Musings

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death (lots of pics, so expect long download)

For me, this was probably the best Pascha yet. This time I feel like I got a real sense of the timing of things. This time I got a real sense of the emotion of the event. When Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, I understood the emotional side of it (at least to some extent). Father Justin, (see pic to the left) did a good job reading the Gospel. Of course, he just read (canted) it, perhaps it would be better to say that I did a better job than in the past of understanding, listening, contemplating, and empathsizing with the Gospel readings this year.

Every year the tomb area looks fantastic, and this year was no exception. As you can see in the picture on the right and below, there were a ton of flowers that greatly accented the service and “framed” the alter area - specifically “the doors” area.

The team that purchases and arranges these do such a good job each year. I think that the added beauty that they provide adds such a fantastic setting and “ambiance” to the services. Having been to several funerals recently and seeing people laying in state, and the amount that we pay for flowers to be arranged in baskets, to be hung on metal frames, and to be “just right” to help us deal with the dieing.

This is especially interesting in the midst of reading ”For the Life of the World” by Alexander Schmemann - may his memory be eternal - specifically chapter six, “Trampling down Death by Death” and the comparrison of Religion, Secularism and Christianity and how Religion and Secularism both try to make death something that is either “normal” - i.e. the funeral home looks like a “normal” house, the corpse looks “good” - or is a natural condition - “death is a part of life”, “we all die, so live life to the fullest”. Christianity, on the other hand, is not here to be a help. It is here to show truth. The truth is that “death” is one of the enemies (along with sin and the devil). Life is a Sacrament - a Mystery in which we are called to experience and commune with God - and thus, death takes us away from this, and is thus an enemy.

The Ressurection Icon was framed well as well as you can see to the left. I tried to capture the scene of Christ entombed, but it is dark (gee, all the lights are low and using a flash probably wouldn’t be a good idea), but you get the picture (pun intended) from below right.

The picture is shown double the size of the other ones so that you can get a better view of the detail. It didn’t look right at 320x256 so I made it 640x512 even though the actual pic is double that.

Some of the things that stuck out to me this year are…

1) The juxtaposition of Judas counting the cost of the Harlot’s gift to Christ versus his determination of the value of the the life of Christ (which would be immeasurable).
2) The juxtaposition of the Harlot’s kiss of humility and repentance vs. Judas’ kiss of betrayal
3) The “attack of presence” that Jesus did - cf. John 18:3-6 -

Judas got a band of soldiers 3 and guards from the chief priests and the Pharisees and went there with lanterns, torches, and weapons. Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him, went out and said to them, “Whom are you looking for?” They answered him, “Jesus the Nazorean.” 4 He said to them, “I AM.” Judas his betrayer was also with them. When he said to them, “I AM,” they turned away and fell to the ground.

The closest that Hollywood can do to the impact that “I AM” has here, has to be “ I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”

Of course, Dirty Harry had fired six, and God still had all his cylinders full… cf. ”Gospel of Nichodemus, Part II”.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Poll Response - If you could work with anyone (alive or dead - past or present) who would it be?

This entry is to give you the chance to comment and fill in your answer.

If you could work with anyone - alive or dead - past or present - who would it be and why?

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Dr. Bacchus Wants to Know Five Things About me

According to his blog… http://wooga.drbacchus.com/?p=1415, he wants to know five things about me.  I don’t know that that is fair since he didn’t give me 5 things I didn’t know about him.  I didn’t know numbers 4 and 5 about him…

4. I won the Kenyan national secondary school poetry recitation contest in 1987, reciting “To An Old Lady, Asleep At A Poetry Reading”, by James Kirkup. My phony English accent was convincing enough that the judge was quite distraught to find out afterwards that I was American.
5. In 1983, I won the North Florida, South Georgia, Road Racing Grand Prix, which means that I won more first places in 5K road races than anyone else in the 13-and-under age group.

So, does that mean I only owe him two?

I will have to admit I agree with his set logic.  He said,

Consider two sets. A is the set of all things that you, my loyal reader, don’t already know about me. B is the set of things that I am comfortable telling to the entire population of the Internet. A ∩ B is vanishingly small.

And the union of that set is fairly small…

Well, since I only owe him 2 at this point… let me think…

1) I’m a bastard.  Now some of you think that this is cheating as you *know* I am a bastard.  But, I really mean it.  I am a Bastard in the Merriam-Webster sense of things - definition 1, definition 2, AND definition 3!  Should this count as 1 thing or 3… I’m going to count it as one, as you probably already knew I was at least one of these definitions.

Main Entry: 1bas·tard
Pronunciation: ‘bas-t&rd
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, probably of Germanic origin; akin to Old Frisian bost marriage, Old English bindan to bind
1 : an illegitimate child
2 : something that is spurious, irregular, inferior, or of questionable origin
3 a : an offensive or disagreeable person—used as a generalized term of abuse b : MAN, FELLOW

2) I have lived in four states - Kentucky (3 times now), Michigan (10 months), Washington (3 years), and California (10 months).

Rich, you want more, pony up new information!

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Traffic in Lexington - what a terrible loss

So, apparently the LFUCG has decided that
1) They want to increase the number of poeple who live downtown
2) They want to make it safer for pedestrians
3) They want to have a new grocery store downtown

So, what are they doing to accomplish this?

They are putting together a 20 year plan. 
This plan includes
1) Taking most of the 1-way streets and returning them to 2-way
2) Adding tons of new apartment types downtown
3) Changing the timing of the lights

Results:
1) more people downtown
2) traffic much slower entering and leaving downtown

Real results:
Lexington becomes even worse for business.  Traffic is already bad for the size town that Lexington is.  They have (historically) done some things to improve this - like the south part of New Circle, the 1 way roads downtown - and they have done some things to make it worse - man-o-war, roads around Hamberg, cloverlfeafs. 

And don’t even get me started on the airport, horse sales, all the empty buildings with the very high rental rates, the high cost of property at the research farm on the north end of town, etc.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Eating my Corn Pops and thinking

I was sitting at my desk eating my Corn Pops and thinking… Well, perhaps, wondering is a better word. 

I was wondering about when authors of computer viruses, trojans, etc. would finally be taken serious by the governments of the world and actually have something done about them. 

Then, I was glancing at cnn and I saw the following headline, “Bluetooth device to save stroke victims”.  I have not read it yet.  However, my imagination has doctors installing devices into people - pacemakers, health monitors, drug dispensers, regulators of different types, etc.  These devices are bluetooth enabled to allow the medical people to read information and make adjustments without having to physically touch the equipment.

So, bluetooth virus finds the device, and whamo someone is dead. 

Of course, instead of doing something about the virus makers - who are the true terrorists of this century - they will have the manufaturer of the devices start adding antivirus software.  People will have to plug themselves in every day and get a anti-virus update.  Then, while that is happening a 3-D image will project out of their chest advertising the latest ware - because that would truly be the last great advertising opportunity!

Perhaps I’m just being optimistic that the advertising and marketing companies will wait until someone is ill to use them as a human billboard… sigh…

Well, I have to go to work.  Have a good day all.

--Moose