Chena Hot Springs Resort in Alaska
One of the Best Spots to View the Aurora Borealis
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Common Ground?
NRA Issues Statement Amid Calls For New Gun Control Laws
The National Rifle Association of America has broken its silence to comment on Friday's gun violence that ravaged a tight-knit Connecticut community, releasing a statement in which the gun-owners' rights group said it "is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again."
In the short statement posted on its blog, as well as on its Facebook page, the organization said that it "is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown."
Runners-up were Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani women's rights activist who survived after being shot in the head and neck by Taliban; Apple CEO Tim Cook; Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi; and scientist Fabiola Gianotti. In 2011, Time picked "The Protester."
The magazine unveiled its Person of the Year selection on the "Today" show on Wednesday. The president's reelection in November showed "the Obama effect was not ephemeral anymore, no longer reducible to what had once been mocked as that 'hopey-changey stuff,'" Time's Michael Scherer wrote in the accompanying cover story. "It could be measured in wars stopped and started; industries saved, restructured or reregulated; tax cuts extended; debt levels inflated; terrorists killed; the health-insurance system reimagined; and gay service members who could walk in uniform with their partners. It could be seen in the new faces who waited hours to vote and in the new ways campaigns are run. America debated and decided this year: history would not record Obama’s presidency as a fluke."
The cover features a silver border--just the fourth time in Time's 89-year-history the magazine was published without its trademark red. Time.com also published a slideshow featuring "never-before-seen images of the Obama presidency" from Election Night to Newtown. “It was easy to think that maybe 2008 was the anomaly," President Obama told Time in an interview. “And I think 2012 was an indication that, no, this is not an anomaly. We’ve gone through a very difficult time. The American people have rightly been frustrated at the pace of change, and the economy is still struggling, and this president we elected is imperfect. And yet despite all that, this is who we want to be. That’s a good thing.”
Earlier this month, the magazine's online readers voted for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as their choice for Person of the Year in what Time called a "completely unscientific" poll. The Person of the Year, instituted in 1927, is "bestowed by the editors on the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year."
Obama was chosen as the 2008 Person of the Year following his historic election. But at an annual luncheon to discuss its Person of the Year issue last month, Stengel said he wasn't a lock this time around. "It's an interesting year because we have a re-elected president," Stengel said. "Sometimes we pick them, sometimes we don't." At the event, Newt Gingrich--Time's Man of the Year in 1995--said "the American voter" would be his choice, but wouldn't bet against Obama. "I have twice underestimated him by a large margin," the former House Speaker said, adding: "If they pick Obama, it would be perfectly fair to have a tiny elephant crying somewhere in the corner."
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Rachel Evans says...
God can’t be kept out
Those little Advent candles sure have a lot of darkness to overcome this year. I see them glowing from church windows and on TV, in homes and at midnight vigils, here in Dayton and in Sandy Hook. Their stubborn flames represent the divine promise that even the smallest light can chase away the shadows lurking in this world, that even in the darkest places, God can’t be kept out.
It’s a hard promise to believe right now, I know. The children in the pictures are just too young, too familiar. Our hearts ache; the darkness seems so heavy and thick.
We all grieve in different ways, and we must be patient with one another as we do, but there is a rumor floating around among the people of God that is so vile, so dangerous and untrue, it simply must be called out. It’s a rumor that began long before the shots rang out at Sandy Hook and long before this Advent season.
It’s the rumor that God can be chased out.
You might have heard it from Bill O’Reilly and those who, every Christmas, work themselves into a frenzy over the “War on Christmas.” They storm checkout counters to demand that clerks issue them a “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays,” crying persecution when inflatable manger scenes are moved from public courthouses to private property. They demand that every gift purchased, every mall opened late, every credit card maxed out must be done so in Jesus’ name…or else Christ will be taken out of Christmas. They do it because someone told them that God needs a nod from the Empire to show up, forgetting somehow that God showed up as a Jew in the Roman Empire.
In a barn.
As a minority.
After a genocide.
To the applause of a few poor shepherds.
If the incarnation tells us anything, it’s that God can’t be kept out.
Or you might have heard the rumor from a red-faced preacher who insists that if we can’t keep God’s name in our pledge, on our money, and on our courthouse walls, then we can’t keep God in our country. He has convinced his congregation that the fight of faith is a fight for power, that we win when we see God’s name on our cash, on our statues, on our idols, and in our legislation. He thinks that the removal of God’s name is the removal of God’s very self. He has forgotten that when God showed up, God was executed by the government.
On a cross.
Emptied of all power.
Only to rise from a borrowed grave three days later because God can’t be kept out.
Or, most recently, you might have heard the rumor from Mike Hucakbee ora friend on Facebook, saying that God abandoned the children at Sandy Hook because, though children have every right to pray in public schools, those schools cannot sponsor prayer events out of deference to religious freedom. When asked where God was on that awful Friday morning, these Christians have said that God did not show up at Sandy Hook because “God is not allowed in public schools,” because “ we have systematically removed God” from that place.
Brothers and sisters, let’s call this one for what it is: bullshit.
God can be wherever God wants to be. God needs no formal invitation. We couldn’t “systematically remove” God if we tried.
If the incarnation teaches us anything, it’s that God can be found everywhere: in a cattle trough, on a throne, among the poor, with the sick, on a donkey, in a fishing boat, with the junkie, with the prostitute, with the hypocrite, with the forgotten, in places of power, in places of oppression, in poverty, in wealth, where God’s name is known, where it is unknown, with our friends, with our enemies, in our convictions, in our doubts, in life, in death, at the table, on the cross, and in every kindergarten classroom from Sandy Hook to Shanghai.
God cannot be kept out.
And although my doubt and anger make it hard for me to believe today, I will keep lighting those little Advent candles like a religious fool until they help me in my unbelief. May their flames be a reminder to all of us that we don’t have to know why God let this happen to know that God was there….
and here,
and in those swaddling clothes,
and on that cross,
and in that grave,
and on the throne.
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