shaktinah's blog

I was sitting in our conference room at lunch, talking, facing the large windows/sliding glass doors, when I noticed what looked like snow flurries gently dropping to the terrace outside.  Now the weather has been weird this year - hot, cold, hot, cold... - but it wasn't snowing outside.  The blossoms - I don't know what kind they were - were dropping, little by little.

I've seen this before.  In fact every year when I go see the cherry blossoms down by the Tidal Basin, I experience the same effect.  White and pink snow drifts on the ground.  So delicate.  So transient.

But I wasn't expecting to see it on the terrace of our office in the middle of our work day.

It's Easter Sunday and we're born again!

Forgive me reader for I have sinned.  It's been nearly a year since my last confession.

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Our senior minister is on sabbatical so we had a guest preacher this Easter morn - Marylin Sewell.  She started off by acknowledging the UU discomfort with Easter.  Of the sample of UU Easter sermon titles she listed, "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down" was my favorite.  And then she went into the passion story - a story with which I am well familiar - and yet for the first time, I finally understood what the resurrection actually meant.

My liberation theology professor had tried to explain a non-literal interpretation of the resurrection.  And I got it - well enough to relay it back - but I didn't really "get" it.

lol!

http://www.jackmormoncoffee.com/

If you don't understand why this is funny, you see Mormons aren't supposed to drink coffee... and a Jack Mormon is someone who is nominally Mormon but not practicing, so... oh never mind. 

By Paul Schwartzman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, March 10, 2007

When a government failure leads to injury or death, there is no shortage of lawyers willing to seek millions of dollars in damages on behalf of the victims or their survivors.

The family of David E. Rosenbaum, the slain New York Times reporter, took a different tack, setting aside a $20 million lawsuit in favor of a promise from the District to repair its emergency services agency.

Although the family has not dropped its claim against Howard University Hospital, the Rosenbaums' decision to seek a cure for society over personal enrichment is a tactic that is very rare, though not without precedent, lawyers and judges said.

Gregory Mize, a retired D.C. Superior Court judge who heard hundreds of civil suits in his career, said he could not recall presiding over a case in which a plaintiff had not sought monetary damages.

All I can say is this never woulda been me.  I'd be one of the many standing on the platform, horrified, but not risking my own life to help.

***

(CBS/AP) A quick-thinking commuter saved a teenager who apparently suffered a seizure and fell onto subway tracks in Upper Manhattan, by jumping onto the tracks himself and pushing them both between the rails, beneath the oncoming train.

Cameron Hollopeter, 19, of Littleton, Mass., fell onto the tracks at Broadway’s 137th Street station Tuesday. Another subway passenger, 50-year-old Wesley Autrey of Manhattan, was standing on the platform with his two daughters whom he was taking home so he could go to his construction job.

When Autrey saw Hollopeter fall, he quickly took action and left his daughters to jump on the tracks to bring the man to safety as an oncoming train approached.

Living so far south here in DC, the leaves are just starting to turn. But here and there is a single tree who for whatever reason is bright red even tho its neighbors are still green. Each afternoon as I've walked home from work I've been struck by the beauty of these trees. I mean just amazed. 

Monday I had to stop in front of this one bright red tree, sitting in the front yard of a brick row house painted dull grey. The yard was all paved over; there was nothing living in that courtyard except for the flaming tree. The contrast was spectacular. 

And then today, as I took a different route home, I saw another tree basking in the afternoon sun, where the red-orange leaves seemed to be glowing from within. Beckoning. 

I thought of Moses and the burning bush. Surely when confronted with that kind of surreal beauty people must have felt the undeniable presence of the Divine.

Today we celebrated the Autumn Equinox at church. A small group of us had planned out what we would say, what the ritual would be, etc. all nice nice. We held it outside in the courtyard at sunset where the birds kick up a storm of chatter for about half an hour every day, and we reflected on the loveliness of nature. We lit our chalice. We cast a circle to create a sacred space. And then came time for the serious part of our worship, a guided reflection on the meaning of Autumn and how that impacts our lives.

Just as we were starting a stranger invited himself into our circle, squeezing himself on a bench between two of our party and reeking of alcohol. I mean I was never closer than a yard from him and I could smell the fumes.

Took a day trip to Baltimore today with my friend Carol in order to see the RACE/CLASS/GENDER does not equal CHARACTER exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum. We took the Baltimore-Washington Parkway on the way up, which is far more scenic than I-95. (It's owned by the National Park Service.) At one point the trees grew especially close to the road, giving us a cozy feel. The grey, rainy skies made the spring green leaves look even more verdant. Interspersed were trees of a redder hue. And here and there the punctuation of dogwood trees in full bloom, their shocking white blossoms like a swarm of moths with their wings lifted up towards heaven. I love dogwood blossoms! Carol and I talked about how we both liked dogwood blossoms even more than the delicate cherry blossoms that DC is so famous for.

Easter Sunday is a good day to talk about the "good news."

"Evangelical" today is generally associated with a conservative Christian movement that is trying to impose its moral beliefs on others via organized political efforts. But "evangelical" traditionally referred to a charismatic Christian movement, whose members experienced a conversion experience so personally profound they couldn't help but put their beliefs into action. Early evangelical Christians were not conservative. Rather they were at the forefront of the abolitionist and feminist movements. They worked in the trenches on behalf of the indigent. And they couldn't help but tell others about their conversion experiences, which is what, unfortunately, led to their bible-thumping reputation.