James Kuchiner, at Mere Comments, reports that in the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Great Lent "begins with congregants asking forgiveness of each other during the Sunday evening vespers."
Continue reading ""Forgiveness" Sunday, and Monday, and..." »
September 8, 2005
From someone with as good credentials as we have ever seen, and Austin roots.
Gerry Charlotte Phelps was teaching economics at the University of Houston when she was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Out of her layered experience of prison and programs come sane words for long-term assistance to those whose lives were disrupted by Katrina, and whose opportunity is to move out of poverty. The latest chapter is here.
These are not things that need to be done during the first part of this emergency. Rather, this is for the time after that, when Katrina evacuees will be moving from getting immediate emergency assistance to trying to normalize their lives. That is when good programs to help them "up and out" of their situation need to kick in. The following is for that time.
August 30, 2005
It seems wrong, narrow, narcissistic, merely to be grateful to have been out of the swath of Katrina, ourselves.
So much misery.
The texture of life in the city, its history cannot be put back.
It's breaking my heart to see the filthy water submerging those little shotgun houses. Unless you've seen it with your own eyes, you cannot grasp just how utterly poor "the poor" of New Orleans are--100,000 of them at the very least. They have nothing left. What government or charitable agencies can feed, house, and support such numbers for long months to come?
So much contemptible human failure, turning the screws on each other.
Looting has also escalated and an atmosphere of lawlessness has developed.
How in the name of a mysterious and sublime Providence can this be eventually turned to good...? Too big for our contemplation, too sad for now to ponder other than to contribute what we can, and be prompted to cherish our fellow man nearby and far away. And, legitimately, be prepared to be cheered by the astonishing resilience of decent people.
We'll be quiet for awhile.
August 28, 2005
Eye of the Storm, an FSU meteorology student, is dire. This may be an annular storm with force that does not fade quickly on landfall.
Shear. Shear. Shear. Chill the currents. Let this thing be interrupted. Sustain life and civilization along its course. Let levees hold, pumps serve, and swells be quieted.
Confuse the wind force, turn it again to sea. Limit, dissolve, contain the fury.
Thanks for sharing, Mr. Zimbleman. We sincerely hope you find what you're looking for, and those of us who see it that way say a prayer for you. Sounds like some of us were remiss in geniality and waited far too long to demonstrate good will toward you.
Via Michelle Malkin and The Anchoress
Here's a long sympathetic chapter on President Bush's.
Includes a kind of gnomic measure of defined maturity: "Son, you've arrived. I can throw it to you as hard as I want to."
A particularly modern psycho-heresy comes from our being pumped full of pseudo-knowledge about other lives, roles, and histories. Mundane and spiritual ambition* run amok in one's thinking. Well, it has to be something big, worthwhile, full of glory and importance. Or I won't do it. "If I can't be Hemingway, why blog?"
This post from Trevor Romain's blog, especially the sketch, is a good reminder. Trevor's work with children seems a true calling. See for instance, the beautiful young model for a day.
Via Dawn Eden.
*Spiritual ambition: the earnest desire for some spiritual achievement and distinction and the willingness to strive for it; a desire to be seen and counted among the mature.
Tony Woodlief is back on track, with a tale of fences, dogs, and small boys, one of whom, with Jack Benny timing, must ponder quite a while 
deciding whether he'd rather sacrifice a red ball, or Daddy, to a furry predator next door. Tony (his writing, we don't know him, but we think we do) is the purest example of Deep Real Feeling, funny without the tell-tale superior flourish.
His is not a cloistered virtue.
I read somewhere that most people are never more than eight feet from a spider. Spiders are ubiquitous and secretive. Suffering is like that, everywhere and hidden.
Sometimes we've been bitten, sometimes we're oblivious. It might be good, especially for Lent, to step carefully among the invisible spiders, offering gentle kindness to those who appear to be just fine.
On-the-ground demonstration of the transformative power of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
We'll take it. A large serving please.
December 7, 2004
On the front page of today's Wall Street Journal (subscription only), a long article about Xu Qian Qian, a deformed Chinese girl-child sold, by a father in intense poverty and privation, to a cruel begging family.
After years of lying on the sidewalk with cigarette butts and candy wrappers, terribly disabled and misused, rescue comes from a true Good Samaritan.
In January 2004, Liu Ruohan, a 33-year-old local resident, decided to help. Mr. Liu says he is a small businessman and practicing Christian, without providing further details, and says his motivation was religious. He went to the neighborhood police station and waited an hour ...They advised Mr. Liu to stay out of the matter. ...A week later, Mr. Liu returned to the bridge and scooped up the little girl. ...By chance, [her watcher] ... had left her watch post. Mr. Liu rushed the girl to a hospital. He says a doctor who conducted a cursory exam estimated that basic treatment would cost about $12,000....Unable to pay, Mr. Liu took Qian Qian to his home and hid her.
After newspaper publicity, the girl's captors have been prosecuted, medical care found for her.
What makes this an Advent story is this unresolved scene, when her sad and sheepish father finds her again.
Qian Qian is cool toward him. "My Dad knew he wasn't taking me to see a doctor," she says....As a nurse's attendant swabbed the deep cuts on one of Qian Qian's heels, [the father who sold her] knelt down and pulled off the powder-blue sock on her other foot. He looked at the puncture marks and bruises below the ankle. "Did he do this to you?" he asked. "Did he do this to you?" Qian Qian didn't say a word. She twisted her face away from her father and with eyes wet, stared up at the hospital lights.
Forgiveness, reconciliation, fruitfulness that transcends injury. In due time, the other half of the miracle and worth waiting for.
This is a story for a modern Chinese opera. Vistas of misery, starvation, despair, cruelty, desperation, 21st-century economic dislocation, ancient customs good and evil, scheming greed, deliverance by quiet genuine heroism. And a final challenge for the spirit.
If a reader or two wants to read the entire article, and missed it in print, let us know at good_and_happy "at" yahoo "dot" com.
