"But where can
we draw water,"/ Said Pearse to Connolly,/"When all
the wells are parched away?"/
O plain as plain can be /There's nothing but our own
red blood/ Can make a right Rose Tree."
--WB
Yeats
Why
"poncer.blogspot.com":
PONC is a
business acronym that stands for "Price Of
Non-Conformance", which in layman's terms means
putting a price-tag on a screw-up. The term originated
from a Phillip Crosby quality class, an '80s fad that
impressed us immensely in showing that one
could actually get rich saying things like
"quality is free".
"O God,
as once the good angels
humbled themselves to adore You appearing before them as a man,
may man humbly adore You appearing before us as bread."
-found here
________________________
"Some first discover Christ's Body, the Church,
and are convinced by her history or theology or structure that she is indeed Christ's Body,
but these people need to go on and discover the Head of the Body they have encountered,
the source of her life, history, structures, theology, all of which are servants of his,
Christ himself. There are others who discover the Person of Christ and are won by his glory,
his truth, his power, his radiance. These people need to go on to discover Christ's Body,
the Church, and learn to love her and abide in her as Christ loves and abides in her.
Christ has identified himself with his Body in a remarkable way:
"And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?'...
'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting'" --Ralph Martin in "Catholic Church at the End of an Age"
It seems I was guilty of my own version of Obamamania - I naively thought that electing him might have a huge side benefit of healing the racial division. But I started to gain a clue about how entrenched the anger is not so much by the rhetoric of Pastor Wright, but by how Donna Brazille and others hinted that this black church ain't all that unusual. I had invested Obama powers he does not have.
It suddenly dawned on me that nothing from the outside (other than Christ) can remove the bitterness. Not even the election of a black president. Even if Obama were elected, there would be new conspiracies, new outrages, new Pastor Wrights.
Yet hopelessness and Christianity are mutually exclusive. I was reading the book "God and Hillary Clinton" last night. Mother Teresa had delivered a blistering address against abortion in front of the Clintons. That might be seen to be the end of her responsibility. But no:
That was not the end of the relationship, which Hillary looks back upon with fondness. In the short time she had left on earth, Mother Teresa continued to try to change Mrs. Clinton's view on abortion. According to Hillary, "she sent me dozens of notes and messages with the same gentle entreaty." She dealt with the first lady with patience and kindness, but firm conviction: "Mother Teresa never lectured or scolded me; her admonitions were always loving and heartfelt," wrote Hillary, adding that she had the "greatest respect for her opposition to aboriton." Mother Teresa saw in Hillary a potentially huge convert to the pro-life cause, and as was her style, she never gave up hope."
Imagine...trying to change Hillary's mind on abortion! Now there's true faith.
UPDATE: Read the Obama speech. The moral equivalency argument was one I suppose he felt he had to make, since he's trying to appeal to both his base and independents and so he had to make things equivalent without losing one or the other. Perhaps he really believes in that equivalency. But what's sad is that it has to be about race when isn't it about anti-Americanism? This is no different for me than when Jimmy Carter sat next to Michael Moore at the '04 Democratic convention and thus lent Moore the aura of respectability. What follows is what I would've liked to have heard Obama say:
"Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, and many of you listening are of Irish descent. The way your forebears felt about the English is unfortunately the way many blacks today think of white America, including Rev. Wright. I would argue that Pastor Wright should be held to a different standard - yes, a lower standard - than someone who has not felt the sting of prejudice. I'm arguing for a double-standard not as redress for the past, for the past cannot be redressed, but merely out of an understanding of how our weaknesses differ. As the apostle Paul wrote: 'One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man,' - such as Pastor Wright - 'whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.' It's not for those who can eat meat to condemn those who can't. This is not to patronize Rev. Wright as to say that we all have fallen short of the glory of God. But I will take a modest step towards the equality that Martin Luther King spoke of by no longer attending Trinity church. I am of a different generation than Pastor Wright, I have seen racial progress, and I am running for the presidency of the United States. I understand that with that comes responsibilities not just to the ethnic group I identify with but to all Americans. With your help, I will be a bridge-builder by eating the meat of a single standard. Just as I would never consider voting for a candidate who considered his spiritual father to be Rev. Fred Phelps, who carries signs saying that "God hates fags", so too would I be held from now on to a similar standard."
