About the Name

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent The-oph’ilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. -- Luke 1:1-4

Relax, I know I’m not writing the New Testament here, but I will try to follow a few things closely. — Dick Sandlin

Search

Advanced Search

Categories

• Creativity
• Religion
• Science
• Other
• Personal

Recent entries

• The Known Universe
• Will TEC Adopt the Covenant?
• Observatories Explore Galactic Center
• St. Francis Dallas Joins Dio Ft. Worth
• Science and Religion Not at Odds
• Long-term Spacers Return Home
• Pope Offers Olive Branch to Anglo-catholics
• Jon Stryker Funds LGBT Initiative
• TEC’s Diocese of Western Louisiana “Affirms” Covenant
• ABC Says Only Provinces Can Adopt Covenant
• Hell Hath No Limits
• Robot Fish Swims with Wave Motion
• Armadillo Qualifies in NASA Challenge
• Wagner’s Pilgrims’ Chorus from Tannhäuser
• Buzz Lightyear Returns from Space
• Ft. Worth Wins 1st Round against TEC
• ACNA Consecrates Its 1st Bishop
• Anglican Primate Elected in Nigeria
• Bethlehemian Rapsody
• Orthodox Lament Georgia Election
• New Images from Refurbished Hubble
• Mozart’s Benedictus
• Cowardly Attack: New Martyrs in Sudan
• Episcopal Nuns Swim Tiber
• Rifqa Wins Stay of Execution
• Facebook Helps Save Christian Girl from Muslim Father
• Creativity Post Opens Thread
• NASA Finding Supports Evolution
• South Carolina Bishop Speaks Out
• Episcopal Bishop Orders No-compete Clause
• California Church Seeks 3rd Way
• The Anglican Communion, The Episcopal Church and ACNA
• Who is leaving whom?
• Who is this Dick (Ricardo) Sandlin?

Archives

• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• Complete Archives
• Category Archives

Syndicate

• RSS 2.0
• Atom
• Referrers

Statistics

• This page has been viewed 66456 times
Page rendered in 0.1887 seconds

Powered by

How This Site Works

Three columns work together to present a lot of information. The center column initially contains recent posts starting with the newest. There are five on each page: see the page numbers near the bottom of the column. Each post is a member of a Category. The left column presents categories so that you can click on one and see the posts in that category alone in the center column. The titles of the forty most recent posts are listed below the categories so that you can quickly select one to view. Please click on the Comments tag below any post to enter a comment about it. The right column contains more persistent Features. Wherever you are in the site, you can return to the home page by clicking on the top banner. The image in the top banner is looking toward the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Creativity Post Opens Thread

Creativity is a category that is open to creative, artistic, beautiful subjects.  Click on the play buttons below to see and hear things and then scroll down to the bottom of the post and leave a comment.

Wesley sings “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash
This is about as creative, artistic, and beautiful as it comes.  Trust me.

This young lady reminds me a lot of my daughter, Jen, when she was that age.  Emma wrote this in January after a storm dumped a foot of snow in Seattle and canceled school.  Rob Hampton is lead guitar on this piece.  Also by Emma: Fun and Leppie Went a Courtin’.

United Breaks Guitars, by Dave Carroll, is another great song from the same site.  All three of these songs come from A Guitar Teacher’s Lesson Notebook, the blog of a very talented musician and guitar instructor named Rob Hampton, who lives in the Seattle area.  Rob’s comment on this one is, “Hey, at least it wasn’t a Martin.”  You owe it to yourself to check out his site.

Rob credits his link to “United Breaks Guitars” to Farida, a musical storyteller also from the Seattle area.

NASA Finding Supports Evolution

It appears that God may have chosen evolution as His method of creating life on the Earth.  It does not seem far fetched, if you think about time in God’s reckoning, that something that happened 2.5 billion years ago could have been the spark that led to human life on our planet.  NASA has reported some research findings in the Aug. 20 online edition of the journal Nature that suggest that the merging of two tiny, single-celled organisms (called prokaryotes) led to organisms with the capacity to use energy from sunlight via photosynthesis.  Further evolution led to photosynthetic organisms that produced oxygen as a byproduct, which produced an atmosphere that would support human life.

This seems plausible to me when I ponder the marvelous “strength through weakness” philosophy espoused by Jesus when many wanted Him to lead a revolution and He died on the Cross instead.  So, when you breath in the wonderful, life-sustaining oxygen (without which you would die in minutes), think about how God may have used two tiny organisms, so small that you would need a powerful microscope to see them, to accomplish this miracle.  Thank you, God.  And thank you, little prokaryotes!

Read more about this on NASA’s website.

South Carolina Bishop Speaks Out

The Rt. Reverend Mark Lawrence spoke out today in an address to the clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. (For the full text, see Titus One Nine.) +Lawrence quoted the first bishop of the diocese who, well before he took office, spoke out in Revolutionary War times for God’s Providence and against relying on a false sense of security. +Lawrence warned the clergy and parishioners of his diocese that hard times were ahead and quoted the Prophet Isaiah’s words to the Jews in exile, “...Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth when he blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.”

The bishop did not offer any quick solutions.  He said, “While I have no immediate solution to the challenges we face—it is certainly neither a hasty departure nor a paralyzed passivity I counsel.”

But, he did speak out against many of the actions that The Episcopal Church (TEC) has taken at a national level.  After reviewing what St. Paul wrote about “new” gospels, He spoke of a False Gospel of An Indiscriminate Inclusivity which has resulted in core doctrines of the Faith being systematically deconstructed. He cited scarce mention of God the Father in many of the masses at the recent General Convention of TEC (GC09).  He scolded the current Presiding Bishop for repeatedly being irresponsible with her comments regarding the doctrine of the Uniqueness and Universality of Christ and pointed out that it is her responsibility as a bishop of the Church to proclaim the saving work of Jesus Christ and to teach what it is the Scriptures and the Church teach. He quoted J.V. Langmead-Casserly who said, “We have developed a method of studying the Word of God from which a Word of God never comes.”

As for Holy Baptism, he suggested that instead of the phrase heard frequently at GC09, “All the sacraments for all the baptized,” we should remember the catechism answer, “It is required that we renounce Satan, repent of our sins, and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.”  And he asked, “Since when has baptism been the ticket to ordination in the Church?” He also stated firmly that marriage is to be between a man and a woman and scolded those who would confuse the issue by using tricky arguments.

+Lawrence issued a warning to the rest of the Anglican Communion that he observed at GC09 behavior that, “...is marked by an increased evangelistic zeal and mission that hints at imperialistic plans to spread throughout the Communion.”  He added:

We are called to speak forthrightly to The Episcopal Church and others, but even more specifically to the thousands of everyday Episcopalians who do not yet know the fullness of this present cultural captivity of the Church.

The bishop outlined four guiding principles to guide the Diocesan strategy for the present: 1) The Lordship of Jesus Christ and the Sufficiency of Holy Scripture:  loyalty to the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this Church has received them. 2) The Appropriateness of Godly Boundaries—Withdrawal: The diocese will begin withdrawing from all bodies of governance of TEC that have assented to actions contrary to Holy Scripture; the doctrine, discipline and worship of Christ as this church has received them; the resolutions of Lambeth which have expressed the mind of the Communion; the Book of Common Prayer and the Constitution and Canons of TEC until such bodies show a willingness to repent of such actions. 3) Domestic Engagement for Relief and Mission: The diocese will join with other dioceses in TEC which find themselves in similar positions of isolation and will encourage parishes to join with parishes in dioceses where there is isolation or worse, and 4) The Emergence of 21st Century Anglicanism: The diocese has asserted it’s authority (as a diocese) to sign onto the Anglican Covenant.  +Lawrence added:

I believe we ought to sign on to the Ridley Draft of the Covenant as it presently stands in all four sections. (If it means we need to withdraw from a lawsuit we withdraw from a lawsuit).

I assume that this last quote refers to the Diocese of South Carolina vs. All Saints Waccamaw, in Pawleys Island, SC, an Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) parish now a part of The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

 

Episcopal Bishop Orders No-compete Clause

In a recent letter to the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church (TEC), the Presiding Bishop (PB) of TEC wrote:

I will continue to uphold two basic principles in the work some of us face in dealing with former Episcopalians who claim rights to church property or assets. Our participation in God’s mission as leaders and stewards of The Episcopal Church means that we expect a reasonable and fair financial arrangement in any property settlement, and that we do not make settlements that encourage religious bodies who seek to replace The Episcopal Church.

Pragmatically, the latter means property settlements need to include a clause that forbids, for a period of at least five years, the presence of bishops on the property who are not members of this House, unless they are invited by the diocesan bishop for purposes which do not subvert mission and ministry in the name of this Church.

For a full text of the letter, see Anglican Mainstream, a reasserter blog that goes back to 2006.

The way that property ownership works in TEC, with a few exceptions for those who are “grandfathered in”, is that the local Parish buys the property, builds the church and any other buildings, pays all expenses related to it, and then hands over the deed to the local Diocesan Bishop.  The property then belongs to the Diocese and it is administered by the Bishop.  The Diocese is the primary unit within the Anglican Communion (AC) of which TEC is a member Province.

If you read the post below, titled “The Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church, and ACNA”, you will see that many Parishes and some Dioceses are seceeding from TEC to join what many hope will become an alternate Province in North America because of problems within TEC.

Many Bishops within Dioceses that are still in TEC have permitted some of their withdrawing Parishes to take their property with them.  Even though the Parishes have paid all the expenses for the property, it is still a benevolent (some would say Christian) act for the Bishops to relinquish their legal right to the land and the church buildings thereon.  Some Bishops have sold the property back to the Parishes for a percentage of its value as real estate.

The PB, who is a “presider”, not a Cardinal Archbishop, has now responded to this benevolence with an edict to the Bishops of TEC that full value must be received for such property and it should not be sold to those who have left TEC for reasons of conscience.  In an attempt to establish a “no-compete” clause, she has ordered an inclusion of words for those contracts that would attempt to prevent Bishops from other parts of the Anglican Communion from entering the property for five years.  Many have suggested that freedom of religion in the USA would make such clauses impossible to enforce.

For a lively discussion of this issue, check out the Stand Firm blog and then come back here to leave a comment.

California Church Seeks 3rd Way

The Blessed Sacrament Church in Placentia, California has suggested a third way to deal with the growing crisis in The Episcopal Church (TEC).  The Rector, Father David Baumann, in his blog John One Five, has proposed the following:

...our Vestry met twice with Bishop Bruno, who offered us another bishop to serve as our pastor under the provision for Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO). We accepted that offer, and the Bishop of Northern Indiana, Ed Little, began to serve us in that capacity about a year ago.

...three courses were open to us: to remain in the Episcopal Church, to align with the emerging Anglican Church in North America, or to seek some sort of arrangement with the Roman Catholic Church…. On the one hand, it was quite evident that no one of these three options appealed to the entire parish. On the other hand it was also quite evident that nearly all the people were determined to retain the unity of the parish family—that is, most wanted to remain at Blessed Sacrament. We had come to an impasse.

In December of 2008 I suggested to the parish in a sermon that we adopt a plan in which all three options could be followed to the benefit of all….

...most of our people will remain in the Episcopal Church under the DEPO arrangement. A significant number of others will remove themselves from the Episcopal Church and align with the emerging Anglican Church of North America but continue to connect—as Anglicans—with Blessed Sacrament. .... A few people…will enter the Roman Catholic Church ... and receive sacramental ministrations there while also retaining their participation at Blessed Sacrament. ... All ministries will continue and be done jointly/ecumenically.

My apologies to Fr. Baumann for removing parts of his text.  You can see it all in his blog.  Will this work as a way to “have your cake and eat it, too”?