Anglican Samizdat

From here:

It was the star of the Oscars, stealing the show with it’s attention-seeking antics.

But Angelina’s lithe leg was kept covered up yesterday as the actress snapped right back to motherly duties.

But while the 36-year-old actress may be keen to move on from her overexposed limb, the rest of the world isn’t quite as ready to forget.

As Angelina was busy shopping with her twins Vivienne and Knox in Beverly Hills, hilarious spoof images of the star were going viral across the net.

Bloggers and artists were having some fun with photoshop last night, circulating pictures of Jolie’s now-infamous right leg slotted into well known photographs and artwork and onto unlikely candidates.

I wasn’t going to bother with this but, since I have so much more spare time now I can’t read tweets from the Diocese of Niagara, it came to my attention. I have no idea who did it:

From here:

THIEVES with a fetish for undies are perplexing police. For the third time crooks have broken into a Hastings op-shop to steal hundreds of pairs of new and used undies.

Between nine and 12 containers of underwear were taken in the latest incident from the Hastings Holy Trinity Church op-shop last Friday week.

Leading detective Sen-Constable Nick Sweetman said the thieves picked mostly undies and he warned that they could be sold at markets in the southeastern area.

“It could be an undie fetish,” Sen-Constable Sweetman said.

Police are looking for this man:

From here:

Bishop Michael Bird from the Anglican Church Diocese of Niagara recently spoke about the frustration he and others in his community have experienced in trying to turn worn-out churches into affordable housing units. One of their most viable projects was turned down by the City for the sake of five parking spots. Pretty ridiculous when you consider that people who need affordable housing usually don’t have cars!

The Diocese of Niagara’s cathedral on James Street is worn out and has plenty of parking room.

Yes, you heard that right: Bird and Ingham, the suing bishops, will be participating in a “Healing relations through Bishops’ dialogue” gabfest. Everyone else should bring a lawyer.

From here:

Healing relations through Bishops’ dialogue

Two primates and 18 bishops from Africa and North America will meet in Dar es Salaam this month to continue a process of dialogue that they hope will contribute toward “healing relations” in the Anglican Communion.

Since 2007, there have been initiatives to bring together Anglican bishops from Canada, the United States and some provinces of Africa, to help bridge a divide resulting from deep disagreements over the issue of human sexuality………

The participants are: Bishop John Chapman (diocese of Ottawa), Bishop Michael Bird (diocese of Niagara), Bishop Michael Ingham (diocese of New Westminster)………

Bishop Michael Bird has been living on a food bank diet for a few days to make a point. The point appears to be that a bishop earning $105,000 a year eats better than a person earning next to nothing. Who knew?

These are some of the things he has been missing:

I try to have a bowl of high fiber cereal each morning and yes, there was cereal included in the box but the fiber count was quite low and there would be no fresh blueberries or yoghurt to go on top. My lunch for two of the three days was a peanut butter sandwich and in fact I had more peanut butter in these three days than I have eaten in the last ten years!

On the first night my wife made me a spaghetti casserole adding the tin of no-name chicken flakes and the tin of tomato paste – nothing like the homemade pasta sauce my wife makes with whole tomatoes that we freeze having picked them fresh from our garden. No parmesan cheese or a fresh salad that might have rescued the dinner a little bit.

Last night my wife and I went to the Mandarin to eat; the temptation when eating at a buffet is to gorge oneself to excess, of course, and last night was no exception. At one point I found myself musing on whether the restaurant should have a trough running through it so patrons could engage in self-induced vomiting – as was the routine in Roman bacchanalias – in order to have room to sample yet another crab leg. In other words, buffets are an invitation to the gluttony of excess.

Gluttony comes in other forms than excess, though, and perhaps the real lesson Bishop Bird could learn from his excursion into impoverishment is that he is no stranger to the gluttony of Delicacy as Screwtape notes:

The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance. One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient’s mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished – one day, I hope, will be – to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small.

But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. … She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile “Oh, please, please … all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast.”

You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before he, she never recognizes as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance …; in reality … the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.

The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life. … Meanwhile, the daily disappointment produces daily ill temper: cooks give notice and friendships are cooled. …

Now your patient is his mother’s son. … Being a male, he is not so likely to be caught by the “All I want” camouflage. Men are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really “properly” cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence – it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes – “puts him out,” for them his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.

Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy. Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity [and I would add other areas of godliness, but that's a topic for another day] …

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

A Sunday school teacher asked her class where God lives. A little boy put up his hand and said, “in our bathroom”.

“Why do you think he live there, Johnny?”, the Sunday school teacher asked.

“Because every morning my Daddy goes to the bathroom door, bangs on it and says, ‘my God, are you still in there?’”

Bishops, of course are far more sophisticated than this, and there are few with more theological sophistication than Michael Bird, Bishop of Niagara. He knows that God doesn’t live in the bathroom – he does know that, really. In the December edition of the Anglican Journal, Michael Bird tells us, not only where God lives, but how to meet him and find out what the truth is:

God lives in the conversation;

We shouldn’t tell people what the truth is: we should walk with them on the journey and then perhaps we’ll find out together.

Obviously Michael Bird has a bit more journeying to do.

Apparently, the Anglican Foundation is trying to introduce some bling into its persona:

The Rev. Canon Dr. Judy Rois has been appointed executive director of the Anglican Foundation of Canada, the community foundation of the Anglican Church of Canada. Canon Rois, a 56-year-old Toronto priest and professor, says she wants to increase the foundation’s profile, or add “a little bling,” as she puts it.

As is often the case with Anglican priests struggling to be relevant, I suspect Canon Rois has little idea what connotations “bling” evokes. Not to worry, Bishop Michael Bird has bling galore; he sets an example for bling seeking Anglican clerics everywhere:

The winning entry will receive a no longer needed Order of Niagara Medal.

My caption is: “I think I’ve nailed my thumb to this board”

Or, “Does this hat make me look like David Hodo from the Village People?”