Winter Camping

Here are some guys who like to hike in the mountains in the winter and have a gizmo that your pack instead of a tent to build an igloo thing out of snow. Very neat.

Private Masses

The Westminster Standards forbid the practice of "private masses." I had always understood that to mean that the king's chaplain was not supposed to have a mass for just the king and queen, excluding all the common folk.

However, from Luther's biography, and now from Wycliff's biography, I get the idea that the practice the reformers were opposing was the mass said by an order of monks, for example, in the pay of some patron, on behalf of the soul of the order's founder, or the patron's ancestors. Thus friar Justin would go to the monastery chapel, and, all by himself, perform a mass on behalf of Prince Fred's dear departed grandmother. And when he was done, friar Benjamin would come in and do one for the soul of the monastery's founder, brother Joseph.

These "private masses", with no one in attendance, were the real target of the reformers' teaching. And so that teaching doesn't apply directly to the practice of taking communion to a shut-in or to guys in jail.

Which is not to say that there may be reasons not to take communion to someone in the nursing home. It says only that you don't appeal to the reformers' prohibition of private masses if you want to make a case against.

Pelham 123

Son Joseph and I went to see Denzel Washington and John Travolta in The Taking of Pelham 123 last Thursday. Of the movies that are in the theaters now, this was the only one that looked like a decent bet. (Well, there is UP, which I have yet to see ...) Anyway, I really enjoyed it. The makers avoided many mistakes that movies like this tend towards. Mostly you have believable characters under pressure doing the best they can. I hate it when, to create complications, the plot requires people to make stupid decisions for the sake of the story that nobody you know would ever make. That loses my sympathy in a heartbeat. If they're that stupid, they deserve the trouble, and why should I care.

But Washington and Travolta are giving us characters that are smart and fun to watch. Travolta gets the juicy villain role, and he does a great job. Washington is the ordinary guy who has to come up with some extraordinary stuff. Well, we find out that maybe he's not all that ordinary. But nothing pushed into 'Oh, c'mon!"

They even had some stuff in there about God, and death, and confession, and sin, and it worked. They didn't exactly move it into the heart of the story, but a story of life and death and crime and guilt almost plays false of none of the characters ever turn to deal with larger issues.

The Religion of Peace

LOS ANGELES, June 29 (Compass Direct News) – Funeral services will be held tomorrow for a U.S. teacher in Mauritania who was shot dead last week by Islamic extremists for spreading Christianity. Christopher Leggett, 39, was killed Tuesday (June 23) morning in front of the language and computer school he operated in Nouakchott, the capital city. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, North African unit of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, claimed responsibility for the murder on an Internet site, accusing Leggett of “missionary activities.”

Luther, the Romantic Lover

"I would not exchange Katie for France or for Venice, because God has given her to me, and other women have worse faults."

I wonder if Hallmark knows about this quote...

Fame

A year ago I spent a week at Youth Camp as the church van driver, and I had a lot of time to read. I decided to read Matthew every day to become as familiar with it as I could, in a week, anyway.

This year somebody else drove the church van to camp, but I remembered my Matthew study, and I decided to pick up my little Greek testament (for use by those who know a little Greek), and read Matthew without any lexical helps. No looking things up. The idea is that the material should be pretty familiar, and I should be able to follow along pretty well in the Greek.

Okay, that's as good as my Greek is. Usable, but far from commanding.

So as I stare at things and puzzle my way along, some of it is pretty easy; but there's always some vocabulary word that is just not common enough for me to know. For instance, you don't get "wineskins" very many places in the NT, so it is not part of the vocabulary drill in seminary Greek.

Still, it's fun to recognize words that have some downstream manifestations in English. "Paralytic" is "paralutikon", "bridegroom" is "nymphios", "blaspheme" is "blasphemei", "heart" is "kardia", "demons" are "daimones", "storm" is "seismos", and "calm" is "galene". And can it be that "fame" is really "pheme"?

Why I do not Own a Mac

Journalism Today

Which Way Do You Wonder?

News Item:

IRAN: TWO CHRISTIAN WOMEN IMPRISONED
Held with no legal counsel for over a month, they suffer illness in notorious prison.
LOS ANGELES, April 13 (Compass Direct News) – Accused of “acting against state security” and “taking part in illegal gatherings,” two Iranian Christian women have been held in a Tehran prison for over a month in a crowded cell with no access to legal representation. Amnesty International, in an appeal for urgent action last week, reported that authorities have made the accusations known but have imprisoned the women without filing official charges. The organization called on Iranian authorities to release them and expressed concern for their health. Maryam Rostampour, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad, 30, who were active in church activities and distributing Bibles according to Amnesty’s appeal, were arrested on March 5. They are being held in the detention center of Evin Prison, a facility that has drawn criticism for its human rights violations and executions in recent years. Their families have presented the title deeds of their homes as bail but are still waiting for approval from the judge. Amnesty reported that Esmaeilabad said both are suffering from infection and high fever and had not received adequate medical care. They continue to be detained in an overcrowded cell with 27 other women.

When they come to Psalm 7, some Christians wonder why God put it in the Bible; all that talk about judging enemies and my righteous cause.

Others of us wonder why the church isn't singing Psalms like this on the day of the Lord every week on behalf of our sisters Maryam Rostampour and Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad and those like them.

Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.
The Lord judges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!

Global Warming 4,000-year Trend

(from American Liberty Publishers ...)

Well, if Greenland ice core samples mean anything ...