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I don’t know what to give up for Lent this year. Basically, I have all day to figure out what I can go without for 40 days before Easter.
I wish I could give up toxic people, but the best I can do is to avoid them and not let them into my life. Somehow, meeting them is unavoidable. I know there are circumstances where it’s inevitable (like bosses and co-workers), but I’m thankful that part is minimal.
Any suggestions?
A friend of mine forwarded this to me. The Reverend Susan Russell comments on our lovely Anglican friends in Nigeria. It’s nice to know Akinola and Company (one mentioned here) and their American minions (the American Anglicans) are so concerned about butt sex.
——————–
Nothing like a little rabid rhetoric from Nigeria — that bastion of
Christian orthodoxy — along with your morning cup of coffee to get your
Wednesday morning going:
>From UPI:
http://www.upi.com/AfricaMonitoring/view.php?StoryID=20070902-831713-6007-r
The Anglican Bishop of Uyo, Rt. Rev. Isaac Orama, has condemned the
activities of homosexuals and lesbians, and described those engaged in them
as “insane people.” “Homosexuality and lesbianism are inhuman. Those who
practice them are insane, satanic and are not fit to live because they are
rebels to God’s purpose for man,” the bishop said.
Inhuman.
Not fit to live.
I just saw the piece on Google alerts but Fr. Jake had the story yesterday
… check him out before you email/comment that this is just one Nigerian
Nutcase who stands alone.
Inhuman.
Not fit to live.
This is what we’re up against, people. If anybody out there is deluding
themselves that this is just a “gentleman’s disagreement” about polity or
theology or hermeneutics then here’s your wake-up call:
Acknowledgement: This post is an excerpt from The Reverend Susan Russell’s blog, An Inch At A Time.
What a weekend it has been.
For the first part of the title: I attended services at St. Paul’s this morning this morning and the guest preacher was John Fanestil. His sermon was about social justice in response to the Gospel reading of the the woman who washed Jesus’s feet with ointment from the alabaster flask, but I was incredibly distracted. I found him very handsome and he was about 6’2″ (another plus). Clergymen aren’t supposed to that good-looking? Or should they?
On Friday, I bought a copy of Armistead Maupin‘s Michael Tolliver Lives. I’ll say more about this in a post after this one. I read this one all weekend and finished it this morning.
Also on Friday, I also went to Sephora in Fashion Valley and bought myself Burberry London as a treat for making it through the first week of the summer course. Well, I do have some other motives for buying the fragrance.
As I was waiting in line to pay for this gift to myself, a friend of mine called me and wanted me to go with him to Top of the Park. This friend of mine can at times have no manners at all and be very pushy, and he was adamant about wanting to go to the Friday night rooftop cocktail party, but I didn’t want to go. I just wanted to go home and read my book before I met another friend of mine at 11pm for some boba. Somehow, my protest that I had nothing to wear didn’t make him back off. Word of advice: never use this excuse with the fashion-challenged unless you can shame them. I compromised and met him for drinks. He’s the type of person who likes to be in crowded places, but I wasn’t quite in the mood as my daytime attire didn’t translate well into evening. I managed to have a good time despite that I really didn’t want to be there, and I barely drove home after a couple of beers. I had to call my other friend to pick me up instead of meeting him at the boba place.
I did have a brief talk with my pushy friend on Saturday morning after he called me the next morning and aggressively invited me to go biking and rollerblading with him. Being Japanese, I don’t like to say “no” at all, and I’ll give a reason or an excuse instead. However, I realized I had to adjust my communication style with him and just hit him over the head with “no.” I told him that’s how I’ll have to deal with him in the future and then he backed off. While I may find my friend’s trait annoying at times, he is a very good friend of mine and I value his insight at times.
My friend called me again later in the evening and he was itching to go out. However, I had the novel to keep me company on Saturday evening and I told him that. He suggested going out to Urban Mo’s, but I already had my fill of restaurant food for the past few days. He was bored and restless. I asked him if he could just read a book, and he didn’t want to do that (he normally is an avid reader). As a joke, I suggested he wank. He wasn’t into that suggestion either. He met someone at Top of the Park and was waffling about calling him. Where is the pushiness when he needs it. I told him to make the call.
I did join pushy friend and a friend to the service on Sunday morning where I was distracted by the clergyman. Afterwards, we went out to Brians‘ after lunch.
After parting ways with my friend, I went out for an afternoon of errands. Sometime after I got home, I lost my keys. I don’t know how this happened, but my keys are gone. I turned everything upside down, but I still couldn’t find them. One nagging suspicion is that I left them at the car wash or at Target, but there is no good explanation of how I could have driven home and lost my keys. I don’t remember re-attaching the car key to the rest of the keys, so anything is possible. The house keys are easily duplicated and my brother had a back up copy of my car key, so not all is lost. I just hate that the keys seem to have fallen through a pocket in the universe.
Here is a man more worthy of screentime on ShindoTV: Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. On the BBC website, Tutu mentions there are more pressing issues in Africa, yet many of his fellow Anglicans have focused on homosexuality. Some are more worried about gay priests than they are about other issues: poverty, disease, and political corruption. Tutu says:
We’ve, it seems to me, been fiddling whilst as it were our Rome was burning. At a time when our continent has been groaning under the burden of HIV/Aids, of corruption.
There are so many issues crying out for concern and application by the church of its resources, and here we are, I mean, with this kind of extraordinary obsession.
Bishop Akinola, are you listening? African nations such as Nigeria and Zimbabwe are in turmoil, yet you’re preoccupied with gays when you are in a position to help your fellow Nigerians and other Africans.
The Most Reverend Tutu, you’re my hero.
Here is a man more worthy of screentime on ShindoTV: Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. On the BBC website, Tutu mentions there are more pressing issues in Africa, yet many of his fellow Anglicans have focused on homosexuality. Some are more worried about gay priests than they are about other issues: poverty, disease, and political corruption. Tutu says:
We’ve, it seems to me, been fiddling whilst as it were our Rome was burning. At a time when our continent has been groaning under the burden of HIV/Aids, of corruption.
There are so many issues crying out for concern and application by the church of its resources, and here we are, I mean, with this kind of extraordinary obsession.
Bishop Akinola, are you listening? African nations such as Nigeria and Zimbabwe are in turmoil, yet you’re preoccupied with gays when you are in a position to help your fellow Nigerians and other Africans.
The Most Reverend Tutu, you’re my hero.
I wonder if Peter Akinola‘s controversy over homosexuality and stirring up conservative Episcopal/American Anglican congregations to join him is less about morality and more about the money the arch-diocese of Nigeria will gain from defector churches. While many African Anglican diocese receive assistance funds from the American Episcopal Church, much of it goes to feeding the hungry and providing medical care for AIDS and malaria. That Akinola is willing to forgo this leads me to think he’s counting on revenue from American parishes that put themselves under his leadership. While Nigeria may be able to play the numbers game by claiming more members nationally, financial contributions from fewer, but more affluent American members may be the pay-off Akinola seeks as he courts angry conservatives who aren’t happy with the ordination of women, gays, and lesbians. Why else would he be so moved to declare the “growing acceptance of homosexals a satanic attack on the church.”
Update:
Here is the American Bishop’s response to Akinola’s planned visit to the US.
This post on Wayne Besen’s website is very interesting. Peter Akinola, the Anglican archbishop of Nigeria, has some very screwed up priorities. Instead of being concerned with the well being of Nigerian citizens (among which are his parishioners) in the wake of a rigged election, he is more upset about us in the US and if the Episcopal Church has a gay bishop (Gene Robinson of New Hampshire). Political instability, poverty, and disease ravage his country, yet he leads a moral outcry against the US. As Besen points out, what about the issues in Nigeria? While he is not a member of the government, he is one of the most influential people in that nation. Like most moral crusaders, he uses sex as a red herring to distract from the issues he fails to address. As bishop, he could do well to follow the example of Desmond Tutu, a bishop whose work for peace first began with being a voice against apartheid and human rights abuses in South Africa.
One bishop did speak out about the Nigerian election, but it wasn’t Akinola.
