Brilliant! Andy Detskas has a site called I Remember, in which he, well, remembers something daily (that's at least until he stopped on Sept. 1). I love things like this - we give far too much attention to the logistical tasks which fill our days and far to little to the memories which feed our souls. (Via 2020 Hindsight).
Well, At Least They Let Them Go Folks on one side of the political spectrum like the phrase "freedom isn't free", but I would like to think that freedom still includes, you know, freedom. Discourse.net links to a letter from U.S. Rep. John Conyers to the U.S. Park Service Police following the arrest of 384 protesters outside the White House on Monday. The protesters, many of whom were elderly, were detained, handcuffed, in vans, for up to twelve hours. Conyers wonders, as do I, why they received this kind of "special" treatment.
St. Mushroom Cloud? I'm not one of those Protestant types who have a "thing" for Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and especially not as it actually exists. Here's another reason why: a Russian admiral who led Tsarist forces against Napoleon has just been named the patron saint of Russia's nuclear bomber arsenal. I am not making this up. (Via Marginal Revolution).
Five Minute Man My congressman, David Dreier, has apparently just set the record for the shortest tenure ever as House Majority Leader. He was announced as the new leader by the Speaker, only to lose out within hours due to pressure from more conservative types. He was replaced by Roy Blunt, who will certainly carry on in Tom Delay's venal tradition - Blunt is literally in bed with a lobbyist, having divorced his wife to marry one last year.
Stand Back, This One's Hot! I don't normally go this far left in my reading, but today Hunter at Daily Kos got off an epic blast on one Mark Noonan, who asserts that in attacking Tom Delay, Democrats are "sitting in a lake of gasoline and... playing with fire". This drives Hunter into wild shrillness. The saddest part is that Hunter's shrillness seems like a reasoned response given the direction of our national political life since Bill Clinton had the temerity to get elected in 1992.
2 comments:
On having a "thing" for Eastern Orthodox Christianity: So you've noticed this phenomenon, too, eh?
Several very thoughtful Quakers have been part of the defection to Eastern Orthodoxy, along with such evangelical luminaries as Michael Harper. I have sympathy for some of the motives (such as getting fed up with puritan cultural filters, and with a sort of disconnection from reality that Earlham's Paul Lacey once summed up as "being of the world but not in it").
I have less sympathy for defectors who don't want women to use all the spiritual gifts that a sovereign God has given them, or who seem to say that only a Byzantine esthetic can be truly Christian.
To my great comfort, the mature Eastern Orthodox insiders and observers whom I've known and read have a refreshing sense of balance about the supposed superiority of their spiritual home. And some of my favorite Orthodox writers (Anthony Bloom and Alexander Men, for example) have been very important to me. I'm in the process of translating Bloom's advice on reading the Bible; it seems very congenial to a Quaker audience.
I too, have been helped by Anthony Bloom, and Kalistos Ware has been another writer I've read with profit.
I actually like the way the Orthodox folks work through certain theological issues, finding their perspectives more congenial to Friends than those of Reformaed and Baptistic Evangelicals.
But the continued assertion of spiritual superiority leaves me cold, and I am very troubled whenever Christian leaders, whether they're in Moscow or Colorado Springs, put the Church in service of the State.
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