Celebrated Holi Quotes

The Chinese used gunpowder to make fireworks for celebrations, and the white man came along and said, Holy shit, we can use this to kill people. What better way to celebrate than that?


What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?

Though you never think it possible, you can celebrate and grieve in the same breath. It is a holy abomination.

It’s almost October though, and horror is my religion. Can I not celebrate orthodoxly and honor my church’s holy days?

I told you guys my grandparents visited, and it was their first time celebrating Thanksgiving. Hailey asked if we ate a cat. Because we’re Chinese.” Ho-ly

The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word 'beat' spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in the postwar France of Sartre and Genet and what's more we knew about it--But as to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was really just an idea in our minds--We'd stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee, playing record after record of Wardell Gray, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson, Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -We'd write stories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goatee hitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message of blowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter the Penniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroes and wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating the new 'angels' of the American underground--In actuality there was only a handful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightily swiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of the universalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnet's 'peace' officers) but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity, the generation itself was shortlived and small in number.

I celebrate life with holy thanks.

Taking off your shoes is a sacred ritual. It is a hallowed moment of remembering the goodness of space and time. It is a way of celebrating the holy ground on which you stand.

Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses. Flood waters await us in our avenues. Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche Over unprotected villages. The sky slips low and grey and threatening. We question ourselves. What have we done to so affront nature? We worry God. Are you there? Are you there really? Does the covenant you made with us still hold? Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters, Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air. The world is encouraged to come away from rancor, Come the way of friendship. It is the Glad Season. Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner. Flood waters recede into memory. Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us As we make our way to higher ground. Hope is born again in the faces of children It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets. Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things, Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors. In our joy, we think we hear a whisper. At first it is too soft. Then only half heard. We listen carefully as it gathers strength. We hear a sweetness. The word is Peace. It is loud now. It is louder. Louder than the explosion of bombs. We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence. It is what we have hungered for. Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace. A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies. Security for our beloveds and their beloveds. We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas. We beckon this good season to wait a while with us. We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come. Peace. Come and fill us and our world with your majesty. We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian, Implore you, to stay a while with us. So we may learn by your shimmering light How to look beyond complexion and see community. It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time. On this platform of peace, we can create a language To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other. At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ Into the great religions of the world. We jubilate the precious advent of trust. We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope. All the earth's tribes loosen their voices To celebrate the promise of Peace. We, Angels and Mortal's, Believers and Non-Believers, Look heavenward and speak the word aloud. Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud. Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation. Peace, My Brother. Peace, My Sister. Peace, My Soul.

Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin. We cannot bear to reveal our failures and shortcomings to others. We imagine that we are the only ones who have not stepped onto the high road to heaven. Therefore, we hide ourselves from one another and live in veiled lies and hypocrisy. But if we know that the people of God are first a fellowship of sinners, we are freed to hear the unconditional call of God's love and to confess our needs openly before our brothers and sisters. We know we are not alone in our sin. The fear and pride that cling to us like barnacles cling to others also. We are sinners together. In acts of mutual confession we release the power that heals. Our humanity is no longer denied, but transformed.

The word “holiday” comes from “holy day” and holy means “exalted and worthy of complete devotion.” By that definition, all days are holy. Life is holy. Atheists have joy every day of the year, every holy day. We have the wonder and glory of life. We have joy in the world before the lord is come. We’re not going for the promise of life after death; we’re celebrating life before death. The smiles of children. The screaming, the bitching, the horrific whining of one’s own children. The glory of giving or receiving a blow job. Sunsets, rock and roll, bebop, Jell-O, stinky cheese, and offensive jokes. For atheists, everything in the world is enough and every day is holy. Every day is an atheist holiday. It’s a day that we’re alive.

Jesus was Jewish. He went to synagogue “as was his tradition” and celebrated holy days such as Passover. But Jesus also healed on the Sabbath. Jesus points us to a God who is able to work within institutions and order, a God who is too big to be confined. God is constantly coloring outside the lines. Jesus challenges the structures that oppress and exclude, and busts through any traditions that put limitations on love. Love cannot be harnessed.

I would celebrate the Holy Communion service in my pajamas if I thought it would help someone to find faith.

But simple as the Sign of the Cross is, it carries a brave weight: it names the Trinity, celebrates the Creator, and brings home all the power of faith to the brush of fingers on skin and bone and belly. So do we, sometimes well and sometimes ill, labor to bring home our belief in God's love to the stuff of our daily lives, the skin and bone of this world — and the Sign of the Cross helps us to remember that we have a Companion on the road.

A Prayer for Daily Insight Open my eyes, God. Help me to perceive what I have ignored, to uncover what I have forgotten, to find what I have been searching for. Remind me that I don't have to journey far to discover something new, for miracles surround me, blessings and holiness abound. And You are near. Amen.

It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? — … There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and Franklin electricity; as Paine exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and Jefferson those of Buffon, so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains those despicable dreams of de Pauw — neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. [Preface to 'A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America', 1787]

From our first day alive on this planet, they began teaching society everything it knows and experiences. It was all brainwashing bullshit. Their trio of holy catechisms is: faith is more important than reason; inputs are more important than outcomes; hope is more important than reality. It was designed to choke your independent thinking and acting—to bring out the lowest common denominator in people—so that vast amounts of the general public would literally buy into sponsorship and preservation of their hegemonic nation. Their greatest achievement was the creation of the two-party political system; it gave only the illusion of choice, but never offered any change; it promised freedom, but only delivered more limits. In the end, you got stuck with two leading loser parties and not just one. It completed their trap of underhanded domination, and it worked masterfully. Look anywhere you go. America is a nation of submissive, dumbed-down, codependent, faith-minded zombies obsessed with celebrity gossip, buying unnecessary goods, and socializing without purpose on their electronic gadgets. The crazy thing is that people don't even know it; they still think they're free. Everywhere, people have been made into silent accomplices in the government's twisted control game. In the end, there is no way out for anyone.

I want my life to be a celebration of slowness. Walking through the sage from our front door, I am gradually drawn into the well-worn paths of deer. They lead me to Round Mountain and the bloodred side canyons below Castle Rock. Sometimes I see them, but often I don't. Deer are quiet creatures, who, when left to their own nature, move slowly. Their large black eyes absorb all shadows, especially the flash of predators. And their ears catch each word spoken. But today they walk ahead with their halting prance, one leg raised, then another, and allow me to follow them. I am learning how to not provoke fear and flight among deer. We move into a pink, sandy wash, their black-tipped tails like eagle feathers. I lose sight of them as they disappear around the bend. On the top of the ridge I can see for miles.... Inside this erosional landscape where all colors eventually bleed into the river, it is hard to desire anything but time and space. Time and space. In the desert there is space. Space is the twin sister of time. If we have open space then we have open time to breath, to dream, to dare, to play, to pray to move freely, so freely, in a world our minds have forgotten but our bodies remember. Time and space. This partnership is holy. In these redrock canyons, time creates space--an arch, an eye, this blue eye of sky. We remember why we love the desert; it is our tactile response to light, to silence, and to stillness. Hand on stone -- patience. Hand on water -- music.

O blessed and happy he, who knowing the mysteries of the gods, sanctifies his life, and purifies his soul, celebrating orgies in the mountains with holy purifications.—Euripides.

Almost all were assured a degree of renown for their exploits, and it became common for these crusaders to be celebrated with the nickname ‘Hierosolymitani’, or ‘travellers to Jerusalem’.

There’s nothing like sorrow to get your attention. It is almost as though sorrow pulls presence out of you. In the midst of sorrow there’s nothing to do but be there and celebrate the hurt. We celebrate the hurt through holy screams. Holy screams come from the heart. They are screams that people often, in their ignorance, try to smother. Don’t let them take your screams away too early. Holy resignation comes only after holy screams.

PRAISE FOR 'THE JOURNEY HOME' Many saints are known and praised by all. We pray to them in litanies and celebrate their feast days. But the vast majority of holy men and women live heroic lives quietly before God. Loyal to family, lovers of God, servants in the Church, these unsung saints live everyday life as an example for us. David Hanneman is one such man. His story is exemplary and should be told to the world. He not only lived a noble life, but also suffered with heroism and grace as he passed into glory. This is a story to encourage and bless us all. We are thankful to Joseph Hanneman for sharing his father and making his story known to us who need such examples to encourage us as we face the difficulties and challenges of life.

God’s vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united by faith in his Son as a manifestation of the expansive nature of his grace. This expansiveness is unfulfilled unless the differences are seen and celebrated, not as ends unto themselves, but as particular manifestations of the power of the Spirit to bring forth the same holiness among different peoples and cultures for the glory of God.

Just as worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship.

May we celebrate the sacredness of Christmas with joy, faith and hope.

Chastity and moral purity were qualities McCandless mulled over long and often. Indeed, one of the books found in the bus with his remains was a collection of stories that included Tol¬stoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata,” in which the nobleman-turned-ascetic denounces “the demands of the flesh.” Several such passages are starred and highlighted in the dog-eared text, the margins filled with cryptic notes printed in McCandless’s distinc¬tive hand. And in the chapter on “Higher Laws” in Thoreau’s Walden, a copy of which was also discovered in the bus, McCand¬less circled “Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.” We Americans are titillated by sex, obsessed by it, horrified by it. When an apparently healthy person, especially a healthy young man, elects to forgo the enticements of the flesh, it shocks us, and we leer. Suspicions are aroused. McCandless’s apparent sexual innocence, however, is a corol¬lary of a personality type that our culture purports to admire, at least in the case of its more famous adherents. His ambivalence toward sex echoes that of celebrated others who embraced wilderness with single-minded passion—Thoreau (who was a lifelong virgin) and the naturalist John Muir, most prominently— to say nothing of countless lesser-known pilgrims, seekers, mis¬fits, and adventurers. Like not a few of those seduced by the wild, McCandless seems to have been driven by a variety of lust that supplanted sexual desire. His yearning, in a sense, was too pow¬erful to be quenched by human contact. McCandless may have been tempted by the succor offered by women, but it paled beside the prospect of rough congress with nature, with the cosmos it¬self. And thus was he drawn north, to Alaska.

Discipline brings freedom. The purpose of meditation is to enable us to hear God more clearly. Meditation is listening, sensing, heeding the life and light of Christ. This comes right to the heart of our faith. The life that pleases God is not a set of religious duties; it is to hear His voice and obey His word. Meditation opens the door to this way of living. To pray is to change. All who have walked with God have viewed prayer as the main business of their lives. For those explorers in the frontiers of faith, prayer was no little habit tacked on to the periphery of their lives; it was their lives. It was the most serious work of their most productive years. Prayer – nothing draws us closer to the heart of God. Fasting must forever centre on God. More than any other Discipline, fasting reveals the things that control us. The most difficult problem is not finding time but convincing myself that this is important enough to set aside the time. Disciplines are not the answer; they only lead us to the Answer. We must clearly understand this limitation of the Disciplines if we are to avoid bondage. Humility, as we all know, is one of those virtues that is never gained by seeking it. The more we pursue it the more distant it becomes. To think we have it is sure evidence that we don’t. Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother.’ If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change.

Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience. We need to be lighthearted in what we do to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. It is a cheerful revolt against self and pride. Our work is jubilant, carefree, merry. Utter abandonment to God is done freely and with celebration. And so I urge you to enjoy this ministry of self-surrender. Don't push too hard. Hold this work lightly, joyfully.

There is a celebrated saying by the French writer Léon Bloy, who in the last moments of his life said, “The only real sadness in life is not becoming a saint.” Let us not lose the hope of holiness; let us follow this path. Do we want to be saints? The Lord awaits us, with open arms; he waits to accompany us on the path to sanctity. Let us live in the joy of our faith, let us allow ourselves to be loved by the Lord . . . let us ask for this gift from God in prayer, for ourselves, and for others.

I was confused at how people could mistreat and eat us on the one hand and then celebrate us on the other for qualities they admired. It was then I realized that humans were very complicated and confused and I could spend the rest of my life puzzling them out. I decided I didn’t have time to do that.

Evening Concert, Sainte-Chapelle" The celebrated windows flamed with light directly pouring north across the Seine; we rustled into place. Then violins vaunting Vivaldi's strident strength, then Brahms, seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness, bit by bit, the vigor from the red, the blazing blue, so that the listening eye saw suddenly the thick black lines, in shapes of shield and cross and strut and brace, that held the holy glowing fantasy together. The music surged; the glow became a milk, a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed until our beating hearts, our violins were cased in thin but solid sheets of lead.

One of the greatest gifts for my life as one who serves God is observing the Sabbath. Celebrating a holy day and living in God's rhythm for six days of work and one of rest is the best way I know to learn the sense of our call - the way in which God's Kingdom reclaims us, revitalizes us, and renews us so that it can reign through us. Before we can engage in the practice of our call, we need to be captured afresh by grace, carried by it, and cared for.

The mature fruit of mystagogy is an awareness that one's life is being progressively transformed by the holy mysteries being celebrated. The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a "new creation", capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that inspires him.

the Sabbath is entirely independent of the month and unrelated to the moon.11 Its date is not determined by any event in nature, such as the new moon, but by the act of creation. Thus the essence of the Sabbath is completely detached from the world of space. The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

Both the Church and the Eucharist have their source and receive their present vitality from the events celebrated in Holy Week: the Last Supper of Jesus with his apostles, his atoning passion and death on Good Friday and his bodily resurrection on Easter Sunday

For many Charismatics, Scripture is not simply a book to be read and studied, but it is an invitation into a lifestyle of supernatural engagement. Truly, such followers of Jesus desire to be doers of the Word, not hearers only. This should be celebrated rather than rejected.

If you have seen in silent prayer How the soul of the earth fashions crystals, If you have seen the flame in the growing seed And death in life and birth in decay, If you have found brothers in men and beasts, And if you recognized in the brother, the brother and God, Then you will celebrate at the table of the holy grail Communion with the messiah of love. You will search and you will find, just like God said, The way to the lost paradise.

Let us go out and meet the newborn world, knowing that Christ has been reborn in it, and that the holiness of this rebirth will last forever. We had lost our way but He has found it for us. Let us go and bid Him welcome Who returns to us to celebrate salvation and the end of all we thought we made.

To share Eucharistic communion with someone unbaptized, or committed to another story or system, is odd—not because the sacrament is 'profaned', or because grace cannot be given to those outside the household, but because the symbolic integrity of the Eucharist depends upon its being celebrated by those who both commit themselves to the paradigm of Jesus' death and resurrection and acknowledge that their violence is violence offered to Jesus. All their betrayals are to be understood as betrayals of him; and through that understanding comes forgiveness and hope. Those who do not so understand themselves and their sin or their loss will not make the same identification of their victims with Jesus, nor will they necessarily understand their hope for their vocation in relation to him and his community. Their participation is thus anomalous: it is hard to see the meaning of what is being done.

Celebration is the sparkle in the eye of the one who glows. It is the song that plays in the house of freedom. Celebration is the dance of life, it’s the one dancing to the drumbeat of the heart, it’s your birthday cake, it’s you blowing out the trick candles, it’s you delighting in the fire of life.

I’m chasing after that Holy Shit effect. If this sounds arrogant, that’s because it is. If you don’t believe in your own greatness, no one else will. You’re limited only by your doubts, your fears, and your desire to fit in rather than stand out. And there’s room in this world for all of us to stand out.

Through his first miracle, Jesus intentionally desecrates a religious icon. He purposely chooses these sacred jars to challenge the religious system by converting them from icons of personal purification into symbols of relational celebration. Jesus takes us from holy water to wedding wine. From legalism to life. From religion to relationship.

This is a book that looks at how we can use the challenges, joys, struggles, and celebrations of marriage to draw closer to God and to grow in Christian character.

The only reason why mankind has celebrated marriages is that they renew the race; they bring forth new life, within the bounds of a holy vow.

Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return.—Thomas Kelly

If the Holy Spirit ever touches people in such a way that they realize they are sons or daughters instantly, we ought to celebrate it as a mighty miracle—because sometimes it takes fourteen years.

That’s what Hringkälla celebrates,” continued Brum. “And every year if there are worthy initiates, the drüskelle gather at the sacred ash, where they may once more hear the Voice of God.” Djel says you’re a fanatic, drunk on your own power. Come back next year. “People forget this is a holy night,” Brum muttered. “They come to the palace to drink and dance and fornicate.” Nina had to bite her tongue. Given Brum’s interest in the dip of her neckline, she doubted his thoughts were particularly holy. “Are those things so very bad?” she asked teasingly. Brum smiled and squeezed her arm. “Not in moderation.” “Moderation isn’t one of my specialties.” “I can see that,” he said. “I like the look of a woman who enjoys herself.” I’d enjoy choking you slowly, she thought as she ran her fingers over his arm.

The disastrous result of this is seen in human societies where sexual passion knows no restraint, where homosexual perversions are celebrated, and where each individual’s conscience is terminally warped and full of corruption. Though man continually and blatantly rebels against Him, God patiently withholds the outpouring of His holy wrath against sin (Romans 1:18,24-32). Yet judgment is certainly coming.

Jesus wept: This Prophet, Priest, King Has a: Holy, Priesthood, Chosen! This Refugee, Homeless, Healer Has a Celebrity, TV, Mega - church? God business to show business. Where did it go wrong? Jesus weeps.

We are asked to shape our lives, our time, our attention by habits and rhythms radically different from the windblown fury of the broken world. This means an entirely alternate shape of life, not just the subtraction of screens and distractions but the embrace of prayer, of daily wonder, of listening, of trust, of celebration that roots us moment by moment in that deep, watchful quiet that ushers us into the presence of God.

To My Priestess Sisters To my priestess sisters: the keepers of mysteries, the medicine women, the story keepers and story tellers, the holy magicians, the wild warriors, the original ones, the ones who carry the ancients within the marrow of your bones, the ones forged in the fires, the ones who have bathed in thier own blood, the heroines who wear thier scars as stars, the ones who give birth to their visions and dreams, the ones who weep and howl upon the holy altars, the avatars, the mothers, maidens and crones, the mystics, the oracles, the artists, the musicians, the virgins, the sensual and sexual, the women of our world- I honor you. I stand for you and with you. I celebrate both your autonomy and our sisterhood of One. We are many. We are fierce. We are tender. We are the change agents and we are radically holding and clearing space for the bursting forth of the holy seeds of the collective conscience and consciousness. We are manifestors and flames of purification and transformation. We are living our lives in authenticity, vulnerability, transparency and unapologetically. We are committed to integrity, impeccability, accountability, responsibility and passionate love. We are here on purpose, with purpose and give no energy to conformity, acceptance or approval. We are the daughters of the earth and the courageous of the cosmos. Priestess, keep living your life passionately, raising the cosmic vibrations and lowering your standards for no one. You are brazenly blessed and a force of nature. Nurture yourself and one another. You are a crystalline bridge between realms and uniting heaven and earth. You are a priestess and you are divinely anointed, appointed and unstoppable.

In “The Cost of Discipleship” Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes it clear that grace is free, but it is not cheap. The grace of God is unearned and unearnable, but if we ever expect to grow in grace, we must pay the price of a consciously chosen course of action which involves both individual and group life. Spiritual growth is the purpose of the Disciplines. It might be helpful to visualize what we have been discussing. Picture a long, narrow ridge with a sheer drop-off on either side. The chasm to the right is the way of moral bankruptcy through human strivings for righteousness. Historically this has been called the heresy of moralism. The chasm to the left is moral bankruptcy through the absence of human strivings. This has been called the heresy of antinomianism. On the ridge there is a path, the Disciplines of the spiritual life. This path leads to the inner transformation and healing for which we seek. We must never veer off to the right or to the left, but stay on the path. The path is fraught with severe difficulties, but also with incredible joys. As we travel on this path the blessing of God will come upon us and reconstruct us into the image of Jesus Christ. We must always remember that the path does not produce the change; it only places us where the change can occur.

I would not have the anniversaries of our victories celebrated, nor those of our defeats made fast days and spent in humiliation and prayer; but I would like to see truthful history written. Such history will do full credit to the courage, endurance and soldierly ability of the American citizen, no matter what section of the country he hailed from, or in what ranks he fought. The justice of the cause which in the end prevailed, will, I doubt not, come to be acknowledged by every citizen of the land, in time. For the present, and so long as there are living witnesses of the great war of sections, there will be people who will not be consoled for the loss of a cause which they believed to be holy. As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man.

When Pilgrim fathers landed safe On Plymouth Rock at last, They bowed their heads and bent a knee, And kept a holy fast. But now to celebrate the day We dine—to say the least— We add an “e” into their plan And change their fast to feast.

The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary, as the very force that sustains all life. Through the Goddess, we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions. We can move beyond narrow, constricting roles and become whole.

Afroditi of the Flowers at Knossos Leave Kriti and come here to this holy temple with your graceful grove of apple trees and altars smoking with frankincense. Icy water babbles through apple branches and roses leave shadow on the ground and bright shaking leaves pour down profound sleep. Here is a meadow where horses graze amid wild blossoms of the spring and soft winds blow aroma of honey. Afroditi, take the nectar and delicately pour it into gold wine cups and mingle joy with our celebration.

A Blessing for the Senses May your body be blessed. May you realize that your body is a faithful and beautiful friend of your soul. And may you be peaceful and joyful and recognize that your senses are sacred thresholds. May you realize that holiness is mindful, gazing, feeling, hearing and touching. May your senses gather you and bring you home. May your senses always enable you to celebrate the universe and the mystery and possibilities in your presence here. May the Eros of the Earth bless you.

Doesn’t your heart just burst with a holy desire to bring Him joy and to walk worthy of your high calling as a child of the Father, seated with Jesus in heavenly places? With Paul, I desire to say at the end of my life, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). And I can’t wait to hear Him say on that day, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. . . . Let’s celebrate together!” (Matt. 25:21, NLT). I am driven and carried and captured by love. Are you?

Holy mama llama. That’s Nathanial Stone. Nathanial Stone is sitting in my booth. Nathanial Stone is in the Finewhile Diner sitting in my booth. I’m supposed to wait on Nathanial Stone. I’m going to make a fool out of myself. I just know it. I can feel it coming. Crap.

Confession is a difficult discipline for us, because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin.

Yet the freedom of the artist, the pure beauty of nature, and the liberty of each of us to live our lives as we choose are still under threat—and despite all our progress, this threat may be greater now than in many years. The slave religions have used the weapons of fear, guilt, superstition, greed, terror and paranoia to achieve significant gains in political, ideological, and cultural power during recent decades, notably in the forms of militant Islamic fundamentalism and Christian dominionism. It takes strength to stand in defense of beauty, truth and freedom, and strength requires unity. Even while we celebrate our diversity and individuality with justified exuberance, it is critical that we remember those principles we hold in common, and those things we owe to each other as brothers and sisters of this, our Holy Order.

At the heart of God is the desire to give and to forgive. Because of this, he set into motion the entire redemptive process that culminated in the cross and was confirmed in the resurrection. The usual notion of what Jesus did on the cross was something like this: people were so bad and so mean and God was so angry with them that he could not forgive them unless somebody big enough took the rap for the whole lot of them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God’s great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it. This is why Jesus refused the customary painkiller when it was offered him. He wanted to be completely alert for this greatest work of redemption. In a deep and mysterious way he was preparing to take on the collective sin of the human race. Since Jesus lives in the eternal now, this work was not just for those around him, but he took in all the violence, all the fear, all the sin of all the past, all the present, and all the future. This was his highest and most holy work, the work that makes confession and the forgiveness of sins possible…Some seem to think that when Jesus shouted “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” it was a moment of weakness (Mark 15:34). Not at all. This was his moment of greatest triumph. Jesus, who had walked in constant communion with the Father, now became so totally identified with humankind that he was the actual embodiment of sin. As Paul writes, “he made him to be sin who knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus succeeded in taking into himself all of the dark powers of this present evil age and defeated every one of them by the light of his presence. He accomplished such a total identification with the sin of the race that he experienced the abandonment of God. Only in that way could he redeem sin. It was indeed his moment of greatest triumph. Having accomplished this greatest of all his works, Jesus then took refreshment. “It is finished,” he announced. That is, this great work of redemption was completed. He could feel the last dregs of the misery of humankind flow through him and into the care of the Father. The last twinges of evil, hostility, anger, and fear drained out of him, and he was able to turn again into the light of God’s presence. “It is finished.” The task is complete. Soon after, he was free to give up his spirit to the father. …Without the cross the Discipline of confession would be only psychologically therapeutic. But it is so much more. It involves and objective change in our relationship with God and a subjective change in us. It is a means of healing and transforming the inner spirit.

...if we accept contemporary literature as sufficient evidence, the society of Paris today is fully as corrupt as that of the Punjab in 1830; and the bazaars of Lahore, while Ranjit Singh was celebrating the festival of the Holi, were not so shameless as Piccadilly at night in 1892.

When quarrel and strife arose among the immortals, if one of them that dwells on Olympus speaks false, Zeus sends Iris to bring the gods' great oath from far off in a golden jug, the celebrated golden water that drops from a high, sheer cliff and, far below the wide-pathed earth, flows from the holy river through dark night, a branch of Oceanus. A tenth part is her share: nine parts Oceanus winds round the earth and the broad back of the sea with his silver eddies, and falls into the brine, while that one part issues forth from the cliff, a great bane to the gods.

The Crusaders come to one immediate decision. They decide that the Orthodox Greek Christians, the Georgian Christians, the Armenian Christians and the Jacobite Christians no longer could hold services in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Only the Latin rite could be celebrated in Jerusalem.

The young activist who recycles Robert F. Kennedy’s line “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why . . . I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” has no idea he’s a walking, talking cliché, a non-conformist in theory while a predictable conformist in fact. But he also has no idea he’s tapping into his inner utopian.... RFK didn’t coin the phrase (JFK didn’t either, but he did use it first). The line actually comes from one of the worst people of the 20th century, George Bernard Shaw (admittedly he’s on the B-list of worst people since he never killed anybody; he just celebrated people who did). That much a lot of people know. But the funny part is the line comes from Shaw’s play Back to Methuselah. Specifically, it’s what the Serpent says to Eve in order to sell her on eating the apple and gaining a kind of immortality through sex (or something like that). Of course, Shaw’s Serpent differs from the biblical serpent, because Shaw — a great rationalizer of evil — is naturally sympathetic to the serpent. Still, it’s kind of hilarious that legions of Kennedy worshippers invoke this line as a pithy summation of the idealistic impulse, putting it nearly on par with Kennedy’s nationalistic “Ask Not” riff, without realizing they’re stealing lines from . . . the Devil. ​I don’t think this means you can march into the local high school, kick open the door to the student government offices with a crucifix extended, shouting “the power of Christ compels you!” while splashing holy water on every kid who uses that “RFK” quote on his Facebook page. But it is interesting.

From now on we no longer judge any person according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 5:16). We don’t judge anyone by how he or she is stuck or broken or lost, but see each person for who he or she is—the one the Holy Spirit finds and celebrates, the one Jesus leaves the ninety-nine to go find, the one the Father waits to welcome home.

Later on, towards the middle of my life, I grew more and more opposed to alcoholic drinks: I, an opponent of vegetarianism, who have experienced what vegetarianism is, — just as Wagner, who converted me back to meat, experienced it, — cannot with sufficient earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to abstain absolutely from alcohol. Water answers the purpose. . . . I have a predilection in favour of those places where in all directions one has opportunities of drinking from running brooks. In vino Veritas: it seems that here once more I am at variance with the rest of the world about the concept 'Truth' — with me spirit moves on the face of the waters. . . . Here are a few more indications as to my morality. A heavy meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one. The first principle of a good digestion is that the stomach should become active as a whole. A man ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach. For the same reasons all those interminable meals, which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which are to be had at any table d'hôte, are strongly to be deprecated. Nothing should be eaten between meals, coffee should be given up — coffee makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial only in the morning. It should be taken in small quantities, but very strong. It may be very harmful, and indispose you for the whole day, if it be taken the least bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard in this matter, often between the narrowest and most delicate limits. In an enervating climate tea is not a good beverage with which to start the day: an hour before taking it an excellent thing is to drink a cup of thick cocoa, feed from oil. Remain seated as little as possible, put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment of free bodily motion — nor in one in which even the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin against the Holy Spirit.

For what, in actual practice, should the critical, mature modernist Christian do when, for instance, he gathers his children around him to celebrate Christmas? Should he read Luke's Christmas Gospel and sing the Christmas carols as if they were true, even though he believes them to be crude and primitive theology? After all, the rest of his society has no scruples about doing this, the pagans and the department stores. Or if this seems too cynical, too dishonest, ought he rather, in the manner of early socialist Sunday schools, to devise a passionately rationalist catechesis, swap German for German, chant a passage from Bultmann instead of 'Joy to the World!'; ought he rather to gather his little ones about the Crib, light the candles, and read Raymond Brown instead of St. Luke on the virginal conception of Jesus: 'My judgment in conclusion is that the totality of the scientifically controllable evidence leaves an unresolved problem.' How their eyes will shine, how their little hearts will burn within them as they hear these holy words! How touched they will all be as the littlest child reverently places a shining question mark in the empty manger. And how they will rejoice when they find their stockings, which they have hung up to a Protestant parody of a Catholic bishop, stuffed with subscriptions to 'Concilium,' 'Catholic Update,' 'National Catholic Reporter,' and 'The Tablet.

Jonathan recovered the day after Cyrus. Then Lucy the one after that. Their fevers broke and their coughs faded and their lungs cleared. Their voices never so much as wavered. And when they asked after their sisters, we had only tears for an answer. Though you never think it possible, you can celebrate and grieve in the same breath. It is a holy abomination.

It was a happy day when I discovered that in the English of Chaucer's day - which was also the time of the Black Death - the word "silly" meant "blessed." I am not sure when we strayed away from its original meaning, when blessedness took on a churchy aura and silliness became the realm of Monty Python and fourth-grade eschatological humor. As hard-working adults we too often lose the gift for letting go, for delight in simply being. We persuade ourselves that every moment must be lived productively; like the busy little bee, we feel a holy obligation to improve each shining hour. We would do well to take very small children or big silly dogs as our teachers. I have learned much about holy uselessness form Perry, the dog...

Someone once asked the celebrated biologist, Sir Frederick Grant Banting, why he cared so much about daily Communion. “Have you ever reflected,” he answered, “what would happen if the dew did not fall every night? No plant would develop. The grass and flowers could not survive the evaporations and the dryness that the day’s heat brings in one way or another. Their cycle of energies, their natural renewal, the balance of their lymphatic fluids, the very life of plants requires this dew….” After a pause, he continued: “Now my soul is like a little plant. It is something rather frail that the winds and heat do battle with every day. So it is necessary that every morning I go get my fresh stock of spiritual dew, by going to Holy Communion.

Jesus’ ministry was not to the upper class, the educated, the elite or the most influential social figures. Jesus came and ministered among those who were poor, with the poor and as a poor man. His ministry was to the children, those who were begging, victims of leprosy, the woman at the well, the woman caught in the act of adultery, the tax collectors, the fishermen communities and those on the margins. Jesus came to the common people and lived alongside them. As a church, we must learn new ways to celebrate our faith inclusively so that those on the margins of society will feel welcome–and so that our love and acceptance of the other will aid in our paths to holiness. Jesus’ ministry was marked with a distinctive compassion for the oppressed poor.

To observe the seventh day does not mean merely to obey or to conform to the strictness of a divine command. To observe is to celebrate the creation of the world and to create the seventh day all over again, the majesty of holiness in time, “a day of rest, a day of freedom,” a day which is like “a lord and king of all other days,” 17 a lord and king in the commonwealth of time.

f Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that g a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8Let us therefore celebrate the festival, h not with the old leaven, i the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

However true or not they may be to us, the trouble with all those tired, platitudinous, hackneyed mantras, which go along the lines of 'Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship,' is that many of us use them not as cries to embrace the grace of God but rather as licenses and/or excuses to celebrate sin. Make way for our beloved and ready, willing and able Christ to clean up your life already.

The first inkling of this notion had come to him the Christmas before, at his daughter's place in Vermont. On Christmas Eve, as indifferent evening took hold in the blue squares of the windows, he sat alone in the crepuscular kitchen, imbued with a profound sense of the identity of winter and twilight, of twilight and time, of time and memory, of his childhood and that church which on this night waited to celebrate the second greatest of its feasts. For a moment or an hour as he sat, become one with the blue of the snow and the silence, a congruity of star, cradle, winter, sacrament, self, it was as though he listened to a voice that had long been trying to catch his attention, to tell him, Yes, this was the subject long withheld from him, which he now knew, and must eventually act on. He had managed, though, to avoid it. He only brought it out now to please his editor, at the same time aware that it wasn't what she had in mind at all. But he couldn't do better; he had really only the one subject, if subject was the word for it, this idea of a notion or a holy thing growing clear in the stream of time, being made manifest in unexpected ways to an assortment of people: the revelation itself wasn't important, it could be anything, almost. Beyond that he had only one interest, the seasons, which he could describe endlessly and with all the passion of a country-bred boy grown old in the city. He was beginning to doubt (he said) whether these were sufficient to make any more novels out of, though he knew that writers of genius had made great ones out of less. He supposed really (he didn't say) that he wasn't a novelist at all, but a failed poet, like a failed priest, one who had perceived that in fact he had no vocation, had renounced his vows, and yet had found nothing at all else in the world worth doing when measured by the calling he didn't have, and went on through life fatally attracted to whatever of the sacerdotal he could find or invent in whatever occupation he fell into, plumbing or psychiatry or tending bar. ("Novelty")

I had refused the body and blood of Christ because it was painful to the person beside me. I had chosen to abstain with him rather than to participate without him. Though I knew full well that he did not expect that of me - that it was possible for a full-fledged Christian and a full-fledged Jew to stand together in their difference - at that moment I did not want to celebrate any Communion that did not include him.

Judaism minimizes the distinction between body and soul. ... Judaism rejects that duality. First, it does not see death as liberation from earthly bondage and a graduation to a better world. It sees death as a tragedy. Death puts an end to a person's ability to sanctify the world. The death of a good person diminishes God's presence on earth. Second, Judaism does not see the material world, the world of food and sex and sleep and other bodily needs, as being less worthy than the realm of the spirit. Nothing created by God is vile or useless. Everything can be made holy or made base by the way in which it is used. The Talmud tells of one of the sages seeing workers cleaning and decorating a statue of the emperor and musing, "If that statue, which is an image of a flesh-and-blood king, is worthy of being cared for so carefully, how much more so my body, which is an image of the King of Kinds.

After all, what is 'poetry itself'? Where are its horizons? What draws a reader to 'read' the world and their own self through this particular medium, even if only occasionally? Because it is often on 'occasions'—sacred or ritualised moments, or moments made holy by celebration or grief—that poetry is reached for, its peculiar intensity and compression instinctively demanded. But this is not a separation from life; rather, it is an illumination of it.

stone. I hate being clever, thought the captain, when you don’t really feel clever and don’t want to be clever. To sneak around and make plans and feel big about making them. I hate this feeling of thinking I’m doing right when I’m not really certain I am. Who are we, anyway? The majority? Is that the answer? The majority is always holy, is it not? Always, always; just never wrong for one little insignificant tiny moment, is it? Never ever wrong in ten million years? He thought: What is this majority and who are in it? And what do they think and how did they get that way and will they ever change and how the devil did I get caught in this rotten majority? I don’t feel comfortable. Is it claustrophobia, fear of crowds, or common sense? Can one man be right, while all the world thinks they are right? Let’s not think about it. Let’s crawl around and act exciting and pull the trigger. There, and there!

If this most holy Sacrament were celebrated in only one place and consecrated by only one priest in the whole world, with what great desire, do you think, would men be attracted to that place, to that priest of God, in order to witness the celebration of the divine Mysteries! But now there are many priests and Mass is offered in many places, that God's grace and love for men may appear the more clearly as the Sacred Communion is spread more widely through the world.

The trouble begins when a group of people are conditioned in different ways to believe that their heritage is superior to that of others. That is a dangerous kind of conditioning, especially in a country like ours that has a shared heritage. However, many people have convinced themselves about the supremacy of their mythologies over the ideas that their mythologies are trying to convey. So, while our epics warn us against arrogance, we embody the same arrogance to promote our religions. In a way, that is self-defeating. Many of us are stuck up in stagnancy of pride over our heritage, without taking the pain of diving deeper in ancient ideas to understand the essence of those epics. Only if we did, we would realize that in almost every country, majority of the population is brainwashed to commit the same mistake that their holy books warned them against, while ironically celebrating mythological as well as historical figures with empty hero worship.

Gradually I remembered what I had known all along, which is that church is not a stopping place but a starting place for discerning God's presence in this world. By offering people a place where they may engage the steady practice of listening to divine words and celebrating divine sacraments, church can help people gain a feel for how God shows up—not only in Holy Bibles and Holy Communion but also in near neighbors, mysterious strangers, sliced bread, and grocery store wine.

I lay down on one of [the rocks] in the fetal position. When I awoke it was after one a.m. and the tide was rising higher. My body was coated in salt and ocean foam. I felt like I was part of the rock and part of the ocean, and I wondered if this was how Sappho felt, even in her deepest desperation, part of the earth, like that desperation and longing or eternal cosmic want was something to be celebrated–something natural–holy even, or at least, not just something to be endured.

There are so many priests who enter triumphantly and walk up toward the altar, greeting people left and right, so as to appear sympathetic. Just look at the sad spectacle of some Eucharistic celebrations. ... Why so much frivolousness and worldliness at the moment of the Holy Sacrifice? Why so much profanation and superficiality, given the extraordinary priestly grace that renders us able to make the Body and Blood of Christ substantially present by the invocation of the Spirit? Why do some think that they are obliged to improvise or invent Eucharistic Prayers that conceal the sacred prayers in a wash of petty, human fervor? Are Christ's words insufficient, making it necessary to multiply merely human words? In such a unique and essential sacrifice, is there any need for such a display of imagination and subjective creativity? "In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words", Jesus warns us (Mt 6:7).

For instance, detractors trumpet that Aurangzeb destroyed certain temples without acknowledging that he also issued many orders protecting Hindu temples and granted stipends and land to Brahmins. They denounce that he restricted the celebration of Holi without mentioning that he also clamped down on Muharram and Eid festivities. They omit altogether that Aurangzeb consulted with Hindu ascetics on health matters and employed more Hindus in his administration than any prior Mughal ruler by a substantial margin.

At least once a year the Caodaists hold a festival at the Holy See in Tanyin, which lies eighty kilometres to the north-west of Saigon, to celebrate such and such a year of Liberation, or of Conquest, or even a Buddhist, Confucian or Christian festival. Caodaism was always the favourite chapter of my briefing to visitors. Caodaism, the invention of a Cochin civil servant, was a synthesis of the three religions. The Holy See was at Tanyin. A Pope and female cardinals. Prophecy by planchette. Saint Victor Hugo.

It is no easy thing to be in your mid-twenties and realize that, holy shit, this is it, this is as good as it gets, and from here it's all downhill, the fun's over, the hijinks have jinked their last, nothing lies ahead but drudgery and toil and a sagging belly and death. It's harder yet when a stupid bitch, a numbfuck cunt, one of those horrible sweet-smelling OMG types who wouldn't talk to you in high school and sure as fuck won't talk to you now, takes position on your elbow with a cell phone jammed into her cheek, yammering away. Because who wants to listen to the stream of shit coming out of her mouth? Gossip about friends. Gossip about enemies. Gossip about celebrities. Gossip about gossip. Not a thought in her head. Not a fact. Nothing of interest. Nothing of worth. Just an avalanche of verbal rubbish. The Patriots took on the Redcoats, the Blue fought the Gray, the National Guard stormed the beaches of Normandy, so this submoronic cretin could stand here in her designer boots and talk about what happened at the club last night.

I don’t know how I didn’t see it for so many years of Bible reading, but I didn’t.  Paul didn’t teach the Gentiles not to follow the law, he didn’t teach people not to have their sons circumcised (in fact he himself had Timothy circumcised in Acts 16:3).  And Paul himself kept the law.  Otherwise, James would have been telling Paul to lie about what he was doing.   So we traded Christmas for Sukkot, the true birth of Messiah during the Feast of Tabernacles, which is a shadow picture of Him coming back to reign for a thousand years.  When we keep that feast, we are making a declaration that we believe He was, is, and is coming.  We keep Yom Kippur, which is a declaration that we believe that Yeshua is the salvation of the nation of Israel as a whole, that “all Israel shall be saved.”  We keep Yom Teruah, the day of Trumpets, which occurs on “the day and hour that no man knows” at the sighting of the first sliver of the new moon during the 7th biblical month of Tishri.  We traded Pentecost for Shavuot, the prophetic shadow picture of the spirit being poured out on the assembly, as we see in the book of Acts,  just as the law was given at Mt Sinai to the assembly, which according to Stephen was the true birth of the church (Acts 7:38) – not in Jerusalem, but at Sinai. We also traded Easter for Passover, the shadow picture of Messiah coming to die to restore us to right standing with God, in order to obey Him when He said, “from now on, do this in remembrance of Me.”  We traded Resurrection Sunday for First Fruits, the feast which served as a shadow of Messiah rising up out of the earth and ascending to be presented as a holy offering to the Father.  In Leviticus 23, these are called the Feasts of the LORD, and were to be celebrated by His people Israel forever, not just the Jews, but all those who are in covenant with Him. Just like at Mt Sinai, the descendants of Jacob plus the mixed multitude who came out of Egypt.    We learned from I John 3:4 that sin is defined as transgression of the law.  I John 1:10 says that if we claim we do not sin we are liars, so sin still exists, and that was written long after the death of the other apostles, including Paul.  I read what Peter said about Paul in 2 Peter 3:15-16 – that his writings were hard to understand and easily twisted.  And I began to see that Peter was right because the more I understood what everyone besides Paul was saying, the more I realized that the only way I could justify what I had been doing was with Paul’s writings.  I couldn’t use Yeshua (Jesus), Moses, John, Peter or any of the others to back up any of the doctrines I was taught – I had to ignore Yeshua almost entirely, or take Him out of context.  I decided that Yeshua, and not Paul, died for me, so I had to

What is the Sabbath?2 A reminder of every man’s royalty; an abolition of the distinction of master and slave, rich and poor, success and failure. To celebrate the Sabbath is to experience one’s ultimate independence of civilization and society, of achievement and anxiety. The Sabbath is an embodiment of the belief that all men are equal and that equality of men means the nobility of men. The greatest sin of man is to forget that he is a prince. The Sabbath is an assurance that the spirit is greater than the universe, that beyond the good is the holy.

Holidays: Imagine if the great holidays and seasons of the Christian year were redesigned to emphasize love. Advent would be the season of preparing our hearts to receive God’s love. Epiphany would train us to keep our eyes open for expressions of compassion in our daily lives. Lent would be an honest self-examination of our maturity in love and a renewal of our commitment to grow in it. Instead of giving up chocolate or coffee for Lent, we would stop criticizing or gossiping about or interrupting others. Maundy Thursday would refocus us on the great and new commandment; Good Friday would present the suffering of crucifixion as the suffering of love; Holy Saturday would allow us to lament and grieve the lack of love in our lives and world; and Easter would celebrate the revolutionary power of death-defying love. Pentecost could be an “altar call” to be filled with the Spirit of love, and “ordinary time” could be “extraordinary time” if it involved challenges to celebrate and express love in new ways—to new people, to ourselves, to the earth, and to God—including time to tell stories about our experiences of doing so.

In Abercorn things are very profane, they do not celebrate Sundays and holy days. . . . It is a shame that Sundays are esteemed so little by most people in Christendom. Some of them drone it away loosely, others [the freethinkers] believe it is a day like other days, even though our dear God has promised to bless it if it is celebrated in the right way as, thank God, many people in Christendom and also among us can say from experience. May our dear God restrain all desecrations of the Sabbath and avert the judgments which are to come upon Christianity because of it.

Our relationship to the law isn’t worth celebrating fourteen days into February. However we learned about it, whether through counsel or conscience, we responded by resisting all of the goodness it had to offer, proving something deep and dark about ourselves. Mainly that we don’t like to be like God. That’s not to say that our sinfulness isn’t a parody and a rather silly way of deifying ourselves. The serpent still incentivizes unbelief by promising that it will make us “like God,” but our motive has never been to be like God in terms of righteousness but of rights.

But Christianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song, in which all the glory of the great joy that they proclaim becomes tangibly present. And so, from that moment, the angels’ song of praise has never gone silent. It continues down the centuries in constantly new forms and it resounds ever anew at the celebration of Jesus’ birth. It is only natural that simple believers would then hear the shepherds singing too, and to this day they join in their caroling on the Holy Night, proclaiming in song the great joy that, from then until the end of time, is bestowed on all people.

You can become a saint! The good news is that God wants us all to go to Heaven! There is no greater proof than the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ. We, the baptized, have been entrusted with all the grace necessary to become a saint through the Holy Eucharist. Bus as if that was not enough, He gives us the ability to be Jesus' hands and feet on the Earth through the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the example of how to live those out through the lives of the saints, and the tremendous graces available through devotions approved by the Magisterium of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Don't miss the opportunity!

YOU NEVER THANKED ME FOR THE BURGER. INGRATE. He checked his work e-mail and fired off a few quick replies. About ten minutes later, he got a text message from Brooke. SOMEBODY WOULD’VE BEEN THANKED IN PERSON, IF HE HADN’T STORMED OUT OF MY OFFICE AS PART OF SOME CRANKY-MAN TIRADE. He smiled while replying. OUT OF THE KINDNESS OF MY HEART, I’LL LET YOU THANK ME IN PERSON OVER DINNER TONIGHT. GOT GOOD NEWS TODAY, NEED TO CELEBRATE. JUST HOW GOOD IS THIS GOOD NEWS? she wrote back. Cade thought about that. ON A SCALE OF MEH TO HOLY-SHIT-I-JUST-WON-THE-ROSE-BOWL, I’D SAY THIS COMES IN AT REALLY DAMN COOL.

N: And then we both came to find that celebration and that life in the actual live theater. So I’ve always said—I always get a laugh when I say it, but I mean it sincerely—that theater is also born of religion. And to me that is very religious. We both talk about how we feel like we have a calling. When people ask me what my favorite thing to do is—theater, film, TV, or whatever—I say theater because of the immediacy. You can feel the medicine you’re giving your audience through laughter or tears or what have you. And the medicine they give back is the closest thing I’ve felt to some kind of holy transaction.

The Torah talks about the Sabbath in different ways. We're told in Exodus to remember, zachor, and keep it holy. In Devarim, it says to observe, shamor, and keep it holy. Zachor speaks to the positive, the bread, wine, prayer, and song, everything we celebrate, eat and drink, and rejoice in. Shamor speaks to the negative - that which is prohibited, the work and play we set aside, the pleasures from which we abstain. This isn't to say these things are good or bad, Hannah. It does not refer to right or wrong. More like inhale and exhale. That which we choose to keep and that which we choose to let go - both are holy.

One thing that the history of Jerusalem teaches is that nothing is irreversible. Not only have its inhabitants watched their city destroyed time and again, they have also seen it built up in ways that seemed abhorrent. When the Jews heard of the obliteration of their Holy City, first by Hadrian's contractors and then by Constantine's, they must have felt that they would never win their city back. Muslims had to see the desecration of their beloved Haram by the Crusaders, who seemed invincible at the time. All these building projects had been intent on creating facts, but ultimately bricks and mortar were not enough. The Muslims got their city back because the Crusaders became trapped in a dream of hatred and intolerance. In our own day, against all odds, the Jews have returned to Zion and have created their own facts in the settlements around Jerusalem. But, as the long, tragic history of Jerusalem shows, nothing is permanent or guaranteed. The societies that have lasted the longest in the holy city have, generally, been the ones that were prepared for some kind of tolerance and coexistence in the Holy City. That, rather than a sterile and deadly struggle for sovereignty, must be the way to celebrate Jerusalem's sanctity today.

20And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and  vran and  wembraced him and  xkissed him. 21And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.  uI am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ [3] 22But the father said to his servants, [4] ‘Bring quickly  ythe best robe, and put it on him, and put  za ring on his hand, and  ashoes on his feet. 23And bring  bthe fattened calf and kill it, and  clet us eat and celebrate. 24For this my son  dwas dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate.

Do not allow your children to celebrate the days on which unbelief and superstition are being catered to. They are admittedly inclined to want this because they see that the children of Roman Catholic parents observe those days. Do not let them attend carnivals, observe Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras), see Santa Claus, or observe Twelfth Night, because they are all remnants of an idolatrous papacy. You must not keep your children out of school or from work on those days nor let them play outside or join in the amusement. The Lord has said, “After the doings of the land of Egypt, where you lived, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, where I bring you, you shall not do: neither shall you walk in their ordinances” (Lev. 18:3). The Lord will punish the Reformed on account of the days of Baal (Hosea 2:12-13), and he also observes what the children do on the occasion of such idolatry (Jer. 17:18). Therefore, do not let your children receive presents on Santa Claus day, nor let them draw tickets in a raffle and such things. Pick other days on which to give them the things that amuse them, and because the days of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost have the same character, Reformed people must keep their children away from these so-called holy days and feast days.

Brothers and sisters, what calls for all our efforts in this life is the healing of the eyes of our hearts, with which God is to be seen. It is for this that the holy mysteries are celebrated, for this that the word of God is preached, to this that the Church's moral exhortations are directed, those, that is, that are concerned with the correction of our carnal desires, the improvement of our habits, the renunciation of the world, not only in words but in a change of life. Whatever points God's holy scriptures make, this is their ultimate point, to help us purge that inner faculty of ours from that thing that prevents us from beholding God.

Not only do I need friends who share in my desires and convictions, and not only do I need mentors who can support, encourage and advise me as I journey to God, but I also need a community with whom I can participate in the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of all that the Words means to me. Like the baby Jesus, I need a "holy family" to belong to. I need to belong to something bigger than myself. If I don't, then I run the risk of developing a sort of God-and-me spirituality with no support systems to hold me up when I am weak, no prophets to challenge me when I am wrong and no party-mates with whom I may celebrate the Lord's goodness in my life.

Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title “Lord of the White Elephants” above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial color the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things— the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.

healthy eating go-to scripts God has given me power over my food choices. I’m supposed to consume food. Food isn’t supposed to consume me. He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” . . . For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:9–10) I was made for more than to be stuck in a vicious cycle of defeat. You have circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north. (Deuteronomy 2:3 NASB) When I’m considering a compromise, I will think past this moment and ask myself, How will I feel about this choice tomorrow morning? Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20) When tempted, I either remove the temptation or remove myself from the situation. If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. Therefore, my dear friends, flee. (1 Corinthians 10:12–14) When there’s a special event, I can find other ways to celebrate rather than blowing my healthy eating plan. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. (Revelation 3:8) Struggling with my weight isn’t God’s mean curse on me, but an outside indication that internal changes are needed for me to function and feel well. “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! . . . I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:18–19) I have these boundaries in place not for restriction but to define the parameters of my freedom. I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. (Romans 6:19)

The LORD through His prophet, Jeremiah, said, “For my people are foolish; they know me not; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are ‘wise’ in doing evil! But how to do good they know not.” (Jeremiah 4: 22). Will this rebuke hold true for you? Sad to note that our knowledge of the LORD is at a play school level, in contrast to our knowledge on the heads of the government, politics, politicians, sports, celebrities, elders, believers, neighbours, friends, relatives, wife, husband, children, our own subjects of expertise etc., which can fetch us a doctoral degree! Shameful, isn’t it? The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (Proverbs 9: 10).

On April 1, the Holy Spirit descended into the body of President Jerry Falwell I, who, it turned out, was in the last year of his life on this world, and God spoke. He wanted them to form God’s Church of the Evangels and he wanted all Americans to have a chance to convert to that true church. Those who did not would be an abomination to the Lord. All the leaders present recognized the voice of the Holy Spirit and fell to their knees and all instantly joined the newly -formed church. The Great Conversion had begun. Interestingly enough, April 1 used to be known as April Fool’s Day and people played practical jokes on each other , but of course it is now Jerry Falwell Day and the holiday is celebrated with praises to the Holy Spirit.

When a man dies, he is like those who are being initiated into the mysteries. The one expression teleutan the other teleisthai correspond..... Our whole life is but a succession of wanderings, of painful courses, of long journeys by tortuous ways without outlet. At the moment of quitting it, fears, terrors, quiverings, mortal sweats, and a lethargic stupor, come over us and overwhelm us; but as soon as we are out of it pure spots and meadows receive us, with voices and dances and the solemnities of sacred words and holy sights. It is there that man, having become perfect and initiated--restored to liberty, really master of himself--celebrates crowned with myrtle the most august mysteries, and holds converse with just and pure souls.

Oh arrive and leave. You were still half a child, Completing a dancing pose for but a moment, The pure form of a star constellation, which is One of the ways in which we overcome the mindless random order Of Nature, also just for a moment. For it was only when Orpheus sang That Nature awoke and heard, was quickened in alertness. Though far away in time, this stirred you. And you were somewhat Surprised that a tree considered so slowly and hesitated To join with you in hearing it. You sensed the very place where the lyre Raised itself aloft -; the mid-point which has never been heard. For you ventured your beautiful steps And you hoped, one day in holy celebration To alter the course and countenance of your friend. (Her friend is himself.)

The tattooed face of a cat, blue and grinning, covered his right hand; on one shoulder a blue rose blossomed. More markings, self-designed and self-executed, ornamented his arms and torso: the head of a dragon with a human skull between its open jaws; bosomy nudes; a gremlin brandishing a pitchfork; the word PEACE accompanied by a cross radiating, in the form of crude strokes, rays of holy light; and two sentimental concoctions—one a bouquet of flowers dedicated to MOTHER-DAD, the other a heart that celebrated the romance of DICK and CAROL, the girl whom he had married when he was nineteen, and from whom he had separated six years later in order to “do the right thing” by another young lady, the mother of his youngest child. (“I have three boys who

If music is meant to help us engage emotionally with words, then most churches need a broader emotional range in the songs they sing. We need songs of reverence, awe, repentance, and grief as well as songs of joy, celebration, freedom, and confidence. The holiness of God cannot be adequately expressed in a two-minute up-tempo pop song. The jubilant triumph of Christ’s victory over sin can’t be fully communicated in a slow a cappella hymn. There are varied traditions of song throughout history as well as very different hymn-writers: Puritans, psalm singers, pietists, charismatics, modern worship songs. Why do we need to pit them against one another? As long as the lyrics are edifying and faithful to Scripture, why can’t we draw from each tradition to enable a broader range of emotional responses in corporate worship?

Like other people in the ancient world, the Babylonians attributed their cultural achievements to the gods, who had revealed their own lifestyle to their mythical ancestors. Thus Babylon itself was supposed to be an image of heaven, with each of its temples a replica of a celestial palace. This link with the divine world was celebrated and perpetuated annually in the great New Year Festival, which had been firmly established by the seventeenth century BCE. Celebrated in the holy city of Babylon during the month of Nisan—our April—the Festival solemnly enthroned the king and established his reign for another year. Yet this political stability could only endure insofar as it participated in the more enduring and effective government of the gods, who had brought order out of primordial chaos when they had created the world.

Apart from the regime of the Last Man, the other nightmare that plagued Nietzsche was the 'long plentitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysm that is now impending' as a result of the Death of God. The Death of God resulted when Christianity's chief virtue, truthfulness, was at last turned against religion. The search for historical truth resulted in skepticism about the transcendent claims of religion, and 'eventually turned against morality, discovered its teleology, its partial perspective....' Luther was an archetypical Christian who, impelled by the love of truth 'surrendered the holy books to everyone - until they finally came into the hands of the philologists, who are the destroyers of every faith that rests on books.' At times, it appears that for Nietzsche the death of God was a supremely liberating event, and one to be celebrated. On the other hand, he also speaks of an 'approaching gloom' which will overwhelm Europe as morality gradually perishes: 'this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe - the most terrible, most questionable, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all spectacles. -' So although Nietzsche harbors hopes for an eventual transvaluation of all values, he does not by any means consider this a foregone conclusion, nor does he look forward to the gloom and cataclysm that will result between the death of the old values and the birth of the new. 'Nihilism represents a pathological transitional stage,' he writes; and he wonders 'whether the productive forces are not yet strong enough, or whether decadence still hesitates and has not yet invented its remedies.

What we are faced with in our culture is the post-Christian version of the doctrine of original sin: all human endeavor is radically flawed, and the journalists who take delight in pointing this out are simply telling over and over again the story of Genesis 3 as applied to today’s leaders, politicians, royalty and rock stars. And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christshaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to the world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion. So the key I propose for translating Jesus’ unique message to the Israel of his day into our message to our contemporaries is to grasp the parallel, which is woven deeply into both Testaments, between the human call to bear God’s image and Israel’s call to be the light of the world. Humans were made to reflect God’s creative stewardship into the world. Israel was made to bring God’s rescuing love to bear upon the world. Jesus came as the true Israel, the world’s true light, and as the true image of the invisible God. He was the true Jew, the true human. He has laid the foundation, and we must build upon it. We are to be the bearers both of his redeeming love and of his creative stewardship: to celebrate it, to model it, to proclaim it, to dance to it. “As the Father sent me, so I send you; receive the Holy Spirit; forgive sins and they are forgiven, retain them and they are retained.” That last double command belongs exactly at this point. We are to go out into the world with the divine authority to forgive and retain sins. When Jesus forgave sins, they said he was blaspheming; how then can we imagine such a thing for ourselves? Answer: because of the gift of the Holy Spirit. God intends to do through us for the wider world that for which the foundation was laid in Jesus. We are to live and tell the story of the prodigal and the older brother; to announce God’s glad, exuberant, richly healing welcome for sinners, and at the same time God’s sorrowful but implacable opposition to those who persist in arrogance, oppression and greed. Following Christ in the power of the Spirit means bringing to our world the shape of the gospel: forgiveness, the best news that anyone can ever hear, for all who yearn for it, and judgment for all who insist on dehumanizing themselves and others by their continuing pride, injustice and greed.

Brigid may be praised as of “the holy well and the sacred flame.” The “well” designates a source of life, to which the new tender being is intimately connected. It may be understood as the Well of Creativity of the Cosmos to which all are seamlessly connected. A dedication to Brigid means a dedication to the being and beauty of particular small self, and knowing deeply its Source, rooted seamlessly in the whole of Gaia – as the infant knows deeply its dependence on the Mother, as the new shoot on the tree knows intimately its dependence on the branch and whole tree, as the new star’s being is connected to the supernova. The “Well” of Brigid then, is not only the well into Earth-Gaia, but also Universe-Gaia’s Well of Creativity. Brigid has extended Her “country,” Her jurisdiction; and perhaps it was always understood that way by the ancients.

Father, thank you for giving us a new birth in spite of our sin and rebellion. Lord, part of us longs to be holy and sinless, but there is much in us that still cherishes our sin and clings to it. Please help us to hate our sin and run from it. As you draw us toward heaven, open our eyes and help us to see how offensive our sin is to you, and how damaging it is to us. When we are dazzled by the alluring temptations of sexual and nonsexual sins, teach us that you are the only feast that satisfies our souls deeply and permanently. Fill us with awe and wonder that you give us the radiant robes of your Son’s perfection to wear, and carry us to a place of high honor for his glory. Thank you that you have begun a good work in us that nothing can stop, and that one day we will stand before you in the bliss of sinless perfection as Christ’s beautiful bride. We give thanks for this in Jesus’ name, amen.

[MINERVA appears.] MIN. Whither, whither sendest thou this troop to follow [the fugitives,] king Thoas? List to the words of me, Minerva. Cease pursuing, and stirring on the onset of your host. For by the destined oracles of Loxias Orestes came hither, fleeing the wrath of the Erinnyes, and in order to conduct his sister's person to Argos, and to bear the sacred image into my land, by way of respite from his present troubles. Thus are our words for thee, but as to him, Orestes, whom you wish to slay, having caught him in a tempest at sea, Neptune has already, for my sake, rendered the surface of the sea waveless, piloting him along in the ship. But do thou, Orestes, learning my commands, (for thou hearest the voice of a Goddess, although not present,) go, taking the image and thy sister. And when thou art come to heaven-built Athens, there is a certain sacred district in the farthest bounds of Atthis, near the Carystian rock, which my people call Alœ—here, having built a temple, do thou enshrine the image named after the Tauric land and thy toils, which thou hast labored through, wandering over Greece, under the goad of the Erinnyes. But mortals hereafter shall celebrate her as the Tauric Goddess Diana. And do thou ordain this law, that, when the people celebrate a feast in grateful commemoration of thy release from slaughter, [188] let them apply the sword to the neck of a man, and let blood flow on account of the holy Goddess, that she may have honor. But, O Iphigenia, thou must needs be guardian of the temple of this Goddess at the hallowed ascent of Brauron; [189] where also thou shalt be buried at thy death, and they shall offer to you the honor of rich woven vestments, which women, dying in childbed, may leave in their houses. But I command thee to let these Grecian women depart from the land on account of their disinterested disposition, [190] I, having saved thee also on a former occasion, by determining the equal votes in the Field of Mars, Orestes, and that, according to the same law, he should conquer, whoever receive equal suffrages. But, O son of Agamemnon, do thou remove thy sister from this land, nor be thou angered, Thoas.

One eye-witness reported that: '...it seems more like the celebration of the orgies of Bacchus, than the memory of a pious saint, from the drunken quarrels and obscenities practised on these occasions. So little is there of devotion, or amendment of life or manners, that these places are frequently chosen for the scenes of pitched battles, fought with cudgels, by parties, not only of parishes, but of counties, set in formal array against each other, to revenge some real or supposed injury, and murders are not an unusual result of these meetings. It is hard to believe that many of those who took part in the fighting had originally gone in a spirit of pilgrimage to a holy well. But very often the two went together, at least in Ireland, and a seriously intended pilgrimage was often followed by boisterous and aggressive behaviour. Dr. Patrick Logan, who has made a modern study of Irish pilgrimages, commented: 'Pilgrims in any age are not noted for their piety, the Canterbury Tales make that clear, but anyone who has ever gone on a pilgrimage knows it is a memorable and enjoyable experience, something which is part of the nature of man. These days pilgrims may be called tourists.

As we stand before this sacred doorway [the doorway to meaning], we realize its response to us is conditional, albeit only in the sense that it’s reflective. If we stand before it arrogant and haughty, indeed the door will remained locked. If we stand before it in doubt, it will disappear. If we knock upon it distracted, our minds somewhere else, we fail to see it open. Anyone in the world can go through it, and there could never be a key. Yet it opens only when we approach it in a certain, truthful way. Otherwise, we may not notice its openness and its infinite offering again and again. To pass into this fertile land of meaning, we must arrive in reverence. We must approach the door in silence, focused upon the primordial pulse of our beings and all of life. We must allow ourselves to open into acceptance, for within acceptance lives our accountability and, therefore, our ability to extract meaning for our growth—and the possibility for things to come to life. We must allow ourselves to be released into the current, the movement of acceptance, otherwise known as surrender, so that we may be taken and discovered unto ourselves. And once we are through, by God, we must celebrate, for what else is there to do?

The holy books of all religions serve as our pathfinders. The Quran of Islam, the Bible of Christianity, the Gita of Hinduism, Guru Granth Sahib of Sikhism, the Tipitaka of Buddhism, and the Agamas of Jainism are all examples of scriptures that dig deep into the perennial questions that have been plaguing mankind since time immemorial. They try to answer them in their own ways. The great souls and prophets who have pioneered various religious movements in the world have left behind their treasure of wisdom in the form of written words available in those Holy Scriptures. Not only such scriptures, but also the many non-religious texts such as the ancient epics of Greece, the writings of Confucius and the celebrated tragedies of Shakespeare, all throw light on the unending questions that mankind has been struggling with. We would be deprived of a lot if such a legacy of contributions down the ages is lost sight of. It would have been nice if we could delve deep into the vast ocean of insights presented in each one of this line-up of classics and holy books in our quest for the necessary answers. It is not that all these scriptures necessarily provide a straight and conclusive answer. Had it been so, the human race would not have been struggling with it even today.

Before the shrinking of the Feminine was the Goddess—and all that is split in our own lives was in harmony in Hers. She was profoundly in Her body. Her body itself was sacred. In the Old Religion, body and spirit were one. She was seen as substantial, as essentially embodied. Her thighs, Her Belly, Her breasts were generous, Her physical strength apparent. We miss the beauty of such an image, we who have been taught to measure ourselves endlessly. Too fat, too thin, too flat, too wrinkled. Our bodies are never good, and in themselves. We must deny our naturalness to see beauty. What we learn to reject was once holy. What we learn to hide behind closed doors was once celebrated in the open. Blood was sacred to the Goddess—menstrual blood. Some of Her images were painted red between the legs. What some of us and many of our mothers learned to see as 'the curse' was once seen as the Blessing, women's particular creative magic. The blood that flows of itself and not from a wounding was thought to be the very source of life. One early creation tale stated than when the Mother created man and woman, She made them from a mixture of Her menstrual blood and clay. Moreover, every woman carried some of the Goddess's sacred substance and participated in Her ability to create life.

The “Order Principle” in 1 Corinthians 14 means that Christian worship should be structured in such a way that instruction is clear, intelligibility is essential, ordained roles and teaching offices are maintained, all the saints are built up in the faith, love and peace are abundant, and God is glorified in all things. It is for this reason that Christians have historically ordered their meetings and services around a well-structured service that takes believers through all of the essential components or elements of a full, robust worship experience. We might speak of this as the “liturgy,” from the Latin word liturgia meaning “service.” A well-ordered liturgy takes the gathered saints through an incredibly beautiful journey in which practically every aspect of the history of redemption is recalled and applied. Although there is great variation in ancient, historic, Protestant, and even Reformed liturgies of worship, certain basic elements are usually present somewhere in the service. These include: an acknowledgment of God as Creator, a confession of the fallen state of man, a rehearsal of the Law of God, the proclaiming of the saving Gospel of Christ, the tangible celebration of the sacraments, and the blessing of the Christian life. In other words, the service moves through the history of redemption: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation. Worship is therefore Trinitarian. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each extolled and praised.

Mason recalls well enough that autumn of ’56, when the celebrated future Martyr of Quebec, with six companies of Infantry, occupied that unhappy Town after wages were all cut in half, and the master weavers began to fiddle the Chain on the Bar, and a weaver was lucky to earn tuppence for eight hours’ work. Mason in those same Weeks was preparing to leave the Golden Valley, to begin his job as Bradley’s assistant, even as Soldiers were beating citizens and slaughtering sheep for their pleasure, fouling and making sick Streams once holy,— his father mean-times cursing his Son for a Coward, as Loaves by the Dozens were taken, with no payment but a Sergeant’s Smirk. Mason, seeing the Choices, had chosen Bradley, and Bradley’s world, when he should instead have stood by his father, and their small doom’d Paradise. “Who are they,” inquires the Revd in his Day-Book, “that will send violent young troops against their own people? Their mouths ever keeping up the same weary Rattle about Freedom, Toleration, and the rest, whilst their own Land is as Occupied as ever it was by Rome. These forces look like Englishmen, they were born in England, they speak the language of the People flawlessly, they cheerfully eat jellied Eels, joints of Mutton, Treacle-Tarts, all that vile unwholesome Diet which maketh the involuntary American more than once bless his Exile,— yet their intercourse with the Mass of the People is as cold with suspicion and contempt, as that of any foreign invader.” “We shall all of us learn, who they are,” Capt. V. with a melancholy Phiz, “and all too soon.

O that today you would hearken to his voice! —Psalm 95:7 (RSV) MARIA, INSPIRATION BEHIND HOLY ANGELS HOME Maria was nine in 1965 when I first wrote about her, a bright, little girl with an impish smile. Born hydrocephalic, without legs, a “vegetable” who could not survive, she’d dumbfounded experts and become the inspiration behind a home for infants with multiple handicaps. Now I was back at Holy Angels in North Carolina to celebrate Maria’s fiftieth birthday. I had to trot to keep up with Maria’s motorized wheelchair through a maze of new buildings, home now for adults as well as infants. At each stop, Maria introduced me to staff and volunteers who simply exuded joy. And yet the people they were caring for had such cruel limitations! How could everyone seem so happy, I asked, working day after day with people who’ll never speak, never hold a spoon, never sit up alone? “None of us would be happy,” Maria said, “if we looked way off into the future like that.” Here, she explained, they looked for what God was doing in each life, just that one day. “That’s where God is for all of us, you know. Just in what’s happening right now.” How intently one would learn to look, I thought, to spot the little victories. In my life too…. What if I memorized just the first stanza of Millay’s “Renascence”? What if I understood just one more function on my iPhone? What if just one morning I didn’t comment about my husband’s snoring? “Thank you, Maria,” I said as we hugged good-bye, “for showing me the God of the little victories.” Through what small victory, Father, will You show me Yourself today? —Elizabeth Sherrill Digging Deeper: Ps 118:24; Mt 6:34

Remembering​ ​is​ ​something​ ​God​ ​asks​ ​us​ ​to​ ​do​ ​over​ ​and​ ​over​ ​in​ ​the​ ​Bible:​ ​“Remember the​ ​Sabbath​ ​day​ ​by​ ​keeping​ ​it​ ​holy”​ ​(Exod.​ ​20:8).​ ​​ ​“Remember​ ​your​ ​Creator”​ ​(Eccles.​ ​12:1).​ ​​ ​The Israelites​ ​were​ ​experts​ ​at​ ​remembering,​ ​building​ ​altars​ ​of​ ​thanks​ ​and​ ​celebrating​ ​festivals​ ​to​ ​be mindful​ ​of​ ​God’s​ ​mighty​ ​acts​ ​of​ ​provision.​ ​​ ​They​ ​had​ ​much​ ​to​ ​celebrate:​ ​​ ​the​ ​parting​ ​of​ ​the​ ​Red Sea,​ ​the​ ​supply​ ​of​ ​manna​ ​in​ ​the​ ​desert,​ ​the​ ​cloud​ ​by​ ​day​ ​and​ ​the​ ​pillar​ ​of​ ​fire​ ​by​ ​night.​ ​​ ​In remembering,​ ​they​ ​knew​ ​God​ ​was​ ​faithful,​ ​and​ ​it​ ​fortified​ ​their​ ​faith​ ​for​ ​the​ ​next​ ​battle​ ​ahead. All​ ​of​ ​us​ ​who​ ​are​ ​Christians​ ​are​ ​asked​ ​to​ ​remember​ ​too.​ ​​ ​The​ ​violence​ ​of​ ​the​ ​cross​ ​is​ ​in front​ ​of​ ​us​ ​each​ ​time​ ​we​ ​take​ ​communion--”Do​ ​this​ ​in​ ​remembrance​ ​of​ ​Me”​ ​(Luke​ ​22:19). Though​ ​it​ ​isn’t​ ​easy​ ​to​ ​face,​ ​we​ ​are​ ​asked​ ​to​ ​remember​ ​the​ ​blood​ ​He​ ​spilled​ ​out​ ​for​ ​us.​ ​​ ​When​ ​I embrace​ ​His​ ​suffering​ ​for​ ​me,​ ​it​ ​gives​ ​meaning​ ​to​ ​my​ ​own.​ ​​ ​I​ ​know​ ​it​ ​also​ ​forces​ ​me​ ​to remember​ ​the​ ​pain​ ​of​ ​others.​ ​​ ​And​ ​God​ ​doesn’t​ ​want​ ​me​ ​to​ ​forget​ ​the​ ​innocent​ ​blood​ ​that​ ​was shed​ ​over​ ​the​ ​hills​ ​of​ ​Rwanda.​ ​​ ​The​ ​act​ ​of​ ​remembering​ ​holds​ ​something​ ​very​ ​sacred--it​ ​makes us​ ​more​ ​grateful.​ ​​ ​We​ ​have​ ​to​ ​be​ ​willing​ ​to​ ​remember​ ​our​ ​pain​ ​so​ ​we​ ​can​ ​comfort​ ​and​ ​offer​ ​a place​ ​of​ ​healing​ ​for​ ​others.​ ​(pp.​ ​152-153)

When Surkov finds out about the Night Wolves he is delighted. The country needs new patriotic stars, the great Kremlin reality show is open for auditions, and the Night Wolves are just the type that’s needed, helping the Kremlin rewrite the narrative of protesters from political injustice and corruption to one of Holy Russia versus Foreign Devils, deflecting the conversation from the economic slide and how the rate of bribes that bureaucrats demand has shot up from 15 percent to 50 percent of any deal. They will receive Kremlin support for their annual bike show and rock concert in Crimea, the one-time jewel in the Tsarist Empire that ended up as part of Ukraine during Soviet times, and where the Night Wolves use their massive shows to call for retaking the peninsula from Ukraine and restoring the lands of Greater Russia; posing with the President in photo ops in which he wears Ray-Bans and leathers and rides a three-wheel Harley (he can’t quite handle a two-wheeler); playing mega-concerts to 250,000 cheering fans celebrating the victory at Stalingrad in World War II and the eternal Holy War Russia is destined to fight against the West, with Cirque du Soleil–like trapeze acts, Spielberg-scale battle reenactments, religious icons, and holy ecstasies—in the middle of which come speeches from Stalin, read aloud to the 250,000 and announcing the holiness of the Soviet warrior—after which come more dancing girls and then the Night Wolves’ anthem, “Slavic Skies”: We are being attacked by the yoke of the infidels: But the sky of the Slavs boils in our veins . . . Russian speech rings like chain-mail in the ears of the foreigners, And the white host rises from the coppice to the stars.

Trust His Promises This is my comfort in my affliction: Your promise has given me life. Psalm 119:50 HCSB God’s promises are found in a book like no other: the Holy Bible. It is a roadmap for life here on earth and for life eternal. As Christians, we are called upon to trust its promises, to follow its commandments, and to share its Good News. As believers, we must study the Bible daily and meditate upon its meaning for our lives. Otherwise, we deprive ourselves of a priceless gift from our Creator. God’s Holy Word is, indeed, a transforming, life-changing, one-of-a-kind treasure. And, a passing acquaintance with the Good Book is insufficient for Christians who seek to obey God’s Word and to understand His will. God has made promises to mankind and to you. God’s promises never fail and they never grow old. You must trust those promises and share them with your family, with your friends, and with the world. Joy is not mere happiness. Nor does joy spring from a life of ease, comfort, or peaceful circumstances. Joy is the soul’s buoyant response to a God of promise, presence, and power. Susan Lenzkes Claim all of God’s promises in the Bible. Your sins, your worries, your life—you may cast them all on Him. Corrie ten Boom We have ample evidence that the Lord is able to guide. The promises cover every imaginable situation. All we need to do is to take the hand He stretches out. Elisabeth Elliot Do not be afraid, then, that if you trust, or tell others to trust, the matter will end there. Trust is only the beginning and the continual foundation. When we trust Him, the Lord works, and His work is the important part of the whole matter. Hannah Whitall Smith Brother, is your faith looking upward today? / Trust in the promise of the Savior. / Sister, is the light shining bright on your way? / Trust in the promise of thy Lord. Fanny Crosby The meaning of hope isn’t just some flimsy wishing. It’s a firm confidence in God’s promises—that He will ultimately set things right. Sheila Walsh

I'm sorry this trip has been so difficult." "It could be worse.We could be enduring Father Morrell's celebration of the Eucharist." Bronwyn's jaw dropped and she turned in his arms to see if Ranulf was serious. He was. Ranulf framed her face in his hands and placed a soft kiss on her lips. He then stepped aside and pulled his tunic over his head. Seeing her still stunned, sea blue eyes follow his movements, he said, "Don't look at me that way. The aggravating priest confronted me when you were packing, telling me that I was damning all of our souls by taking you away on such an auspicious day." Bronwyn bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing. "Father Morrell's just concerned. He believes that all should be given Holy Communion at least once a year and-" "He has chosen the last Sunday of the Twelfthtide to be that day. I understand. But just as I told him, I've missed so many of what he considers critical celebrations in my lifetime, another won't matter. And since you've attended almost every one, forgoing one or two this year is just as trivial." Bronwyn took a deep breath, exhaled, and followed his lead, freeing the restraints of her bliaut. "I've married a heathen." Helping her pull the thick material over her head, Ranulf agreed, "I think that is exactly what Father Morrell concluded as well." Free from the bulky winter garment, Bronwyn felt a surge of arousal and twisted around to kiss him full on the lips. "Then maybe I'll just have to reform you." "Sounds tempting," Ranulf murmured against her lips, "but what if it is I who corrupt you?" he asked as he slowly edged her shift up over her hips, breast, and then head. Bronwyn smiled and twined her arms around his neck.She felt no awkwardness for her lack of clothing.She had nothing to hide from this man.He thought her perfect. "You've already tried." "And it's working.Just who is seducing whom, angel?" "Oh,I am definitely seducing you, my lord." Tomorrow she would ask him about his reasons for their impromptu journey south. She suddenly had other plans.

Last night I undressed for bed. But instead of crawling between the sheets I decided to stand, naked, in front of the large full-length mirror that is propped against the wall next to my bed. ⠀ ⠀ I turned off the bright lights, and found a song that spoke to the energy I could feel under my skin. For a while I just stood there. And I looked at myself. Bare skin. Open Heart. Clear truth. ⠀ ⠀ It's a wonder, after 42 years on earth, to allow it to fully land, this knowing that I can stop, and look at myself and think things other than unkind words. ⠀ ⠀ Don't get me wrong. I don't want to paint you a pretty social media picture that doesn't play out in real life. I'm not suddenly completely fine with all that is. I'm human and I'm a woman in the midst of this particular culture, and so of course I'd love to be tighter and firmer and lifted. I'd love to have the skin and metabolism I did in my twenties. I wish, often, that my stomach were flatter. I wear makeup and I dye away my gray hair. I worry about these things too, of course I do. ⠀ ⠀ But finally, and fully - I can stand and look at myself and be filled, completely, with love. I can look at myself entirely bare and think, yes, I like myself now. Just as I am. Even if nothing changes. This me. She is good. And she is beautiful. ⠀ ⠀ And even in the space of allowing myself to be human, and annoyed with those things I view as imperfections, I honor and celebrate this shift. ⠀ ⠀ And so last night I was able to stand there. Naked and unashamed and run my own hands gently along my own skin. To offer the tenderness of the deepest seduction. To practice being my own best lover, to romance my own soul. To light the candles and buy the flowers. To hold space for my own knowing. ⠀ ⠀ And to touch my own skin while the music played. Gently. Lightly. With reverence. My thighs, my arms, my breasts, my belly, the points where my pulse makes visible that faint movement that proves me alive. To trace the translucent blue veins, the scars, the ink that tells stories. To whisper to the home of my own desire. ⠀ ⠀ I love you. ⠀ I respect your knowing. ⠀ Thank you for waiting for me to get here. ⠀ I finally see that you are holy.

God of goodness, what causes man to be more delighted by the salvation of a soul who is despaired of but is then liberated from great danger than if there has always been hope or if the danger has only been minor? You also, merciful Father, rejoice 'more over one penitent than over ninety-nine just persons who need no penitence' (Luke 15:4). We too experience great pleasure when we hear how the shepherd's shoulders exult when they carry the lost sheep, and as we listen to the story of the drachma restored to your treasuries while the neighbors rejoice with the woman who found it. Tears flow at the joy of solemnities of your house (Ps. 25:8) when in your house the story is read of your younger son 'who was dead and is alive again, was lost and has been found' (Luke 15:32). You rejoice indeed in us and in your angels who are holy in holy love...What then is it in the soul which causes it to take more pleasure in things which it loves when they are found and recovered than if it has always had them? There are other examples which attest to this fact, and everyday life is full of instances where the evidence cries out 'That is the case.' A victorious emperor celebrates a triumph. He would not have conquered if he had not fought. The greater the danger in battle, the greater the joy in the triumph. A storm throws people about on a voyage and threatens shipwreck. All grow pale at the imminence of death. Sky and sea become calm, and the relief is great because the fear has been great...The same phenomenon appears in acts which are demeaning and execrable, in acts which are allowed and lawful, in the sincerest expressions of honorable friendship, and in the case of the one 'who was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found' (Luke 15:32). In every case the joy is greater, the worse the pain which has preceded it. Why is this, Lord my God?... Why is it that this part of your creation alternates between regress and progress, between hostilities and reconciliations? Or is it that a restriction is placed on them, a limit you have imposed, when 'from the highest of heaven' (Ps. 112:4) down to the lowest things on earth, from the beginning to the end of the ages, from an angel down to a worm, from the first movement down to the last, you have assigned to it its proper place and time all kinds of good things and all your just works?

Day 4 Jehovah-Nissi __________, I call your spirit to attention in the name of Jehovah-Nissi, God who promised to be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation. The context of the story is of Moses having to lead his people into battle when they weren’t ready to go to war. They were attacked by the Amalekites. As he lifted his hands to the Lord, the Lord warred on behalf of Israel. __________, I bless your spirit with knowing when to war and when to lift your hands to the Lord. There will be seasons when God calls you to use the greatest of your strength. There will be seasons when God presses you to the wall and yet expects you to work hard, like Israel had to make bricks; then they had to make bricks in a harder way without straw. Then they had to march during the middle of the night to escape from Egypt. There will be times when God will celebrate the gifts that He has placed in you, when He will celebrate your strength. At times God will place you in a context where every talent and ability that you possess can be brought to the front and be used to make changes in the kingdom. That is good. That is fine. That is excellent. That is the will of God. But there will be times, __________, when God will very specifically put you in a place where everything that you have is not good enough, where you have to do something you have never done before. Enemies that you have never irritated will seek to attack you just because they are opportunistic. I bless you, __________, with having the courage not to depend on a skillset that is inadequate but to have the courage to lift your hands up to God on the mountaintop and ask Jehovah-Nissi to war for you. Because where you are inexperienced against any enemy, Jehovah-Nissi has the experience of the ages. Where you don’t know how to do it, Jehovah-Nissi has done it endless times. Where you have not walked that way before, Jehovah-Nissi has worn a path with the mighty tread of His feet. __________, Jehovah-Nissi has promised and recorded in Scripture that He cannot lie, that He will be at war against the opportunistic coyote, the spirit of Amalek that prowls around. It never attacks directly but takes advantage of your vulnerabilities, takes advantage of the opportune times of transition when you are not ready for war. Jehovah-Nissi has promised to war on your behalf. __________, I bless you with finding profound security in Jehovah-Nissi, celebrating your giftedness while always knowing that Jehovah-Nissi is there for those battles that He permits which you don’t anticipate. He anticipates the battles that blindside you on a path that you’ve never walked before. Israel did not know the desert area. The Amalekites lived there. Israel didn’t know the safe places, the high places, the hidden places. They didn’t know how to craft an effective war strategy. They just went out and bumbled around while Moses stood on the mountain with his hands lifted high. __________, celebrate your areas of strength, but when you are in a new area and the enemy attacks you and you don’t know what to do or how to do or where to do it, go to the mountaintop. Lift your hands and let Jehovah-Nissi war on your behalf. I bless you with knowing Jehovah-Nissi experientially in your generation. I bless you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Many leaders of the Christian right like to dress up in red, white, and blue and announce themselves as true patriots. But they are the same people who seek to pervert our institutions, betray our international alliances and make friends with despots, degrade the public discourse, treat the Constitution as a subcategory of their holy texts, demean whole segments of the population, foist their authoritarian creed upon other people's children, and celebrate the elevation of a ‘king’ to the presidency who has made a sport out of violating democratic laws and norms. We don't need lessons on patriotism from Christian nationalists.

The Liturgy is not just a sermon. It is not something to be listened to or watched. The Liturgy never grows old. Its cup does not go dry. No one can say he has got to know it or got used to it because he has understood it once or once been carried away by the attraction of it. The faithful are not like spectators or an audience following something that makes a greater or lesser emotional impression on them. The faithful partake in the Divine Liturgy. The mystery is celebrated in each of the faithful, in the whole of the liturgical community. We do not see Christ externally, we meet Him within us. Christ takes shape in us. The faithful become Christs by grace. What happens is a miraculous interpenetration by grace and an identification without confusion. The whole man, in body and in spirit, enters the unalloyed world of the uncreated grace of the Trinity. And at the same time he receives into himself Christ, with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The whole of God is offered to man, "He makes His home with him" (John 14:23); and the whole man is offered to God: "let us commend ourselves and each other and all our life unto Christ our God." "God united with and known to gods.

The elements of the world pass away with a loud noise (II Pet. 3:10): and everything is clothed with light and existence as with a garment. Everything exists and acquires substance. Representing the cherubim in the liturgical singing of the thrice holy hymn, we are caught up into heaven-whether in the body or out of the body we do not know, God knows (cf. II Cor. 12:2) -and we sing the triumphal hymn with the blessed powers. When we are there, beyond space and time, we enter the realm of eschatology. We begin to receive the Lord "invisibly escorted by the hosts of angels." Thus anyone who participates in the Liturgy, who is taken up-"he was caught up into heaven"-acquires new senses. He sees history not from its deceptive side, which is created and passes away, but from the true, eternal and luminous side which is the age to come. Then the believer delights in this world too, because he experiences the relation between it and the other world, the eternal and indestructible: the whole of creation has a trinitarian structure and harmony. The thrice-holy hymn is sung by the "communion of saints," the Church, in the depths of its being. Solemnly sung as part of the Divine Liturgy, the thrice. holy hymn overcomes tumult, and makes everything join in the celebration and sing together in complete silence and stillness, the silence and stillness of the age to come. This is an indication that we have already received the pledge of the life to come and of the Kingdom.

Like I said, I did what was necessary. I knew she would keep you here, and I was right. So, lecture me all you want, Adryan. But that doesn’t change your duty to this place.” Oh, my God. “My duty is not to this place—it’s to the other one below it,” Shade said. “If I have any doubts about the Void, you will know. If I don’t, I’ll be right here—not in your celebrations.

In 381 Theodosius I organised the Council of Constantine, which proclaimed the doctrine of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of the same substance, consubstantial, one person comprising god. The doctrine went even further than Greek myth in eliminating the female from the godhead. The Christian father-god utters the Word, his son, and procreates through language, entirely without a woman. The holy spirit is born from the mutual love of son and father. This creation is not incest because bodies are not involved. The Trinity, understandably called a mystery, lies at the heart of Christianity. It achieves two major goals: it posits a realm that transcends the physical world, in which reality is made by the word. History is filled with rules who claim divinity to justify their superiority, but not until Christianity and the sacralising of the notion that language creates reality does the debate between appearance and reality begin to pervade Western literature and thought. [...] the Trinity procreates without the female - without body, blood, ooze, without nature, and superior to it. Generations of clerical writers, wishing that women did not exist, lament that this sort of procreation was possible only to god. The church defined the divine realm in opposition to the earthly one, celebrating birth through utterance, death as life, the overcoming of sex and body, a realm where nothing changes and power and justice are one.

Deepawali - The holy light Yesterday it was the festival of lights, Bright, sparkling, endlessly shimmering lights, With children running on the lanes that led everywhere, Because on this day happiness takes a stroll everywhere, It was a scene of joy and happiness, A moment to celebrate togetherness, While many indulged in savouring sweets, Many felt just walking and talking on these ever stretching streets, That on this day, led everywhere, Because on this day everyone seemed to appear in these streets from nowhere, Life had acquired an eloquent rush, life was in a flow of its own, And one felt the the joy of a holy kiss unknown, They say on this day good prevailed over evil, But I say, on this day humans realised nothing is more beautiful than a beautiful human will!” In the night the sky was lit with fire crackers that carried someones joys into the sky, And when I saw them bursting in the sky, I thought of you often my love, not just by and by, Until it was late in the night and the playfulness of the festive day decided to repose, And I too called it a day, as my imaginations, now your beautiful dreams composed!

Tolkien’s advice to Michael also contains the rather counterintuitive suggestion to strengthen his faith by going to a Mass celebrated by “a snuffling or gabbling priest”—that is, one who mumbles the liturgy or rushes through it in a mechanical manner—or by “a proud and vulgar friar.” This, he says, “will be just the same (or better than that) as a mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man.”12 Why would Tolkien, with his great devotion to the Eucharist, consider that a slipshod liturgy could be “the same” or “better” than a beautiful and devoutly celebrated one? It is precisely his Eucharistic spirituality that undergirds his thinking.¶ Here Tolkien is emphasizing his belief that the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is brought about ex opere operato (“by the work worked”), meaning that sacramental grace comes from the validity of the rite and of the priest’s ordination; it does not depend on the aesthetically pleasing nature of the liturgy or on the personal holiness of the priest who has consecrated it. Tolkien had by this stage in his life of faith learned to relax into the sheer objectivity of the Blessed Sacrament, undeflected by exterior irritations or distractions—or at least he felt there was spiritual value in making the attempt.

Behind the counters, women in visors work without stopping. It’s a beautiful, holy place. A cafeteria full of people from all over the world who have been displaced in a foreign country, each with a different history. Where did they come from and how far did they travel? Why are they all here? To find the galangal no American supermarket stocks to make the Indonesian curry that their father loves? To buy the rice cakes to celebrate Jesa and honor the anniversary of their loved one’s passing? To satisfy a craving for tteokbokki on a rainy day, moved by a memory of some drunken, late-night snack under a pojangmacha tent in Myeong-dong?

I follow the holy wheel of the year and the cycles of the moon, doing rituals and seasonally appropriate celebrations. I honor nature and the divinity that is inside me and all living beings, and I strive to spread light and to be in service of something higher than myself: Spirit, the gods, the Goddess, the Mystery—that which language is too restrictive to name.

Such is the festival of St. John's Eve, as celebrated at this day in France and in Popish Ireland. Such is the way in which the votaries of Rome pretend to commemorate the birth of him who came to prepare the way of the Lord, by turning away His ancient people from all their refuges of lies, and shutting them up to the necessity of embracing that kingdom of God that consists not in any mere external thing, but in "righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

Now, when the mother of the Pagan Messiah came to be celebrated as having been thus "Assumed," then it was that, under the name of the "Dove," she was worshipped as the Incarnation of the Spirit of God, with whom she was identified. As such as she was regarded as the source of all holiness, and the grand "PURIFIER," and, of course, was known herself as the "Virgin" mother, "PURE AND UNDEFILED." Under the name of Proserpine (with whom, though the Babylonian goddess was originally distinct, she was identified), while celebrated, as the mother of the first Bacchus, and known as "Pluto's honoured wife,

Now, the very legend of Vishnu, that pretends to make him no mere creature, but the supreme and "eternal god," shows that this interpretation of the name is no mere unfounded imagination. Thus is he celebrated in the "Matsya Puran:" "The sun, the wind, the ether, all things incorporeal, were absorbed into his Divine essence; and the universe being consumed, the eternal and omnipotent god, having assumed an ancient form, REPOSED mysteriously upon the surface of that (universal) ocean. But no one is capable of knowing whether that being was then visible or invisible, or what the holy name of that person was, or what the cause of his mysterious SLUMBER. Nor can any one tell how long he thus REPOSED until he conceived the thought of acting; for no one saw him, no one approached him, and no one can penetrate the mystery of his real essence." In conformity with this ancient legend, Vishnu is still represented as sleeping four months every year. Now, connect this story with the name of Noah, the man of "Rest," and with his personal history during the period of the flood, when the world was destroyed, when for forty days and forty nights all was chaos, when neither sun nor moon nor twinkling star appeared, when sea and sky were mingled, and all was one wide universal "ocean," on the bosom of which the patriarch floated, when there was no human being to "approach" him but those who were with him in the ark, and "the mystery of his real essence is penetrated" at once, "the holy name of that person" is ascertained, and his "mysterious slumber" fully accounted for. Now, wherever Noah is celebrated, whether by the name of Saturn, "the hidden one,"--for that name was applied to him as well as to Nimrod, on account of his having been "hidden" in the ark, in the "day of the Lord's fierce anger,"--or, "Oannes," or "Janus," the "Man of the Sea," he is generally described in such a way as shows that he was looked upon as Diphues, "twice-born," or "regenerate

the Rite of Election, where the Church formally recognizes a person’s desire to become Catholic. The Sacraments of Initiation: For most people, the RCIA process reaches its climax at the Easter Vigil, where non-Christian catechumens receive baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist. Catechumens from other Christian denominations with valid baptisms receive confirmation and the Eucharist. It is a joyous occasion that celebrates how God has brought his children into full communion with Christ’s “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

We celebrate Christmas, and everything that follows, as an act of war. War? What about peace on earth, good will toward men? Jesus also said that He did not come to bring peace on earth, but rather a sword. How may this be reconciled? Jesus is the Prince of Peace, but the peace He brings is not the peace of dithering diplomats, who like nothing better than talk, talk, talk. Our Lord Jesus does bring peace, but He does so as a conquering king. He brings peace through superior firepower. That firepower is not carnal, but it is potent, and the principalities and powers (those that are left) tremble at the might wielded by a faithful Christian church, uncontaminated by idols, worshiping God in the spirit of holiness.

Shabbat simultaneously pointed backward to the first day in Eden and forward to the final day when all of creation will find wholeness and rest in unbroken fellowship with God.

[Jesus] was crucified before the beginning of the Sabbath and resurrected after the Sabbath had concluded. Jesus not only fulfilled God's intention for the Sabbath but also became our Sabbath.

It's ironic that while we have debated for a generation about worship music styles and preferences, I can't remember anyone ever questioning how our calendar affects our worship, forms our identity as followers of Christ, or calls us to live on mission in any way counter to popular culture.

God has given us the privilege of discipling our children, grandchildren, and all who are following in our footsteps: "Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power." - Psalm 145:4, NLT The calendar gives both form and substance to that privilege. As we celebrate God's mighty acts together, we are connecting the next generation with a past. That past includes our individual family stories but also enfolds them in a story much greater and more beautiful than our own. The feasts form the structure for the task of discipleship God has given us. God tells us in Deuteronomy 6:7 we are to repeat and keep on repeating to our children the commands he has given us. This repetition was meant to take place within the structure of a family's daily life and inside the context of an entire community participating in a weekly and yearly rhythm of feasts, fasts, and festivals.

You and I are not the measure, or the focal point, or time. God is.

You and I are not the measure, or the focal point, of time. God is.

On its face, the Song of Songs is a beautiful and striking statement about human love. It suggests that all life, including human sexuality, is holy because God has created it. There is in the song a celebration of life simply for its own beauty and experience.

Many of these important days called for celebration and feasting, and no work was permitted on holy days, which is why the word ‘holiday’ is still associated with taking the day off.

Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice says that at their peak, religion and psychotherapy become one. They both represent the relationship between thought and experience, and are used by the Holy Spirit to celebrate one of the most glorious human potentials: our capacity to change.

Honor He Wrote Sonnet 33 There is no lord almighty, only human almighty, No magic and mysticism, only nature and oneness. There are no ten commandments, only one, Compassion has no religion, character has no race. There’s no law above life, life alone is the supreme law, And stagnant law does more harm than action illegal. There is no holy trinity, only humanity up on its toes, It is always the human mind playing the triangle. No more dogmas, no more doctrines and manifestos, Let us be forthright 'n just foster the spirit of affection. Once we learn to celebrate each other's existence, There won't be any need for artificial occasion. Awake, arise o dynamite, blow up all old paradigm. Don't fight it, or cuss it, just overwhelm it with your lifeline.

God invites us into a variety of Spiritual Disciplines, and we step into them as best we can. These actions place us before God as a living sacrifice. God, in turn, uses our actions to build within us deeply ingrained habit patterns of “righteous and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). Back and forth, back and forth, in interactive relationship so that, through time and experience, we are learning to “grow in grace.” Once more, the Spiritual Disciplines are the means God uses for producing in us the needed transformation of heart and mind and soul.

Through [the Eucharist's] celebration Christ makes himself present and that presence, it is interesting to note, is largely made through words which may be those of holy scripture or those of the poets who, together with the music that their words have evoked, have enriched our worship throughout the centuries. These patterns of words, music, gesture, and movement, sometimes of great beauty, have formed the setting of the eucharistic action on whose content in one way and another they have thrown light. Together they have manifested the Christ who makes himself present. Likewise, the prayer of the Church, whether it is called the Divine Office or Mattins and Evensong, which are so largely scriptural, recalls the past, speaks through Christ who is present, and constantly looks on to the end.

My takeaway from this is that no matter what I step into or what my day looks like, I can be joyful. Because I know my God is holy, I can publicly honor and praise Him as I celebrate each day.

God came into this world in the flesh because from the beginning, God created us as creatures of flesh and proclaimed that we are good. As we celebrate at Christmas, God comes to meet us in the flesh, reminding us that our bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul professes that our minds, spirits, souls, and bodies remain intact in salvation. Each is constituent of the fullness of our salvation. We are not split apart into good substance and bad but wholly renewed because everything that God creates is good. This truth may never be more evident than on Ash Wednesday when the mark of the cinder cross on our foreheads reminds us that we are dust and to dust we shall return.

Even as the flames raged, Baybars sent a triumphant letter to Bohemond, who had not been present at the siege. He mocked him for having lost his right to call himself “Prince,” then described the atrocious punishment that had befallen his city. Had Bohemond been present to defend his people, said Baybars, “you would have seen your knights prostrate beneath the horses’ hooves, your houses stormed by pillagers and ransacked by looters . . . your women sold four at a time and bought for a dinar of your own money! You would have seen the crosses in your churches smashed, the pages of the false Testaments scattered, the Patriarchs’ tombs overturned. You would have seen the Muslim enemy trampling on the place where you celebrate the Mass, cutting the throats of monks, priests and deacons upon the altars . . . you would have seen fire running through your palaces, your dead burned in this world before going down to the fires of the next . . . Then you would have said ‘Would that I were dust, and that no letter had ever brought me such tidings!’”20 This was more than mere rhetoric. Antioch’s days as a leading city of the Syrian northwest were over.

I’d like to be able to make my voice heard all over the world to the poor, poor church living on cheap fiction, living on the smiles and bows of converted celebrities, living to sing cheap songs about, “Once I smoked, now I don’t. Once I drank beer, now I don’t.” Thank God you don’t, brother. It’s cheaper not to—and healthier. But if that’s your concept of Christianity, you haven’t even seen the door of the outer chambers, let alone the Holy of Holies or the sanctum sanctorum.

It felt as if the world was spinning, as if hell was silencing and reigniting all at once. Everything he'd been holding back unleashed against me, and we were the night sky, the crashing thunderstorm of deadliest proportions. A holy and evil celebration of the worst and deadliest of loves. A love that died and came back to life. A love that found more pieces of herself in the Halloween Boys and danced with the devil in hell again. A love that stopped running and turned to the vices pursuing her and burned them alive. This moment alone with him, horn and bone, flame and mountain was everything.

Dearly beloved, we’re gathered here today to celebrate the holy union of Nikolas Peter Ares Stathoulis and Theresa Maria Drakatos.

Psalm 15: The Honor Code to Become God’s Guests This short hymn celebrates the ideal Yahweh worshiper. This type of person is considered honorable enough to enter into God’s presence. Priests likely recounted this psalm at the entrance of the Jerusalem temple to prepare people for entering the holy space. The virtues in this psalm are not merely religious qualifications for temple entrance but were also esteemed as honorable characteristics within the community. O Lord, who has the honor of being a guest in your house? Who is worthy of standing in your presence? Those who do these things will enjoy such a favored position: · Live a noble life. · Do what is virtuous before God. · Say what is true. · Esteem, don’t slander, other people. · Be loyal, not evil, to friends. · Be respectful, not insulting, to neighbors. · Shame those who are wicked. · Honor those who revere the Lord. · Stay true to their promises always. · Use wealth to help, not extort, the weak. · Avoid corruption. The person who does these things will be firmly established in a place of honor before you.

The mind tricks began in the first decade after the territorial conquests of 1967. The Labor governments set their sights on settling the Jordan Valley as Israel’s eastern security border, as well as building a Greater Jerusalem. But Moshe Levinger, a firebrand rabbi who viewed the victory of 1967 as a sign of redemption, moved a group of settlers into the Park Hotel in the newly conquered holy city of Hebron to celebrate the Passover holiday the following year and refused to leave. The government caved. The group remained in an Israeli military compound in the city until the adjacent settlement of Kiryat Arba was established with government approval.

Everything he’d been holding back unleashed against me, and we were the night sky, the crashing thunderstorm of deadliest proportions. A holy and evil celebration of the worst and deadliest of loves. A love that died and came back to life. A love that found more pieces of herself in the Halloween Boys and danced with the devil in hell again. A love that stopped running and turned to the vices pursuing her and burned them alive. This moment alone with him, horn and bone, flame and mountain, was everything.

Rev. Robert J. Carr, parochial vicar of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, where Law says Mass whenever he is in town, reported getting catcalls from construction workers as he walked back to his rectory after celebrating Mass for prisoners at the Nashua Street Jail. Rev. Robert Bowers, the Charlestown pastor, recalled a Halloween party at which someone came dressed as a pedophile priest. “Now, when you look out at an audience, it crosses your mind, ‘What do they think of me?’” said Monsignor Peter V. Conley, pastor of St. Jude’s Church in Norfolk, a suburb southwest of Boston. “I know a priest who stood outside of his rectory and a car slowed down and a guy yelled out, ‘Hey, pedophile!’ He was in a funk for days.

A heavy meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one. The first principle of a good digestion is that the stomach should become active as a whole. A man ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach. For the same reasons all those interminable meals, which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which are to be had at any table d'hôte, are strongly to be deprecated. ... Everybody has his own standard in this matter, often between the narrowest and most delicate limits. ... Remain seated as little as possible, put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment of free bodily motion—nor in one in which even the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin against the Holy Spirit.

Making the Right Decisions Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him. James 1:5 HCSB Some decisions are easy to make because the consequences of those decisions are small. When the person behind the counter asks, “Want fries with that?” the necessary response requires little thought because the aftermath of that decision is relatively unimportant. Some decisions, on the other hand, are big … very big. If you’re facing one of those big decisions, here are some things you can do: 1. Gather as much information as you can: don’t expect to get all the facts—that’s impossible—but get as many facts as you can in a reasonable amount of time. (Proverbs 24:3-4) 2. Don’t be too impulsive: If you have time to make a decision, use that time to make a good decision. (Proverbs 19:2) 3. Rely on the advice of trusted friends and mentors. Proverbs 1:5 makes it clear: “A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel” (NKJV). 4. Pray for guidance. When you seek it, He will give it. (Luke 11:9) 5. Trust the quiet inner voice of your conscience: Treat your conscience as you would a trusted advisor. (Luke 17:21) 6. When the time for action arrives, act. Procrastination is the enemy of progress; don’t let it defeat you. (James 1:22). People who can never quite seem to make up their minds usually make themselves miserable. So when in doubt, be decisive. It’s the decent way to live. There may be no trumpet sound or loud applause when we make a right decision, just a calm sense of resolution and peace. Gloria Gaither The Reference Point for the Christian is the Bible. All values, judgments, and attitudes must be gauged in relationship to this Reference Point. Ruth Bell Graham The principle of making no decision without prayer keeps me from rushing in and committing myself before I consult God. Elizabeth George If you are struggling to make some difficult decisions right now that aren’t specifically addressed in the Bible, don’t make a choice based on what’s right for someone else. You are the Lord’s and He will make sure you do what’s right. Lisa Whelchel We cannot be led by our emotions and still be led by the Holy Spirit, so we have to make a choice. Joyce Meyer

Many Buddhists observe what are known as the Eight Precepts on all the holy days during Lent. The Buddhist holy days are the day of the dark moon, the eighth day of the new moon, the day of the full moon and the eighth day after the full moon. The Eight Precepts are four of the basic Five Precepts (not to kill, steal, lie or take intoxicating drinks) with the addition of four others: not to commit any immoral acts, not to take any food after twelve noon, not to indulge in music, dancing and the use of perfume, not to sleep in high places. (The last is taken to mean that one should not sleep in a luxurious bed.) Some devout Buddhists keep these eight precepts throughout the three months of Lent. Because it is a time when people should be thinking of their spiritual development, Buddhists should not get married during this period. Marriage brings family life and therefore greater ties and attachments. Thus it is likely to make the achieving of nirvana more difficult. The end of Lent coincides with the end of the monsoon rains in October. It is a time for happiness and rejoicing. Tradition has it that the Lord Buddha spent one Lent in the Tavatimsa heaven to preach to his mother. (His mother had died in giving birth to him and had been reborn in Tavatimsa, one of the many Buddhist heavens.) At the end of Lent, he came back to earth and the people of the world welcomed him with lights. In celebration of this, during the three days of the Thidingyut festival, pagodas, monasteries and homes are decorated with lights and lanterns.

Peter Brown, that great historian of early Christianity, has given the most cogent explanation for the arising of the cult of the saints in the late Roman world. He explains that the emphasis of early Christian preaching on judgment, on the human need for redemption from sin, brought to the minds of common people — among whom Christianity was early successful — their social and political condition. Having strictly limited powers to remedy any injustice they might suffer, or to clear themselves of any charges of wrongdoing, they turned, when they could, to their social betters in hope of aid. If a local patrician could befriend them — could be, at least for a time, their patron — then they had a chance, at least, of receiving justice or at least escaping punishment. “It is this hope of amnesty,” Brown writes, “that pushed the saint to the foreground as patronus. For patronage and friendship derived their appeal from a proven ability to render malleable seemingly inexorable processes, and to bridge with the warm breath of personal acquaintance the great distances of the late-Roman social world. In a world so sternly organized around sin and justice, patrocimium [patronage] and amicitia [friendship] provided a much-needed language of amnesty.” As this cult became more and more deeply entrenched in the Christian life, it made sense for there to be, not just feast days for individual saints, but a day on which everyone’s indebtedness to the whole company of saints — gathered around the throne of God, pleading on our behalf — could be properly acknowledged. After all, we do not know who all the saints are: no doubt men and women of great holiness escaped the notice of their peers, but are known to God. They deserve our thanks, even if we cannot thank them by name. So the logic went: and a general celebration of the saints seems to have begun as early as the fourth century, though it would only be four hundred years later that Pope Gregory III would designate the first day of November as the Feast of All Saints.

Japanese tragedy illustrates this aspect of the Trinity better than Greek tragedy, Kitamori taught, because it is based on the feeling expressed by the word tsurasa. This is the peculiar pain felt when someone dies in behalf of another. yet the term implies neither bitterness nor sadness. Nor is tsurasa burdened with the dialectical tension in the struggle with fate that is emphasized in Greek drama, since dialectic is a concept foreign to Japan. Tsurasa is pain with resignation and acceptance. Kitamori called our attention to a Kabuki play, The Village School. The feudal lord of a retainer named Matsuo is defeated in battle and forced into exile. Matsuo feigns allegiance to the victor but remains loyal to his vanquished lord. When he learns that his lord's son and heir, Kan Shusai, has been traced to a village school and marked for execution, Matsuo resolves to save the boy's life. The only way to do this, he realizes, is to substitute a look-alike who can pass for Kan Shusai and be mistakenly killed in his place. Only one substitute will likely pass: Matsuo's own son. So when the enemy lord orders the schoolmaster to produce the head of Kan Shusai, Matsuo's son consents to be beheaded instead. The plot succeeds: the enemy is convinced that the proffered head is that of Kan Shusai. Afterwards, in a deeply emotional scene, the schoolmaster tells Matsuo and his wife that their son died like a true samurai to save the life of the other boy. The parents burst into tears of tsurasa. 'Rejoice my dear,' Matsuo says consolingly to his wife. 'Our son has been of service to our lord.' Tsurasa is also expressed in a Noh drama, The Valley Rite. A fatherless boy named Matsuwaka is befriended by the leader of a band of ascetics, who invites him to accompany the band on a pilgrimage up a sacred mountain. On the way, tragically, Matsuwaka falls ill. According to an ancient and inflexible rule of the ascetics, anyone who falls ill on a pilgrimage must be put to death. The band's leader is stricken with sorrow; he cannot bear to sacrifice the boy he has come to love as his own son. He wishes that 'he could die and the boy live.' But the ascetics follow the rule. They hurl the boy into a ravine, then fling stones and clods of dirt to bury him. The distressed leader then asks to be thrown into the ravine after the boy. His plea so moves the ascetics that they pray for Matsuwaka to be restored to life. Their prayer is answered, and mourning turns to celebration. So it was with God's sacrifice of his Son. The Son's obedience to the Father, the Father's pain in the suffering and death of the Son, the Father's joy in the resurrection - these expressions of a deep personal relationship enrich our understanding of the triune God. Indeed, the God of dynamic relationships within himself is also involved with us his creatures. No impassive God, he interacts with the society of persons he has made in his own image. He expresses his love to us. He shares in our joys and sorrows. This is true of the Holy Spirit as well as the Father and Son... Unity, mystery, relationship - these are the principles of Noh that inform our understanding of the on God as Father, Son, and Spirit; or as Parent, Child, and Spirit; or as Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier...this amazing doctrine inspires warm adoration, not cold analysis. It calls for doxology, not definition.

In these circumstances it would have been surprising had the Jewish authorities not made life difficult for the disciples of Jesus. And this is just what they did, as the book of the Acts records.1 The apostles, when arrested and reprimanded, defied all prohibitions, and neither stripes nor imprisonment intimidated them. The priests, however, had not a free hand. The governor apparently was not inclined to lend himself to new condemnations. But there was worse to come. Stephen, one of the first converts, a zealous helper of the apostles, was accused of blasphemy against the Holy Place and against the Law of Moses. To judge by the speech he is described as making in the Acts of the Apostles, it does seem that his words were rather peculiarly vehement. At any rate, the Sanhedrim, perhaps encouraged by the weakness of the governor, or taking advantage of the post being temporarily vacant, pronounced sentence of death against Stephen, and caused him to be stoned in the traditional manner. They followed this up with severe measures against the faithful, and the terrified community dispersed for a time. But the alarm did not last long, and the "Church," as it now began to be called, soon came together again. The internal organization of the Church seems to have been very simple. Converts were admitted by baptism, the symbol of their union with Jesus, in whose name it was administered, and also of the conversion, the moral reform promised by the believer. A common daily meal was the sign and bond of their corporate life. There they celebrated the Eucharist, a perceptible and mysterious memorial of the invisible Master. In those first days the desire for a common life was so intense that they even practised community of goods. This led to administrative developments; the apostles chose out seven helpers who were the fore-runners of the Deacons. A little later there appeared an intermediate dignity, a council of elders (presbyteri, priests), who assisted the apostles in general management and took counsel with them.

Without the mellifluous notes of memory, there would be no songs to sing, no ballads dedicated to past afflictions or affections, and no church hymns celebrating the trials and tribulations of saints, martyrs, and holy deities. Without respect for memories for days gone by, we would lack impetuses to write poems or produce literature reflecting the bitter hardships and ineffable joys of human life. Without a reference to the past serving as an ethical compass pointing the way forward, we would be oblivious to the inequities committed by foes and the glorious deeds performed by our ancestors; we would lack the essential evenhandedness required of every caretaker; and we would be poor stewards of this planet. The loss of memory severs us at the stem from one another. Without the bond of shared memories, we would each remain forever unconnected to our brothers and sisters. Without the twigs of memory, we would lead a life as dry and disjointed as withered leaves scattered by a cruel wind.

This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law. 10 Then he said to them, “Go and eat what is rich, drink what is sweet, and send portions to those who have nothing prepared, since today is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, because the joy of the Lord is your stronghold.” 11 And the Levites quieted all the people, saying, “Be still, since today is holy. Do not grieve.” 12 Then all the people began to eat and drink, send portions, and have a great celebration, because they had understood the words that were explained to them.

For he who loves God cannot but love his image too, in which he clearly views express characters of the Deity, and not a small degree of the brightness of his glory. Again, whoever loves God will, by virtue of that love, seriously wish, desire, study, and as much as in him lies be careful, that his neighbour, as well as himself, be under God, in God, and for God, and all he has be for his glory. Again, whoever loves God will make it his business that God may appear every way admirable and glorious; and as he appears such most eminently in the sanctification and happiness of men, 2 Thess. 1:10, he will exert himself to the utmost that his neighbour make advances to holiness and happiness. Finally, whoever sincerely loves God will never think he loves and glorifies him enough; such excellencies he discovers in him, sees his name so illustrious, and so exalted above all praise, as to long that all mankind, nay all creatures, should join him in loving and celebrating the infinite perfections of God. But this is the most faithful and pure love of our neighbour, to seek that God may be glorified in him, and he himself be for the glory of God. Hence it appears, that the love of our neighbour is inseparably connected with that of God. If, therefore, it flows from the nature of God, to enjoin us the love of himself, as was just proved; it must likewise flow from the nature of God, to enjoin us the love of our neighbour.

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God. —WILLIAM TEMPLE To

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Almighty God, who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ overcame death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life: Grant that we, who celebrate with joy the day of the Lord's resurrection, may be raised from the death of sin by your life-giving Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Jesus’ doctrine of hell levels the playing field. This is one of the things I have come to love about it. It does not elevate me above the world; rather, it humbles me before the world. As a man, I need to come to grips with the fact that lust is not allowed in the city where all God’s daughters are treated honorably, with respect, and lifted high. As an American, I need to understand that nationalist superiority will not be allowed in God’s kingdom, where the nations are healed, where Iraqis and Afghans are at the center of the celebration, where we rejoice together in God’s presence. As a pastor, I need to accept that self-righteousness and hypocrisy will not be allowed in Jesus’ city, where religious folks seem to have a harder time getting in than most.

During the early Islamic period between the 7th and 11th centuries, Bethlehem came under the dominion of the Muslim caliphates, and in 634, Modestus, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, failed to celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem for the first time in three centuries.[69] During this time, parts of the southern transept of Justinian’s church were converted to be used as prayer areas for Muslims.[70] Bethlehem was an important site for Muslims, who considered it the birthplace of Issa, the Islamic equivalent of Jesus who was seen as a prophet for the coming of Muhammad. In 1009, Caliph Hakim ordered that Christian monuments and structures around the Holy Land be destroyed, but the Church of the Nativity managed to survive this widespread destruction

Innocent III demanded of the Waldenses that they sub scribe to a profession of faith containing these words in regard to the Holy Mass: " For which celebration three things are necessary, as we believe, namely, a certain person, i. e. the priest, . . . those solemn words [of institution], . . . and the honest intention of the one who pronounces them.

We must be careful in all our talk about liturgical prayer not to rule out the spontaneous moves of the Spirit. Just as liturgical traditions have much to offer us by way of roots, the charismatic and Pentecostals have much to offer us in zeal and passion. Tradition and innovation go together in God’s kingdom. Jesus was Jewish. He went to synagogue “as was his tradition”and celebrated holy days such as Passover. But Jesus also healed on the Sabbath. Jesus points us to a God who is able to work within institutions and order, a God who is too big to be confined. God is constantly coloring outside the lines. Jesus challenges the structures that oppress and exclude, and busts through any traditions that put limitations on love. Love cannot be harnessed. Liturgy is public poetry and art. You can make beautiful art by splashing paint on a wall, and you can also make art with the careful diligence of a sculptor. Both can be lovely, and both can be ugly. Both can be marketed and robbed of their original touch, and both have the potential to inspire and move people to do something beautiful for God. So it is with worship. More important than whether something is old or new, winsome or classic is whether it is real. The Scriptures tell us to “test the spirits,”and the true test of the spirit of a thing is whether it moves us closer to God and to our suffering neighbor. Does it have fruit outside of our own good feelings? Beauty must hearken to something beyond us. It should cause us to do something beautiful for God in the world.

First, we are obviously trying to get people back into a relationship with God. Almost everyone who desires to grow as a Christian works on this. But beyond that, we generally see only two other emphases: one is to reconcile people to each other, and the other is to reconcile people to the idea of holiness and pure living. For many, these three emphases constitute the ministry of reconciliation. And, to be sure, great life change and healing are to be had when these three things occur. But there is more to be done. Spiritual growth is not only about coming back into a relationship with God and each other, and about pursuing a pure life, but it is also about coming back to life— the life that God created for people to live. This life of deep relationship, fulfilling work, celebration, and more gives us the life we desire and solves our problems. As Paul says, we are “separated from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18). We must be reconciled to life the way it was created to work.

It’s only because I was given the “second birth,” only because I was born again of the “imperishable seed” of grace, that I discovered my need of the gospel and was able to obey the truth of the gospel by believing it. You get all the credit, Jesus, from beginning to end. So as I celebrate your incarnation this early morning, I surrender to its implications. Love in me and love through me, Jesus. There’s no other way I will love anybody well. Make my love for my brothers and sisters sincere and observable. Teach me how to love deeply from my heart, just as you love us. I pray in your holy and loving name. Amen.

Sabbath rest God will share the secrets of His heart with you as His bride. Shin Beth—Ayin—Shava’: To become satisfied, fulfilled. After a time of sharing love, intimacy, and the secrets of each other’s hearts you as bride will feel this great, overwhelming sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Shin Beth—Sade—Shavats: To weave or intermingle together to create something beautiful. During this time of intimacy, God and you as His bride will intermingle together, weave together to create something beautiful in your relationship. Shin Beth—Resh—Shavar: To examine in order to make pure. As the Sabbath concludes, God will do a final examination of His bride and declare that you are indeed pure and holy before Him. So, as you conclude your celebration of the next Sabbath, perhaps you can wander through Hebrew alphabet and let God tell you what you mean to Him and you tell Him what He means to you.

Though most cultural observers hadn't noticed it yet, everything was now in place for "Hallelujah" to sweep through the pop landscape. It was a song that had multiple strong, emotional connections with millions of listeners. Its mood was both fixed and malleable, universal and specific. It was familiar enough to resonate, obscure enough to remain cool. Though its most celebrated performer was gone forever, its mysterious creator had come back to the spotlight just in time. After 2001, whether it signified an individual's solitude (human or monster or otherwise) or a population in mourning, "Hallelujah"—now far removed from Leonard Cohen's initial," rather joyous" intent—was established as the definitive representation of sadness for a new generation.

At the Last Supper, Christ gave us in an unbloody manner his self-sacrifice, to be consummated the next day on Calvary. He also gave us the apostolic college to make visible the communion that, with the Eucharist, constitutes the Church. From ecclesial communion in the Eucharist comes the impulse for the Church’s mission. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Church announces everywhere the work of the Son, testifying to him, making him truly present in the celebration of the Eucharist in all the languages of the earth. Each time the Eucharist is celebrated, the world changes. The love of God, mediated in the Eucharist, has the power to shape right order and harmony in all other relationships, both personal and social, strengthening them in anticipation of heaven.

The benefits of playfulness may not be immediately noticeable, but they are undeniable. Here are five ways I see playfulness abetting ministry: 1. Freshness. When one does so many of the same things over and over again, I don’t care what those things are, boredom can set in. Ministry is not immune to this. The only way to remain fresh for the long haul is to be intentional about learning new things in familiar tasks. An experimental disposition is at the heart of playfulness. Playfulness primes us to be alert and creative, ever open to novelty and new growth. 2. Dexterity. Playfulness resists rigidness. In a spirit of play, we are more open to the Spirit’s play of reforming and transforming—making all things new. 3. Resilience. No one is immune to a broken spirit and a broken heart. Yet, as we become more accustomed to living energized and inspired, we are less likely to have regular extended periods of feeling down. 4. Boldness. Fear keeps us aiming low in ministry or not aiming at all. The unsung antidote for fear is curiosity. Become interested in that which you fear, and suddenly, fear is melted away. Playfulness is a way to cultivate and satisfy curiosity. 5. Contagiousness. To be playful is to be lighthearted. Light is warming and attractive. As we let our lights shine bright in the spirit of ministry as holy play—exploration, creation, and celebration—chances are, we will spend less time searching for members and more time wondering where all of these people came from.

The bishop, therefore, is most himself when he is at prayer, celebrating the Mass in his cathedral, surrounded by his priests and deacons, breaking open the Word of God for the holy People of God and bringing them with him into the sacrifice which unites us most perfectly to God through the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

It is called a holiday for a reason, Jews. Holi-“day,” singular, as in one day. You don’t see the Christians celebrating Christmas for more than one day. You don’t see them playing Christmas music nonstop for two months, or putting up lights in November that are so bright the neighborhood children can only look at them through a slit in a shoebox like it’s a fucking solar eclipse.

A few things that revival is not: Revival is not a series of special meetings at church. Revival is not what a church does a few times a year to simply draw in new converts (although we celebrate true conversions when they take place). Revival is not about the unusual, physical manifestations that tend to happen when people are “touched by the Holy Spirit.” Great Christian author A. W. Tozer made this most relevant observation about praying for revival: “Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late—and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work.

He shared with them his own merciful mission. He breathed on them a second time and said, As the Father has sent me, so I send you.... Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained. (Jn 20:21-23) That night Jesus gave the Church the ministry of the forgiveness of sins through the Apostles (cf. CCC, no. 1461). By the Sacrament of Holy Orders, bishops and priests continue this ministry to forgive sins “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” In this Sacrament, the priest acts in the person of Christ, the Head of the Church, to reconcile the sinner to both God and the Church. “When he celebrates the Sacrament of Penance, the priest is fulfilling the ministry of the Good Shepherd who seeks the lost sheep.... The priest is the sign and instrument of God’s merciful love for the sinner

Space and time limit our activity; but they are as subject to God as are we. God is the Lord of history, and the call to celebrate a Jubilee is a call to enter again into God’s space and time and to be set free by him. Jubilees send us on pilgrimage, because God makes space and places in it holy. Jubilees celebrate anniversaries, because God makes time holy.

Everything we believe and do, including our work for justice in the world, culminates in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

The spiritual life of the bishop reflects and strengthens his ministry. The believer’s spiritual life relates him or her to the Blessed Trinity internally and is made visible externally in prayer and works. The bishop, therefore, is most himself when he is at prayer, celebrating the Mass in his cathedral, surrounded by his priests and deacons, breaking open the Word of God for the holy people of God and bringing them with him into the sacrifice which unites us most perfectly to God through the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

WE have little idea of just how dependent we have become on human means. If we don’t spend thousands of dollars advertising our special rallies and activities we can hardly draw a crowd. Without extensive mailings, only a handful of people will be interested in our Gospel activities and products. In our media-soaked society, we have found it necessary to resort to full-color magazine displays, catchy marketing phrases, massive bumper sticker campaigns, and special celebrity guests at our meetings. And while none of this is necessarily sinful or wrong, it is surely symptomatic of one thing: We don’t have revival fire in our midst! The Holy Spirit is not drawing the crowds.

I can think of no greater privilege than being a child bearer of the gods! And that privilege begins today. All those women who desire the Sacred Marriage say your goodbyes to your fathers, your husbands, your siblings and your lords, and come to the holy shrine of Enlil this evening. We will perform a mass marriage ceremony and celebrate your newly exalted status!” Inanna was smugly satisfied with her delivery.