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I got accepted into Concordia's Masters Program in Electrical Engineering today.
Moving back to Montreal.
Very excited.
If you're ever in Montreal, you should visit me, but first you should
stop by stephanie and andrea's place for some INSANE quinoa
spinach shittake salad. Promise you won't be disappointed.
Also, when you come to my place after that
I will make you a coconut blt (CLT) because
I just figured out how and they are also
INSANELY GOOD.
That is all for now.
I hope everyone is well wherever they may be. | | |
| "Christianity has given us a God who caused the death of his son, the damnation of disbelievers, the subordination of women, the bloody massacre of the Crusades, the terror of judgement, the wrath toward homosexuals and the justification of slavery. The Father God embodied in the creeds is a diety who chooses some of the world's children while rejecting others. He is the father of wrath, the father of male ordination and female submission, the father of literal and spiritual slavery."
We Christians have historically rooted our faith story not in the beauty and wonder of God's creation, but in the presumed depravity of human corruption. We have made "original sin" the lens through which we have viewed Jesus, rather than "original blessing."
The reason religion has become so fierce in our day is that we know on both conscious and subconscious levels that this very supernatural concept of God has died and that the religion of fear and control is not holding. Our inability to face the death of this God serves not only to heighten our anxiety and to cause us to build our defenses to ever-higher levels. It also gives rise to religious rage that verges on hysteria. The fact remains however, that the theistic God is dying - perhaps already has died - and nothing we can do can finally supress that reality.
We know there is no theistic god, just above the sky, keeping record books and standing ready to reward or punish us on the basis of our deserving. We know that we live in an ordered world in which mathematically precise natural laws govern a clockwork universe. The intervention of the theistic god from above to accomplish the divine will or to respond to the fervent prayers of the faithful, whether they be for mercy or for healing, is no longer credible. Miracle and magic both have faded from our world.
We know that natural selection in evolution and the Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest, together with DNA evidence, make it quite clear that human life is not just a little lower than the angels as we once thought, but is just a little higher than the apes as now understand. Religious objections to evolution are very telling. Evolution forces us to entertain a new definition of what it means to be human. Human beings are in fact part of an unfolding unity called life. We are deeply connected with all living things, from the apes to the cabbages. The unique thing about human beings is that in us this reality called life has entered into full self-consciousness.
Christian people can no longer live in denial. Theism is not morally neutral. The death of theism is greatly to be desired. That truth is finally dawning on us. We are beginning to suspect that the riddance of theism might just be the doorway through which we have to walk to reach both a new humanity and a new maturity. It also might serve to lower the decibels of religious anger by tempering the negative image of human depravity that theism has fostered. Who needs a God who would require the death of the divine Son before willing to forgive a fallen humanity? That is a portrait of a God as a divine child abuser. We should rejoice in the death of such a deity. A parent who would act toward his or her child in the way we suggest God has acted would be called immoral. I think it is high time we proclaim the theistic God to be immoral also. Moving beyond theism, separating our understanding of Jesus from our theistic understanding of God, is not only a moral imperitive; it is also the only pathway into a future of a loving Christianity. Viewing Jesus as the incarnation of a theistic deity is thus doomed. We need to move on to new possibilities. Once we walk away from theism I think we can.
I have no concern for what is happening in institutional Christianity today. It is, in my opinion, little more than the final dance of rigor mortis. Today's church spends it's energy in losing battles about such things as authority, scripture, women, sexuality and homosexuality, about which history reveals it knows very little. It is the anger that is both overt and covert inside institutional Christianity that is most revelatory of its current status. When an institution spends its time defending the indefensible, when it abdicates its responsibility to seek new forms in which to proclaim its essential truth, when it offers its world either a Jesus enshrouded in mythology that violates everything we know about our world, or no Jesus at all, when it extols unity over truth, then it is clearly time for either the death of that institution or a bold new direction. Surely there must be another way....
I now turn to propose such a way. I seek the sketch the outlines of a new Christology that is true to the Jesus experience while walking away from the traditional Jesus explanations. What emerges is a portrait of a life in which the human opens to the divine, in which the sacred is not isolated from the real, but it is an expression of it. It is a portrait that I call "Jesus for the Non-Religious."
This book rules.
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| Canada announced plans Monday to increase its Arctic military presence in an effort to assert sovereignty over the Northwest Passage -- a potentially oil-rich region the United States claims is international territory.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said six to eight patrol ships will guard what he says are Canadian waters. A deep water port will also be built in a region the U.S. Geological Survey estimates has as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas.
On another note, the first chapter of this book I'm reading now
starts off with a poem written by a 78 year old bishop.
It kind of made me cry.
"The Lament of a Believer in Exile"
Ah, Jesus!
Where have you gone?
When did we lose you?
Was it when we became so certain that we possessed you
That we persecuted the Jews,
Excommunicated doubters,
Burned heretics,
And used violence and war to achieve conversion?
Was it our first century images
Collided with expanding knowledge?
Or when biblical scholars informed us that the Bible does
Not really support what we once believed?
Was it when we watched your followers distorting people
With guilt,
Fear,
Bigotry,
Intolerance,
And anger?
Was it when we noticed that many who called you Lord
And who read their Bibles regularly
Also practiced slavery,
Defended segregation,
Approved lynching,
Diminished women,
And hated homosexuals?
Was it when we finally realized
That the Jesus who promised abundant life
Could not be the source of self-hatred,
Or one who encourages us to grovel
In life-destroying penitence?
Was it when it dawned on us that serving you would require
The surrender of those security-building prejudices
That masquerade as our sweet sicknesses?
We still yearn for you, Jesus, but we no longer know where
To seek your presence.
Do we look for you in those churches that practice certainty?
Or are you hiding in those churches
That so fear controversy that they make "unity" a god,
And stand for so little that they die of boredom?
Can you ever be found in those churches that have
Rejected the powerless and the marginalized,
The lepers and the Samaritans of our day,
Those you called our brothers and sisters?
Or must we now look for you outside ecclesiastical settings,
Where love and kindness expect no reward,
Where questions are viewed as the deepest
Expressions of trust?
Is it even possible, Jesus, that we Christians are the villains
Who killed you?
Smothering you underneath literal Bibles,
Dated creeds,
Irrelevant doctrines,
And dying structures?
If these things are the source of your disappearance, Jesus,
Will you then reemerge if these things are removed?
Will that bring resurrection?
Or were you, as some now suggest, never more
Than an illusion?
By burying and distorting you were we
Simply protecting ourselves
From having to face that realization?
I still seek to possess what I believe you are, Jesus:
Access to and embodiment of
The Source of Life,
The Source of Love,
The Ground of Being,
A doorway into the mystery of holiness.
It is through that doorway that I desire to walk.
Will you meet me there?
Will you challenge me,
Guide me,
Confront me,
Reveal your truth to me and in me?
Finally, at the end of the journey, Jesus,
Will you embrace me
Inside the ultimate reality
That I call God
In whom I live
And move
And have my being?
wow.
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In California, infants can start working when they're 15 days old, provided that they (or their parents) have a work permit and a note from a licensed physician. According to the California labor code, the note must attest that the child was not born prematurely, was of normal birth weight, and is, in the doctor's opinion, "physically capable of handling the stress of filmmaking." Also, the child's lungs, eyes, heart, and immune system must be "sufficiently developed to withstand the potential risks."
In some states, like New Mexico, West Virginia, and Wyoming, there are no age restrictions on acting gigs. That means babies can make their screen debuts as soon as their umbilical cords are cut. California's standards are stricter. Along with outlawing infants under 2 weeks old, it's also a violation of state law to cast preemies. That practice was outlawed in California in 1998 due to protestations from child-labor advocates and the Screen Actors Guild. According to a 1996 Washington Post story, for example, one child advocate alleged that 1-month-old twins who were born two months premature had been slathered with cream cheese and jelly for a birth scene. (Screen Actors Guild guidelines do cover condiment usage. Grape, red currant, and cherry jelly can be used to simulate birth-related fluids. Strawberry, raspberry, and K-Y jellies are a no-no, for fear of allergic reactions.) | | |
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