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Monthly Archives: December 2024
Ronnie Pontiac on “The Other Betty White”
Word-Built World: sad sack
Image: Wikimedia
A.Word.A.Daywith Anu Garg
sad sack
PRONUNCIATION:
MEANING:
noun: A well-meaning but hopelessly inept person.
ETYMOLOGY:
Named for the bumbling US Army private in George Baker’s (1915-1975) comic strip of the same name. See also: schlemiel.
Churches fight to stay open as attendance dwindles
Houses of worship around the country are adopting varying strategies to survive.
By Steve Osunsami and Sean Keane
December 28, 2024, 9:18 AM (abcnews.go.com)
Linkto video: https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/america-losing-religion-116929092
Is America losing its religion?
ABC News’ Steve Osunsami reports on how churches faced with empty pews are fighting to keep their doors open, while former houses of worship are being converted into bars, clubs and luxury condos.
During the final Mass at the All Saints Parish in Buffalo, New York, on a warm Sunday in July, the priests encouraged the few parishioners who came to take comfort in holy scripture.
“For everything, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” the passage read.
On Earth, many parishes are accepting that it’s time to sell their properties. As the person leading renewal and development for the Diocese of Buffalo, Father Bryan Zielenieski is one of many religious leaders across America who have closed houses of worship in recent years.
“We essentially went to half of what we used to back in the early 2000s,” he told ABC News. “We lost about 100 parishes.”
Zielenieski expects he’ll need to shut down another 70 churches in what the Diocese is calling its “road to renewal.” It’s a very biblical name for the challenge facing churches: People just aren’t going as much as they used to.
On average, more than half of the diocese’s churches today are baptizing fewer than one person a month, and 59% of them are spending more than they take in, Zielenieski noted.
MORE: Pope Francis in Papua New Guinea reaches out to ‘peripheries’ of Catholic Church
“It’s my job and role to not just pray about the situation, but to then look at the hard data and say, where does the church need to move?” he told ABC News.
In the late 1940s, nearly 80% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, mosque or temple, according to Gallup. Today, just 45% say the same, the analytics company noted, and only 32% say that they worship God in a house of prayer once a week.
Another Gallup poll found that child sex abuse cases may be among the reasons for some people’s absence from church.
In 2019, 37% percent of U.S. Catholics, up from 22% in 2002, said that news of abuse cases led them to question whether they would remain in the Catholic church.
In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, America was losing as many as 1,000 churches a year.
Some former churches are being converted for businesses or residential use. One old Methodist church in Atlanta, which was down to about 60 members when it closed, was sold to a luxury real estate developer seven years ago. Now, it’s become a series of 3,000-square-foot condos.
Some of the oldest churches in the world have even turned into bars and nightclubs.
However, another Atlanta church is taking a different route. Pastor Jasmine Smothers is saving the city’s First United Methodist church from closing with what she says is a “God-sized” plan.
The most profitable thing they own is their land, and she’s using it to build more than 300 apartments in the high-rent city — most of which will become affordable housing.
“It’s literally going to change the landscape of Atlanta in more ways than one,” she told ABC News.
Smothers said the project will give the church the resources to help people and to continue its ministries.
“In the words of one of my friends, this ain’t your great grandma’s church,” she said.
At Calcium Church outside Syracuse, New York, Pastor Milton LaSalle recently acknowledged to his small-town church that, after 171 years, they’re in financial trouble. On a good Sunday, LaSalle has 35 regular members — most of them are in the sunset of their lives. The church hasn’t been forced to close or sell its land, the pastor says.
“The aging of the church here, of course, is seen all over America. That makes it harder in a lot of ways. For instance, we lost five of our members last year to death,” he told ABC News.
LaSalle said he’s confident Calcium Church will be able to stay open, but noted that they’ve had to make cutbacks.
They still hold clothing and school supply giveaways, parishioners told ABC News. Parishioner Jeannetta LaSalle expressed the importance of the church in her life, saying that her fellow churchgoers are like family.
MORE: NYC church redefines acceptance for LGBTQ+ people
“It gives me purpose to get up in the morning,” she told ABC News.
In Buffalo, Father Zielenieski also noted how people turn to the church for comfort in times of crisis, like in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“There’s a sociological principle or idea out there that when times are good, people forget God,” he said. “When times are challenging, they go to God first.”
However, Zielenieski highlights the danger of taking the church for granted.
“We’ve never asked the question, how is it going to be there and how is that going to stay?” he said.
The sale of the All Saints Church in Buffalo will close in the coming weeks. The priests told ABC News they have language in the deal that prevents the new owners from turning it into a place that encourages people to sin.
Pierre Grimes on “Turn the other cheek”
New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • Dec 30, 2024 The late Pierre Grimes, PhD, was a specialist in classical Greek philosophy. He was the founder of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association. He was also founder of the Noetic Society in the Los Angeles area. He is author of Philosophical Midwifery: A New Paradigm for Understanding Human Problems, Socrates and Jesus: A Dialogue in Heaven, and Unblocking: Removing Blocks to Understanding. He is also a decorated veteran of the second world war. In this interview, rebooted from 2018, he describes his combat experience during the second world war, pointing out that the generals sometimes made disastrous decisions costing many lives. At other times they managed to execute brilliant strategies. He argues that it is essential to oppose injustice wherever it is found. He points out that the same injustices that result in war can also be observed within family dynamics. The interviewer, Jeff Mishlove, raises some pacifist arguments. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on September 11, 2018)
Other Losses: An Investigation Into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans After World War II
James Bacque
The first edition of this controversial book caused an international scandal by claiming that almost one million German prisoners of war had died of starvation in American and French death camps after World War II. In 1992, Bacque visited the newly-opened KGB archives where he discovered more evidence to support his claim. This revised edition of Other Losses presents all the relevant new material on the deaths plus new evidence of the suppression of truth by Western academics, press, and governments.
About the author
James Bacque
Canadian novelist, publisher and writer of historic non-fiction.
Book: “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong”
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
James W. Loewen
This national best-seller is an entertaining, informative, and sometimes shocking expose of the way history is taught to American students. Lies My Teacher Told Me won the American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.
James W. Loewen, a sociology professor and distinguished critic of history education, puts 12 popular textbooks under the microscope-and what he discovers will surprise you. In his opinion, every one of these texts fails to make its subject interesting or memorable. Worse still is the proliferation of blind patriotism, mindless optimism and misinformation filling the pages.
From the truth about Christopher Columbus to the harsh reality of the Vietnam War, Loewen picks apart the lies we’ve been told. This audiobook, narrated by Brian Keeler (The Hurricane, “All My Children”) will forever change your view of the past.
About the author
James W. Loewen
A professor of sociology, James W. Loewen earned his bachelor’s degree at Carleton College in 1964, and his master’s (1967) and doctorate (1968) degrees from Harvard University. Loewen taught at Touglaloo College from 1968 until 1975, and at the University of Vermont from 1975 until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1995.
(Goodreads.com)
On being a Christian
“People say they’re Christians. But you know what? You never see them nailed to anything.”
–Vicar Harry Watling (played by David Tennant) to his wife Mary (played by Lyndsey Marshal) in Inside Man (2022)
Dis (Divine Comedy)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Dante Alighieri‘s The Divine Comedy, the City of Dis (Italian: Dite Italian pronunciation: [ˈdiːte]) encompasses the sixth through the ninth circles of Hell.[1]
Moated by the river Styx, the fortified city encloses the whole of Lower or Nether Hell.[2]
Background
To ancient Roman mythology, Dis Pater (“Father Dis”) is the ruler of the underworld.[3] In the sixth book of Virgil‘s Aeneid (one of the principal influences on Dante in his depiction of Hell), the hero Aeneas enters the “desolate halls and vacant realm of Dis”.[4]
His guide, the Sibyl, corresponds in The Divine Comedy to Virgil, the guide of “Dante” as the speaker of the poem. The descriptions in the Aeneid of “mighty Dis’s walls… wide buildings girt by a triple wall”,[5] gave Dante the impetus for his later and more formal description of the city of Dis.[6]
Description
The iron walls of Dis are guarded by fallen angels, the Furies, and Medusa.[7] Dante emphasizes the character of the place as a city by describing its architectural features: towers, gates, walls, ramparts, bridges, and moats. It is thus an antithesis to the heavenly city, as for instance described by St. Augustine in his book City of God.[8] Among these structures are mosques,[9] “the worship places of the most dangerous enemies of medieval Christendom.”[10] The presence of mosques probably also recalls the reality of Jerusalem in Dante’s own time, where gilded domes dominated the skyline.[11]
Tiers of Hell
Before he reaches the City, in the eight to ninth cantos, Dante encounters the unbaptised and then those who sinned by self-indulgence—the lustful, the gluttons, the misers and spendthrifts—and then at the outskirts of the red-hot walls of the City of Dis are the wrathful and those of ill-will.[12] From this point on we find sinners who acted out of malice and wickedness. Immediately within the walls of the City are Heretics like Epicurus, who, having previously disbelieved in immortality, are forever imprisoned in red-hot tombs.[13] Beyond are three rings of those who were violent—to others, to themselves (suicides), or to God (blasphemers).[14] In yet deeper gulfs within the decaying City of Dis are the last two circles, of frauds and corruptors, and finally the traitors.
Punished within Dis are those whose lives were marked by active-willed and obdurate, rather than venial sins:[15] heretics, murderers, suicides, blasphemers, usurers, sodomites, panderers, seducers, flatterers, simoniacs, false prophets, barrators, hypocrites, thieves, fraudulent advisors, sowers of discord, falsifiers, and traitors. Sinners unable to control their passions offend God less than these, whose lives were driven by malizia (“malice, wicked intent”):
Of every malice (malizia) gaining the hatred of Heaven, injustice is the goal; and every such goal injures someone either with force or fraud.[16]
There is perhaps a distinction between malizia as the characteristic of circles seven and eight, and the matta bestialitade, “inhuman wickedness”, of circle nine, which punishes those who threaten “the most basic civic, familial, and religious foundations of happiness”.[17]
New Moon In Capricorn – New Year Resolutions
(Astrobutterfly.com)
On January 11th, 2024 we have an auspicious New Moon in Capricorn.
The new Moon is at 20° Capricorn and it is trine Uranus and sextile Neptune, bringing creative vision and a dose of magic to our aspirations and dreams.
The Capricorn New Moon is THE best time to come up with New Year’s resolutions.
Have you already set your 2024 intentions? You can still use the potent energy of this lunation to revise and refine them.
Seriously, if there is one time to plan for the future, this is it. Even if you’re not big on New Moon intention-setting, give this one a try.
Not only is this New Moon particularly auspicious – but the New Moon (the Sun and the Moon) allies with the most resourceful and productive planets: Mars and Pluto. Mars is actually exalted in Capricorn – which means it’s particularly resourceful – and Pluto is the planet of power and resilience.
These are the last days of Pluto in Capricorn; we will never have another New Moon in Capricorn with Pluto in the sign for the rest of our lives. If you have an ambitious goal NOW it’s the time to pursue it.
This Capricorn season, let’s plan for the future like a Capricorn.
This means, not just setting goals (Sagittarius) and then waiting for things to happen. It means committing to actually doing the work to achieve those goals.
We all have plans that didn’t go through. Ambitious goals that failed. So we might feel a bit reluctant to face ‘another disappointment’.
Why do we fail to achieve our goals?
There are 2 main issues: a) lack of clarity around the type of intentions that best serve our unique path and b) lack of commitment to making these happen.
a) Lack Of Clarity
Society bombards us with aspirational goals around what it means to be successful: having a family, a successful career or business, having a certain number of Social Media followers, or a certain level of fitness.
The issue with these goals is that they are not necessarily ours. It’s what we believe will make us feel happy and accomplished – it’s not actually what will make us feel happy and accomplished.
In our natal chart, the Midheaven, the Sun and the North Node give us hints into our unique path, and the type of qualities our soul is called to expand into.
Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what these qualities are, or what exactly it is that we need to do to fulfill our path.
“What is your purpose in life?”.
This is such a tough question. Many of us have no idea what our purpose in life is.
If you feel confused or lack clarity around your path, here is one exercise I always recommend: make a list of 3-5 people you deeply admire, and then look for some common traits or qualities they share.
THESE are the qualities you are asked to develop. This is the highest version of yourself, this is the potential you’ve been designed to grow into.
Whatever we find aspirational, these qualities and achievements resonate because we know at a deeper level that we are absolutely capable of achieving them. If you wouldn’t be able to do it, you wouldn’t find it aspirational.
“If you can dream it, you can become it”
b) Lack Of Commitment
The second reason why people don’t achieve their goals is that they don’t put in the work to make them happen.
In Sagittarius, we formulate our vision and our goals. In the next sign, Capricorn, we employ the discipline and persistence to make them happen.
This is of course, not easy. Change requires a high energy consumption, and our brain is literally wired to consume as little energy as possible. That’s why we give up, falling back into old patterns of behavior.
However, if we want something to change in our lives, we need to put in the work. There’s really no other way.
All the successful people I know, absolutely all of them – including those who don’t want to show it, or admit it – are very hard workers. They have become successful because they have committed to their goals, and have worked hard to achieve them.
And by “hard work” I don’t mean working 16 hours a day every day – this is oftentimes a symptom of running away from the real issues, by burying yourself in work.
By “hard work” I mean committing yourself to reaching your “next level” – whatever that means for you. Facing your demons. Trying things out – knowing that failure and rejection are an inevitable part of the process. Pushing through resistance even when you don’t feel like it. Having a great work ethic. Wanting to achieve some sort of excellence in what you do. Caring about the quality of your work and about the people you are serving.
New Moon In Capricorn – Bring Your Vision To Reality
When we follow our path the “Capricorn way” i.e. without shortcuts, we may not be an “overnight success”. Real mastery takes time.
However, when we build our skills and knowledge sustainably, then success that eventually materializes is also sustainable.
It doesn’t come and go. Real success, built on real mastery, is there to stay.
Capricorn is THE sign of the zodiac that excels at both a) and b), so the New Moon in Capricorn is really the best time of the year to embody Capricorn’s discipline and persistence and bring your vision to reality.
2024 has the potential to be an extraordinary year.
Let’s commit to the disciplined work needed to make our goals a reality!
Happy New Year!
| DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY |
| DEC 29, 2024 |
As we contemplate the end of a taxing and trying year, the sentiments of an albeit obvious choice could not be more appropriate. “Auld Lang Syne” has been a tradition and a favorite for decades. I’ve heard dozens of versions over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever found one this beautiful. It’s certainly a reason to smile. The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin chamber choir performance is pure enchantment.
LYRICS:
Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, we’ll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne. And surely you’ll buy your pint cup, and surely I’ll buy mine! And we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne. For auld lang syne …
We two have paddled in the stream, from morning sun ‘till dine; But seas between us broad have roared since auld lang syne. For auld lang syne … And there’s a hand my trusty friend! And gi’es a hand o’ thine! We’ll take a right goodwill draught, for auld lang syne! For auld lang syne …
The song, traditionally sung on New Year’s Eve, poses the question: How do we best remember old friends and fond moments of the past year? The answer, the song says, is to “share a cup of kindness yet” as we journey into the new year.
“Auld Lang Syne” is based on an 18th century poem by Scotsman Robert Burns, which he based on traditional folk songs and stories. Burns sent a copy of his song to the Scots Musical Museum in 1788 with a note: “The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man.”
Bandleader Guy Lombardo and his orchestra first wove the song into our national fabric almost 100 years ago, on New Year’s Eve 1929. He performed it every year for the next 47. Here is his final performance on December 31, 1976.