespassing because they were "serious about enlisting" despite being decades older than the maximum age for recruits.
  
  They were protesting at the military recruitment center, 2303 E. Speedway, on July 13, as they have done on Wednesdays for the last three years, and then went inside to try to enlist, said Betty Schroeder, 74, one of the grannies. "We went in asking to be sent to Iraq so our kids and grandchildren can be sent home, but rather than listening to us, they called the police," she said.

• That group is part of a larger movement, The Raging Grannies.
  
  There's even a group in Saskatoon. Their philosophy:The Raging Grannies are caring older women who use song to protest and raise awareness concerning issues of peace, the environment and social justice. Satirical and serious we are politically conscious but non-partisan. The Raging Grannies dedicate their efforts to children, so that they may live in a peaceful and harmonious world, safe from wars and pollution. Now that's cool.

• Chocolate wars: the real story behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- interesting backstory to Dahl's classic. I still haven't seen the Tim Burton version of the film. Part of me is hesitant because I love the 70's classic so much! Anyone seen it yet? Any good?

• Rick Santorum was a guest on the Daily Show last night. He's the crazy Republican that thinks the state has the right to dictate birth control use for married couples. I'm still trying to figure out how effective Jon Stewart's interview was with him -- he could have nailed him to the wall a couple times, but instead -- he let Santorum himself show what a jerk he is. More on Santorum here.

• and finally, Tattoos for Jesus, featuring a kitschy painting of Jesus sporting a 'too himself. via.

Awwww., originally uploaded by becky b..

Just so everyone can roll their eyes right now and see exactly how honeymoonish we still are, here's the snack Jerry just made me.

Harry! Don't you see? Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realise, that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back! Voldemort is no different! Always he was on the lookout for the one who would challenge him. He heard the prophecy and he leapt into action, with the result that he not only handpicked the man most likely to finish him, he handed him uniquely deadly weapons!

[...] Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort's world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have), you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort's followers!

[...]You are protected, in short, by your ability to love! The only protection that can possibly work against the lure of power like Voldemort's! In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mirror that reflected your heart's desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches.

• A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. LeGuin
• David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
• and Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding

all part of the Bildungsroman literary genre he's been researching lately.

• Orality and Literacy, by Walter J. Ong
• The Bonesetter's Daughter, by Amy Tan
• and Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah by Phyllis Trible

I was really excited about the latter -- I've been to one of Trible's lectures here at the U, and she's way up there on the feminist theologian list.

Funny business, a woman's career, the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common - being a woman. Sooner or later we've got to work at it no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed and there he is. Without that you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings but you're not a woman. Slow, curtain, the end.*

Lloyd Richards: You've developed a certain cynicism since you've been married to me.
Karen Richards: I developed that cynicism the day I discovered I was different from little boys!

When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data - and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

• The last episode of 30 Days (for this season) is out. I recently found Spurlock's fiancee's webpage -- Healthy Chef Alex, and she's written a book I'd like to (eventually) read: The Great American Detox Diet. The book discusses how she got her Supersize Me man back into shape after eating a month's worth of processed crap.

• Speaking of which, Andrew Jones has a post on his cruelty-free diet and what he calls a "theology of the body." Cool stuff.

• And finally, World Historical Cheneys. All characterizations based on this clueless statement of his [regarding the current status of things in Iraq]: "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." My favorite:

On Procrastination, originally uploaded by peachicken.

It's a family affliction.

• 1 quiet apartment
• 1 fuzzy fleece blanket & set of jammies
• 1 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince book, read 1/3 through
• 1 thunderstorm omniously lurking outside your window
• 1 grrrl happily avoiding her thesis for the night (after a productive morning)
  

Add all these ingredients and stir. For effect, wait til the power goes out and read by candlelight for that extra Hogwarts-esque feel.

he arrives!, originally uploaded by becky b..

Guess what arrived on my doorstep today? And furthermore, guess what I'll be doing for the next couple of days?

(yay!)

Our generation can end extreme poverty on the planet simply by following through on our promises. The United States (and other high-income countries) has pledged repeatedly to give aid to the poorest countries in the amount of 70 cents for every $100 of our national income. This is known as the "0.7 percent commitment."

Right now the United States gives only 15 cents per $100, less than 1/4 of what we've promised. With the promised amount of aid, the poorest countries could afford immunizations, antimalaria bed nets, fertilizers, irrigation pumps, school meals, rural roads and electricity, and other resources to escape from poverty, disease, and hunger.

As a result, the deaths of millions of children every year would be averted. Farmers in Africa would grow twice as much food per acre, reducing hunger. The amount of violence would also fall sharply, since recent conflicts in Sudan, Liberia, Ethiopia, and elsewhere have been fueled by desperation and hunger. All this can be accomplished for just 70 cents out of every $100 of our income, surely the greatest bargain on the planet.

from The End of Poverty
Jeffery Sachs

Compassion isn't simply opening a spigot and coating everything in a
treacly, all-purpose goo. It requires a gut hunch that whatever I do unto
others, I do unto myself. It calls for appreciating not only what
comforts us but what pierces us ... It's why the sweetest people are often those
who have been the most wounded by life. They know what it feels like and
almost can't help but care.

from Field Notes on the Compassionate Life
by Marc Ian Barash

always be open
e.e. cummings

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

Now comes the so-called official response. Predictably, George W. Bush proclaimed that the War on Terror goes on. Conservative frother Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and made a few remarkable rhetorical contortions. To wit: The G8 summit, which was apparently the target of these attacks, is a liberal summit. Yes, you read that right. He called it a "leftist summit" aimed at achieving leftist goals like saving Africa ("Again," he said) and stopping global warming, and so this was an attack on leftists who will now attack Bush.

The idea that the G8 is a leftist organization is a new one to me. I must have missed a memo somewhere. Apparently, the three billion people who went out last weekend to ask the G8 to do the right thing likewise missed the memo. Other conservative commentators rushed to microphones to proclaim that if we had all been standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Bush, this London attack would never have happened. Never underestimate the ability of the right-wing to use tragedy as a means of beating on people they don't agree with.

I am a little wiser nowadays, and perhaps a little more callous because of that wisdom. My first response was horror, and my second was a sense that the British people have the strength to endure this. My third response was to marvel at the news coverage. Four bombings, more than thirty dead, hundreds more wounded? In London, it is a terrifying, enraging, appalling act of despicable violence that must be immediately avenged.

In Iraq, they call events like this "Tuesday."

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Iraq by way of deadly bombings that have been taking place every single day. These Iraqi people are no different from the Londoners who perished today. Their skin is darker perhaps, and they pray to a different God, but they have families and children and dreams and they die just as horribly as their British counterparts. Yet they earn perhaps a few sentences on the back page of the paper, and virtually no comment from the members of the international community which gunned up the invasion of Iraq in the first place.

If I weren't a Christian, and I kept seeing Christian leaders on television more concerned with money, fame, and power than with grace, love, and social justice, I wouldn't want to believe in God at all. I really wouldn't. The whole thing would make me want to walk away from religion altogether because, like I was saying about Santa Claus, their god must be an idiot to see the world in such a one-sided way.

The god who cares so much about getting rich must not have treasures stored up in heaven, and the god so concerned about getting even must not have very much patience, and the god who cares so much about the West must really hate the rest of the world, and that doesn't sound like a very good god to me. The televangelist can have him for all I care.

You know, the real problem with God-impostors is that they worship a very small god, a god who exists simply to validate their identities. This god falls apart as soon as you touch him, as soon as you start asking very basic questions about the sanctity of all human life, the failure of combat mentality, and the lustful love of power.

[...] I tell you all this only to say I came back to God. All the complexity about life was begging for an explanation; and me actually being god wasn't answering many questions. And so in a way, I left the old god of easy answers, the god who was always wanting me to be rich or wanting my country to be better than other countries or, for that matter, for me to be better than you. I left that god the preachers talk about on television and the politicians mention in their prayers.

But I left room open for another God, a God who might explain my existence, explain the complexity of my hands and feet and feelings and the very strange and mysterious fact that even as I type this I am breathing.

from Searching for God Knows What
Donald Miller

"Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

- Ann Coulter

Banana Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Muffins
(for those times when you gotta use those bananas, and also need a snack that's chocolate-fied, but won't feel too guilty eating!)

2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons (or so) cocoa powder
1 tablespoon baking powder
3-4 mashed bananas (number depends on how many you got -- more is always ok!)
2/3 cup canola oil
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1 cup (or so) semi-sweet chocolate chips

• In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, and baking powder

• In another bowl, blend the mashed bananas, oil, egg, and milk. Add this to the dry ingredients, mixing together until just blended.

• (the best part) Fold in the chocolate chips. Spoon batter into a greased muffin pan, filling 3/4s full.

• Bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for 15-20 minutes. Remove muffins to cool completely.

• Makes about 18 or so muffins. These also freeze really well!
  

Me & the folks, originally uploaded by becky b..

I have just enough time left in the day to wish my parents a happy 32nd anniversary. It's quite something to be with your soulmate for longer than you were old when you met. (does that make sense?)

I love you both! (and miss you)

Ben Jones, a former Georgia congressman who played the wisecracking mechanic on the popular series from 1979-85, said profanity and sexual content in the film make a mockery of the family friendly show.

"Basically, they trashed our show," said Jones, who now lives in the mountains of Washington, Va. "It's one thing to do whatever movie they want to do, but to take a classic family show and do that is like taking "I Love Lucy" and making her a crackhead or something."

Jones said he read a script of the movie, which is scheduled to be released next month, and that it contained profanity, "constant sexual innuendo and some very clear sexual situations."

"From all I have seen and heard, the "Dukes" movie is a sleazy insult to all of us who have cared about the "Dukes of Hazzard" for so long ... ," Jones wrote. "Unless they clean it up before the August 5th release date I would strongly recommend that true blue Dukes fans hold their noses and pass this one up."

To get out of a difficulty, one usually must go through it. Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII).
>
>The deadly seriousness is greatly compounded by the fact that there are very few of us who think we can possibly lose this war and even fewer who realize what losing really means.
>
>First, let's examine a few basics:

>Who were the attackers?
>
>In each case, the attacks on the US were carried out by Muslims.
>
>What is the Muslim population of the World? 25%.

>If we lose the war, our production, income, exports and way of life will all vanish as we know it. After losing, who would trade or deal with us, if they were threatened by the Muslims.
>
>If we can't stop the Muslims, how could anyone else?
>
>The Muslims fully know what is riding on this war, and therefore are completely committed to winning, at any cost. We better know it too and be likewise committed to winning at any cost.

>Although all of the terrorist attacks were committed by Muslim men between 17 and 40 years of age, Secretary Mineta refuses to allow profiling. Does that sound like we are taking this thing seriously? This is war! For the duration, we are going to have to give up some of the civil rights we have become accustomed to. We had better be prepared to lose some of our civil rights temporarily or we will most certainly lose all of them permanently.

>Compare this with some of our press and politicians, who for several days have thought and talked about nothing else but the "humiliating" of some Muslim prisoners -- not burning them, not dragging their charred corpses through the streets, not beheading them, but "humiliating" them.
>
>Can this be for real?
>
>The politicians and pundits have even talked of impeachment of the Secretary of Defense.
>
>If this doesn't show the complete lack of comprehension and understanding of the seriousness of the enemy we are fighting, the life and death struggle we are in and the disastrous results of losing this war, nothing can.
>
>To bring our country to a virtual political standstill over this prisoner issue makes us look like Nero playing his fiddle as Rome burned - totally oblivious to what is going on in the real world.

There are days when I sympathize with pastors. You know how people will suddenly stop swearing or telling lewd jokes when a pastor is identified in the vicinity? I have heard from reliable sources how there are times when pastors would like to be invisible - just ordinary people so that others around them could just act their normal selves instead of slipping on a false mask of piety or tripping over their tongues in apology. Some pastors have divulged that they would appreciate just being treated like ordinary sinners, not like someone too delicate for the realities of life.

Some days that is how I feel too. I guess I should qualify that a bit. I don't end up feeling set apart from ordinary humans because of my great holiness, perceived or real. I don't think most people mistake dentists for holy people. Maybe the opposite . . .

Anti-gay vandals suspects in church arson

Anti-gay graffiti and a fire at a Virginia church may be linked to the United Church of Christ's recent vote affirming same-sex marriage. St. John's Reformed UCC in Middlebrook in western Virginia was vandalized Friday with anti-gay graffiti and the church was set on fire, but the blaze did not spread, according to the Rev. John Deckenback, United Church of Christ Central Atlantic Conference minister.

Police and church leaders said the arson likely was because of a July 4 vote by the denomination's General Synod supporting same-sex marriage. "The violation of sacred space is traumatic for a congregation, particularly with a message of hate targets a church's efforts to reach out in the spirit of Christ's love of all people," UCC President the Rev. John Thomas said in a release. Thomas said he knew the same-sex marriage vote would be controversial but "it sadden me that, for a few, disagreement has moved to acts of violence."

Two other churches in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley were vandalized about the time the United Church of Christ ran television ads welcoming all people, including homosexuals.

In any event, Ferguson makes no bones about Canada's faults -- the weather, above all. As a young man, he found himself "marooned" one winter in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and the experience just about broke his spirit. "Sometimes a word or place becomes symbolic of a larger event," he writes. "The literary term for this is metonymy : 'He met his Waterloo.' 'We don't want this turning into another Vietnam.' . . . To this day, whenever I hear of a young person struggling and adrift, I think to myself, Ah, she's facing her Saskatoon ."

Note-the-JLo-esque-glasses, originally uploaded by becky b..

Happy Birthday Laura!

We've Persian-danced together, commiserated over thesis woes, laughed a lot, shared pints of ice cream or sushi (though not at the same time), watched Bette Davis films or Survivor, worked out together and consumed many odd combinations of Jelly Bellys.

I love ya!

I also have a number of other things hanging over my head that I am doing my darndest to avoid (not you, Darren). The apostle Paul was quite insightful when it comes to human nature, wasn't he? "I do the things I ought not do, and do not do what I ought to do," he said. That's the story of my life.

The great allurement in our present popular "inspirational literature," for instance, may be largely of this sort. It is a strategy for easy consolation. It "fills a need," and since there is always a need for easy consolation -- and in an era of confusion like our own the need is especially keen. So people are only too willing to "meet a man halfway" who will play down the realistic naming of our situation and play up such strategies as make solace cheap.

However, I should propose a reservation here. We usually take it for granted that people who consume our current output of books on "How to Buy Friends and Bamboozle Oneself and Other People" are reading as students who will attempt applying the recipes given. Nothing of the sort. The reading of a book on the attaining of success is in itself the symbolic attainment of that success. It is while they read that these readers are "succeeding."

I'll wager that, in by far the great majority of cases, such readers make no serious attempt to apply the book's recipes. The lure of the book resides in the fact that the reader, while reading it, is then living in the aura of success. What he wants is easy success; and he gets it in symbolic form by the mere reading itself. To attempt applying such stuff in real life would be very difficult, full of many disillusioning problems.

from "Literature as Equipment for Living" by Kenneth Burke

Picture a juice glass sitting on a porch rail in the sunshine. It may look empty, but churning inside that glass are twenty-five thousand microscopic pieces of dust -- at least. And these dusts are a little bit of everything on Earth. One minute they're tiny crumbs chipped off Saharan sand and invisible shreds of camel hair. Then the wind shifts, and you are surrounded by spores of forest fungi and fragments of desiccated violets. A bus stops nearby to take on passengers, and flakes of human skin mixed with miniscule specks of black soot momentarily dominate.

Every time you inhale, thousands upon thousands of motes swirl into your body. Some lodge in the maze of your nose. Some stick to your throat. Others find sanctuary deep in your lungs. By the time you have read this far, you may have inhaled 150,000 of these worldly specks -- if you live in one of the cleanest corners of the planet. If you live in a grubbier region, you've probably just inhaled more than a million.

The Secret Life of Dust
by Hannah Holmes

• City Lifts Mandatory Water Rationing:The City thanks residents for their compliance with the order. By conserving water over the weekend, residents reduced demand on the Water Treatment Plant by 20%. That assistance, combined with the efforts of City crews to complete repairs to the equipment, helped lift the water restriction faster than expected.

• I spruced up my Mom's blog this morning. Check it out, but don't ask her to share any embarrassing stories/pictures, please.

• New google distraction: Google Earthing -- fun with satellites!

• Tom Cruise is Nuts.com -- he really is. I read up on Scientology over the weekend. Think Star Trek meets organized religion. Wild.
  

• Don't Click It -- harder than you think.

• Iraq war fatalities -- sobering.

• A Rhetorical Journey into Darkness: Crime-Scene Profiling as Burkean Analysis< -- an article by my supervisor in the latest KB (Kenneth Burke) journal.

• Photomosaic of Starry Starry Night -- zooom on in and see for yourself.

• Strawberry Pretzel Salad -- made this for some friends the other day. I am domestic. (ack!)

Naomi = "Pleasant-One"
she changes her name to Marah, which means "bitter-woman one"
Elimelech (her dead husband) = "My God-is-King"
Naomi's dead sons: Mahlon = "disease" & Kilion = "destruction"
Daughter-in-law 1, Orpah = "Back-of-neck"
and Ruth, who stays with Naomi = "Sprinkle" or "Dewy"
and finally, Boaz, who Ruth eventually marries = "He-who-has-Might"

Once, many years ago, famine drove My-God-is-King and Pleasant-One from Bethlehem in the land of Judah to the land of Moab. There My-God-is-King died. His two sons Disease and Destruction married local women, but after a while, they too died, leaving only Pleasant-One and her two daughters-in-law. When they heard that there was food in Bethlehem, they set out to return.

On the way, Pleasant-One released her two daughters in law and sent them back to begin new lives. Back-of-neck tearfully turned and left, but Dewy stayed with her mother in law, now no longer Pleasant-One but Bitter-Woman, for God had killed her men. In Bethlehem, they turned to their kinsman He-Who-Has-Might. First God, then Pleasant-Woman, then Dewy, and then He-who-has-Might planned to bring them together, and finally He-who-has-Might married Dewy and from this union came He-who-Serves [Ruth's son Obed], the grandfather of Beloved [King David].

Read this way, the story is an allegory for Israel's destiny, beginning with her bereavement and ending with her joy. Pleasant-Woman is Jerusalem/Judah, so often personified as a woman, the most lovely of women. Elimelekh is the king of Israel or the institution of kingship; the dead sons are the many dead children of Israel. When Pleasant-Woman comes back to the land, "Dewy" the Moabite comes with her, and by mating with the remaining strength in the land (He-who-has-Might), she revitalizes Israel.

The combined efforts of the gracious three, all of whom act with hesed [benevolence] toward one another, make possible the rebirth of the lineage. And so "A child is born to Pleasant-Woman," from whom came Beloved ["and a redeemer come to Zion"]. Beloved is David, the founder of the dynasty that ruled Judah until its destruction.

Reading the Women of the Bible
"Ruth on the Royal Way"
by Tivka Frymer-Kensky

Yellow Flower X, originally uploaded by Marc Vandersluys.

This pic is by Marc, and it looks really nice as my current desktop.

He's got a great collection of pictures here.

1 bag of egg noodles (I like the large ones)
a couple chicken breasts
portabello mushrooms
a cup or two of spinach (frozen or fresh)
1 can of mandarin oranges
fresh basil, garlic
olive oil
unsalted slivered almonds

• Dice up the chicken and cook in olive oil and garlic. When chicken is nearly finished cooking, add mushrooms and fresh basil. Cook 'er up.
  

• Cook and drain egg noodles -- add spinach, chicken & mushrooms, mandarin oranges (with juice!), and almonds

• Mix it all up! Add lots of sea salt and fresh ground pepper. If you want to really mix it up, refrigerate the oranges and add them in last -- makes a nice contrast!

CITY REQUIRES RESIDENTS TO COMPLY WITH MANDATORY WATER RATIONING

The City of Saskatoon requires residents to stop using water in all non-essential activities such as washing clothes, washing cars, showering, and watering lawns and gardens. Water should only be used for drinking purposes. This mandatory water rationing is in effect immediately until further notice.

The high river flows over the past few weeks have created a huge amount of sand that is clogging the Water Treatment Plant’s equipment. Crews have been working around the clock this week to unclog the equipment. Clean, safe drinking water is still being produced, but at a reduced capacity.

Residents must stop using water in order to ensure there is enough water supply to the city. Water supplies are critical for the weekend, and residents must conserve water by only using it for drinking water—non-essential activities are prohibited.

The City of Saskatoon will notify residents when the water rationing is over. The City thanks everyone for their cooperation.

BRIAN MCLAREN: More and more of us are feeling that if we have a version of the Christian faith that does not make us the kind of people that make this a better world, we really want no part of it.


DON CARSON (Professor, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School): You keep moving farther out and farther out and farther out, until the whole cultural shift that is sometimes characterized by the label "postmodern" begins to domesticate what the Bible is actually about. And at that point, it becomes more than troubling. It becomes really a threat to historic Christianity.


TONY JONES (National Coordinator, Emergent): Is it more sloppy than what a systematic theology professor does, sitting in his tenured chair typing up a book on the doctrine of the atonement? Yeah, it's messier than that! But that's, I think, theology as it works itself out in the lives of human beings who are kind of scratching and clawing their way to try to follow Jesus on a daily basis. It's a messy endeavor, and I embrace that messiness.

I've scanned my computer for viruses and spyware.
Somehow in doing all that my soundcard got uninstalled, so I installed it back.
I watched a documentary on Jim Jones.
I delivered coffee to my love.
I learned how to make Italian potato salad.
I watched movie trailers (including this thriller, The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe, and Daily Show alum Steve Carell's film The 40 year old Virgin -- which looks hilarious, by the way)
and I've managed to do almost everything but work on my thesis. (of course)

• Cameron Crowe has a new film coming out: Elizabethtown, which will make me miss the South.
  
• The Aristocrats, a film about big-time comedians (though somehow Bob Saget got in there -- how'd that happen?!). Think Kings of White Comedy.
• Antonio Banderas in a Zorro sequel
• and I even created a trailer with Jerry as Owen Wilson, and me putting the moves on Vince Vaughn.

To believe in God is to believe in the salvation of the world. The paradox of our time is that those who believe in God do no believe in the salvation of the world, and those who believe in the future of the world do not believe in God.

Christians believe in "the end of the world," they expect the final catastrophe, the punishment of others.

Atheists in their turn . . . refuse to believe in God because Christians believe in him and take no interest in the world . . .

Which is the more culpable ignorance?

. . . I often say to myself that, in our religion, God must feel very much alone: for is there anyone besides God who believes in the salvation of the world? God seeks among us sons and daughters who resemble him enough, who love the world enough so that he could send them into the world to save it.

Louis Everly, In the Christian Spirit
(found in The Last Word and the Word After That by Brian McLaren)

Prairie lillies, originally uploaded by becky b..

Look what I got!

There is nothing more painful or more heart breaking than a parent losing a child. And for Sheehan to lose her 24-year-old son, Casey, must have been like someone taking her very own heart and soul and, without warning, ripping them out and throwing them into the depths of hell.

No one should have to experience such pain, but the cold reality of war is that someone’s child actually dies and there are actual parents left living with the hopeless task of trying to cope with the pain. And anyone with any semblance of a heart and soul knows a mother coping with such a loss needs all the help and understanding she can get.

So when Sheehan received an invitation to meet privately with President Bush at the White House two months after her son died, the least she could have expected was a bit of compassion or a kind word coming from the heart.

But what she encountered was an arrogant man with eyes lacking the slightest bit of compassion, a President totally "detached from humanity" and a man who didn’t even bother to remember her son’s name when they were first introduced.

Instead of a kind gesture or a warm handshake, Sheehan said she immediately got a taste of Bush arrogance when he entered the room and "in a condescending tone and with a disgusting loud Texas accent," said: "Who we’all honorin’ here today?"

"His mouth kept moving, but there was nothing in his eyes or anything else about him that showed me he really cared or had any real compassion at all. This is a human being totally disconnected from humanity and reality. His eyes were empty, hollow shells and he was acting like I should be proud to just be in his presence when it was my son who died for his illegal war! It was one of the most disgusting experiences I ever had and it took me almost a year to even talk about it," said Sheehan in a telephone conversation from Washington D.C. where she was attending a July 4th anti-war rally.

Sheehan said the June 2004 private meeting with the President went from bad to worse to a nightmare when Bush acted like he didn’t even want to know her name. She said Bush kept referring to her as ‘Ma’ or ‘Mom’ while he "put on a phony act," saying things like ‘Mom, I can’t even imagine losing a loved one, a mother or a father or a sister or a brother.’

"The whole meeting was simply bizarre and disgusting, designed to intimidate instead of providing compassion. He didn’t even know our names," said Sheehan. "Finally I got so upset I just looked him in the eye, saying ‘I think you can imagine losing someone. You have two daughters. Imagine losing them?’ After I said that he just looked at me, looked at me with no feeling or caring in his eyes at all."

Winners of the Dark and Stormy Night Contest aka the Bulwer-Lytton Contest run by the English Dept of San Jose State University, wherein one writes only the first sentence of a bad novel.

10) As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber he would never hear the end of it.

9) Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens.

8) With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small, straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description.

7) Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the east wall 'Andre, creep...Andre, creep...Andre, creep...

6) Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex change surgeon to become the woman he loved.

5) Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living in a local pet store.

4) Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do.

3) Like an overripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor.

2) Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear', a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death....in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies.

AND THE WINNER IS

1) The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward and with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly 'You lied!'

Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. The contest (hereafter referred to as the BLFC) was the brainchild (or Rosemary's baby) of Professor Scott Rice, whose graduate school excavations unearthed the source of the line "It was a dark and stormy night."

Sentenced to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist, he chose the man with the funny hyphenated name, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who was best known for perpetrating The Last Days of Pompeii, Eugene Aram, Rienzi, The Caxtons, The Coming Race, and--not least--Paul Clifford, whose famous opener ["it was a dark and stormy night"] has been plagiarized repeatedly by the cartoon beagle Snoopy. No less impressively, Lytton coined phrases that have become common parlance in our language: "the pen is mightier than the sword," "the great unwashed," and "the almighty dollar" (the latter from The Coming Race, now available from the Broadview Press).

DSCN2942, originally uploaded by becky b..

It's the fourth of July, so watermelon-eating is mandatory. We found some YELLOW watermelons at the store -- and they're not bad. The texture is slightly different (the rind is tougher) and the taste is a combo of watermelon and apricots.

Yum.

Going Back to Georgia
Nanci Griffith, Adam Duritz & Brian Claflin

Oh the city snow makes your brown eyes shine
We've gotta look real hard to find a reason to cry
New York, New York is a friend of the traveling kind

And I'm coming around from years of hard times
He's chased me down through the towns and the miles
Once stilled by love he was bound to roll on by

[Chorus:]
And if you feel my love won't leave you
And if your sorrow has been your share
If you are traveling back to Georgia
Won't you take me with you there

Well I'm long gone darlin', lonesome blue
I been thinking of leavin', I been thinkin' of you
But that big city singin', man, I like the way that it shines

I was half a mile from Canada waitin' on a train
Wonderin' and wishin' I could disappear again
I been killed by love till it takes me to the end of the line

[Chorus]

Well, I've been troubled by a love untrue
He's a fool who'll drown in his fountain of youth
I can see that now as I'm walkin' and talkin' with you

Well, I been blinded by the sun, washed in the rain
Scattered in America, I'm scatterin' again
But if you're goin' south darlin' I guess I'm travelin with you

[Chorus 2x]

Take me with you...
Oh... won't you take me home

You are dependable, popular, and observant.
Deep and thoughtful, you are prone to moodiness.
In fact, your emotions tend to influence everything you do.

You are unique, creative, and expressive.
You don't mind waving your freak flag every once and a while.
And lucky for you, most people find your weird ways charming!

The world is not what I think, but what I live through. I am open to the world, I have no doubt that I am in communication with it, but I do not possess it; it is inexhaustible.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Phenomenology of Perception.

NEW MAGAZINE WREAKS HOLY MISCHIEF IN AN AGE OF FAST FAITH

Winnipeg, Canada - A new magazine will rise from the fringes of faith this November. Geez magazine will integrate spiritual adventure and social change.

It's a defiant effort to untangle the Christian story from fundamentalists and pious self-helpers -- all with an uninhibited, sometimes cheeky, aesthetic, says publisher Aiden Enns.

"There's so much spiritual vitality at the periphery of traditional religious structures. I see it in Jesuits who resist the invasion of Wal-Mart, in evangelicals squatting with homeless people, or in activsts staging a die-in against the latest war," said Enns, former managing editor of Adbusters magazine.

"We want to capture that energy and let it loose on other sensitive souls," he said.

Their audience includes Christian peacemakers dodging Rumsfeld's bombs, gung-ho student organizers, edgy nuns, a few right wing spies and non-church folk who want to peek past the stained glass.

Geez will mix the activist kick and visual pull of Adbusters, the intelligent critique of Harper's and the subversive elements of contemplative communities, said Enns, 43, who holds graduate degrees in religion and journalism, and has worked eight years with the church press.

Geez magazine launches in November, 2005.

There's an array of social justice magazines out there -- Mother Jones, Yes!, Clamor, Z Magazine and more -- but they rarely tap the spiritual core of social action, said Enns. "At the same time, I see religious magazines getting stuck in self-indulgent piety or personal enlightenment and ignoring wider political issues."

"Gandhi called his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth," said Geez editor Will Braun. "In a similar spirit, we'll hunt for experiments in dynamic spirituality at the front lines of social action."

"Geez is redrawing the boundaries of church to create more space in the spiritual commons for people of restless faith," said Braun, 32, a part-time market gardener and freelance writer with experience as a human rights activist with northern indigenous peoples. Both Braun and Enns claim their counter-cultural instincts stem from their Anabaptist roots.

Darryl Brown, a Quaker and professional designer from Newberg, Oregon, is also involved in the project. "Geez will have a confident aesthetic - fluent in the language of image,"said Brown.

Geez magazine will publish quarterly, with the premiere issue arriving in November. Headquarters are deliberately located in Winnipeg, Canada, in what the editors call "the demographic fringe of the continent." They aim to print ad-free on 100 percent, post-consumer recycled paper. Charter subscriptions cost $25 and can be ordered at www.geezmagazine.org.

Foreign aid should be targeted to specific, measurable, achievable and bold goals. Proven technologies such as antiretroviral medicines should be featured. Timetables should be prepared. The United States should help countries that are prepared to help themselves. Americans should be encouraged to understand the roots of the African crisis and its solution. Bipartisan support should be sought.

Here then is how President Bush and Congress could quickly fix the broken strategy on Africa.

• Five Rights Women Could Lose

• A bunch of opinions and predictions by pundits from the Christian Coalition to NARAL.

• NYT graphic with possible nominees -- all appointed by Reagan or Bush I or II.

• O'Connor Resigns, Ugliness to Come

• And of course, the clowns at the Family Research Council get their say in.