A Map for This Week's Quantum Theology

Please feel free to download and print the map above; or simply be familiar with it in anticipation of tomorrow's class.

Away From the Office Today

Friday is now, for all intents and purposes, my day off as I must review the work that is being done on our house on the other side of the state. Not only do I have to pay the three guys doing the work, but I have to remind them that a wall sconce doesn't go in the center of the ceiling.

As ever, I may be reached at the emergency number.

This Week in Quantum Theology

Many thanks for those who showed up for the inaugural session of Quantum Theology. Last week we discussed the Prime Concern of all philosophy/theology and how Christianity, mainly through Paul, began to address this Concern.

We will continue our discussion of Paul's understanding and employment of Hellenistic Greek philosophy this Saturday at 10am. If you wish, please feel free to read the first chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

Just not contraception

Vatican: It's OK for Catholics to Believe in Aliens

Even totalitarianism is going green

War veteran, 96, has rubbish uncollected for two weeks for 'crime' of putting two jars in wrong bin

This Week in History

May 13, 1917: Three shepherd children report that the Virgin Mary appeared to them in Fatima, Portugal.

May 13, 1925: Florida's House of Representatives passes a bill requiring schools to conduct daily Bible readings.

May 14, 1607: Robert Hunt holds the first Anglican service in the New World days after the Virginia Company lands in Jamestown.

May 14, 1759: Anglican evangelical John Berridge preaches his first outdoor sermon. Outdoor preaching became a prominent feature of his ministry, as it did for George Whitefield, John Wesley, and the early Methodist movement as a whole.

May 15, 1265: Poet and politician Dante Alighieri is born in Florence, Italy. Dante finished the epic poem just before his death, and it was quickly recognized as brilliant. His epitaph begins: "Dante the theologian, skilled in every branch of knowledge that philosophy may cherish in her illustrious bosom").

May 15, 1886: American poet Emily Dickinson, author of many poems on death, eternity, God, and the afterlife, dies. Only 7 of her 1,775 poems were published at the time.

May 16, 583 (traditional date): Brendan the Navigator, founder of a Celtic monastery in Clonfert, Ireland, dies. Some Irish scholars have asserted that Brendan was among the first Europeans to reach America, nine centuries before Columbus.

May 16, 1805: Henry Martyn, a well-educated Englishman, arrives in India to aid William Carey with translation work (see issue 36: William Carey).

May 18, 1834: Sheldon Jackson, Presbyterian missionary to the frontier West and Alaska, is born in Minaville, New York. Jackson's reputation for ministering to the spiritual, physical, and social needs of both natives and settlers earned him the nicknames "Bishop of All Beyond" and "Apostle to Alaska".

May 19, 804: Alcuin of York, an English scholar who became an adviser to Charlemagne and the most prominent figure in the Carolingian Renaissance (the rebirth of classical learning under Charlemagne), dies. He also devised a handwriting system using both small and capital letters for easier reading.

May 19, 1971: The musical Godspell, based on Matthew's gospel, opens at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York.

Episcopal Relief and Development

For those wishing to give for the relief of the victims of the recent brace of international cyclones, tornadoes, and earthquakes, I cannot urge you more strongly to think of ERD as your medium for charity.

Episcopal Relief and Development is a responsible agency, part of our greater Church's worldwide outreach, that ensures that 100% of your donation will reach the affected people.

Details for online giving and other matters may be gleaned at this site.

Una rebanada de Cubano

Parish Picnic This Sunday

Remember that it will be Trinity Sunday this week, our parochial feast and the understood "birthday" of our parish.

In addition to experiencing some liturgical flourishes familiar to those who would have worshiped at Trinity on that very first Sunday, we will also hold the parish picnic. [Pray for good weather, willya?]

On Sept. 28, I'll Be Busy Speaking of Something Else from the Pulpit

Namely, the proclamation of the Gospel. Please feel free to vote as you please.

Pastors to Challenge Ban on Political Activity by Endorsing Candidates From Pulpit on Sept. 28

Another Reason [Besides Poor Surf] Not to Move to Florida

Fla. Teacher Accused Of Wizardry

Diocesan Prayers for This Week

Please remember the clergy and laity of:

St. Luke’s Church, South Glastonbury;
St. Paul’s Church, Southington;
Trinity Church, Southport; [where Jenni and I were married]
and
St. Peter’s Church, South Windsor.

Finally, Something Worth Reading in the New York Times

'Soul Surfers' Rekindle the Love of the Longboard

Maybe he placed his home on an Indian burial ground

Driver gets in wreck, sees his home catch fire, gets ticket

The Day of Pentecost

This week we hear of languages un-tangled, thirst that can be slaked, and the family that Jenni and I were invited to join.

The lections for the great day of Pentecost, a sort of "birthday" for the community of faith, may be found here.

[It is ancient Christian custom to wear something red on this day.]

Today in Quantum Theology

Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and Paul

No, they're not the Greek Beatles, but the foundation for what we speak of when we address the first concern of philosophy/theology. [If you don't know what the prime concern of all philosophy/theology is, then you have to come to class. Interestingly, the prime concern unites all philosophy/theology, both Western and Eastern.]

We'll learn more at 10am today at Trinity Church.

This Week in History

May 7, 1833: German pianist and composer Johannes Brahms is born in Hamburg. Intensely religious, he wrote many works for the church though one never officially employed him. He even compiled the biblical texts for his "German Requiem" himself.

May 8, 1373: English mystic Julian of Norwich receives 15 revelations (she received another the following day) in which she saw, among other things, the Trinity and the sufferings of Christ. She recorded her visions and her meditations on them 20 years later in her book The Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love.

May 8, 1559: The Act of Uniformity receives Queen Elizabeth I's royal assent, reinstating the forms of worship Henry VIII had ordered and mandating the use of the Book of Common Prayer (1552). [Yaay, Team BCP! -ed.]

May 8, 1915: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, the first black army chaplain in the United States, dies in Windsor, Ontario, embittered toward America for its racism. Many consider him to be the precursor of black theology for his statement, "God is a Negro.

May 9, 1983: Pope John Paul II reverses the Catholic Church's 1633 condemnation of Galileo Galilei's Copernican heliocentric theory of the universe.

May 10, 1310: In Paris, 54 Knights Templar are burned alive. The Catholic church created the Templars to protect Holy Land pilgrims from bandits, but the knights' quick rise in power and wealth made them unpopular. Philip the Fair of France against them trumped up charges of blasphemy and homosexuality to convince Pope Clement to disband the order and persecute its members.

May 10, 1886: Karl Barth, the most important theologian of the twentieth century and opponent of theological liberalism and political fascism (especially under Hitler), is born in Basel, Switzerland. When asked in 1962 (on his one visit to America) how he would summarize the essence of the millions of words he had published, he replied, "Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so".

May 11, 330: Roman emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor, inaugurates Constantinople as his capital on the site of the Greek city of Byzantium.

May 11, 603: Comgall, founder and first abbot of Bangor, dies. Considered the founder of Irish monasticism, by his death he oversaw 3,000 monks—including the famous missionary Columba.

May 11, 1610: Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, the first Catholic missionary to China, dies. Entering the country as a repairer of clocks, Ricci was criticized for becoming a Confucian scholar and allowing ancestor "worship." Though the number of his converts was relatively small, it included many influential Chinese scholars and families, who played key roles in the future of Christianity in China.

May 11, 1682: The General Court of Massachusetts repeals two 2-year-old laws: (1) a ban on the celebration of Christmas, and (2) capital punishment for banished Quakers who returned to the colony.

May 11, 1825: The American Tract Society organizes in New York City. A leader in developing printing technology, the nondenominational organization was publishing 30 million tracts a year by its sesquicentennial. [A forerunner of weblogs, etc. -ed.]

May 12, 1861: Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," published in the Atlantic Monthly three months earlier, is first performed at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, during a flag-raising ceremony for new Union recruits.