Various & Sundry, May 4

It's the 10th anniversary of my ordination and I've been thinking about heresy all day. Not for me personally.  It's because I'm revising the Confirm not Conform curriculum.  To that end, I finally tracked down the source of the Helen Keller quote, "The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next." It's from her essay on Optimism, free on Google Books. She follows that thought up with the great caveat, "The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life." Love it.

Yesterday, while I was pondering the news for the World In Prayer prayers, I found this tidbit about the lost parakeet in Tokyo who told the police his address. "The bird's owner, a 64-year-old woman, said she taught the address to her pet after she bought him two years ago. She had lost another parakeet previously and wanted to ensure that did not happen again, police said." How very practical.

Lots of good obits this week, but how can I resist telling you about professional poker player Amarillo Slim? I've linked here to the obit in the London Telegraph for its very British recounting of a very American man.  It begins, "One of a cabal of rough and ready gamblers, mostly Texans, living on their wits in the days when the game was largely confined to dimly-lit, smoke-filled back rooms, Slim sprang from a Wild West tradition dating from the days of Billy The Kid. Many Americans frowned on poker, some even considering it a sin." Oh, tut tut.

Did you hear the one about the six logicians at a restaurant?

Daniela Papi has a sharp-ish post on Lessons I Learned entitled, So, you’re helping people with “no skills”…?!

I can picture these skill-less people you speak of as you stand there in your suit, I imagine they can grow food we only know how to pick off of a shelf, perhaps build their own home, and fix the limited electronic items they have...Drop me in a developing country, in a community without electricity, with no job, and many kids to feed, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have the skills to survive. I bet the “villagers” (yep, I feel sick!) in that community would indeed describe me as having “no skills” at all… and in their world, they’d be right. 

Yep.

Finally, I  loved Dave Walker's blog post about a bricked up door.  As he says, "There is nothing worse than not knowing when a door was bricked up." The comments are awesome as well.

Enjoy.