Mycenae and Agamemnon’s tomb, the Beehive Tomb. My camera body chose this moment to self destruct, reducing me to using a point and shoot until we returned to Athens, where my wife compelled me to buy a new body. Not that I was complaining.
More here.
Yours truly standing in front of an antique windmill clutching his new camera body, which cost him considerably more than it was worth before the 23% tax which the EU refused to refund despite strenuous protests:
Agamemnon’s tomb:
Mycenae:
The problem, it seems, is that people are no longer interested in rationalism, propositional faith, and institutionalism. Unsurprisingly, the solution is more fluidity, flexibility, openness, and diversity, seasoned with listening to the world and “God’s Spirit”, the current Anglican code word for the zeitgeist. In other words, more of what we already know doesn’t work.
It goes without saying that any article seeking to elucidate a remedy for the malaise afflicting the Anglican Church of Canada that resorts to using the word “deep” six times in just over 1000 words, can hardly be expected to be anything other than trite bluster.
Entirely absent from the article is any mention of ensuring that what is being peddled is the Truth, confident in the knowledge that God will use it – not necessarily to fill church buildings, but for saving people and for his glory. The reason is that, by and large, the ACoC, has lost interest in proclaiming what is true, preferring instead to spout what is popular. What else can the church do since it no longer believes that people need eternal salvation or that God actually acts in our universe: its efforts are confined to building Utopia Now without God’s participation.
Perhaps the real answer is that the Anglican Church in the West has had its day, and God’s plan is for it to fade quietly away to be replaced by the more robust expressions of Anglican Christianity found in Africa. That won’t do much for clergy pensions, of course.
Read it all here (page 7)
8. In order for us to cooperate with the work of God’s Spirit, we must loosen our grip. If the church wants to move forward in the current environment, we can allow no place for stultifying rigid hierarchy or oppressive control. Clergy must learn to let go. We need to relax our structures, allow for fluidity, flexibility, openness, and diversity.
9. Letting go means being willing to accept that certain things may need to die. There are some institutional expressions of faith that are simply no longer sustainable. Certain things must be left undone in order to create space for new things to arise. For a time this may look messy. It may seem like failure. But the only failure is demanding that what has been in the past must continue to bein the future. Such a demand makes us unable to respond to the call of God’s Spirit blowing through the church today.
10. A church that has the potential to appeal beyond the narrow confines of churchland, will be driven by a vision that reduces division and emphasizes the oneness of all creation and of the human community. We are too familiar with the devastation of division in our midst. We know too well the impact of dissension and discord. The world is looking for places where the realities of deep connection are honoured and practiced. When churches quarrel and separate, they erect impenetrable obstacles to being able to speak in any meaningful way to the world beyond the church. We must model profound respect for all people. We must learn to pay careful attention to the world and to listen carefully for God’s Spirit at work in all peoples’ lives. Good speaking always starts from good listening.
11. We need to listen to the world outside the church and find ways to make church more accessible to that world. The world will never listen to an arrogant voice that pronounces from a position of power and privilege. The world will listen only to the authentic voice that speaks from a place of deep sensitivity and openness to the real wisdom that is already present in the hearts of people who do not find a place in the church.
The Soviet Union tried to stamp out Christianity; it failed, but government agencies in the USA are having another go.
From here:
Veterans in Houston say the Department of Veterans Affairs is consistently censoring their prayers by banning them from saying the words “God” and “Jesus” during funeral services at Houston National Cemetery.
Three organizations — the Veterans of Foreign Wars, The American Legion and the National Memorial Ladies — allege that the cemetery’s director and other government officials have created “religious hostility” at the cemetery and are violating the First Amendment. According to court documents filed this week in federal court, the cemetery’s director, Arleen Ocasio, has banned saying “God” at funerals and requires prayers be submitted in advance for government approval, MyFoxHouston.com reports.
[….]
“We were told we could no longer say ‘God bless you’ and ‘God bless your family,'” Marilyn Koepp, a volunteer with the National Memorial Ladies, told the website. “How did I feel? I probably shouldn’t say how I felt because it was absolutely appalling that this woman would come aboard and tell us we cannot say ‘God bless you.'”
The news that a law permitting same-sex marriages in New York has been approved is all it took for bishops in The Episcopal Church to fall over themselves in their eagerness to slavishly follow the world’s lead. In contemporary ecclesiastical parlance, this is called being prophetic. It used to be called being relevant but that is so 1990s.
You can read more on their enthusiastic rejoicing here:
At least one U.S. Episcopal Church bishop in the state of New York has said that clergy in his diocese may solemnize same-gender marriages as soon as the state’s recently passed Marriage Equality Act goes into effect.
“The Episcopal diocese of Long Island will engage this new law with a generous and open response allowing, under the provision of our General Convention, the use of rites for same-gender marriage by priests of this diocese who believe they are called to preside at the exchange of vows, once the law has taken effect in 30 days,” Bishop Lawrence Provenzano said in a June 25 statement.
Meanwhile, Bishop Prince Singh of Rochester said in a statement e-mailed to Episcopal News Service that he would soon set up a diocesan task force “to help us chart our course to engage this journey reverently, deliberately and in congruence with church law.” Singh told ENS that he was “working on some more specific direction for the diocese.” He had actively campaigned for at least two years for passage of the law.
Diocese of Western New York Bishop William Franklin said in a statement welcoming the law’s passage that he will be holding meetings soon “for members of our diocese to listen to how Episcopal churches in Western New York might integrate this decision into our life.”
Diocese of New York Bishop Mark Sisk said in a statement that “the legislation, as enacted, appears to be closely aligned with the long standing views of this diocese that the civil rights of all people should be respected equally before the law.”
All four praised passage of the act. The bishops of Albany and Central New York did not respond to ENS requests for comment.
Just when I convince myself that the evil that man devises cannot possibly become any more horrific than it already is, it does.
One of the youth in my church is working to put a stop to human trafficking in all its forms. Any attempt to treat a person as a commodity is loathsome, but the killing of children to remove and sell their organs must surely be a demonically inspired depravity beneath which it is impossible to sink.
Here is a part of her story:
For more information go here.
More here.
Corinthian Church:
Greek Orthodox Church in Nauplia:
Corinth Canal:
Remains of a pagan temple:
From here:
A skirmish broke out during U2’s performance at Britain’s Glastonbury festival between security guards and protesters unhappy with the group’s tax avoidance in Ireland.
The Art Uncut group inflated a massive balloon emblazoned with the message “U Pay Your Tax 2” during the Irish rock group’s Friday night performance. The statement is a reference to the group members’ decision to move their business affairs in 2006 from Ireland to the Netherlands, which meant they didn’t have to pay taxes in Ireland on their profits.
As the protesters were about to release the balloon over the crowd, they were wrestled to the ground by a security team, who then deflated it and took it away. There were no arrests.
It would be ironic if the security team were funded by tax payers.
The church is being promoted as a “place of safety and healing”.
From here:
With imagination, empathy and will, our churches can be places of safety and healing. This was the conclusion of the Revd Dr Marie Fortune’s keynote address on the first day of the Partnering for Prevention conference taking place 23 to 26 June on the campus of Victoria University in British Columbia, Canada.
The conference, organised by the Anglican Safe Church Consultation, has gathered 60 safeguarding officers and other Anglicans and ecumenical partners concerned with power, abuse and gender issues in the church.
Dr Fortune reflected on the long history of the powerful exploiting the vulnerable and of impunity in church settings but affirmed that the silence has been broken and there is now no going back.There were no easy answers to the causes of abusive behaviour, she said, but a number of factors contributed to its perpetuation and to the failure of those in authority to protect vulnerable children and adults. These included the absence of a critical and robust sexual ethic grounded in concern for the well-being of our people.
This is more an attempt at damage control than it is one of healing those who have been abused by the church. It seems to me be blunderingly clumsy, though: why would a person who has been abused by an institution return to it for “healing”? It is like a doctor who has left a scalpel inside someone expecting him to return so the doctor could try again.
Considering the Anglican Church’s determination to continue employing homosexual priests, I can’t help wondering whether future abuse might be of a Roman Catholic flavour.
What other conclusion can one draw from the cockamamie responses in this interview:
Q&A: Why United Church activists are targeting Israel:
Q Your task force has 15 members and you say that the boycott expresses the will of the 60 congregations in your church region. How do you know it reflects the views of those 7,000 members in those congregations?
A A corporation doesn’t have all its policies approved by all their shareholders, do they? We did not go to every single individual and every single congregation, but we’re a body of the United Church that has the authority to make these decisions and we did that.
Q Has the national church endorsed what you’re doing?
A The national church has not endorsed this campaign, but it hasn’t unendorsed it either.
Q What other countries are you targetting for boycotts?
A We’re active in a whole bunch of issues.
Q But what other boycotts have you called for?
A Oh, boycotts. Well, not necessarily boycotts at this point. But this is a long entrenched problem and boycotts have been called for against Israel by civil society in many other countries.
Q But I am wondering what other boycotts your group has called for or been involved with.
A We have participated in other boycott campaigns. In South Africa we participated during the era of apartheid.
Q That was a while ago. What oppressive regimes have you called for boycotts against since then? There are many oppressive regimes in Africa and the Middle East. Or what about communist China?
A No, we have not.
Q So why a boycott of Israel?
A Number one, because Israel purports to be a democracy. Number two, they are in violation of international law and even the UN has tried to call Israel to account. So what is left for people who want to see international law enforced? Libya just happened and the U.S. jumped to take on the presumed responsibility to protect civilians; they jumped in with all kinds of force. But they won’t do that against Israel ever because Israel purports to be a democracy.
Q You say five of the companies extract minerals from occupied land or exploit labour or is a supporter of the IDF. Does Indigo make books in Israel?
A Chapters Indigo owners [Heather] Reisman and [Gerald] Schwartz founded the HESEG foundation, which provides scholarships and other support to “lone soldiers” who have been in the Israeli military. [Lone soldiers are Jews who leave their home countries to join the Israeli army. They have no family in Israel, but often want to stay once their military service is done.]
Q Why would you boycott the company then? This is not the company doing this, but a couple as private citizens.
A I don’t know what to say to you. It’s not a purely private interest. They use the profits from their ownership from this huge company. They are supporting the occupation. This was the only way we could bring the light of day to how the profits of this company support this foundation.
Q Are you concerned that people think you’re fixated on Israel?
A This is not our only effort. We do anti-poverty work, we’ve lobbied about aboriginal rights and environmental issues.
Q But to be clear, you don’t target other countries.
A No.
While we were in Greece there was a one day strike which disrupted very little – for us, at least – and we saw some of the demonstrations in Athens; no violence, though. The locals we spoke to were sympathetic to the demonstrators but had no use for the rioters who, they were convinced, were imported professional agitators.
More Athens photos here.
The Acropolis
Mars Hill where St. Paul preached:
Street vendor:
