Sunday School Class Proverbs
26:17-19 Watch out for the troublemaker who says, "...only
joking."
Scripture
reading: #633
Chorus: O Come All Ye Faithful (F)
Sunday evening Vesper's @
Wednesday - No Wednesday
evening class until after the first of the year.
Next Sunday: A.M. – Ragsdale’s Marimba
Christmas! P.M. – church Christmas Party!
The Second Sunday of Advent - We light the
"Preparations for the
Holidays!"
"Happy holidays...happy
holidays," the song is played every year on loud speaker
systems throughout malls, stores and on city sidewalks.
For most people it is a wonderful, joy-filled, happy time of year that
fills one's soul with warmth.
For most people, but not for all.
There are many people whose
souls are filled with grief, sadness beyond description, and a melancholy that
almost suffocates. I am told, by young teenage girls 'in trouble,'
that this is how they feel.
How do you distinguish between the physical and emotional feelings
associated with anxiety and grief, confusion and sadness, fear and melancholy?
I wonder if a very young teenage girl, under a cloud of impugned
character, miserable after a trip of perhaps 75 miles on the back of a bony
donkey, miserable being nine months pregnant, miserable being away from the
comfort and security of her family and friends, married to an older man (many
Catholic theologians have for centuries considered Joseph an older widower with
older children)...I wonder if her feelings were a mixture of anxiety and grief,
confusion and sadness, fear and melancholy?
And now that they have come to
It certainly is easy for us, two thousand years out, to get all excited
and joyfully sing, "O little Town of
Perhaps we ought
to compassionately align our hearts with those who are anxious and grieving,
confused and sad, feeling fear and melancholy - in order to bring to
them, and to the world, the comfort and hope that God brought to Mary, and to
us.
How can professing Christians be inhospitable?
The start of redemption and the first step away from theocratic Judaism and
towards the establishment of the church began with this difficult and inhospitable
trip to
Yesterday, in the
Op-Ed Columnist
Spies Like You and Me
By
BOB HERBERT
Published:
Let the witch hunt begin. Are you now or have you
ever been an illegal immigrant?
Are
any of your friends illegal? Relatives?
The last
place you’d expect to encounter a chilling moment is at a presidential debate
sponsored by National Public Radio. But on Tuesday, there was the NPR
moderator, Steve Inskeep, asking the Democratic
candidates whether American citizens have an obligation to turn in people they
suspect are illegal immigrants.
It was
not just a question asked in passing. Mr. Inskeep
pressed the issue. He asked Senator Chris Dodd, for example, about the
hypothetical situation of a “citizen” interviewing for a nanny.
“You
interview a number of applicants,” Mr. Inskeep said.
“They all seem very nice. They seem like they would take care of the kids. But
it would appear that their documents may not be in order. What would you want
an American to do?”
Their documents may not be in order.
Mr. Inskeep didn’t make clear what should trigger the
suspicions of such oh-so-solidly American parents, causing them to scrutinize
an applicant’s papers with a thoroughness worthy of
Sherlock Holmes. Might it be a skin tone darker than Paris Hilton’s? Or maybe
an accent, like that of my Aunt Lottie, who came here
from
You
wouldn’t have wanted to face my family if you were some rat who tried to turn
in my Aunt Lottie.
I have
no idea how Mr. Inskeep feels about this issue. He
was just asking questions. But the last thing in the world that the
The Democrats
did not rise to the bait. Senator Hillary Clinton was especially good. Mr. Inskeep said to her, “If a citizen witnessed some other
kind of crime, wouldn’t you want them to report it?”
Senator
Clinton replied: “It’s a very clever question, Steve, but I think it really
begs the question, because what we’re looking at here is
12 to 14 million people. They live in our neighborhoods, they take care of our
elderly parents, they probably made the beds in the hotels that some of us
stayed in last night. They are embedded in our society.”
She
warned that listening to the “demagogues and the calls for us to begin to try
to round up people and turn every American into a suspicious vigilante” would
do grave harm “to the fabric of our nation.”
She
couldn’t have been more correct. Enlisting ordinary Americans in a nationwide
hunt for so-called illegals is a recipe for violence
and hysteria, a guarantee of tragedy.
We’ve
already got radio-active talk show hosts spewing anti-immigrant venom from one
coast to another. Media Matters for
“When I
see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a
Nazi. That’s what I see. How do you like that? A hateful Nazi who would like to
cut your throat and kill your children.”
When a
woman wears a burqa, said Mr. Savage, “She’s doing it
to spit in your face. She’s saying, ‘You white moron,
you, I’m going to kill you if I can.’”
That’s
what’s already out there. We don’t need national leaders adding fuel to the
fires of bigotry by calling for recruits to join in a national dragnet for
people who look or sound a certain way.
That
kind of insidious leadership helps drive people to irrational fury over
neighbors speaking Spanish at a barbecue, or a Muslim co-worker competing for a
coveted promotion, or a schoolteacher with a Hispanic surname who gives a
failing grade to little Sally.
This
country needs to cool it on the immigration front. Solutions to immigration
problems need to come from rationally thought-out and compassionate government
policies, not a witch hunt by all and sundry.
It was
beyond ironic to listen Thursday to Mitt Romney as he went on national
television to ask Americans to view his candidacy with a sense of tolerance.
“We believe that every single human being is a child of God,” he said. “We are
all part of the human family.”
At the
same time, Mr. Romney’s political operatives were distributing campaign
material (some of it inaccurate) beating up on his opponents for being
insufficiently intolerant on the immigration issue.
The
Don’t go
there.
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Are you watching
the presidential debates? Let me share with you this from the debates, which I
sense is very representative of positions in both political parties. This was
also in yesterday’s NYTimes:
Huckabee Immigration Plan Emphasizes Security
Stephen Morton/Associated Press
Mike Huckabee released an
immigration plan Friday that endorses a border fence and calls for tougher
enforcement.
By SARAH
Published:
Mike Huckabee, the Republican presidential candidate,
released a plan for tougher immigration
enforcement and border security yesterday, pledging to complete a border fence
between the United States and Mexico by July 2010 and ruling out a pathway to
citizenship for illegal immigrants unless they returned first to their country
of origin.
Mr. Huckabee has taken heat in recent weeks from his rivals for
the Republican nomination, especially after his impassioned defense at a Nov.
28 debate of merit scholarships to children of illegal immigrants while he was
governor of
In the
proposal he released yesterday, Mr. Huckabee did not
address whether he still supported such benefits for illegal immigrants. But in
detailing his plan for stepped-up enforcement, he said immigrants who failed to
register within 120 days and then leave the country would be deported and
barred from re-entry for 10 years.
In
addition to completing the fence and installing an “interlocking” camera
surveillance system on the Mexican border, he said he would increase the number
of Border Patrol agents. Employers who hire illegal immigrants would also be
subject to penalties under his proposal.
Mr. Huckabee’s plan also includes an increase in the number of
visas for “highly skilled and highly educated applicants.”
Rivals
for the nomination said his proposal did not square with his record.
“Governor
Huckabee is now forced to put out an immigration plan
that contradicts everything he did as governor,” said Jeff Sadosky,
a spokesman for Fred
D. Thompson, the former
In
A
Newsweek poll released yesterday showed Mr. Huckabee
with a clear lead over Mitt
Romney among voters who said they were likely to take part in the
Jan. 3 caucuses in
Mr.
Romney endured tough questioning from reporters in
Pressed
on whether he should have been more vigilant, given his tough talk on
immigration, he grew testy.
“Let’s
say I go to a restaurant,” he said. “Should I make sure that all the waiters
there are all legal? How would I do that?”
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How can professing Christians be inhospitable? Christianity and
We MUST compassionately align
our hearts with those who are anxious and grieving, confused and sad, feeling
fear and melancholy - in order to bring to them, and to the world, the comfort
and hope that God brought to Mary, and to us.
I wish for you – Jesus.
I wish for you – Joy.
I wish for you Peace and Hope!
Emmanuel, God is with us.