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One of the more sedate and contemplative church services of the year is the Ash Wednesday service, which was yesterday.
It's a bit sad to me, our church has the service at noon; not in the morning, so some people can attend before work, and not in the evening when the early shift working stiffs like me can be there, but smack in the middle of the day when there's no way for us to get away.
Thus each year i find myself at a lovely service in another church nearby with a wonderful pastor named Hyacinth who is very upbeat.
This year her sermon was based on a the true story of a young man who wound up, for all of ten seconds before being spit back out, swallowed and in the mouth of a humpback whale while kayaking with his father through the Straits of Magellan, and how we don't need to wait for such a huge event to take time to reevaluate our lives the way the young man said he wanted to do when it was all over.
Her words with the imputation of the ashes are, "Repent and believe the Gospel," which i find a quite refreshing positive change from the usual, "Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return."
She emphasized repentance is a turning back toward the cross when you find you're walking away from it, and i'm going to be lingering over this definition for quite some time.
Linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and the cue is Wound.
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While Good Fences Around the World seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird, i still enjoy looking for and posting interesting fences, so i will!
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It's Angel Sammy's Poetry Day! This week's image and my poem:
I know I said I'd do it
when pigs fly fast and far,
well this is a good try,
but pig ballet? No cigar!
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Angel Brian's Family of Brian's Home - Forever hosts the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop. It's time to share something for which i am thankful.
We are all thankful the generator worked with no drips, runs or errors on Tuesday when lightning knocked out power to part of our neighborhood as well as thankful the electricity came back on four hours later.
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Today is:
Alamo Day -- Texas, US
Celebrate Your Name Week -- Thursday: Name Tag Day, celebrating those silly tags that say, "Hello, My Name is Illegible"!
Crufts Dog Show -- Birmingham, England (the World's Greatest Dog Show; Best in Show here is the most prestigious award in the world of dogs; through Sunday)
Feast of Excited Insects -- China; Korea (sometimes called Chinese Groundhog Day, the day insects are supposed to awaken for spring; date approximate)
Foundation Day -- Norfolk Island, Commonwealth of Australia
Headache Relief Day -- aspirin was patented today in 1899
Independence Day -- Ghana(1957)
Kirishima Jingu Otaue-sai -- Kirishima Jingu Shrine, Kirishima, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan (rice planting festival)
National Frozen Food Day
National White Chocolate Cheesecake Day
Oreo Cookie Day -- no history found on why this day, but if you like Oreos, do you need a reason?
Stoneware Pottery Appreciation Day -- internet generated by those who love stoneware
St. Colette's Day (Patron of Corbie, France; against the death of parents)
St. Rose of Viterbo's Day (Patron of exiles, people rejected by religious orders, tertiaries; Viterbo, Italy)
World Book Day -- UK and Ireland (most other countries celebrate this on April 23; more information is here)
Birthdays Today:
Ryan Nyquist, 1979
Shaquille O'Neal, 1972
Amy Pietz, 1969
Connie Britton, 1968
D.L. Hughley, 1963
Tom Arnold, 1959
David Gilmour, 1946
Rob Reiner, 1945
Kiri Te Kanawa, 1944
Dave Gilmour, 1944
Ben Murphy, 1942
Willie Stargell, 1941
Valentina Tereshkova-Nikolaeva, 1937
Lorin Maazel, 1930
Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, 1928
Alan Greenspan, 1926
Ed McMahon, 1923
Will Eisner, 1917
Lou Costello, 1906
Bob Wills, 1905
Ring Lardner, 1885
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806
Anna Claypoole Peale, 1791
Cyrano de Bergerac, 1619
Michelangelo Bounarroti, 1475
Debuting/Premiering Today:
"Both Your Houses"(Play; Pulitzer Prize for Drama), 1933
"La Traviata"(Opera), 1853
"La Sonnambula"(Opera), 1831
Today in History:
Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam, 1521
The First Fleet arrives at Norfolk Island (an external territory of Australia) in order to found a convict settlement, 1788
York, Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto, 1834
After a thirteen day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers defending the Alamo are defeated and the fort is captured, 1836
Giuseppe Verdi's opera La Traviata receives its premiere performance in Venice, 1853
Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society, 1869
Bayer registers "aspirin" as a trademark, 1899
The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins, 1951
United Kingdom colonies Gold Coast and British Togoland become the independent Republic of Ghana, 1957
After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time, 1981
Michelangelo computer virus begins to affect computers, 1992
A referendum in Moldova results in the electorate voting against possible reunification with Romania, 1994
Picasso's painting Tête de Femme is stolen from a London gallery, and is recovered a week later, 1997
Microsoft is fined €561 million for not providing E.U. residents with an alternative web browser to Internet Explorer, 2013
The Crimean parliament votes unanimously to make the Crimea part of Russia, 2014
NASA's Dawn space probe enters orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, 2015
The world's oldest message in a bottle is found in Western Australia, thrown from the German ship Paula 132 years ago (12 June 1886), 2018
On his first visit to Iraq, Pope Francis meets with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the Shiite cleric's home in Najaf, 2021
Nikki Haley withdraws from the presidential race, leaving Donald Trump as the Republican candidate, 2024
Wow, that sounds like an incredible sermon! I wish I could hear it.
ReplyDeleteSo happy they got your power back on relatively quickly.
I would be happy for a working generator too.
ReplyDeletelovely 6 sentence, the poem, world history n so much info in the end!
ReplyDelete"Repent and believe the Gospel" was exactly what the priest said to us yesterday (only in Danish of course) ... and of course I like the "dust" one better ;)
ReplyDeleteYour poem is fun. Dancing pigs sounds even worse than flying ones ;)
And your thankful this time makes me wonder: Does every household have their own emergency generator? Here it's only hospitals and possibly very large and vital places like fire stations and suchlike that have those. Normal citicens, shops and so on just wait for the current to return.
I do believe that that is the right preaching to spread. Repent and believe in the gospel in God. I like the fence and I see we've been warned about the dog and to stay out. Cute poem.
ReplyDeleteI'll try to blog for Brian's Thankful Thursday. I got your tip about gathering together a few blog writing challenges and post them as one. I was feeling scattered as I tried to keep up with as many prompts as I could write. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing all your blog hops, & prompts.
Sorry, I forgot to fill my name & website for my comment made at 4:56 am.
DeleteWe could see having a midday service as a second option but around here most of the services are in the evening. Even those that work from home can't really leave for a service at noon. That kayak thing was on the news and so amazing!
ReplyDelete