AletheiaRivers

LOL! The name makes sense now. I KNEW it couldn't be serious. If it had been serious, I would have had to say that the person who would create such a "swami name" for themselves would have to be a bit nuts and a bit narcissistic.

Oh yeah! Matt Fox is an example similar to Wallis. I've seen Fox speak and met him during a workshop and he is so warm, engaging and wonderful. His books, otoh, can be a laborious (if rewarding) read. His last few books (except Many Wells) are much shorter. Beyondananda? Seriously? What a name! Hehehehe. Curly (Mary ), did you enjoy Fox when you heard him speak? I would LOVE to hear Joan Chittister speak. To bad I don't still live in NYC instead of way over here on the west. Too far and too expensive for me right now.

Hi Marie and welcome to the board! We have a great mix of characters here. Fresh "faces" are always welcome to liven up the mix. Aletheia

MT, I noticed your "Norwegian imigration collage" tribute to your grandparents. Pretty cool. My great grandparents imigrated from Norway. In fact, until my grandfather was born in the USA, the family continued the tradition of changing their last name with each generation. I'm grateful that they stopped this when my grandfather was born (he was "son of Carl"), otherwise my father would have been "son of Reginald." I don't think I could have handled growing up with the last name Reginaldson.

The Road Less Traveled has been on my "to read" list for about 5 years. I've heard such great things about Peck and about his work. My heart goes out to his family.

bloved, Studylight.org will bring up both the NRSV and The Message side by side online. It's not as convenient as a hard copy, but it's still pretty cool.

Hey Curlytop. Missed you! I've seen the word "Taize" pop up time and again and have no idea what it is really. Can you recommend an artist that perhaps I could look up and listen to on Amazon or Apple?

PS - Congrats on the new position. Whoo hoo!

I'm so glad! I for one have sorely missed your input!

LOL! First thought that popped into my mind was "I'm Mormon and this is lime jello surprise ..." It's a well known Mormon stereotype (at least in Utah anyways).

ROFLMAO!!! No fair making me shoot coffee out of my nose first thing in the morning! Hehehehehehe.

I read tonight while looking up various scriptures in The Message on studylight.org that it is now available with chapter and verse. I can just imagine trying to use a bible w/o chapter and verse in church: "Please turn to page 325, about 1/4 way down the page, third word in from the left ... Everybody at the word "the"? Next word "Son"? ... Sister Jones, I think you are about 5 lines too far down the page ..."

www.studylight.org has The Message, as well as about a dozen other translations and versions online. At the top of the page, type in the passage or keywords that you're looking for and the version you want to look in. After it brings up results, you can tell it to do a side by side comparision with up to (I think) 10 other versions. It's pretty cool.

Thanks Cynthia. It will be a while before I read them. I'm just starting "The Jesus I Never Knew" by Yancey. Then it's on to "What's So Amazing About Grace?" I'm also reading "God, a Guide for the Perplexed" by Keith Ward. I really love Hanh's stuff. I'd also like to read some books about Buddhism from P. Chodron as well.

I looked at "Living Buddha, Living Christ" at B&N on Wednesday and am really wanting to read it. "Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers" and "Zen Keys", both by Hanh, I'm also interested in as well. I also looked at a couple of books by Jack Kornfield that I would like to own: "After the Ecstacy - the Laundry" and "A Path with Heart". Anybody read any of these?

Here's a current news article about the Gulf coast and hurricane Rita.

Thanks Cynthia. I'm still here and doing okey dokey.

God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away. - Meister Eckhart God gives us just enough to seek him, and never enough to fully find him. To do more would inhibit our freedom, and our freedom is very dear to God. - Ron Hansen In order to be a person, exercising some measure of genuine freedom, the creature must be brought into existence, not in the immediate divine presence, but at a distance from God. - John Hick

The GOP Finds the Silver Lining in Death and Destruction by Arianna Huffington The GOP message machine has now moved into the latest stage of its Katrina response: gleeful opportunism. First there was denial. The lowlights of this stage included Bush strumming his guitar, Condi taking in Spamalot, and Cheney shopping for luxury digs -- all while New Orleans flooded. This was followed by the clueless stage, which will be best remembered by the president telling Michael Brown “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of job!”, his mother saying of Katrina’s victims, “This is working very well for them,” Tom DeLay asking young evacuees in the Astrodome, “Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?”, and the president vowing to rebuild Trent Lott’s house, “I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch”. Next came head-ducking. Repeat after me: “This is not a time for finger pointing,” “We are not going to play the blame game.” But after staggering through those stages, Republicans have regained their footing and are now hard at work finding the silver lining within all the death and destruction – i.e. a chance to trot out their pet shibboleths and push for their pet projects. ‘The question is,” said Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, commenting on the now-abandoned plan to issue $2,000 debit cards to Katrina victims, “how do you separate the needy from those who just want a $2,000 handout?” Actually, Governor, the question is, among hundreds of thousands of evacuees are there any who are not really “needy” -- but somehow managed to have their lives destroyed so they could score a $2,000 handout? Then there was Fox News’ Tony Snow who crowed: “This would be a marvelous time to push in a serious way for school choice, dramatic regulatory reform…even more thoroughgoing tort reform, privatization of everything from the Department of Commerce to many FEMA duties, and so on.” David Sirota lays out a few of the top opportunities the GOP sees arising from Katrina, including the suspension of the 74-year-old Davis-Bacon Act requiring federal contractors to pay workers “prevailing wages”, the chance to offer more giveaways (and fewer regulations) to oil companies, and -- proving that no issue is too tangential to link to Katrina -- the chance to try and get the president’s derailed attempt to privatize Social Security back on track. But wait, there’s more. Pete Domenici is looking to ease environmental requirements on oil refineries, and George Allen wants to permanently repeal parts of the clean air act. Two weeks in, Katrina has turned into an-all-you-can-eat-right-wing-policy buffet. And, as is so often the case with these tireless champions of crony capitalism, the main course at this opportunistic smorgasbord is “privatization”. And the target du jour is FEMA. The subtext is that the Katrina debacle somehow proves that disaster relief is no business for the government and should be turned over to the Halliburtons of the world (after all, they’ve done such a great job supplying our troops and reconstructing Iraq, right?). Of course, FEMA’s Katrina failures have far less to do with some inherent big government bugaboos than with the way Bush and the partisan hacks he installed there turned a successful, widely-praised cabinet level agency (one that then-Gov. George Bush took time to praise in a debate with Al Gore in 2000) into a denuded and incompetently managed after-thought. In truth, the piecemeal privatization of FEMA started soon after Bush took office -- and is one of the reasons it has stumbled so badly in Louisiana and Mississippi. Ezra Klein offers chapter and verse on this and on the chutzpah of the GOP attempt to use the Katrina fiasco to privatize FEMA: “The car broke because Bush slashed the tires and now his allies are trying to convince us that the real problem lies with the whole ‘car’ concept.” David Brooks spent his last column attempting to make this very case. Let me distill its essence for you: Government sucks! According to Brooks, “the Army Corps of Engineers had plenty of money” -- so the problem wasn’t that Bush had slashed funding to fortify the levees, the problem was government. And according to Brooks, “there were ample troops nearby to maintain order” -- so the problem wasn’t that nearly 40% of Louisiana and Mississippi’s National Guard is deployed in Iraq, the problem was government. And the problem certainly wasn’t that Bush had filled five of the eight top slots at FEMA with incompetent political cronies… the problem was (all together now!) government. In fact, dear David, the fault lies not in the Platonic idea of government but in the crummy reality of our leaders. © 2005 Huffington Post CommonDreams.org

Right, hence my confusion when I originally answered the post back in May - I think the phrase "renunciation of privilege" is ambiguous and perhaps could be worded a bit differently. But how?

Here is the recommendation of one websight : For Biblical studies, the website recommends something on the literal end of the spectrum.

I agree that much of the NT (and the OT as well) contain literary devices (parables, allegory, metaphor and myth) to communicate the meaning of existence. In fact, I do get more out of most of the stories if I approach it from this perspective. I'd like to know what certain parables and metaphors might have meant to first century Jews. NT Wright deals more with the literal aspect of the NT, which I really really appreciate, but I also want to know a bit more of how Jewish listeners (readers) might have interpreted a parable (say of the fig tree). Does Wright deal with this as well? Would Sanders be a better option? Aletheia PS - I do realize that you are saying that even those areas of the NT that we might think of as literal history ALSO have something to tell us from a symbolic perspective. I agree.

Hehehehe. I knew you'd say that! OK, so I can't say FOR SURE that he has your nose, but it seems to me, from the little that I can see of it in the 64 pixel icon, that he has your nose.

He is SO DANG CUTE! He definitely has your nose.

Ah! OK cool! I totally agree. The virgin birth is a great point about misinterpretation and misunderstanding. If the Septuigant (sp?) hadn't translated the OT passage (is it maiden?) as virgin, how would that have changed the NT? Did first century Jews even realize the wording of the Septuigant was wrong? Anyway ... I don't think those narratives are straightforward history either. I think much of the gospels may have been an attempt at history though, and so overall, could be intuited literally, with obvious parable and metaphor thrown in. I do believe in a literal resurrection though (whether it was historically and accurately told in the gospels notwithstanding). I just don't agree with the common views of "atonement". I wish someone made a recliner that would fit under my computer desk. This desk chair is damn uncomfortable!