1. I find the LOL cats more miss than hit, but when they hit, I about can’t stop laughing. Check out the Tiger and the Mortgage.
2. The lesser-known Johnson at the crossroads.
3. I can’t decide if this is Sarcastro as a child or what Sarcastro has to look forward to when the little guy turns five.
Hey, folks, don’t forget to check out the Southern Festival of Books this weekend.
I’ll just say up front that I don’t really care for Starhawk. I try to be sympathetic to the fact that a lot of it probably has to do with the different eras we’re coming up in, but still… I don’t like that she talks about the “pagan religion” as if there’s only one. Pagan is more an umbrella term to lump together a lot of religions than a religion in itself. And it annoys me when she talks about what “we, pagans” believe, as if she has the right to talk with authority about what anyone but the folks she knows and works with believe. And yet, if not for her and the work she’s done, would we even have the expectation of worshiping how we like. But maybe someone less annoying would have done it but….
But… all that being said, I do like her take on Halloween and death.
At this time of year, as we move toward Samhain or Halloween, the ancient festival of the ancestors, we say ‘the veil is thin’ that divides the world of the living from the realm of the dead. The ancestors return to visit us—and that is the origin of our Halloween customs of setting candles out in jack-o-lanterns to light their way to our doors, of giving offerings (once harvest offerings, now candy) to children, who are the ancestors returning.
[…]
Our metaphor for death is of a journey . When we die, the soul voyages across a dark sea to the Shining Isle, the Isle of Apples. There, we walk beneath the apple trees of the Goddess, trees which are in bud, blossom, fruit, and decay all at the same time, reviewing our life and its lessons, and growing ever younger, until we are at last young enough to be reborn.
I, myself, don’t believe in reincarnation, though I’m open to surprises. I just don’t believe that dreams and hopes and fears and memories die with the dreamer and I think there are ways for folks to tap into that. But I do love the idea of thinking of children as returning ancestors.
That’s very sweet.
I’m not one to stick up for Ann Coulter, but I’m disturbed to see folks piling on her, specifically, for calling Christians perfected Jews.
I mean, yes, it’s insulting and bigoted, but a lot of Christians believe it. I mean, it was just last week that Ned Williams was asserting to NM that “Evangelical Christians typically believe more of the Hebrew faith’s assertions than most Jews believe” and just not getting why that would be offensive to Jews, even after he admitted that he doesn’t know a whole lot of Jews or a whole lot about Judaism (I suspect, based on his positive reaction to Sharon Cobb, that Ned thought he would just spout some nonsense and that NM would take it as a teaching moment and, instead, like Coulter, he was blindsided by the fact that said nonsense is actually hurtful to people, which, in a way, explains why I cannot agree with dear Sarcastro. There are plenty of times when it doesn’t matter whether the person intended to be an asshat; they still are asshats. Also, Christian friends, I kind of went a little crazy asshat in the comments of that post, just to warn you ahead of time–Ned’s, not Sarcastro’s).
There are a shit-ton of Christians who support Isreal, not out of some great love for the Jewish people, but because they believe there have to be Jews on that land and the Temple rebuilt before Jesus comes back and, once Jesus comes back, the Jews will eather be converted or sent to Hell. And those Christians are trying to force Jesus’ hand. They don’t give a shit about Jewish people as people. The Jews are just props in their grand effort to stage a large-scale production of “The Passion: Part II” in hopes that Jesus will be contractually bound to show up and read his lines.
So, I mean, it’s fine to be mad at Coulter, but let’s not overlook that we need not only be laughing at her, we need to be addressing with her fellow believers why this is offensive.
Argh, yeah, what KTK says over at Lean Left.
Tiny Cat Pants 