More snapshots from Duncan demonstration--local pastors

Let us have no imitation Christian love. Let us have a genuine break with evil and a real devotion to good. Let us have real warm affection for one another as between brothers, and a willingness to let the other man have the credit. Let us not allow slackness to spoil our work and let us keep the fires of the spirit burning, as we do our work for the Lord. Base your happiness on your hope in Christ. When trials come endure them patiently; steadfastly maintain the habit of prayer. Give freely to fellow Christians in want, never grudging a meal or a bed to those who need them. And as for those who try to make your life a misery, bless them. Don't curse, bless. Share the happiness of those who are happy, and the sorrow of those who are sad. Live in harmony with one another. Don't become snobbish but take a real interest in ordinary people. Don't become set in your own opinions. Don't pay back a bad turn by a bad turn, to anyone. See that your public behavior is above criticism. As far as your responsibility goes, live at peace with everyone. Never take vengeance into your own hands, my dear friends: stand back and let God punish if he will. For it is written:

Vengeance belongeth unto me: I will recompense.

And these are God's words:

If thine enemy hunger, feed him;
If he thirst, give him to drink:
For in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head.

Don't allow yourself to be overpowered by evil. Take the offensive--overpower evil with good!
--Romans 12:9-21 [J. B. Phillips' translation]

More snapshots from the May 17 Duncan Halliburton protest--before 8:30 am

As usual, click photos for larger versions.

But the spirit of the passages about the cities of refuge [Numbers 35:9-31; Joshua 20:1-9; and Deuteronomy 19:1-13] makes the prevention of harmdoing, the prevention of injustice, a requirement, a heavy obligation upon those who live as regular inhabitants of those cities. They must both refuse to do harm themselves and act to prevent others from doing harm, as if they were all being commanded to be the Good Samaritan of Luke 10:30-37, and as if this was what Jesus meant when he said, immediately before the Good Samaritan passage, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood be Shed, 1979, 110. [more to follow]

Duncan Banner on Halliburton meeting protest

Here's the link to the article promised yesterday: Halliburton's meeting draws fire [Duncan Banner, 15 May 2006]

Reporter Rod Jones interviewed Darla Shelden [identified as a protest organizer for the Oklahoma City branch of Halliburton Watch] and Katie Heim of Houston Global Awareness. The theme of this year's protest is "Monopoly" [as in the board game].

The paper and ink newspaper [not the online version, as far as I can tell] includes a box listing "Some of the complaints against Halliburton by protesters:"

• Mismanagement of operations in Iraq and Kuwait, in which the company is accused of cheating the U. S. government out of millions of dollars through overcharging, bribery or waste.
• Accusations of increasing profits by employing international laborers for company contracts in Iraq and in Hurricane Katrina rebuilding projects.
• Accusations of using worker's pensions to pay management benefits.
• Using hydraulic fracturing techniques in domestic drilling projects, which protesters say has had disastrous impacts on the environment, including water supplies.
• Accusations that the company has sent workers to perform Iraq rebuilding projects without adequate protection or training.
• Allegedly giving U. S. soldiers contaminated water and food while they were serving in Iraq.

There is no discussion of the potential validity or credibility of these accusations, nor any response from Halliburton. The article says that Halliburton "has not responded to give an estimated number of shareholders planning to attend"--which the company had earlier promised to provide.

The biggest surprise to me in the article was the claim that Duncan Middle School was not closed for the day just for safety reasons; Duncan School Superintendant Sherry Labyer at a recent school board meeting stated that "there could be some educational value for students to see a protest in action." Why not close the entire school system that day? Well, one of my sons will be out of school on Wednesday, and he will get an educational experience at the protest. My other son will have to get his educational experiences that day in class.

They who are baptized inwardly with Spirit and fire, and externally with water, according to the Word of the Lord, have no weapons except patience, hope, silence, and God's Word. . . .
Iron and metal spears and swords we leave to those who, alas, regard human blood and swine's blood about alike.
--Menno Simons

Footwashing

Today's devotional prayer at Sacred Space reflects on our freedom to serve each other:

Freedom--God is not foreign to my freedom.
Instead the Spirit breathes life into my most intimate desires,
gently nudging me towards all that is good.
I ask for the grace to let myself be enfolded by the Spirit.

Today's verse, to read slowly and meditate upon:
John 13:16-17

After Jesus had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

Some thoughts on today's scripture:

Lord, you are teaching me here: it is not what you say that stays with me, so much as the sight of you doing a slave's job and loving it. As you kneel at our feet, you put all hierarchies into perspective. This is the ultimate ecumenism, the unity of those who serve with love. In that unity we are guided, not by rules or rituals, but by the needs of others.

Postage Stamp Mosaics

Source: Chinanews
On 30 August 2005, Hong Kong Post unveiled a gigantic stamp mosaic to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the 'Post Office Trading Fund.'The mural portrays Victoria Harbor and the Hong Kong skyline. Over 1000 staff members of Hong Kong Post helped create the mosaic.

Source: Hong Kong Post
The mural contains over 69,000 used postage stamps. The Guiness Book of World Records has recently recognized it as the largest stamp mosaic in the world. It measures 6.45 meters [21 feet] wide and 3.97 [13 feet] meters high.

I wondered what other stamp mosaics may be on the web, and I found this photo gallery at the National Postal Museum. I have selected two images from this gallery for Ghost Town Orange. They feature my favorite postage stamp topic: the Statue of Liberty:

After me Mattheus was tortured; he named his house and the street in which we live, and said it was in a gate; however, I am of the opinion that there are no longer any gates on that street. Hence, move away altogether, if you have not done so yet; for I think the lord will find his way there. Let therefore no one who stands in any danger go into the house. He also named R. T.'s house, and the street where F. V. St. lives. Do herein immediately the best you can. He is very sorry for it.
--from the second letter of Christian Langedul to his wife, written while he was in prison in Antwerp, 12 August 1567

[The Bloody Theater; or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, compiled by Thieleman J. van Braght, 1660.]

Technical Difficulties

Technical difficulties over the weekend have delayed the 'Statue of Liberty on US Postage Stamps' post...

Also, I suddenly had a desire to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on the big screen; a movie where Santa Claus cheerfully passes out gifts of weapons to the young heroes, with the admonition that they are 'tools, not toys.' Odd that spiritual warfare is reduced to physical battle where the good guys never really die.

The redemptive death of the lion Aslan and his magical resurrection seems to reduce Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection to a magic trick. Why did Aslan's mane grow back? Shouldn't he bear the scars of the horrible death he just suffered?

I enjoyed reading the book as a child; re-reading it with one of my sons left me feeling frustrated at the shallowness of the story. Where is the church--the community of faith--in Aslan's army? Why are four flawed children shown as the only representatives of humanity in Narnia?

Forgive us, Lord God, if we have placed fun before fulfillment;
if we have sought pleasure before purpose;
if we have sought to leave a legacy that does not include love;
if we have viewed all of life as a competition;
if we have placed ourselves before others.
Pardon us, we pray, and help us to set straight our priorities.

Twelfth Night

Tonight [or in some traditions, tomorrow night] is the 'Twelfth Night' of Christmas. In Shakespeare's day,

this holiday was celebrated as a festival in which everything was turned upside down--much like the upside-down, chaotic world of Illyria in the play.

More from Wikipedia on Twelfth Night:

In Tudor England, the Twelfth Night marked the end of a winter festival that started on All Hallows Eve--which some now celebrate as Halloween. A King or Lord of Misrule would be appointed to run the Christmas festivities, and the Twelfth Night was the end of his period of rule. The common theme was that the normal order of things was reversed. This Lord of Misrule tradition can be traced back to pre-Christian European festivals such as the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia.

Celebrate Twelfth Night by downloading a copy of the Shakespeare's play from Project Gutenberg--4 English versions available:

• First Folio [public domain, with old-style spelling]
• Collins edition [public domain]
• Hudson edition [public domain]
• World Library edition [copyrighted]

and 1 German:

• translation by Christoph Martin Wieland [public domain]

Tobacco, banjo playing, and dominoes do not figure in the Decalogue as recorded in the Book of Exodus. But particularly in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, Christians have been adept, and remarkably inventive, at interpreting God's commandments to cover just about anything they don't approve of. The effect, of course, is to make the surpassingly large God of the scriptures into a petty Cosmic Patrolman. Addictions are not pretty, but for Christians, fretting over them as exclusively moral issues can be a convenient way of ignoring Jesus' admonition that it isn't what we ingest into our bodies that is at the root of our troubles, but what comes out of our hearts and minds.

--Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace, 1998

John Brown

Madman, terrorist, or crucial spark in the struggle to end slavery in the United States?

John Brown, illustrated by Gregory Nemec for the New York Times 
The new book 'John Brown, Abolitionist': A Soldier in the Army of the Lord by David S. Reynolds was reviewed recently by Barbara Ehrenreich in the New York Times. The militant abolitionist John Brown is frequently dismissed as a crazy person or as a terrorist. David S. Reynolds takes a look at him in light of the times in which he lived:

In the 1850's, it was the pro-slavery forces that held a monopoly on armed force -- terrorizing antislavery citizens in the Midwest as well as the South, or proudly proclaiming, as did one Kansas newspaper editor, that he lived to kill an abolitionist: ''If I can't kill a man, I'll kill a woman; and if I can't kill a woman, I'll kill a child!'' Antislavery activists, on the other hand, were often pacifists and usually the victims of their political opponents -- a relationship symbolized by a South Carolina congressman's crippling beating of the abolitionist Charles Sumner on the floor of the United States Senate. With his guns and pikes, Brown reversed the equation -- stiffening the backbones of Northern abolitionists, terrifying the white South -- and hastening, through both effects, the Civil War and emancipation.

According to the book,

... if terrorism is defined as the random killing of civilians to make a political point, then it is not just misleading to call Brown a terrorist, it is flat-out wrong. Brown selected his victims carefully; all had reportedly threatened abolitionists and the Brown family in particular.

Grounds for further research...

The New York Times has an excerpt from the first chapter. [I don't know if this is a permanently available link.]

Here is another review of John Brown by Kathleen Krog in the Miami Herald.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Terri Schiavo

This story is one that I have followed in the Christian media for several years. I didn't realize until last night's Nightline how many lies the Christian media have been telling about the case. Unfortunately, I can't find a link to a transcript and I can't even remember the name of the doctor who formerly served as Terri Schiavo's guardian under Florida law. Christians who engage in assassinating the character of Michael Schiavo should be ashamed of themselves.

Digby has a well-written summary of the political aspects of this case and Republican hypocrisy over the issues of medical care, funding, bankruptcy 'reform,' tort 'reform,' etc.:

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terri Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terri Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terri Schiavo's because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terri Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

This is why we cannot trust the mainstream media. Most people get their news from television. And television is presenting this issue as a round the clock one dimensional soap opera pitting the "family", the congress and the church against this woman's husband and the judicial system that upheld Terri Schiavo's right and explicit request that she be allowed to die if extraordinary means were required to keep her alive. The ghoulish infotainment industry is making a killing by acceding once again to trumped up right wing sensationalism.

This issue gets to the essence of the culture war. Shall the state be allowed to interfere in the most delicate, complicated personal matters of life, death and health because a particular religious constituency holds that their belief system should override each individual's right to make these personal decisions for him or herself. And it isn't the allegedly statist/communist/socialist left that is agitating for the government to tell Americans how they must live and how they must die.

One of the things that we need to help America understand is that there is a big difference between the way the two parties perceive the role of government in its citizens personal lives. Democrats want the government to collect money from all its citizens in order to deliver services to the people. The Republicans want the government to collect money from working people in order to dictate individual citizen's personal decisions. You tell me which is the bigger intrusion into the average American's liberty?

Republicans do not know the meaning of 'liberty.'

For the spiritual aspects of the case, read Terri Schiavo: Whose Will Should Prevail? by Johann Christoph Arnold:

. . . the media attention it [the Terri Schiavo case] has received has also created an atmosphere of paranoia, and this has harmed Terri more than it has helped, and has clouded the real issues that are at stake. These issues are our society's terrible fear of death and suffering and our over-reliance on medical technology in a desperate attempt to avoid both. In fact, God alone is in control of human life, and our idolization of science and medical technology needs to be subjugated to his much greater wisdom and love.

Arnold's concluding paragraphs:

If Terri dies, she will leave a very big hole in her mother's life: after all, she has loved and cared for her daughter faithfully, for years. But it is just here that we need to turn to God in prayer. He knows everything, and he will heal the most wounded heart, providing we take time to grieve. All the service Terri's parents -- and her husband, and her doctors and nurses -- have given her over these many years will never be in vain and will be richly rewarded in the next world. May Bob and Mary Schindler and Michael Schiavo be given the wisdom of Job who, after his suffering, could finally experience the beautiful words, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

As a culture, we have become too reliant on science and technology. We have also become dangerously dependent on the State to make decisions for us. Shouldn't we rather try to discern what God would have us do? In Terri's case it should not be the end of the world to remove a feeding tube. Where medical knowledge and capability end, there God can begin to work. And if it is God's will for Terri to recover, she will: for Jesus is truly the only physician who can heal the sick and raise the dead. If Terri should die, it will be painful, but no cause for despair: we all have to die one day.

We are too afraid of death and dying. We forget that those who are dying are stretched out between earth and heaven, between the physical and the spiritual, between the finiteness of life on earth and the eternity of life beyond. Every dying person has a message to the living. Even in her current condition, Terri's living is not in vain; all who come in contact with her have an opportunity to be taught love and compassion to others.

That an intensified struggle over Terri's life is occurring right at Easter highlights the message of Good Friday, when we think of the death of Jesus, who longed to reconcile everything in the universe. His crucifixion remains the supreme example of suffering that was not in vain.

The temptation to run from pain -- to choose the path of least suffering -- is only human. Even Jesus begged his Father to "take this cup from me." But that isn't the full story, for Jesus added, "Yet not my will, but Thy will be done." In Terri's case, there will be suffering on both sides, no matter how the controversy is resolved. All the more, shouldn't each of us lay aside our agendas and opinions and ask what Jesus asked -- that God's will alone be done?

And now, my two cents: I wonder what Christian witness is being made by people protesting Mrs. Schiavo's immanent death. Is our physical life so precious that it must be grasped at all costs--as if it were the entire sum of our existence?

We all have to muddle through this brief, physical life, with pain, trouble, and suffering. We all have to make decisions with imperfect information. And we should have the grace to let other people make their own decisions. In this case, this is Terri's husband Michael, not her parents, and certainly not the cold, stale hands of politicians, more concerned with making 'pro-life' political points than making sure that all Americans have access to adequate medical care.

Ye who think of sin but lightly
Nor suppose the evil great
Here may view its nature rightly,
Here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the Sacrifice appointed,
See who bears the awful load;
'Tis the WORD, the LORD'S ANNOINTED,
Son of Man and Son of God.
--3rd verse of Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted by Thomas Kelly, 1804

St. Patrick's Day

Something by Saint Patrick of Ireland arrived in my in-box today:

The Cry of the Deer

I arise today:
in the might of heaven,
in the splendor of the sun,
in whiteness of snow;
irresistibleness of fire,
swiftness of lightning;
absoluteness of the deep;
in speed of wind,
rock’s durability…

Eye of God for my foresight,
ear of God for my hearing;
word of God for my word,
hand of God for my guard,
shield of God for my protection,
against any demon’s snare,
against all vice’s lure,
against ill-wishes far and near...

Full text at Bruderhof.

Pray with Irish Jesuits on-line. From today's entry:

If there is a hierarchy in heaven based on the churches named after you, Patrick must be at the top. He is our antidote to racism – a Welsh boy educated in France and missioned by Italians, who became the loved apostle of Ireland, and the toast of Irish people everywhere on 17th March. He is our antidote to conservatism – a slave who ran away from his owners and returned to Ireland to face down kings and chieftains. He was a visionary who followed his dreams, and loved the high mountains like Slemish and Croagh Patrick. Above all he was a religious man who turned to God during his leisured hours as a swineherd. All through his Confessions you sense his overflowing gratitude for the privilege of knowing Almighty God and Jesus Christ his son as he wrote: In the light of our faith in the Trinity, regardless of danger, I must make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, without fear and frankly. I must spread everywhere the name of God so that after my decease I may leave a bequest to those whom I have baptized in the Lord — so many thousands of people.

Irish Immigrant Database Goes Online [NPR story]
'Information Wanted' Ad Database

From October 1831 through October 1921, the Boston Pilot newspaper printed a "Missing Friends" column with advertisements from people looking for "lost" friends and relatives who had emigrated from Ireland to the United States. This extraordinary collection of more than 31,438 records is available here as a searchable online database, which contains a text record for each ad that appeared in the Pilot.

I did not remember to wear green today; I don't even have a green tie. Memo to self: get a kelly green and orange tie for next St. Patrick's Day. The Irish ancestors I know about were Protestants, not Roman Catholics, so I'll wear orange too.

This is a day of new beginnings,
time to remember and move on,
time to believe what love is bringing,
laying to rest the pain that's gone.

For by the life and death of Jesus,
God's mighty Spirit, now as then,
can make for us a world of difference,
as faith and hope are born again.

--Brian Wren
This is a day of new beginnings, 1978, alt.
(1st 2 verses)

Ghost Town Orange's Reagan Memorial Post

Turner Classic Movies is showing many of Ronald Reagan's movies on Thursday June 10 and Thursday June 24. I don't remember watching any of them, so I will be programming the VCR to tape a bunch of them; I especially want to see Kings Row. This movie provided the title for Reagan's autobiography: "Where's the rest of me?"


"King's Row"
Ann Sheridan, Ronald Reagan
1942
Warner Bros.Photo source: Mptv.

President Reagan certainly could deliver a speech; I have a vivid memory of his address to the nation after the space shuttle Challenger disaster:

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

[Reagan was quoting from the poem High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., an American pilot serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Magee died in a plane crash in England just a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.]

Here's a list of highlights from the Reagan presidency which I will use to teach my sons about President Reagan (modified from 66 Things to Think About When Flying Into Reagan National Airport by David Corn, [The Nation, March 2, 1998]):

the firing of the air traffic controllers

winnable nuclear war

recallable nuclear missiles

trees that cause pollution

Elliott Abrams lying to Congress

ketchup as a vegetable

colluding with Guatemalan thugs

pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers

voodoo economics

budget deficits

toasts to Ferdinand Marcos

public housing cutbacks

redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement

James Watt

Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals

tax credits for segregated schools

disinformation campaigns

"homeless by choice"

Manuel Noriega

falling wages

the HUD scandal

air raids on Libya

"constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa

United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers

attacks on OSHA and workplace safety

the invasion of Grenada

assassination manuals

Nancy's astrologer

Drug tests

lie detector tests

Fawn Hall

female appointees (8 percent)

mining harbors

the S&L scandal [remember that President Reagan said "All in all, I think we hit the jackpot" when signing legislation that directly led to the failure of the S&Ls.

239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut

Al Haig "in control"

silence on AIDS

food-stamp reductions

Debategate

White House shredding

Jonas Savimbi

tax cuts for the rich

"mistakes were made"

Michael Deaver's conviction for influence peddling

Lyn Nofziger's conviction for influence peddling

Caspar Weinberger's five-count indictment

Ed Meese ("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime")

Donald Regan (women don't "understand throw-weights")

education cuts

massacres in El Salvador

"The bombing begins in five minutes"

$640 Pentagon toilet seats

African- American judicial appointees (1.9 percent)

Reader's Digest [this entry stumps me. what is this about?-GTO]

C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed)

200 officials accused of wrongdoing

William Casey

Iran/contra

"Facts are stupid things"

three-by-five cards

the MX missile

Bitburg

S.D.I.

Robert Bork

naps

Teflon

Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you."

The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.

I bless the LORD who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
I keep the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
--Psalm 16: 1-2,5,7-8,11
June 9 is the feast day of St.Colmcille