Ashes to ashes

ASHES TO ASHES

  • February 24, 2024
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  • Faith

This post concerns some fundamental themes in God’s creation of Adam and Eve (including rabbinic traditions of Eden), sin and repentance, and death. I want to focus specifically on the final hours of a person’s life in this existence and what immediately lies beyond the veil as far as we mortals can know. The familiar funeral term “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” does not come from the Bible as such, but from the Anglican Book of Common prayer. However,...

A penny for your thoughts

A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

The idiom “a penny for your thoughts” can be traced back to Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) who first mentioned it in “The Four Last Things,” an unfinished work written circa 1535 and published after his death:   Thomas More, a devout Catholic who resisted the Protestant Reformation in England and who was eventually beheaded (and subsequently canonized), intended to imply that when a person seems lost in thought or distracted, it was fitting to offer them a penny if they would explain...

Numbers

NUMBERS

  • February 21, 2024
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  • Faith

The item in the photo should be familiar to many of us, though it is not widely used anymore. It would be familiar to Jesus, and his disciple Matthew who likely owned one of his own, since he was a tax collector. The item is an abacus which predates Christianity by many centuries. There are also various versions of this instrument used in counting. For example, it may have been more convenient in the Old West to use knots in...

A TODOS NOS DUELE A VECES

I was listening to REM’s song “Everybody Hurts Sometimes” (A Todos Nos Duele A Veces) the other night. It put me in a reflective, almost somber mood.  I stared at this photo of a young Latina in custody at the U.S. border.  She no doubt has overwhelming problems and pain, as do other young people in America. I tried to put myself in her shoes to understand how she feels. She cannot leave the facility in which she is warehoused.  She cannot leave...

Sarcasm

SARCASM

Sarcasm: Hostility disguised as humor. It’s very difficult to have grown up in the Catskills and not to have been exposed to sarcasm.  Comedians such Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Billy Crystal, Sid Caesar, Jerry Seinfeld, Jacky Mason, Buddy Hackett and many others entertained New Yorkers for many, many years.  Today, shows like “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) feature sarcasm and SNL fans are probably enthused about the show for this very reason.  This show has a well-earned and well rewarded reputation of cutting-edge humor...

One Love

ONE LOVE

  • February 18, 2024
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  • Film

I have always liked Reggae.  As a child, I was introduced to Calypso music, popular in Trinidad and Americanized by Harry Belafonte.  We had county fairs and such when I was a teenager, and invariably there was a steel drum band featured that played Caribbean music.  As an adult, my favorite rock artists such as The Police and Peter Gabriel would play similar third world music.  It didn’t take much of a leap to collecting Bob Marley songs. In this post, I’d like to...

Life after seventy

LIFE AFTER SEVENTY

So, big changes begin when someone turns seventy. It’s not like being a septuagenarian is, in and of itself, a crisis, but you may start thinking differently and your body may start feeling differently. You are entering the period that developmental psychologist Eric Erikson calls “integrity vs despair,’ or as he describes it “a retrospective accounting of one’s life to date; how much one embraces life as having been well lived, as opposed to regretting missed opportunities. . .” What’s more:...

The doctor will see you now

THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW

Sesame Street character Elmo paid a virtual visit to X recently with a post that said “Elmo is just checking in. How is everybody doing?” The fact that Elmo is 43 years “old” means he has been entertaining and inspiring Americans for almost two generations. Thousands of people responded to him, though relatively few responses came from children. The respondents were clearly worn out, anxious, fearful and outright “down” in their prospects for a better life. Many families are stressed...

HEARTS

  • January 29, 2024
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  • Faith

Valentine’s Day is coming up and I wanted to do something about love or relationships, but I settled on the topic of “hearts,” instead. After all, hearts are a common motif on the occasion of Valentine’s Day. I happened to think of a lesson on hearts that I may have used many years ago in my adult Sunday School class (and) which would be as relevant today as back then. The scripture passage is from the Old Testament of the...

The Leader

THE LEADER

Usually, I work my way step-by-step into a topic, especially if the topic is controversial. However, this time I think I’ll work backwards. The topic is whether or not Donald J. Trump, if re-elected, might represent the First Horseman of the apocalypse. The leader. Our leader. I’ve reached a point to where I am entertaining the notion that Donald J, Trump might be the First Horseman of the Apocalypse. The Apostle John received the series of visions in the book...