R.I.P. George Shearing

Posted on by
4

From the BBC:

Anglo-American jazz pianist Sir George Shearing, best known for his song Lullaby of Birdland, has died in New York aged 91 of heart failure.

Blind from birth, he began his career in London before moving to the US in 1947 and becoming one of the best known jazz pianists of the post-war era.

Made an OBE in 1996 and knighted in 2007, he was renowned for his unusual “locked hands” style of playing.

Nat King Cole and Peggy Lee were among the music stars he worked with.

Sir George played for three US presidents as well as the Queen and led his own quintet for decades.

He was still performing into his 80s but suffered a serious fall in 2004 that led to months in hospital and nursing home care.

The previous year he had received a lifetime achievement honour at the BBC Jazz awards.

At the time of his knighthood, Sir George spoke fondly of his early years “playing in a pub for the equivalent of $5 a week”.

“Receiving such an honour as a knighthood might also show young people what can be achieved in life if one learns his craft and follows his dreams,” he added.

A sad day for Jazz – on earth, at least.

Thrice-married transgender former fireman marries lesbian chef

Posted on by
2

It’s not at all confusing once you’ve sorted through the double opposites: the one in green is a lesbian and only likes women; the one in purple used to be a Add an Imageman but is now a woman and likes men…. hang on, he/she used to be a man and is now a lesbian woman and only likes women – that’s it.

From here:

In this day and age, when a thrice-married former fireman who has become a woman meets a Jamaican lesbian chef online there can only be one outcome – wedding bells!

Or, rather, civil partnership bells.

This is 66-year-old Kerry Whybrow, dressed in a full-length custom-made lilac dress, tying the knot for the first time as a woman three years after undergoing a sex change on the NHS.

Her partner is Alcia Evans, a mother of one and almost 30 years her junior, who met Miss Whybrow through an international dating website.

Australia has a law that allows private schools to expel homosexual students

Posted on by
3

It comes as no surprise that an Anglican bishop is at the forefront of those who are appalled by the law.

A SENIOR Anglican bishop calls it “appalling” and a gay and lesbian rights group condemns it as “deeply offensive”, but the Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, backs a NSW law that allows private schools to expel gay students simply for being gay.

Through a spokesman, Mr Hatzistergos, described the 30-year-old law as necessary “to maintain a sometimes delicate balance between protecting individuals from unlawful discrimination while allowing people to practise their own beliefs”.

Even though the very existence of the law is enough to give Anglican bishops an attack of the vapours, in practice it seems unlikely that the law would be administered in a draconian way:

Brigadier Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby has no qualms about the law. The head of the influential Christian pressure group said a church school should have the right to expel any openly gay child.

“But I would expect any church that found itself in that situation to do that in the most loving way that it could for the child and to reduce absolutely any negative affects.

“I think that you explain: this is a Christian school, that unless the child is prepared to accept that it is chaste, that it is searching for alternatives as well, that the school may decide that it might be better for the child as well that he goes somewhere else. I think it’s a loving response.”

In such a case, why should a Christian school not have the authority to expel the student? Why would the student want to attend the school in the first place?

Archbishop of Canterbury converts to Islam

Posted on by
1

From here:

Dr RoAdd an Imagewan Williams has failed to quell the row over his recent comments with the announcement that he has been fully accepted into the Muslim faith. He claims to see no inconsistency with his new religion and his continuing role as the leader of the Anglican faith.

‘Both religions are saying basically the same thing,’ said Rahman Muhammed bin Williams as he now wishes to be known, ‘and I hope to bring together two aspects of these two major world faiths. So we will still have the Church of England Christingle Add an ImageJumble Sale, but instead of getting a jar of home made jam in the raffle, the winner gets to drive a car bomb into the American Embassy.’


Rowan Williams added that, in order to become a Muslim, he has had to relinquish his standing as a Celtic Druid, since Druidry conflicts with Sharia law.


St. John’s Anglican Church celebrating Valentine’s Day with Leonard Cohen concert

Posted on by
20

From here:

An Anglican parish in Squamish is arranging a special Leonard Cohen concert night in honour of Valentine’s Day.

A group of singers will perform a variety of Cohen’s love songs, along with offerings of wine and roses, on Saturday, Feb. 12, two day’s before Valentine’s Day.

Regular readers will understand my enthusiasm for such an event, given this review of Cohen’s recent concert in Vancouver, plus my advance article, headlined: “Leonard Cohen: The Theology of Love.”

David Dranchuk, the Anglican who is organizing the event at St. John’s Anglican Church puts his passion this way:

“Valentine’s just makes sense because Leonard Cohen was just so preoccupied with love… What a wonderful opportunity to give him some recognition for exploring the many facets of love.”

Although Cohen’s music is full of Biblical references from both the Old and New Testament, Dranchuk told the local newspaper the Canadian bard’s music is as much spiritual as it is religious, including as it explores the theme of erotic love.

No nonsense about how Saint Valentinus aided Christians persecuted by the Roman emperor Claudius and how he was killed for trying to convert Claudius: too religious. What the modern Anglican needs is not religion but spirituality with a spot of Eros on the side.

I’m sure they’ll perform “Hallelujah”. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the last three lines below are a reference to the immaculate conception; but they are very Anglican Church of Canada.

There was a time you let me know
What’s really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

The Rev. Canon Dr. Martin Brokenleg does some more David Kato handwringing

Posted on by
1

From here:

It is not Anglican requiem tradition to eulogize the deceased, although it would be easy to do so in the case of David Kato. He was Anglican, openly gay and worked for human rights for sexual minorities.  Born in Uganda, he lived for some time in South Africa, a safe place for gay and lesbian people.  Then in 1998, the same year that Matthew Shepard, also Anglican, was beaten to death in the United States, David returned to Uganda to work for justice for gay and lesbian people. He founded Sexual Minorities Uganda and was known internationally for his work.

At around 2 pm on Jan. 26, 2011, David was beaten to death with a hammer. He was in his own home in Uganda. No ordained Anglican clergyperson came to bury him. Instead, a lay reader was sent to lead the funeral.  When the lay reader denounced gay persons, some in the crowed cheered. Then a young lesbian named Kasha seized the microphone and spoke about David’s work. Eventually, an Anglican bishop not recognized by the Church of Uganda because of his support for gay folk, spoke a comforting word.

What Brokenleg doesn’t bother to mention is the real reason David Kato was murdered. It wasn’t because someone who hates homosexuals decided to take it out on Kato. Nor was it because Kato was a Christian or a gay Anglican: it was because Kato had promised to pay a criminal to have sex with him and after the deed was done, didn’t pay up.

I can’t help wondering whether the Rev. Canon Dr. Martin Brokenleg has as much sympathy for the thousands of Christians who are being martyred, tortured, arrested and turned out of their homes – usually in Islamic nations – or whether they hold little interest for him since they are being persecuted for their faith not their sexual proclivities. We never hear “requiems” for them, so, presumably not.

The Anglican Church of Canada continues to claim that it isn’t obsessed with deviant sex. Who believes them? Not me.

Rowan Williams, friend of axe murderers

Posted on by
4

The UK does not allow prisoners to vote, a tragedy that probably doesn’t bother most law abiding citizens since prisoners would undoubtedly vote for anyone who promises to go easy on criminals.

Most law abiding citizens other than Rowan Williams, that is, who, in his never ending exertions to distance himself from normal people, has put his foot – perhaps both feet – in his remarkably capacious mouth by supporting a prisoner’s “right” to vote.

From here:

Williams said that the civic status of a prisoner should not be “put in cold storage” while they are inside. “The notion that in some sense, not the civic liberties, but the civic status of a prisoner is in cold storage when custody takes over is one of the roots of a whole range of issues around the rights of prisoners,” he said in remarks published by the Prison Reform Trust.

“If we lose sight of the notion of the prisoner as citizen, any number of things follow from that, and indeed are following from that. The prisoner as citizen is somebody who can … expect that penal custody will be something that contributes to, rather than takes away, their capacity to act as a citizen in other circumstances,” said the archbishop.

“Thus issues around restoration, around responsibility, around developing concepts of empathy and mutuality are all part of what seems to me to be a reasonable working out of what it is to regard the prisoner as a citizen.”

John Hirst, who chopped up his landlady with an axe before managing to develop much of a concept of empathy, is, needless to say, most appreciative of Rowan’s support and is boasting about it:

The Archbishop of Canterbury today said prisoners should get the vote, backing an axe killer whose campaign has been endorsed by European courts.

John Hirst, who hacked his landlady to death, yesterday boasted that he was on the verge of forcing the Government to ‘wave the white flag of surrender’, as MPs prepare to vote on the move tomorrow.

As usual Rowan sacrifices common sense to tangled Rowanesque distinctions; in this case between civic liberties and civic status, both of which – even if there is a distinction – are forfeited the moment you start hacking your landlady to death with an axe.

Rowan Williams should re-read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: in it, Raskolnikov, an axe murderer, didn’t receive redemption through insisting on his right to vote, but by confessing his crime, repenting, accepting his punishment in Siberia and being spiritually reborn in Christ.

The message of the Green Church

Posted on by
Reply

Mankind has instigated a rebellion against God. God is righteous and, therefore, punishes sin and rewards goodness. He is also merciful, so he sent his Son to absorb the punishment that we deserve so that we don’t have to. We are still free to accept the punishment instead if we choose – à la Dawkins and Hitchens. The church’s job is to tell people this.

If true, it’s the single most important thing a person can be told. Anglicans believe that it’s true.

Well, maybe not: the Anglican Church of Canada would prefer to tell people about green churches instead.

The Anglican Church of Canada is taking steps towards a green revolution it hopes will sweep across 1,700 parishes nationwide.

The Partners in Mission and Eco-justice (PIMEJ) of General Synod will launch a national database this year to provide information on eco-friendly and energy-efficient Canadian Anglican parishes, including how they became green. It is hoped that sharing their stories will help other parishes to do the same.

“We want to celebrate and reward parishes [which] have accomplished reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” said Ken Gray, a member of PIMEJ and the Canadian church representative to the Anglican Communion Environment Network………………..

The secularization of Canada has also meant that “the place of the church in economic and political discourse is probably quite different that what it was in the 1970s,”said Gray. “We need to be innovative in our justice advocacy…”

Seven-year-old donates to LA gay centre

Posted on by
52

From here:

A seven-year-old has donated $140 to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC) because he doesn’t think it’s right for gay people not to be treated equally.
The child, called Malcolm, was given $140 by his parents to donate to the charity of his choice. He chose to split the money between the gay centre and the HRC.

The cheque was accompanied by a hand written note that read: “I am sending you this money because I don’t think it’s fair that Gay people are not treated equally,” Malcom writes on the check [sic].”

When I was seven, the concept of homosexuality was something to which I was completely oblivious: had someone attempted to explain it to me, I would not have believed them on the grounds that it is both emotionally and mechanically too improbable.

Not so for today’s seven-year old; no doubt some see that as progress.