Holy Thursday

Notice Judas' atrocious table manners. A remarkable lunge.

Holy Thursday is almost my favorite part of Eastertide because it is my favorite Mass of the entire year. Not because of the washing of the feet, or the cute little first communicants processing around, or even the silent reverence in front of the Altar of Repose. It's a combination of the music and the fact that it is all so centered around the Holy Eucharist. It's one of two times a year that I receive the Precious Blood (the other being Corpus Christi).

Plus the possibility that it may be a Dominican Rite.

Spy Wednesday

I almost forgot what day it was today. In fact, it's hard to realize that it is in fact Holy Week already. Palm Sunday was a little surreal and life has been more than a little hectic since then.

Do we know that Judas is in Hell? We're not supposed to judge anyone, and Dante was hardly an authority on roll call down there. On the other hand, if Jesus says that it would be better that you were never born...I can't imagine that you would end up in Heaven, since that would mean that it was better that you were born. And why was it better for Judas never to be born? Jesus had to die to complete His mission, so he would have been handed over to the Sanhedrin one way or another. My theory is that it's because he not only lost belief in Jesus but also despaired and killed himself, thus committing what is called an "unforgivable sin". I think that means that if you truly despair, it is unforgivable because you decide that you can't be forgiven, and don't bother repenting.

Bet you weren't expecting this!

Ben feels we have fallen into a rut, and to allay his fears, I will now post on totally random and unexpected topics. Such as Whirling Dervishes. Cool picture, huh?

Apparently dervish means mendicant in ancient Persian and dervishes are a sect of a sect of Islam. They beg to learn humility, but cannot keep their earnings for themselves and have to give it all away. So I don't know how they live or eat...maybe they don't. In Turkey they perform whirling to obtain religious ecstacy, holding one palm up to receive energy and one palm down to transmit it to the earth. They are also a major tourist attraction.

There.

Now that I've edified you all, I think I'll be on my way. And I hope that this was off the beaten path enough to surprise you all.

Contributors

Does anyone think we could use more contributors on this thing? You know, fresh blood. Not that I think our content gets stale exactly, but it does seem to run in some very definite veins. Just an idea...

A New Beatification

Last Sunday, Locus Magazine announced some very startling news.

pretty much lame

So. I am full of fresh vituperation to heap upon that worthless, lowdown, conniving buch of hobos called "Congress". Their new conception of daylight savings has struck again.... My television, it would seem, has a little chip in it that tells it when to switch times with daylight savings. Said machine did switch times when it used to be daylight savings, before Congress stepped in. As a result...I recorded Prisonbreak instead of 24. I am so outraged and yet to powerless. Woe is me! I have somewhere around 100 pages left of War and Peace. Yes, that would be 100, not 1000. However, it is not worth pulling out my eaglesbobbleheaddoll dance because I'm totally fed up with it. Andrei is dead, and Pierre (can't stand him) is still lumbering around, presumably well on his way to marrying Natasha. Another reason for me to be in a foul mood!

WHOA!

I don't know how many of my dearly beloved readers watch LOST...but last episode, which I taped and watched yesterday, completely freaked me out. I had to pause it and go out of the room, just to walk around and catch my breath, calm back down. It managed to combine a couple of my worst fears in a particularly disturbing fashion. Twas awful. My guess is that the writers pull an all nighter, drinking heavily and reading Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Horror aloud. There is no other explanation for that episode, it was totally random, didn't advance the main plot AT ALL and was juuuust weird.