by Philipp Otto Runge ...

- Mass of St. Gregory, Hours of Henry VIII, Illuminated by Jean Poyer, France, Tours, ca. 1500

It's not only Halloween, it's also Reformation Day .... On 31 October 1517, Martin Luther wrote to Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, protesting the sale of indulgences.

I find indulgences just wrongheaded and I'm not alone - here's a little about indulgences and the second vatican council from What Happened at Vatican II by John O'Malley SJ.....

With the Protestant observers present, the subject was touchy. Indulgences had driven Luther to post his "Ninety-Five Theses," the beginning of the Reformation. The Council of Trent in a hasty and somewhat perfunctory decree just before the council ended reaffirmed the legitimacy of indulgences and provided measures to obviate abuses of them. In subsequent centuries the popes, and especially Pius XII, had granted even more indulgences, with the possibility of gaining large numbers of so-called plenary indulgences in a single day. Some theologians and bishops felt that the matter was again spinning out of control, while others questioned the whole concept, which was, put most simply, that by performing certain good actions individuals could lessen the time in Purgatory for themselves or others ........

The first prelate to speak, in the name of the Melkite episcopate, was the intrepid Maximos IV Saigh, and he fired off the most radical criticism. By categorically denying that there was any connection between the intercession of the church and the partial or full remission of any temporal punishment resulting from sin, the concept on which the practice rested, he torpedoed the basis for it. Moreover, he challenged the assumption of a continuity between the practice of the early church and the medieval doctrine and practice of indulgences. "There is no indication that in the primitive and universal tradition of the church indulgences were known and practiced as they were in the Western Middle Ages. More specifically, during at least the eleven centuries when the Eastern and Western churches were united there is no evidence of indulgences in the modern sense of the term ... The theological arguments that try to justify the late introduction into the West constitute, in our opinion, a collection of deductions in which every conclusion goes beyond the evidence." .........

The interventions the next day from Alfrink speaking for the Dutch episcopate, König for the Austrian, and Döpfner for the German did not help matters. The last two, especially, made a strong impression. Döpfner did not go so far as to call for the abolition of indulgences, but he severely criticized the theology that underlay the document, the misleading way it handled the history of indulgences, and the changes in practice, all too minimal, that it advocated. He was the last to speak that day ..... In the written reports the episcopal conferences of Belgium, England and Wales, Scandinavia, Haiti, Brazil, Chile, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Dahomey, Japan, and Laos expressed dissatisfaction with the document prepared by the Penitentiary, and the last three called for the abolition of indulgences. Two years later, on January 1, 1967, Paul VI would issue an Apostolic Constitution on the matter, Indulgentiarum Doctrina, which consisted of a modest revision of the original text ..........

A kind of interesting aside is the Mass of Saint Gregory ....

The Mass of Saint Gregory is a subject in Roman Catholic art which first appears in the late Middle Ages and was still found in the Counter-Reformation. Pope Gregory I (c. 540-604) is shown saying mass just as a vision of Christ as the Man of Sorrows has appeared on the altar in front of him, in response to the Pope's prayers for a sign to convince a doubter of the doctrine of transubstantiation ........

The story was hardly seen in art until the Jubilee Year of 1350, when pilgrims to Rome saw a Byzantine mosaic icon, the Imago Pietatis, in the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which was claimed to have been made at the time of the vision as a true representation. In this the figure of Christ was typical of the Byzantine forerunners of the Man of Sorrows, at half-length, with crossed hands and a head slumped sideways to the viewer's left. It has now been lost, but is known from many copies. This image seems to have had, perhaps initially only for the Jubilee, a Papal indulgence of 14,000 years granted for prayers said in its presence .....

There were several prints that were often copied by artists, notably ten different engravings of the subject by Israhel van Meckenem and a woodcut by Albrecht Dürer of 1511. Many of these included printed indulgences, usually unauthorised. The oldest dated Aztec feather painting is a Mass of 1539 (see gallery) following one of the van Meckenem indulgence prints (not the one illustrated). This particular print began with a "bootlegged" indulgence of 20,000 years, but in a later state the plate has been altered to increase it to 45,000 years


- The Mass of St. Gregory, feathers on a wood panel 68 x 56 cm, Mexico 1539. Musée de Jacobins, Auch. By Diego Huanutzin, Aztec puppet ruler under the Spanish between 1539-1541. This technique was an speciality of the aztec craftmen called "amanteca" and this is the oldest example of christian art in america. - Wikipedia

A woman dressed as a red devil was shot to death and her ex-con boyfriend critically wounded when the couple was ambushed in Brooklyn after returning from a Halloween party.

Ciera Glenn, 25, was shot several times in the chest early Saturday, while her companion Tyree Shelton was blasted in the face, witnesses said. Both collapsed in pools of blood in the lobby of a building at the Sheepshead Bay Houses.

"I opened the lobby door and I saw the young girl dead," said horrified neighbor Luke Kopelakis, 71, who stumbled upon the grisly scene. "There was blood in the elevator, blood on the walls."

Glenn, the mother of a 7-year-old son, and Shelton spent their final hours together at a late-night Halloween bash at the bar 95 South in Prospect Heights, the dead woman's sister said.

"I told her I love her and gave her a hug," said Trina Porter, 27. "I said I'd call her tomorrow - I didn't know it was going to be the last time I saw her."

The couple walked past Halloween decorations, including pumpkins and a life-sized witch, when they returned to Shelton's apartment in the Batchelder St. building around 5:45 a.m.

Then shots rang out.

Glenn died instantly, while Shelton, 27, managed to drive himself 2 miles to Coney Island Hospital, police said.

Shelton, who is in critical condition, has been arrested several times on drug charges and served nearly two years in prison after a 2006 conviction for gun possession, according to records.

The motive for the shooting remains a mystery as detectives looked for surveillance video and studied the bloody crime scene. No one has been arrested.

Glenn, who was set to graduate from Medgar Evers College in May, balanced her studies with a full-time job at a Coney Island car rental outlet and with raising her son, Robert, her sister said.

She was also president of Prime Squad A.C. Divas on Deck, an auto club that hosts fund-raisers and gives to charities.

"She was a wonderful mother," said a tearful Porter. "She was the life of the party. When you were feeling down, she would bring you right up."

"That was my heart right there," she said. "This is really hard."


Story by: jlemire@nydailynews.com

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this and nothing more."



Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;--vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore--

Nameless here for evermore.



And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

"'Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door--

Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door;

This it is and nothing more."



Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you"--here I opened wide the door--

Darkness there and nothing more.





quoted from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe



--------------------


I always liked Poe's The Raven, I think there's a musical tone to it. It begs to be read aloud. And what better time than the night before Halloween?



I hope you all enjoy your weekend. I'll be taking the children trick-or-treating tomorrow. Diego will be coming along with us. He is dressing as a Wizard this year. I'll post pics soon :)

title: The Darkest Pleasure Book 3 in the Lords of the Underworld Series

author: Gena Showalter

genre: paranormal romance

published: 2008

pages: 374

first line: Reyes stood on the roof of his Budapest fortress, five stories up, his feet balanced precariously on the highest ledge.


rated: 3 1/2 out of 5

Reyes is a man possessed. Bound by the demon of pain, he is forbidden to know pleasure. Yet he craves a mortal woman, Danika Ford, more than breath and will do anything to claim her—even defy the gods.


Danika is on the run. For months she's eluded the Lords of the Underworld, immortal warriors who won't rest until she and her family have been destroyed. But her dreams are haunted by Reyes, the warrior whose searing touch she can't forget. Yet a future together could mean death to all they both hold dear.…

The Darkest Pleasure is book 3 in Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underworld Series. In this series, after opening Pandora's Box, a group of immortal men have been cursed to house demons for eternity. They live in a remote castle in Budapest.


Just to name a few, Maddox is the Keeper of Violence, Paris is the Keeper of Promiscuity, Reyes the Keeper of Pain and Lucien is the Keeper of Death.




Each one of these immortals keeps these demons inside himself, the demon always part of his thinking and awareness, almost like an inner voice. These demons make life for these men nearly unbearable and love almost impossible.
Each book in the series involves all of the immortals, but centers on one in particular and adds a heroine to the mix.



Book three centers on the immortal Reyes, the Keeper of Pain. I've actually been interested in reading Reyes story since I read the first book in the series.
Reyes houses the Demon of Pain which will not rest until Reyes injures himself, badly. *see the first line quoted above* His demon craves agony and Reyes finds himself craving it as well. It's almost like an addiction. He'll injure himself, heal quickly, only to have to do it again and again, for all eternity. Small injuries don't please his demon. Reyes jumps off buildings, shatters bones, has his spleen removed, stabs himself...stuff like that. If he doesn't injure himself on a regular basis, Reyes will have to injure others.




Reyes falls for Danika Ford the first time he sees her, in book 1. Danika and her family are on the run after being held captive by the Lords themselves.



One of the Lords, Aeron, has been ordered by the Titans to kill Danika and her family. Aeron however, does not want to kill the family, but his demon is craving it. He begs Reyes to trap him deep underground, near Hades, where he won't be able to do harm. This is where the storyline with Danika and Reyes begins in book 3.


Danika also finds herself unable to forget the beautiful and haunted Reyes since she first sees him. She is confused however as to whether the Lords are friends or enemies.





While on the run and in disguise, Danika is captured by Hunters, humans who dedicate their lives to finding and capturing the Lords of the Underworld. However, these Hunters use extreme measures and aren't in their right minds themselves.


When Reyes finds out Danika has been captured, he goes to save her.
Danika and Reyes are instantly drawn to each other when they reunite but Reyes wonders if Danika is secretly working with Hunters to bring the Lords down.
He also wonders if his 'angel', which is what he calls her, can truly love him despite his demon constantly craving physical pain.



As the story unfolds the Lords discover that Danika has a special power of her own.

He was right and wrong wrapped in the same sensual package, with a kiss and flavor that transported her at once to the heights of heaven and the depths of hell.




He had sprung from her nightmares, yet he had become her fantasy, weaving gossamer wings of desire through her every cell. He was the only thing she wanted and everything she shouldn't have.

I like how Gena Showalter gives her heroes heart and soul and makes her heroines smart and sassy. These reads are fun. Plus I'm a sucker for Alpha males. Funny enough I don't read many paranormals, but this author has become a favorite.






I read and really enjoyed the first book in this series, The Darkest Night. I stumbled upon it at the bookstore one day and am very glad I did. The second book is called The Darkest Kiss, and was so-so for me mostly because of the influx of different characters and a plot that was a bit too busy for me. I didn't want to give up on this series and have been meaning to get back into it. I am glad I finally did.



I liked reading about Danika and Reyes and I wondered how these two would work it out. The love scenes were well written, thankfully they weren't 'over the top', considering Reyes loves pain. The author found a way for these two characters to be together despite the violent demon Reyes houses.


I liked how Reyes was torn between his love for Danika and just leaving her be. He's a great hero, tormented and sensitive. He didn't want to corrupt Danika, he considers her an angel.

The storyline was fun, the writing was fast paced and I do look forward to the next book in the series. I also liked how the author weaved in other characters to the plot, new and old. It wasn't overwhelming. One thing I disliked was the length of the book, I felt like it could have been 50 pages or so shorter. Other than that, this was a good read.




If you enjoy paranormal romance, Alpha males and lots of action, you might like this series. I recommend reading them in order though.


Next in the series is The Darkest Whisper, which centers on Sabin who houses the Demon of Doubt.










R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge

So it is actually getting kind of difficult to find trick plays...but I found one 7 pages deep on youtube and here it is...

I've finished Radical Orthodoxy: A Critical Introduction by Steven Shakespeare. Here's a bit from the almost end .....

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(pp. 164-5) ... Milbank in particular has insisted on a traditional understanding of God as 'pure act', with no unfulfilled potential. There can be no lack in God, only fullness, if God is not to be made into the sickly mirror image of our own striving. Milbank therefore strongly opposes any idea that God can suffer ....Milbank holds that God 'experiences nothing of evil ... does not in any way suffer, acts without fear in the world' (WMS, p. 229). Only so can God overcome our slavery to death.

However, it is far from clear that all ideas of God's compassion need result in this kind of caricature of the sympathetic counselor in the sky. For God to allow himself to be affected by creation can be seen as an expression of divine freedom, as strengthening the dignity and worth of creation. God takes the risk of creating life other than his own, life which is fragile, mortal and tempted to evil .....

(pp. 177-8) ... The Christian God is made up of relationships, and the giving and receiving of love. Compassion is not alien to the Trinity. And the fact of the world, of there being something which is not God, invites us to imagine how God enjoys and suffers creation.

Radical Orthodoxy is right to warn us against the constant temptation to project all-too-human ideas of existence and relationship on to God. If God becomes nothing more than the reflection of our own insecurities and desires, then God is little more than an idol. However, this does not mean that classical ideas of God's self-sufficiency and immunity from change and suffering can simply be allowed to pass without challenge. It is ironic that a theology which sets so much store by theology's ability to take over all of philosophy's functions should still be so under the spell of Plato and the Greeks.

It is important to ask what difference creation, sin, history, incarnation and resurrection make to God, even if we are aware that our words are broken and fumbling. The God of the Bible and Christian tradition longs for his beloved, is grieved by sin. Through Christ, God takes on himself the vulnerability of the servant and is exposed to the reality of death. The Spirit is sent to be an ongoing guide for the Church in its geographical, historical and cultural journeying. In other words, God doesn't remain confined within the borders of our definitions of what is appropriate to the divine, any more than the father of the prodigal son bowed to the dictates of convention when running to meet his lost offspring on the road (Luke 15.20), or Jesus kept himself separate from the dirt, pain and celebration of human life. The scriptural stories do not offer a metaphysical blueprint of God, but they must inform a Christian understanding of God's nature. Perhaps one of the great weaknesses of Radical Orthodoxy is its inattention to this biblical challenge.

The Christian community that is formed in response to this revelation is called to embody a living compassion for and solidarity with creation. If it works toward mutuality and reconciliation between its members, it cannot turn its back on the world. As Ward suggests, it must always risk itself beyond its borders. That risk entails the possibility that it will have to learn its own wounds, how it has caused violence to and received grace from others. Radical Orthodoxy is too ready to gloss over the ambiguities and failings of the premodern Church, and so has not done enough to convince its feminist and liberationist critics that it really has learnt the lessons of imperialism and patriarchy. A discipline of compassion might prevent us from rushing in to categorize people and tell their story for them, and free us to learn new lessons about how deep and wide the freedom of the gospel runs. Radical Orthodoxy itself has proved capable of moving beyond the established traditions of the Church to open up a more inclusive stance towards same-sex unions. Perhaps it needs to reflect upon what has motivated this move - one likely to make it deeply unpopular in conservative Christian quarters.

Compassion is therefore not a weak masochism, but a mature, confident humanity. It does not wish away the realities of human mortality and fear with speculative doctrines, but lives with and learns from them. An ethic of compassion does not mean applying sticking plaster to the world's pains, but entering into them creatively, discerning the power of resurrection to transform lives and situations. However, to proclaim resurrection cannot mean to bypass the passion and cross, and the silence of the tomb.

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Ok, so the site that the video I want you to see is on sucks, you can't embed a link from it, so here it is...

On the topic of helmet to helmet hits here is an announcer who is pretty pissed off about a helmet to helmet hit that occurred in a blowout.

Just saw the cover of SI this week, and it's this hit. There has been a lot of talk about head hits and concussions lately, and I had not posted this vid yet. This continues the softification of the NFL...was this hit really that bad. Was he headhunting? I thought it looked like a pretty clean hit...

NO OTHER FACTOR HAS BEEN MORE HARMFUL TO DEMOCRACY THAN THE FILIBUSTER

At a recent meeting with blog heavyweights at the White House the President answered many questions from the bloggers and the FILIBUSTER issue came through loud and clear as something that is hurting our country because it hinders the legislative process.

QUESTION FROM BLOGGER: I want to go back to the idea of working with Republicans. And given the comments from McConnell and -- well, all of them -- I think that what a lot of people find frustrating is that our side compromises and continues to compromise just to get that one Republican on. We’re going to get one of the Maine twins -- whatever. And it doesn’t happen, and then by the time health care or whatever goes through we’ve compromised; we still don’t get any Republicans.

I don’t anticipate this changing in the next two years. I think it’s going to get worse. How are you going to get Democrats to understand that compromise means the other side has to give something sometimes, one day?

THE PRESIDENT: Look, obviously I share your frustrations. I’ve got to deal with this every day.

Q UESTION FROM BLOGGER: Well, I don’t expect you to talk like a blogger. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: But I guess I’d make two points. The first is, I’m President and not king. And so I’ve got to get a majority in the House and I’ve got to get 60 votes in the Senate to move any legislative initiative forward.

Now, during the course -- the 21 months of my presidency so far, I think we had 60 votes in the Senate for seven months, six? I mean, it was after Franken finally got seated and Arlen had flipped, but before Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. So that’s a fairly narrow window. So we’re right at the number, and that presumes that there is uniformity within the Democratic caucus in the Senate -- which, Barbara, you’ve been around a while. You know that not every Democrat in the Democratic caucus agrees with me or agrees with each other in terms of complicated issues like health care.

But that’s not the system of government we have. We’ve got a different system. I will say that the damage that the filibuster I think has done to the workings of our democracy are at this point pretty profound. The rate at which it’s used just to delay and obstruct is unprecedented. But that’s the reality right now.

So I guess my answer is that there has not been, I think, any issue that we’ve worked in which I have been willing to sign on to a compromise that I didn’t feel was a strong improvement over the status quo and was not the best that we could do, given the political alignments that we’ve got.

And, yes, it leaves some folks dissatisfied. I understand that. But let’s take the health care bill. As frustrated and angry and dispirited as the base might have been -- we didn’t have a public option, and it just dragged on for such a long time, and you’re having conversations with Grassley, even though it turns out Grassley has no interest in actually getting something done -- all the complaints which I was obviously very familiar with, the fact of the matter is, is that we got a piece of legislation through that we’ve been waiting a hundred years to get through; that in the aggregate sets up a system in which 30 million people are going to get health insurance; in which we’ve got an exchange that forces insurance companies to compete with a pool of millions and will be policed so that they can’t jack up prices; that pool has purchasing power that they’ve never had before; that you’ve got a patient’s bill of rights that was the hallmark, sort of the high-water mark of what progressives thought we could do in the health care field -- we got that whole thing basically just as part of the bill.

You’ve got investments in community health centers and preventive medicine and research that’s going to help improve our health care delivery systems as a whole. And we can build on that.

And I know this analogy has been used before, but when Social Security was passed, it was for widows and orphans. And a whole bunch of folks were not included in it. But that building block, the foundation stone, ended up creating one of the most important safety nets that we have. And I think the same thing is going to happen with health care.

I think when you look at financial regulatory reform, there’s been a whole bunch of debates about where that could have gone and how it could have gone. And there are folks in the progressive community who complain we should have broken up the banks, or the derivatives law should have been structured this way rather than that way.

But the truth of the matter is, is that this is a incredibly powerful tool. You’ve got a Consumer Finance Protection Agency that that can save consumers billions of dollars -- is already saving folks billions of dollars just by having it passed. Already you’re starting to see negotiations in terms of how mortgage folks operate, in terms of how credit card companies operate.

You’ve got capital requirements that are being imposed on banks and other financial institutions that are much higher than they were before, which creates a cushion against the kind of too-big-to-fail that we’ve seen in the past.

You’ve got derivatives markets that are now being forced into open clearinghouses and markets so people know exactly what’s going on. You’ve got Volcker rule that some people didn’t think it was strong enough, but basically prohibits some of the proprietary trading that helped to create this market in securitized subprime loans that helped to trigger this disaster.

So in each of these cases, this glass isn’t full, but it’s got a lot of water in it. And so I guess my point is that on all these debates, my constant calculation has been, are we better off going ahead and getting this done? Or are we -- is it better for us to have a fight that may end up being symbolically satisfying but means that we lose because we just don’t have enough votes.

And I’ll give you one last example because I know this is a famous example in the blogosphere, is the stimulus. I mean, if folks think that we could have gotten Ben Nelson, Arlen Specter and Susan Collins to vote for additional stimulus beyond the $700 billion that we got, then I would just suggest you weren’t in the meetings.

This notion that somehow I could have gone and made the case around the country for a far bigger stimulus because of the magnitude of the crisis, well, we understood the magnitude of the crisis. We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.

And getting 60 votes for what was an unprecedented stimulus was really hard. And we didn’t have the luxury of saying -- first of all, we didn’t have 60 votes at the time. We had 58. And we didn’t have the luxury to say to the Senate, our way or the highway on this one.

So we did what we could in an emergency situation, anticipating that we were going to have to do more and hoping that we could continue to do more as time went on.

YOU CAN HELP – IF YOU FOLLOW MY BLOG AND YOU ARE WILLING TO HELP END THIS RIDICULOUS WEDGE IN OUR DEMOCRATIC PROCESS – PLEASE GO TO THE WEB SITE BELOW AND SIGN UP:

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SOURCE: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/28/914273/-Bloggers-roundtable-with-President-Obama