#Church minister

[scotianostra]

Donald Currie Caskie was born on May 22nd 1902 at Bowmore, Islay, his exploits during WWII earned him the nickname "The Tartan Pimpernel"

Dr Caskie was the minister at the Scots Kirk in Paris when the Germans invaded France in 1940 and frequently denounced the Nazis from the pulpit which meant he had more to fear than many after the invasion.

He was repeatedly urged to return home and after the Dunkirk evacuation he locked the church on the 9th of June of that year and joined the mass exodus of Paris, heading south.

The crofter's son from the inner Hebridean island of Islay, said to have had the Celtic gift of second sight, endured weeks of hardship to get to Bayonne but in the end rejected the chance of safe passage on the last ship bound for England on the grounds that his place should be given to a wounded man instead.

He walked to a village called Cambo les Bains where he met friends from Paris purely by chance and they all drove to the port city of Marseille - leaving just hours before the Germans arrived.

Dr Caskie believed that God had commanded him to stay in France and help stranded British subjects and he was warned that he must only engage with civilians and would be arrested if he assisted servicemen.

He ran a Seaman's Mission but was living a double life and secretly helped airmen, seamen and soldiers, under the noses of the Vichy Police, escape the country across mountains into Spain or by sea in a submarine or ship.

Dr Caskie, a Gaelic speaker whose codename was Monsieur Le Canard – Donald Duck – was eventually recruited by British Intelligence officers and was told that his mission was the last link of a chain of safe houses that they had set up, which stretched from Dunkirk to Marseille.

One of the soldiers Dr Caskie helped was Captain Derek Lang who was captured at St Valery-en-Caux in Normandy along with 10,000 soldiers from the 51st Highland Division, mostly Scots, 81 years ago this weekend.

He managed to escape the Germans and fled to Marseille where he recalled meeting a "courageous and fearless" Church of Scotland minister.

"Evil in war produces heroes and Donald Caskie is one of these," wrote the army officer in the forward to the Tartan Pimpernel – a book he said moved him to tears.

Caskie spoke Gaelic to confuse German spies and inquisitors, but was betrayed by an English double agent. He evaded the firing squad and then restarted his activities in Grenoble. There he again repeatedly escaped the clutches of the Nazis until he was sentenced to death - when the intervention of a German pastor had his sentence commuted and he saw out the war in a PoW camp. His awards were: OBE, MA and O.C.F.(an honour bestowed by the French government). The OBE was awarded by the king for services to his country.

The medal, along with other personal artefactcs, is on display in the church. at Bonore. His autobiography, The Tartan Pimpernel was published in 1951.

[nakeddeparture]

Edey Village, Christ Church, Barbados. Oliver Chesterfield Fields, 71, is a church minister.

https://youtu.be/-1f-S2yHjYo

His ‘gift’ was satisfied by rape and a hasty retreat when the husband came home. I have questions. What about you? Naked!!

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[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was spending the evening with a group and someone stole all my stuff, so I went to see who had security cameras pointing outside to find out who the thief was. The next day, the prime minister of Spain appeared and said he was sure who it had been and took a bunch of people and the offender to a church to make him confess by brute force.

[noctilin]

"pleased to see you're doing well, esteemed fix-it of mistria!" he's a seasonal romanceable, better act quickly before he's gone forever! 🌼✨

[not-so-superheroine]

[ave-immaculata]

if a teacher at a Catholic school is a poor role model of the moral life in a public way, they should be fired, simple as. if a teacher at a Catholic school cannot accurately describe and vocally affirm the teachings of the Catholic Church when asked, they should be fired, simple as. if a teacher at a Catholic school is known publically to be a non-practicing Catholic, they should be fired, simple as. Close schools if there aren't enough staff. I don't care. I'm sick of our Catholic schools disobeying the Bishop, the Church at large and pushing relativistic nonsense onto students as Catholicism.

[bookishbrigitta]

Okay, but, please consider Luke Skywalker hauling his Jedi school kids around in a 15 passenger van that he heard about from someone in his Interfaith Education SpaceBook group who said their church selling it. Like, it was a piece of junk, and he finally wore Han down enough to help him fix it, but when the light hits it in a certain way, you can just make out "Mustard Seeds Outreach Ministry of Grace Lutheran Church" or some such under the new paint.

[la-galaxie-langblr]

today on random languages my brain is going 👀 at is biblical hebrew and biblical greek

[o-uncle-newt]

So the JFSP 2024 special was... different, wasn't it? I'm trying to suss out what I feel about it.

I think I probably need a second listen to the full thing. (I did listen to the first third of it while busy with something else, didn't get into it particularly, and then relistened to the whole thing in order while walking in the park and liked that first third much better. So I think that relistening to the whole thing all together will be helpful.)

As anyone who has listened to JFSP S9 and has seen my username here can tell, I LOVED JFSP S9, in fact loved it more than I loved the regular sketch show, and the first thing that came to me after listening was "so this is clearly meant to be more like S9." But it didn't feel like that to me, and I'm not sure why- I think maybe because S9 had lower-octane jokes and no audience laughter, meaning that scenes felt like they were servicing the characters and arc rather than only the jokes. So there, the punchline didn't need to go at the end for the audience to know where to applaud, whereas here we had that more low-key, fittingly bucolic gently-told-story feel that didn't always have a punchline, but the audience still felt like they were trying to FIND the punchline and the ends of sketches in how they were laughing. (Or maybe it was part of the editing...?)

I usually LOVE audience laughter, so it feels weird for me to say that I wish I could find a version of this without it to see if it feels more S9-like, but I do kind of want that.

It felt like it was not one thing or another- not like the rest of JFSP, but not like S9 or JF's other narrative work either. And it's not meant to be like any of those, I'm sure... I just need time and a relisten or two to suss out what I think it is, or rather how it makes sense to me.

I loved the standup concept, and there were some very fun slice of life stories told through it. (Also, obviously, the cast was, as always, phenomenal.) As storytelling, I thought it was great, even if the ending felt a bit sudden. But I do need to listen again to figure out what I think it is, and I wish I could do that without audience laughter, and without the feeling like this was meant to be a sketch show.

[thebreakfastgenie]

Howard Stern: How many Jews can say they were baptized?

Billy Joel: All the Jews living in Spain during the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella.

[intrinsicallydisordered]

I asked my friend, who’s been a DRE and catechist for nearly 40 years, what her advice would be to me, who is just recently back in active ministry.

“Don’t expect that you will effect any real change.”

So, yeah, the state of the Church isn’t looking too hot rn…

I should say, she was fired for advocating for the child of queer parents to be baptized. The pastor refused. And when she refused to turn the child away, he fired her for “not fulfilling the job description.”

[scotianostra]

November 10th 1781 saw the birth of Thomas Blacklock.

Thomas Blacklock was born of "humble parentage", meaning basically they were ordinary folk, he fell foul to smallpox as an infant meaning from just 6 months old he was rendered blind.

Unable to afford any sort of special schooling for young Thomas, his parents read to him in his childhood, progressing to a more mature reading subject as he grew older, this was well before braille gave the blind the opportunities they have nowadays. Milton, Spenser, Prior, Pope, and Addison were among the authors read to him, he also learned some latin along the way and studied for the church, remarkably he was appointed Minister of Kirkcudbright! The parishioners however objected to this though, due to him being blind and he was unable to take u the position.

During the 1750s he was sponsored by the philosopher David Hume He then retired to Edinburgh, where he became a tutor. The poet Allan Ramsay was one of his favourites and it encouraged Blacklock to write some poetry himself, some of which he managed to get published, but most of his writing has long been lost over time. I did however find some passages which were published, one of them shows his anguish at his plight....

"Nor end my sorrows here: The sacred fane

Of knowledge, scarce accessible to me,

With heart-consuming anguish I behold:

Knowledge for which my soul insatiate burns

With ardent thirst. Nor can these useless hands,

Untutor’d in each life-sustaining art,

Nourish this wretched being, and supply

Frail nature’s wants, that short cessation know."

As well as having many friends amongst the Edinburgh Literati, Blacklock had read to him, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which we know nowadays as the Kilmarnock Edition, Rabbie Burn's first collection of poems. He wrote to Burns with his admiration and praise of the book, Burns on reading the praise commented......." belonged to a set of critics for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His opinion that I would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition, fired me so much, that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction." The two became good friends during Burns' time in Edinburgh and a further letter from the Ploughman Poet is said to have persuaded Burns from sailing to the West Indies, his passage was booked and he was set to leave, Blacklock's intervention indirectly saved his life since the ship sank on the voyage.

I've had to try and whittle this post down and will post a link to much more of Thomas Blacklock's life, he might be little known to many of you out there but he lives on in Edinburgh where he lived for many years on West Nicholson Street, the building now houses some licensed premises, most of you will know the Pear Tree, with it's famous beer garden, but the bar next door is named after Thomas Blacklock, as "The Blind Poet"

A quote I found when putting this together seems to sum the man up....."he never lost a friend, nor made a foe"

He passed away in Edinburgh on 7 July 1791 aged 69.

The third pic is a hand written Epistle to the Rev Thomas Blacklock by Rabbie Burns.

[abrahamvanhelsings]

it's been a good few days since we made our (re)acquaintance with our good professor dr. van helsing, which means im going to do what i promised to do literal months ago and present my historical faceclaim: dutch reformed church minister (dominee) cornelis eliza van koetsveld (1807-1893):

one of the most well-known ministers of his era, he started out as a simple village preacher and ended up as court minister - he even baptised queen wilhelmina of the netherlands (1880-1962). he was also, like many dutch reformed ministers in the 19th century, a fairly popular author. it was relatively common for dutch ministers to write fictionalised accounts of their experiences, especially in the countryside, about the people and their habits, the day-to-day occurences, their own efforts to teach and guide their flock correctly and the difficulties they encountered. such accounts usually included some kind of social commentary (van koetsveld's later work was inspired by dickens) and moral lessons for the readers as well. van koetsveld's most popular book can be found here, though it is of course in dutch.

so why van koetsveld? going off his looks alone, when i saw his picture for the first time, i was struck by how in almost every single one of his portraits, he looks kind and caring and yet - there is something mischievous about him, like he's in on some joke or a little piece of knowledge that you, the onlooker, have not yet been made aware of. he looks like a knowledgeable elderly man who also knows how to have little fun - which, to me? is van helsing to a t. and it's not just in his face: his written work exudes the authoritativeness of the 19th century preacher but is full of witty comments and sharp wisecracks that still make me chuckle when i read them.

there is also something else that endears him to me, and that makes me think he's a good fit for van helsing: van koetsveld founded the first dutch school for special education of what we now know to be neurodivergent children, the 'hague idiot school' (1855-1920). the name of his institute doesn't translate particularly well to modern times, but it is important to view this in context: the children who attended this school were generally thought to be feeble-minded and therefore incapable of development, but van koetsveld disagreed with that sentiment. now i don't think van koetsveld would've believed vampires to be anything else but a baseless countryside myth, but his views on neurodivergent children show a certain open-mindedness, to think differently from other people, that is a core trait of van helsing too. (somewhat in that vein, for anyone interested, when the time comes, ill make a post on his conduct towards renfield)

tl;dr, when looking at his pictures i can easily imagine him doing any of the things we see van helsing do in the books: teasing seward, maintaining his gentle but firm bedside manner around his patients, getting up to the various nighttime shenanigans from the next few weeks, and van koetsveld's real-life temperament, as far as can be established, seems to collide quite well with the character of van helsing.

[religioused]

Being filled with the Holy Spirit was considered to be a sign of God’s acceptance in the early Christian church. That same sign can be used as we consider the ordination of women and LGBT plus people. 

[hellcatazura]

I'm happy to finally announce publicly that I'm now a Minister of Satan

Photo: Stephie Scarlet Horns: StoryTeller Cosplay Rosary: Unholy Rosaries Pitchfork Pin: Psychic Circle Oddities

[anintelligentoctopus]

Actually whenever you do try to fob off evangelists with 'I'm already a Christian/I already go church' etc they always ask you which church and it's just occurred to me that this might be a way of figuring out if you are trying to get rid of them by doing just that bc if you can't actually name which church/denomination then you've been caught out and they can give you the sales pitch