Saturday, November 29, 2014

The sweet spot to avoid time travel in your space travel

"Time Travel Is Real. Here Are the People and Spacecraft Who Have Done It" BY SETH KADISH , Wired  Magazine:



To get ahead in life, spend some time on the International Space Station. Why? Well, according to the theory of relativity, astronauts on the ISS age more slowly due to the spacecraft’s high orbital speed. It’s called time dilation, and it means that when they return they’re a bit younger than they would have been—as if they’ve traveled into the future. (The effect is very small—it would take more than 100 years on the ISS to warp ahead by just one second.) But not all space travel will keep you young. Like speed, gravity also slows time, so your clock revs up as you get farther from a large mass like Earth. As a result, satellites in higher orbits age more quickly. Got your heart set on space travel but want to age at a normal, earthly pace? Good news! There’s a sweet spot, 3,174 kilometers above Earth’s surface, where the effects of increased speed and reduced gravity cancel each other out. You can hang out there as long as you like without fear of relativistic shenanigans.  link

"Jesus didn’t cleanse the temple, he indicted it"

Rusty Butler:

Last week, Valerie encouraged us to look at the events of Palm Sunday and
to see in Jesus’ procession into the city of Jerusalem a counter parade to
the imperial/military parade that took place when the Roman Army
entered into Jerusalem at the beginning of the Passover celebration. On
one side of the city Pilot’s army comes thundering in with war horses, foot
soldiers, armor and swords, on the other side of the city, Jesus rides in on a
donkey a symbol of an entirely different kind of Kingship.

Was the parade enough of an affront to Pilot and the authorities to cause
Jesus death? If not, what else happened that week that propels the events
forward that culminate in Jesus death....

Well, a few questions spring to mind: Did Jesus do all this by himself? Or did
he have help from the disciples? Imagine this too..24 acres of open
courtyard. If Jesus and his followers had taken control of the entire
courtyard and held it for hours, the Imperial troops stationed at the
Fortress Antonia ....

...Some people call what Jesus did a Temple Tantrum, as if Jesus saw what
was going on and became surprised and then very angry that there were
such things going on. But the fact of the matter is, the buying and selling of
animals for sacrifice had been going on long before. Generations in fact,
even though before the courts were built, the buying and selling was to
have taken place away from the Temple proper.

Instead, I invite us to look at the act as an intentional one. One that is
strategically planned. Someone said, it is a symbolic act not unlike the Nuns
who broke into one of the missile silo sites and poured a vial of their blood over
the concrete missile site. That is a symbolic act, in no way do they
think they are bringing the entire nuclear missile program down, rather it is
supposed to suggest a stance, it makes a statement.

Think of what Jesus did in that way and it becomes something quite
different than a temper tantrum.

Most of us probably grew up knowing the story of Jesus overturning the
tables. And many of us probably heard that it had something to do with
people being cheated…during the buying and selling of animals and that
changing money should not be going on in a place of worship. In fact, we
talked about it on Wednesday at Bible study and each of us there has this
lingering sense that whenever we buy or sell something like Fairtrade
coffee or grocery certificates here at church we get a queasy feeling…that
that kind of thing should not be going on in a church…and that if Jesus
came back and saw that, he’d be distressed.

We grew up with that…but it is not the story.

For many, naming the story, the “cleansing of the temple” means that Jesus
sought to get rid of the money changers and vendors to purify the Temple.
But the fact is that this was a traditional practice, and the animal providers
and the money changers provided a service for the pilgrims and the
functioning of the temple. If you were a pilgrim who had traveled miles and
miles to get to Jerusalem, it was much more convenient to purchase your
sheep, cattle, dove at the temple than to bring it with you from home.
There is evidence according to Marcus Borg that the exchange rates were
closely regulated so the issue was not that pilgrims were being cheated by
these money changers.

So what was it that Jesus was taking exception to? Some have suggested it
was the animal sacrifice but Jesus mentions nothing about it. That seems
not to be the case either. As Mark tells the story, Jesus, after the turning of the
 tables teaches. And
this is what he says.
"Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations?
But you have made it a den of robbers."
Herod had built the courts of the Gentiles so that people who were “all
nations” in other words, the gentiles could come to the Temple. That was
not the problem…The real key is the second sentence. You have made it a
den of robbers.

That phrase echoes a phrase found in the book of Jeremiah in the Old
Testament. Standing in the gates of the Temple, Jeremiah the prophet said
Do not trust in these deceptive words: This is the temple of the lord, the
temple of the lord, the temple of the Lord. He warns the people that the
Temple will be destroyed unless the people who worship there begin to
practice justice.

Listen to what he says: "If you truly amend your ways and doings, if you truly
act justly with one another , if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan and
the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after
other Gods to your own hurt, then I (God) will dwell with you in this place.
Then Jeremiah says, Has this house, (meaning the temple), which is called
by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?"

The meaning seems to be, it was a den of robbers because it had become
the center of an oppressive system that did not practice justice but
exploited the most vulnerable in society. It was an indictment of the
powerful.

They thought of the temple as their safe house and a place of security. It
had become a hideout for the robbers of society. When Jesus calls the temple
a den of robbers, he was rather indicting the
temple authorities who had collaborated with the Romans at the top of the
system. Jesus didn’t cleanse the temple, he indicted it....



...When we think about the fact that we are the followers of a person who
strategically made moves against the authorities when he felt the system
they represented and led was unjust…it may begin to creep into our minds
that this Jesus was about more than just getting people into heaven…and it
may even change what we think about who we are as Christians.   link

McMass Project Aims to Put McDonald's Restaurant in a Church

McMass Project Aims to Put McDonald's Restaurant in a Church

El Greco and The Cretan paradox: mystic...or not

Good article on El Greco:
The Cretan ParadoxIt's riveting and highly influential, but El Greco's work never quite fit. Could the reason lie in his birthplace?
By Morgan Meis....El Greco’s bodies are longer and stretchier than those we encounter in daily life. He portrayed the human form as you might see it in a vision or a mystical trance. He looked at painting, it would seem, in the same way that his contemporary — the great mystic Saint Theresa of Ávila — looked at prayer. They were both seeking spiritual ecstasy.
Except, there is no evidence that El Greco had any interest in spiritual visions or mystical ecstasies. Instead, he read boring tracts of Counter-Reformation theology and studied Renaissance art theory (we still have his library). El Greco was no Baroque painter, but he was no mystic either.
What to do with an artist who slips through every explanation?...full article

pastor: "odd jumble of undisciplined plurality”

 “In the course of our research into the early church we found not a single system of pastoral thought and action but instead an odd jumble of duties and ideologies variously interrelated, with different emphases in different times and places. It looks quite modern in its undisciplined plurality” -p 2, The Pastor: Readings from the Patristic Period (Fortress: 1990), Philip L. Culbertson and Arthur Bradford Shippee (eds)

Monday, November 24, 2014

"Christ is a shard of glass in your gut"

"Modern spiritual consciousness is predicated upon the fact that God is gone, and spiritual experience, for many of us, amounts mostly to an essential, deeply felt and necessary, but ultimately inchoate and transitory feeling of oneness or unity with existence. It is mystical and valuable, but distant. Christ, though, is a shard of glass in your gut. Christ is God crying, I am here, and here not only in what exalts and completes and uplifts you, but here in what appalls, offends, and degrades you, here in what activates and exacerbates all that you would call not-God. To walk through the fog of God toward the clarity of Christ is difficult because of how unlovely, how 'ungodly' that clarity often turns out to be."  -Christian Wiman,  My Bright Abyss ... HT Ryan
--

Christian Wiman and Eugene Peterson on poetry and pastoring:
HT Ryan

"Fidelity is always a change"

"Fidelity is always a change,
                    a blossoming,
                              a growth"
 -Pope Francis, p. 89 of Pope Francis: Why He Leads the Way He Leads"

Pope invites godmother of punk to sing/ orders showers for homeless to be installed at Vatican

1)Godmother of punk invited by pope to sing at Vatican event









2)Pope orders showers for homeless to be installed at Vatican

"the best band from the ’90s you’ve never heard": "songs of life, death, God and faith"

Can you guess?  Think you've heard of them?
Click here

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Q :"Doesn't that kill intimacy though?" A: "It does, absolutely. But you look great!"


Kurd Loder, MTV News : "Do you think the audience is getting something out of this?"
Yeah," Larry says. "They're coming to a rock n roll gig and watching television. What more can you ask for?"  link 
Kurd Loder, MTV News: "One of the things about rock 'n roll stars is that they're bigger than life, they're bigger than the audience; they're almost intimidating. Well, this whole set is like that. Right?" Bono, U2: "That's right, yeah!" Loder: "Isn't that — isn't that off putting, doesn't that kill intimacy though?" Bono: "It does, absolutely. But you look great!" link
--
♪ WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU ♪  WELCOME TO ZOO TV.
>> I CAN'T EVEN SAY THE BLOODY  WORD, ACTUNG BABY.
>> YOUR INDECK DANCE AND THE LAV  VEGAS TRASH.
>> THE THING ABOUT ROCK 'N' ROLL  STARS IS THEY'RE BIGGER THAN  LIFE.
THIS WHOLE SET IS LIKE THAT,  RIGHT?  >> YES.
>> DOESN'T THAT KILL INTIMACY,  THOUGH?  >> IT DOES.
BUT YOU LOOK GREAT.
♪ HERE SHE COMES  TAKE ME HIGHER  ♪ TAKE ME HIGHER ♪  >> PUT YOUR HAND on THE  SCREEN.
♪ YOU TAKE MY HIGHER ♪  >> DO YOU THINK THE AUDIENCE IS  GETTING SOMETHING OUT OF THIS?  >> THEY'RE COMING TO A ROCK 'N'  ROLL GIG AND WATCHING  TELEVISION.
WHAT MORE CAN YOU ASK FOR?  ♪ I FEEL YOUR COMFORT LET YOUR  SPIRIT TAKE ME  ♪ LIGHT UP MY NIGHT. ♪  >> ROCK 'N' ROLL IS WHAT ZOO TV  IS ALL ABOUT.
SO IS MUST BE OURS.
>> IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR  EMOTIONAL SATISFACTION, HIGH  ADVICE IS SEEK PROFESSIONAL  HELP.
>> DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE OR 
WISE WORDS FOR THE YOUTH OF AMERICA? >>WATCH MORE TELEVISION link



AND FROM 4:11 HERE:

"Careerism is leprosy! Leoprosy!" -Pope Francis

"Careerism is leprosy!  Leoprosy!" -Pope Francis
quoted in a great book, Pope Francis, Why He Leads the Way He Does" by Chris Lowney
p. 73...quote, in context here

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Virginia Postrel: 1)Economic value and buying what we don't need to need 2)Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion

Economic value and buying what we don't need to need LOL, must be a college class, see 44 min mark..one  student on Google; another on Facebook during the lecture (:
 
Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion:

"Reception exegesis": biblical studies conference of "Jesus and the Life of Brian"

Fr Burridge:“If you had been told 35 years ago that some of the world’s top biblical scholars and experts would fly around the world to discuss your work, what would you have said?” 
John Cleese of Monty Python:“Well it’s just as silly as everything else."

See  Sarah Prime's post on the "Jesus and Brian"  academic conference:

And now for something completely different: Brianology Comes of Age; or, What Have the Pythons Done for Us? – By Sarah Prime


Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Steve Taylor and Jarvis Cocker, Infinite Jest, Richard Hell, Armando Iannucci

Steve Taylor’s ‘Goliath’ is a Roaring, Raging Comeback  by J. Edward Keyes  is not only a great review of the new Steve Taylor (and The Perfect Foil)'s new CD from a mainstream source, but in four comparisons Keyes makes , I've learned about four new (to me) intriguing artists:



1) "The best of Taylor’s writing casts him as a kind of Jarvis Cocker of American Religion, pointing out its foibles with an acid tongue and sanding his sharp darts with wry, expertly-applied satire." 

2)"It’s like 'The Entertainment' from Infinite Jest as filtered through a Richard Hell song "

3) "Taylor’s observations come off not so much as stuffy polemics as wry, Swiftian gallows humor--Pilgrim’s Progress staged by Armando Iannucci

--
Don't miss this!:
Here's some of the album:


---


Bonus: here's  some video of Steve and the Foil playing a couple of oldies, as I captured them here in Fresno recently.
Note: sub bass player
 

What the Christian Church Can Learn from The Church of Satan (by Christianity Today)

read it here

Space Oddity reimagined

see backstory here

"Bad Liturgy Is Not A Victimless Crime. Just Ask Jimmy Fallon"

From Steve Skojec's "Bad Liturgy Is Not A Victimless Crime. Just Ask Jimmy Fallon":
GROSS: So you went to Catholic school when you were young.
Mr. FALLON: Oh yeah.
GROSS: Did you have…
Mr. FALLON: I wanted to be a priest.
GROSS: Did you really?
Mr. FALLON: Yeah. I loved it.
GROSS: Why?
Mr. FALLON: I just, I loved the church. I loved the idea of it. I loved the smell of the incense. I loved the feeling you get when you left church. I loved like how this priest can make people feel this good. I just thought it was – I loved the whole idea of it. My grandfather was very religious, so I used to go to Mass with him at like 6:45 in the morning, serve Mass. And then you made money, too, if you did weddings and funerals. You’d get like five bucks. And so I go ‘Okay, I can make money too.’ I go, ‘This could be a good deal for me.’ I thought I had the calling.

   From Bad Liturgy Is Not A Victimless Crime. Just Ask Jimmy Fallon.

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

While My Guitar Non-Gently Weeps

Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne, George Harrison's son  Dhani ......

                                         and Prince...

 were slated to perform "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as a tribute to George Harrison
There are many theories about what happened  from the 3:24 mark on (what some call one of the greatest moments in rock history); these would include:

-Nobody knew what Prince would do, and the other guys were blindsided and mad..(except obviously Dahne..just watch his face at  3:24. 4:44!)
-Everyone  knew what Prince would do, and the other guys were blindsided and mad (except obviously Dahne)
-The impossible way Prince's guitar disappears at the end was some evil voodoo.
The impossible way Prince's guitar disappears at the end is proof the whole thing was planned (at least by Prince's people)

on earth now...as it is on heaven

Sounds like Bono
                                               but it's Rich Kriegbaum: 


“If nobody is lonely and abandoned in heaven,
                 then I want everyone to have good and faithful   friends here on earth now.

If no one is hungry in heaven,
                        then I want the hungry fed good nutrition on earth now.

If nobody is controlled by addictions in heaven,
             then I want bodies, minds, and souls liberated to freedom in Christ here and now, on earth.

If there is no violence or war in heaven,
    then I want peace and reconciliation among people here on earth now

 If heaven has clean air and water and no cancer,
              then I want clean air and water and no cancer on earth now as it is in heaven.

If everyone in heaven is a joyful follower of Jesus Christ, worshiping him in spirit and in truth,
              then I want everyone on earth to experience the love of God and joyfully follow  the                                 King of Kings and worship the prince of peace in spirit and in truth.” 

Watch this talk here

God and Quantum Physics - Sarah McGee, PhD

"The single most effective way I know of to study the Bible in our digital age"

The single most effective way I know of to study the Bible in our digital age by JM Smith