Your obvious intelligence should show, Boaz, that ecumenalism is not about a super church. As a matter of fact, in our wheat belt district most of the different church attenders were also sports-lovers. In fact, whom we termed the deep-seated believers who refused to seed on on Sundays even after a vital opening rain, all were tennis lovers, with courts surfaced with crushed up ant-hill.

When we did get the people to go to each other's churches early in the piece, there was never any suggestion about super churches, but more a kind of communal fellowship, like men later making tea, and ladies supplying scones and cakes with beaded nets covering the foodstuff dishes to keep away the flies.

Really thought that was what ecumenicalism is all about.

Cheers - BB

Well said Brushy.. could not agree more. You amplified and explained your position very well. No argument there.

TRTL. The point I'm making is well underlined by the article itself.

"She was arrested by the military on her return to Manila and her body was tortured and found in a mass grave some months later."

Failure to see evil for what it is, and describe it so, is a failure of common sense mate. I was not criticising a 'Christian position' as you say, I was criticizing a 'silly' position.

I have a sneaky feeling that this girls involvement with 'political prisoners' may have brought her onto radar of the government as a possible sympathizer.

I restate that true hope simply comes from knowing that death is not the end, and that God is ultimately sovereign.

"My hope is built on nothing less,
than Jesus blood and righteousness" says the hymn.

but it does not end on a dismal note, or of despair or of resignation to powers at work to destroy us, no,

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne

The chorus is great too.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand x2

Trying to over intellectualize 'hope' is a bit pointless I feel.

The warm tones of the article with which you identified are indeed reflective of Christs own 'setting His face toward Jerusalem' where he knew he would be crucified. All I can say there is please remember He did this for 'you' as well as 'me'.

Declaring the Taliban 'evil' does not set US up to a particular standard over these people, it sets "God" above them. Jesus 'slashed and burnt' verbally the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, lawyers and religious leaders.

As Solomon said "For everything, there is a time"

What a beautifully written article. I will reread it a couple of times and meditate on some of your arguments.

Sustaining of hope in dark times can be difficult. Reading of other people's courage facing seemingly unsurmountable odds is inspiring.

(part a)
“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick...”

Conflict, confusion, anxiety, depression, mental illness, suicide.

Is Richard Dawkins right – religion is the root of all evil?

But, “Laughter is the best medicine”!

In a wisdom capsule of sweet brevity, Dorothy once said to her friends she would “write a book
about the meaning of life...they...all laughed. Understandably.” Such an insight undergirded
the work to follow, that “to live life to the full is not just about meaning, ...but...passion, hard times
and human frailty.” The awesome mystery of life is acknowledged, but to some, the idea of God
helps along the way.

Perhaps one of the most succinct insights into some of life's difficulties occurred in Viktor Frankl's
“Man's Search for Meaning”(1959)p18, originally written and lost during the Holocaust years.
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior”.

There can be little doubt, that the transsexual phenomenon is by any logical standard, an abnormal
reaction. If by definition this is normal behaviour, what then is the abnormal situation?

Life consumes itself in order to survive. Yet, within each individual life form is implanted an urge
to struggle, and fight for its existence. Between the realm of conflict and suicide, Nature has
implanted a structure in the human brain which just may play an important role in human survival.

There seems to be a limitless variation in the structure of the stria terminalis, a series of fibres
running from the hypothalamus to the amygdala. Just as we all have a different fingerprint, which
can be used against us by forensic science in the search to convict a criminal, so we all have a
different brainprint. Do we not all have different talents in order for society to grow?

shmuel (contin)

(part b)
The mestizo arises in the situation where cross cultural mergers unite in a fruitful marriage. Success is dependent on a warm balance of cultures transferring to resultant offspring. But sometimes, this does not occur. If one parent acquiesces to the dominance of the partner (it does not matter here whether the female or male dominates), there becomes a serious risk, that an offspring with the same sex as the passive parent may well run the gauntlet of spiritual confusion. This seems to be the abnormal situation in which sexual deviation is most likely to occur.

Resilience and the will to persist in the struggle to survive then kick in to determine the nature of
what outcome may ensue.

Hope for reconciliation of a spiritual identity may well consume a lifetime of effort to find a
resolution. Did not the Jew cry out each year “Next year in Jerusalem!” for two thousand years
before an answer emerged?

My hope is that one day there will be a reconciliation between the different concepts of the
Jewish and the Christian ideas of God. With a humility that acknowledges a great spirit of the universe, just then may we experience the latter part of the ancient wisdom that began this
comment - “... But desire fulfilled is a tree of life”. The preservation of this insight in the Book of
Proverbs 13:12, helps to remind us that life is the supreme value and needs to be sanctified. This lies within the realm of the religious spirit.

Dorothy has written about hope with an empathy that must surely help such a dream come true.

shmuel