A miraculous Christmas present — an album of four songs from the soundtrack of The Bells Of St. Mary’s, on two 78s pressed in 1946. Some surface noise after a perfunctory cleaning but otherwise a rich, full sound, at least as good as the sound of an LP.
Western Christians should not be smug about radical Islam. John Calvin was a religious terrorist and murderer every bit as vile as the Muslim gunmen who killed twelve people in Paris on 7 January. Today, he is revered as a saint by the Anglican Communion.
We rightly urge Islam to condemn the horrific acts done in its name, but those who continue to revere the monstrous Calvin cannot rightly join in this call. Their hands still drip with the blood Calvin caused to be shed in the name of Jesus.
John Calvin was a sinner, like the rest of us, as deserving-undeserving of forgiveness as the rest of us, but celebrating him as a saint is one reason Christianity remains a moral joke in the modern world, with no authority to condemn the religious murders carried out by Muslims.
Incidentally, Martin Luther, even more revered than Calvin by modern Christians, did not believe in murdering people for harboring private beliefs he considered blasphemous. He did believe in murdering them if they expressed their beliefs in public utterances. He and the murderers of the Charlie Hebdo staff were thus on the same page, morally speaking.
. . . that can’t tolerate ridicule or abuse is planted in shallow, stony soil.
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Click on the image to enlarge.
Click on the image to enlarge.
The world needs to join ranks against radical Islam and wipe it off the face of the earth. We should start by using tactical nuclear weapons against troop concentrations of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria. Killing large numbers of them quickly and efficiently is the only way to stop their momentum and the glamor of their success which attracts adherents.
When the last Pope suggested that Islam was a violent religion his remarks were met by riots around the Islamic world with people calling for the Pope to be beheaded. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the mastermind of the Boston Marathon bombings, was motivated by his outrage that people called Islam a violent religion.
You cannot reason with such people, you cannot negotiate with them — they inhabit a universe of irrational rage which can only be answered by sure and swift elimination.
I’m convinced that God will welcome these people into Heaven with opens arms and forgiveness, but we need to send them to Heaven as rapidly as we possibly can, to save the lives of countless innocents.
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Click on the image to enlarge.
Just . . . sublime.
Via Jae Song . . .
In some traditions, Twelfth Night, the evening of the twelfth day of Christmas, is celebrated on 6 January rather than on 5 January. This makes no sense to me. 6 January is the Feast Of the Epiphany, when Christmastide gives way to Epiphanytide. Why would you celebrate the last day of Christmas on the first day of Epiphany?
Celebrating on the 6th also requires counting the day after Christmas as the first day of Christmas. Christmas is not the first day of Christmas? No, no — it cannot stand.
What’s been lost in all traditions is the custom of having a wild party on Twelfth Night. The holidays are considered over then in our time, people have gone back to work. But the holidays are not over, and people should not be back at work. They should be having wild parties, like the one depicted above by Jan Steen in 1662.
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I’ll be sad to see the lights on the tree go out and Christmas over. It was the best Christmas ever, as all Christmases are — bringing good news that never grows old.
. . . by Jae Song.
View from outside our motel rooms, Marfa, Texas, Christmas — the edge of the prairie.
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. . . New York City, 1915.
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