Top Five Archaeological Discoveries of 2011

Start the slideshow to view some of the archaeological discoveries made this year here.

Of particular interest to readers of this blog would be:

• Old Crusader City Discovered Under an Old Israeli Port here.
• 2 AD Statue of Greek Mythical Hero Hercules Discovered in Israel here.
• The iffy Tomb of Jesus’ Apostle Philip Discovered here.
• And coins From 17 A.D. Discovered in Jerusalem here.

It’s been a good year archaeologically!

HT:   Antonio Lombatti

 

NT Wright at the Moody Bible Institute

I think I’ll spend my time in the peace and quiet of a Sunday afternoon listening to his Excellency, the Lord Bishop Rt Rev Dr Prof NT Wright:

Bliss.

Thanks (HT)

 

Advent Quote

“Take time to be aware that in the very midst of our busy preparations for the celebration of Christ’s birth in ancient Bethlehem, Christ is reborn in the Bethlehems of our homes and daily lives. Take time, slow down, be still, be awake to the Divine Mystery that looks so common and so ordinary yet is wondrously present.

“An old abbot was fond of saying, ‘The devil is always the most active on the highest feast days.’

“The supreme trick of Old Scratch is to have us so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. Hurt feelings, anger, impatience, injured egos—the list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all.”

- Edward Hayes

The First Openly Transgendered Minister

Is there anything left that the Episcopalians have not been ‘first’ in? Meet the minister who was a she. She is now a he!

Pondering a gender change began with his doctoral studies at Harvard Divinity School in the ’90s. “I was out as gay at that point,” he recalls. The run-up to his change was not the turmoil-filled time you might expect. “I’m not a huge fan of the trapped-in-the-wrong-body narrative” of some other transgendered people, Partridge says. “I know it’s true and real for some folks, but I never felt like God made a mistake. I’ve not had a problem with God about this, I really haven’t. I just had a sense of this growing—discomfort, disjunction.” With the change, “I felt like I was able to kind of reclaim the body that God had given me.”
Seeking a unisex name, he was stumped until he went for take-out sushi one day when he was still a woman and the clerk misheard the name, asking, “Cameron?” Partridge looked the name up and learned it meant “crooked,” just the name, he thought, for someone who believes gender is not linear.
As for his agenda as chaplain, he’s exploring ways to involve students in environmental justice, an interest that has come up in conversations with them.

Read it all.

He/she could have at least ironed his/her shirt for the photo!

God’s blazing judgement on the apostate Episcopalian whatever (for a Church it no longer is), cannot be far…