Thursday, May 13, 2004

Silent Treatment By Emily Yoffe

This is TOO FUNNY!!


When I mentioned to my husband that I was considering taking a vow of silence, he had an immediate reaction, "What a great idea! How long are you going to do it? How about a month?"

Now here we were, on the morning of Day 2, and my husband had this to say: "I can't wait for this stunt to be over.
...
Being silent in the real world was draining. But it left me longing to do it in the confines of a retreat. There everyone would understand what I wasn't trying to say.


Read the article here.

Reminds me of a "clock fast" I took on a retreat. I only lasted half a day and had to peek. Very sad.

Tenebrae clay crosses posted

Some pictures of the modeling clay crosses from Tenebrae have been posted at The Fotolog. These are creations from one of the communion stations, photographed against colored paper. Kinda cool. Thanks to all who made the crosses.

SUMMER IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER

Only thirteen days until summer is officially here for this Talbotian. The stack of summer books is growing. Frankly, I'm super eager to begin reading them. This past academic year has raised a number of issues that beg for further investigation and pondering.

- ecclesiology in real life
- the nature of change in the human soul
- the skills and passion of teaching
- influencing and respecting culture

and just added today (prompted by the Jollyblogger and my comments on same)

- what would the church look like if we (meaning women and men) stopped being a bunch of wimps and started being strong men AND strong women who will stand up for the truth, who will speak the truth even if it crushes someone's daity little toes, and who will passionately search for the truth and toss out the baby food that passes for teaching.

Yup. It's gonna be a full summer. For now, though, the only question on my mind is, "How does a person go about changing from childhood faith to adult faith?" (project and presentation due 5/24)

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Cicada Cycle Fascinates Regions

"Scientists plan to study the mass coming out of Brood X to find out. Did their bizarre 17-year cycle evolve because they are such easy preys, or did it allow them to evolve into the clumsy, noisy creatures that they are?"

Personally--young earth, six-day creationist that I am--I think God made them that way just to wack us out. Such a sense of humor. Gotta love it.

Read the article here.

Monday, May 10, 2004

STEM CELL RESEARCH

Former US First Lady Nancy Reagan has urged the Bush administration to support embryonic stem cell research.
Mrs Reagan said too much time had been wasted already discussing the issue.

...
The Bush administration has blocked public funding of this type of research because of his party's ethical reservations about embryo research.


Read the article here.

Scott Rae, a professor at Talbot School of Theology and ethics expert (not only theoretical expert, but practical--he works with several hospitals to make real life decisions) has a helpful perspective:

...we must consider an embryo as a person with dignity. "We have a problem with harvesting stem cells from human embryos because that's the moral equivalent of killing a person in order to benefit another."

Rae compares that to the behavior of Nazi medical doctors who experimented on Jews without their consent, for the sake of society. Of course, it is impossible to get the required consent from an embryonic cloned person.

Rae said, "That's been a fairly standard part of medical ethics - we don't require, we would never ask nor would we obligate someone to sacrifice their existence in order to benefit someone else."


Read the article here.


Ethics--live and direct. Stand against the evil. Stand for the good.

PICTURES

New pictures over at The Fotolog. I lucked out and captured three bees (2 on one flower and 1 on another) and an ant. Friday was a good hunting day...