Jamie123
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Posts posted by Jamie123
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I know an old guy that I'm just not sure about. I really wonder what, if anything, I should do about him. Maybe it's none of my business, but if anything were to happen, then I'd feel really, really bad. He seems harmless enough, but I wonder. There are just some weird things about him:
- He is inordinately attached to children, and doesn't really associate with adults at all.
- He actually keeps careful track of many children. I know he watches them, and he sometimes observes them while they take naps (!).
- Very often, he gives gifts of some sort to these children, without the parents' explicit permission. I know some children that have actually asked him for certain things that their parents have explicitly told them they can't have.
- He really seems to work at cultivating friendships with these children. Sometimes he lets them sit on his lap (isn't that called "grooming"?).
- I can't prove this, but it's said that he breaks and enters into people's houses. Kind of a weird old guy -- he doesn't take anything except some snack food, and he leaves behind little "gifts" for the kids, as mentioned above.
- The guy is a total hermit, keeps a low profile. He and his "wife" (whom I've never seen) live waaaaaay out in the sticks in some kind of private commune and pretty much don't see anyone else all year long.
I don't know, they guy is pleasant to talk to and actually rather friendly. Maybe I'm overreacting. What do you think? Is this creepy enough that I should report him?
That's not the half of it!
This guy runs a sweatshop where poor exploited elves toil 24 hour days, 364 days a year, making shoddy inferior toys that fall to bits even before your Christmas turkey is cooked.
Up the workers!!!! Down with shoddy imports from the North Pole!!!!
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What right have you to be merry, nephew? Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine!I don't care what you say, I will keep christmas in my heart and keep it well.
Ebenezer Jamie
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Humbug! Humbug! Anyone care for a humbug?........Everyone pretend to be sleeping, so he leaves us presents.
When does the Christmas season start for you?
For me it usually started on the 4th of December, when I was a kid. Thats when my mum used to put up the tree and decorations. It's my sisters birthday and that was always part of the day.
Now I usually do the 12 days before and 12 days after, But one thing I do is play christmas carols or classical christmas music while I'm wrapping presents, no matter the time of year. I also read "A Christmas Carol" on pretty much a monthly basis. It's my favourite book ever and feel it's message isn't just for christmas, so I read it whenever I need a bit of that christmas spirit.
Thanks
John
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This is Billy Connolly singing "The Bellman's Speech" from Mike Batt's musical version of the poem by Lewis Carroll. I first saw it on TV about 20 years ago, and loved it. It reminds me very much of Gilbert and Sullivan's operas (which I also totally love!).
Very few of Carroll's original words made it into the musical. Most of the words are Mike Batt's own, but I think it captures the spirit of the original very well: The tale of an unlikely assortment of people ("the bellman", "the butcher", "the banker" etc.) who go in search of an unexplained creature called "The Snark" which may (we suspect) only exist in the minds of those pursuing it.
Even Carroll himself wasn't exactly sure of the "meaning" of the poem:
Anyway, hope you enjoy the song as much as I did. (Just a pity there isn't more of the complete show on You Tube!)"To the best of my recollection, I had no other meaning in my mind, when I wrote it: but people have since tried to find the meanings in it. The one I like best (which I think is partly my own) is that it may be taken as an allegory for the pursuit of happiness."
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It's a story.
Ooooo Nancy! You've disillusioned me!
What's there left for me to believe in now?
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Am I the only person who thinks that Professor Robert Langdon (of Harvard University no less) is not as bright as he's cracked up to be? He seems to be always missing the most obvious clues, and making absurd assumptions. ("Turn the paper upside down, you idiot!")
I'm only half way through The Lost Symbol (having read The Da Vince Code and Angels and Demons) so please don't tell me how it ends - though I expect a typically Scooby-Dooish conclusion.
It's not a bad yarn though - it keeps you turning the pages!
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I have 2 permanent unread messages and as far as I know I've never read afoul of the Mods.
A halo for Saint Dravin!
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As many are aware, there have been many that have received "spam love messages." Having deleted the user, it unfortunately doesn't delete the fact that you have one unread message if you were one of the recipients. My guess is you were one of the lucky recipients.
"Spam love messages". Doubt it. NOBODY loves me.....
Nobody likes me
Everybody hates me
Just because I eat worms
Short fat hairy ones
Long tall skinny ones
See how the little ones squirm
Bite all their heads off
Suck all the juice out
Throw the empty skins away
Nobody Likes me
Everybody hates me
Cos I eat worms all day
Nobody likes us
Everybody hates us
Just because we eat worms
Short fat hairy ones
Long tall skinny ones
See how the little ones squirm
Bite all their heads off
Suck all the juice out
Throw the empty skins away
Nobody Likes us
Everybody hates us
Cos we eat worms all day
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Last week I committed the atrocious crime of posting a link to a page on an anti-Mormon site. Not maliciously I assure you - it was just to prove that I wasn't making something up. That's no excuse of course, and I have been put on the "naughty people" list by Pam
Trouble is, it won't stop telling me that I have "one unread private message" - despite the fact that I've read it a dozen times over. Is it just a bug in the system, or does anyone know how to make the stain of this abominable sin go away?
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Come to think of it, I was driving south down the M1 in evening when I heard OJ had been found innocent. (OK- "not guilty" if you want to be technical.) It was raining.
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I think there's very much a difference of viewpoints here. Traditionally most non-LDS Christians see salvation as a bipolar all-or-nothing concept. You are either under God's grace (in which case you are a Christian) or else you are not, and the concept of a "partial Christian" is disallowed. Mormonism by contrast has a wide spectrum of different levels of salvation. Whatever you believe in yourself, you need to appreciate the other person's worldview before you can appreciate what he/she is saying.JohnDoe,
Your post #53 is kindof revealing to me. As I said, the issue of semantics on the word "Christian" is what is being hashed out in this thread. When you say to someone, "If you're happy with the little portion [of the gospel] that you have now," I would feel as though you're saying I'm less than a Christian. How can I be a true Christian and have just a little portion of the Gospel? I either believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true and accept it for ME (and I do and have)--thus having the full gospel, or I don't. It seems as though you're saying I'm only a partial Christian.
This goes for Mormons too: Mormons claim they have the fullness of the Gospel, and that they are a restoration of Christ's original Church. But it is only the Mormons themselves who believe this, and it is pointless for any Mormon apologist to base his/her arguments on this premise.
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It is TO WHOM WOULD YOU BE LISTENING?Whom Would You Be Listening Too?
Now write that out five hundred times!
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I was standing on my head on London Bridge, playing the banjo with my toes when I heard that Captain Crunch had been stripped of his master mariner's license for dumping toxic breakfast cereal in New York Harbor without a permit.
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Several times I've noticed that, when referring to people's conversions from (say) agnosticism to any other form of Christianity, Mormon speakers say things like: "She became what she called a Christian" instead of simply "She became a Christian". Yet when I've come out and asked them whether they consider Protestants and Catholics to be "true Christians" the answer is always "yes".
This has got to be confusing.
On the other hand, I've often read that LDS-members have only quite recently started calling themselves "Christians", and that traditionally they preferred to be called "Saints" or "Mormons". (I don't know how true this is, but I've seen it written enough times to think there's probably some truth to it.)
Of course, it's only really a matter of Semantics. I believe the word "Christian" (or whatever the Greek equivalent was) was not coined until some time after Christ's death anyway.
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The classic case was about 30 years ago when a woman bathed her dog and tried to dry it in her microwave. The unfortunate animal was cooked alive, and the woman successfully sued the microwave manufacturers for not saying "do not put your dog in it".
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Praying in tongues is very common. I do not have the gift myself but I've known many people who do.
Prophesizing in tongues is something I've never experienced, though I understand it happens often in many churches. In Bradford (where I was a student) there was one particular Anglican church where it was said to be quite common. I never went there - partly because the idea of it spooked me out a bit.
Probably the spookiest thing about it was the casual way in which people talked about it. Typical conversation:
Me: Please explain to me about prophesizing in tongues.
Charismatic type: Oh, that's just when the Holy Spirit gives a message to a person in the congregation, and they speak it out in a strange language. If it's of God, there will be someone else present who can interpret it. That's all that's about.
Me: What??!! You're telling me that....[words fail me]
Charismatic type: Yeah. That's all it is. Any more coffee?
Further attempts to express my surprise at the utter "strangeness" of this were usually met with blank looks of incomprehension about how anyone could find it unusual.
In the LDS church at Loughborough (where I first got involved with the LDS) the attitude couldn't have been more different. I remember one of the Sunday School speakers mentioned it. (He was an engineering student like me. He illustrated his talks with conjuring tricks using eggs and bottles. To me he always seemed disturbingly sure of himself.) His actual words were something like:
So I get the impression that it doesn't happen very often amongst Mormons, but at least they don't consider it blahdy-blah-blah-nothing-special.Prophesizing in tongues doesn't happen here very often. In fact [shift to more serious tone of voice] I don't think it has ever happened. [Long emphatic silence.]
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Not necessarily true is it when individual members records are sent to the ward or the branch the member is assigned to.
Interesting - so if an individual church burns down, the entire ward must be rebaptized? Or are records kept centrally as well?
In Loughborough where I used to live, there was a fire in the LDS chapel, and the meetings were moved to the Glenfield Ward in Leicester for several months. Loughborough Ward also housed a family history center. I've never thought about it before this minute, but that fire could have played merry hell...
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I hope no one plays with lighted matches in the Church's records room. One fire and the whole Church will take weeks to get rebaptized!It does not matter why, or how but if a baptism record is lost then for the baptism to be recognized it must be done over again with all the proper approvals for everyone involved and a proper record made and signed and placed into the church achieves before that baptism is recognized.
Seriously though, this is very different to the teachings of many other churches, where rebaptism for any reason is seriously frowned upon. In the Anglican (and I believe also in the R.C.) church, an emergency baptism can be performed by a layperson (*), but they are often advised to say to say "If you are not already baptized, I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" so as to exclude the possibility of a rebaptism.
(*) By a "layperson" I mean a person who does not hold a clerical order (bishop, priest or deacon). I've noticed Mormons often use "lay" to mean "not paid". The Church of England has many unpaid priests (we call them "non-stipendiaries") but they are still considered clergy, not laity.
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As FYI, and by way of confession, my LAUGH point was giving on the "amusing silliness" level. :-)
Maybe you could tell us some in-jokes about appropriation or perichoresis and see how many of us "get it"
(Confession: I picked those terms randomly from Glossary of Theological Terms.)
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Oh great..you delete your message after I post mine. Now it's going to look like I am just talking to myself. hahaha
LOL - sorry Pam - I thought I'd format it a bit better and make sure I wasn't taking credit for a very old joke.
I think it's quite clever as it works on different levels: To many people it's just a piece of amusing silliness. But anyone with a degree in science or engineering will see that it's actually true.
I had a better version of it once, which had the twelve-line spherical form of the equations. Don't know what happened to that.
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In the beginning God said let there be light . . .
Reminds me of the old Physicists' T-shirt slogan:
And God said...
∇•B=0
∇•E=ρ
∇xB=∂E/∂t+J
∇xE=-∂B/∂t
and then there was light.
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It was the emperor Theodosius I (ruled 378–392) who decreed the destruction of pagan tables. Theophilius was the Patriarch of Alexandria who carried the destruction of the Serapeum. As I said before, no one knows whether or not the portion of the library stored there was destroyed too.Theophilus I decreed the destruction of all the pagan temples. The Serapeum, where a small portion of the library was found was destroyed. But the major portion of the library was left intact for the Moors to destroy centuries later.
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It was the Christians that burned the library at Alexandria – it would be more than 200 years after the burning of the library at Alexandria before Islam
I'm sorry, but this is not true:
1. In 391 the Christian emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all "pagan" temples, which included the Serapeum which had once housed part of the Great Library. It is unknown whether any books were still stored there by this time, and if so whether they were destroyed along with the temple. Either way, the Library certainly survived this episode.
2. In 642 the Arab general Amr ibn al 'Aas captured Alexandria from the Byzantines. When he asked the Caliph what was to be done with the library, he got the famous reply "They will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, in which case they are superfluous." The books were burned in order to heat the public baths.
Drink poison? That's the first time I've ever heard that about Galileo. Are you sure you're not thinking of Socrates?Galileo was not threatened with torture by just any ordinary Catholic priests but a particular order of Catholic priests. Galileo was threatened to be forced to drink poison by the order of Jesuits Priests.
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Or even "faux pas". (Pity - I like "foo-paw" better!Of course, if we wish to have an intelligent discussion, we should start with proper grammar and spelling. I think you wish to use the term "blonde" as referencing women. Burnets should be "brunette." And a "foo-paw" is probably supposed to be a "faux pax."
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This may be a ridiculous topic.
in General Discussion
Posted
Tell that to Grouchy Smurf!
I hate Smurfs!