Words 10.18

 Words Twice a Week 10.18

(sent my computer off to get repaired – so this is done on an older model. Hope it all works!)

From the church calendar (kind of a quiet week) -

Oct 23 -

James, brother of Jesus Well, there are a lot of James in the New Testament and the early church, and probably some confusion between them. And some question about what it means to be “brother of the Lord”. Did Mary and Joseph have other children? Apparently James did not believe in Jesus during Jesus’ lifetime, but did after the resurrection and became one of the leaders of the Jerusalem church.

And a few days from the world/earth calendar -

Oct 21 -

+ birthday of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1772. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. When you mess with Mother Nature (in this case by shooting the albatross, in our case by loading the atmosphere up with heat trapping gasses) things don’t end well! Here’s a prayer by Wendy Robins -

    We share a common earth.

    We stand among each other.

    We share our planet,

    we share birth, death, hunger, and love.

       The sky opens above us and we receive space.

       The earth stands beneath us and we receive ground.

       The air becomes our breath and we are one wind.

       The water becomes our blood and we are one sea.

       Living things die for us.

       And we die, returning to the soil, sea, and air.

    We are the people of pain and fear,

    we are the people of anger and joy,

    we are the people of compassion and grace.

    In all of us is a longing

    for a life that has not yet come,

    for a world that is free and just,

    a dream of hope for all people.

+in 1983 the 17^th General Conference on Weights and Measures defined a meter as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of about three hundred millionth of a second. That’s handy. But wait a minute – “about”? (It had been defined in 1793 as one ten millionth of the distance between the Equator and the North Pole, and in 1960 as “1650763.73 wavelengths of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the levels 2p10 and 5d5 of the krypton 86 atom.”) Ok, maybe that distance light travels is not so bad after all. So does Menards have to order a whole new box of meter sticks each time, or can they just shave a little off the ends?

Oct 22 -

+the International Meridian Conference adopts Greenwich England as the initial longitudinal meridian – it’s where the day begins!

+Xerox copier invented in 1938

+5,000 troops intentionally exposed to a nuclear explosion in Nevada (1951)

Oct 23 -

+in 1964 Jean Paul Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize, saying that he did not want to take sides in the East-West struggle of the Cold War by accepting an award given out by a Western institution. Isn’t that an interesting concept – can you imagine someone today turning down an award (or a position) because they didn’t want to take sides between the Republicans and Democrats?

+Swatch announces “Internet time” – in Internet time, each day is divided into 1000 units called “beats”, each one is 1 minute, 26.4 seconds.

+Heeeeeeere’s Johnny – it’s the birthday (1925) of Johnny Carson

+and – it’s the birthday of “Weird Al” Yankovic! Wow - this day could use a few extra beats!

Oct 24 -

+The United Nations was founded in 1945

+Houdini gave his last performance in Detroit in 1926. He had a temperature of 104 – possibly due to being hit is the abdomen several days earlier – and a broken ankle. He died a week later of peritonitis and appendicitis.

+Rosa Parks died in 2005 –

    God of all,

    of all the different tribes and groups and factions that we classify ourselves into,

    thank you for the gentle strength you gave Rosa Parks,

    and for the courageous and powerful way she lived it out.

    We rejoice in the progress we have made,

    we lament the long way we still have to go.

    May the memory and spirit of Rosa Parks keep us going

      marching on till victory is won.

Oct 25 -

+Geoffrey Chaucer died in 1400. Along with writing The Canterbury Tales, he is credited with the first use of about 2,000 words commonly used today, and to some extent being responsible for much of the shape of the English language. (It would be an interesting exercise to write a poem or prayer using only the 2000 words. Maybe for next week!) You can see pictures of the Canterbury pilgrims and three different “translations” of the first 18 lines here. Here’s a Celtic prayer for travelers – which we really aren’t right now, unless you count the trips to SuperOne and Menards! And back and forth to camp -

   Life be in my speech,

   Sense in what I say,

   The bloom of cherries on my lips,

   Till I come back again.

     The love Christ Jesus gave

     By filling every heart for me,

     The love Christ Jesus gave

      Filling me for every one.

   Traversing corries, traversing forests,

   Traversing valleys long and wild.

   The fair Mary still uphold me,

   The Shepherd Jesu be my shield,

   The fair Mary still uphold me,

   The Shepherd Jesu be my shield.

+Roger Miller died in 1992 – Dang me!

That’s the week -

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