Idol Worship Ends in Disaster

As idolatry always does. This in via Sky news:

One person has been killed and six others injured after a balcony collapsed during a Hindu procession in India.

An idol of the god Ganesha was being paraded through the streets of Mumbai.

More than 50 people were standing on the balcony of an old building which could not hold their weight.

It happened during an 11-day festival which is celebrated in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Karnataka, as well as western Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Hundreds of thousands of Ganesha idols are worshipped during the Ganesha Chaturthi festival.

The celebrations finish with the statues being immersed in the nearest source of water – which includes wells, ponds, tanks, rivers and the sea.

There is a video of the actual incident too.

Jerusalem’s Lights Festival

Here are some stunning shots of the 2011 Jerusalem festival of lights:

When night falls on the Old City of Jerusalem this week, the walled enclave sheds its role as one of the world’s most contested pieces of real estate to become a luminous carnival of art installations and performances. (Scroll down for photos)

Jerusalem’s Festival of Lights, now in its third year, illuminates an area known more for religious friction and clashing political claims than for art or nightlife. Most nights, the Old City’s stone alleyways are dimly lit, peopled mainly by small numbers of tourists, Palestinian merchants and children, and ultra-Orthodox Jews headed to or from religious studies or prayers.

But for seven nights, until June 22, a shining 10-foot-tall (3-meter-tall) puppet named Meir — Hebrew for “the illuminator” — entertains visitors with antics like trying to scale the wall of the moat at the Tower of David, used by conquerors across the millennia as a fortress, barracks and gun emplacement.

Check them out here.

How I love that place!