#Good Friday Year B Passion Of Our Lord

[ongole]

DAILY SCRIPTURE READINGS (DSR) 📚 Group, Fri Mar 29th, 2024 ... Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion , Year B

Reading I

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Is 52:13—53:12

See, my servant shall prosper,

he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.

Even as many were amazed at him--

so marred was his look beyond human semblance

and his appearance beyond that of the sons of man--

so shall he startle many nations,

because of him kings shall stand speechless;

for those who have not been told shall see,

those who have not heard shall ponder it.

Who would believe what we have heard?

To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

He grew up like a sapling before him,

like a shoot from the parched earth;

there was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him,

nor appearance that would attract us to him.

He was spurned and avoided by people,

a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,

one of those from whom people hide their faces,

spurned, and we held him in no esteem.

Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,

our sufferings that he endured,

while we thought of him as stricken,

as one smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our offenses,

crushed for our sins;

upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,

by his stripes we were healed.

We had all gone astray like sheep,

each following his own way;

but the LORD laid upon him

the guilt of us all.

Though he was harshly treated, he submitted

and opened not his mouth;

like a lamb led to the slaughter

or a sheep before the shearers,

he was silent and opened not his mouth.

Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away,

and who would have thought any more of his destiny?

When he was cut off from the land of the living,

and smitten for the sin of his people,

a grave was assigned him among the wicked

and a burial place with evildoers,

though he had done no wrong

nor spoken any falsehood.

But the LORD was pleased

to crush him in infirmity.

If he gives his life as an offering for sin,

he shall see his descendants in a long life,

and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him.

Because of his affliction

he shall see the light in fullness of days;

through his suffering, my servant shall justify many,

and their guilt he shall bear.

Therefore I will give him his portion among the great,

and he shall divide the spoils with the mighty,

because he surrendered himself to death

and was counted among the wicked;

and he shall take away the sins of many,

and win pardon for their offenses.

Responsorial Psalm

__________________

Ps 31:2, 6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25

R (Lk 23:46) Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

In you, O LORD, I take refuge;

let me never be put to shame.

In your justice rescue me.

Into your hands I commend my spirit;

you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God.

R Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

For all my foes I am an object of reproach,

a laughingstock to my neighbors, and a dread to my friends;

they who see me abroad flee from me.

I am forgotten like the unremembered dead;

I am like a dish that is broken.

R Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

But my trust is in you, O LORD;

I say, “You are my God.

In your hands is my destiny; rescue me

from the clutches of my enemies and my persecutors.”

R Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

Let your face shine upon your servant;

save me in your kindness.

Take courage and be stouthearted,

all you who hope in the LORD.

R Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

Reading II

_______________

Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9

Brothers and sisters:

Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens,

Jesus, the Son of God,

let us hold fast to our confession.

For we do not have a high priest

who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,

but one who has similarly been tested in every way,

yet without sin.

So let us confidently approach the throne of grace

to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.

In the days when Christ was in the flesh,

he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears

to the one who was able to save him from death,

and he was heard because of his reverence.

Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered;

and when he was made perfect,

he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Verse Before the Gospel

________________

Phil 2:8-9

Christ became obedient to the point of death,

even death on a cross.

Because of this, God greatly exalted him

and bestowed on him the name which is above every other name.

The passion narratives are proclaimed in full so that all see vividly the love of Christ for each person. In light of this, the crimes during the Passion of Christ cannot be attributed, in either preaching or catechesis, indiscriminately to all Jews of that time, nor to Jews today. The Jewish people should not be referred to as though rejected or cursed, as if this view followed from Scripture. The Church ever keeps in mind that Jesus, his mother Mary, and the apostles all were Jewish. As the Church has always held, Christ freely suffered his passion and death because of the sins of all, that all might be saved.

Gospel

___________

Jn 18:1—19:42

Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley

to where there was a garden,

into which he and his disciples entered.

Judas his betrayer also knew the place,

because Jesus had often met there with his disciples.

So Judas got a band of soldiers and guards

from the chief priests and the Pharisees

and went there with lanterns, torches, and weapons.

Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him,

went out and said to them, “Whom are you looking for?”

They answered him, “Jesus the Nazorean.”

He said to them, “I AM.”

Judas his betrayer was also with them.

When he said to them, “I AM, “

they turned away and fell to the ground.

So he again asked them,

“Whom are you looking for?”

They said, “Jesus the Nazorean.”

Jesus answered,

“I told you that I AM.

So if you are looking for me, let these men go.”

This was to fulfill what he had said,

“I have not lost any of those you gave me.”

Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it,

struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear.

The slave’s name was Malchus.

Jesus said to Peter,

“Put your sword into its scabbard.

Shall I not drink the cup that the Father gave me?”

So the band of soldiers, the tribune, and the Jewish guards seized Jesus,

bound him, and brought him to Annas first.

He was the father-in-law of Caiaphas,

who was high priest that year.

It was Caiaphas who had counseled the Jews

that it was better that one man should die rather than the people.

Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus.

Now the other disciple was known to the high priest,

and he entered the courtyard of the high priest with Jesus.

But Peter stood at the gate outside.

So the other disciple, the acquaintance of the high priest,

went out and spoke to the gatekeeper and brought Peter in.

Then the maid who was the gatekeeper said to Peter,

“You are not one of this man’s disciples, are you?”

He said, “I am not.”

Now the slaves and the guards were standing around a charcoal fire

that they had made, because it was cold,

and were warming themselves.

Peter was also standing there keeping warm.

The high priest questioned Jesus

about his disciples and about his doctrine.

Jesus answered him,

“I have spoken publicly to the world.

I have always taught in a synagogue

or in the temple area where all the Jews gather,

and in secret I have said nothing. Why ask me?

Ask those who heard me what I said to them.

They know what I said.”

When he had said this,

one of the temple guards standing there struck Jesus and said,

“Is this the way you answer the high priest?”

Jesus answered him,

“If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong;

but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”

Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest.

Now Simon Peter was standing there keeping warm.

And they said to him,

“You are not one of his disciples, are you?”

He denied it and said,

“I am not.”

One of the slaves of the high priest,

a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off, said,

“Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?”

Again Peter denied it.

And immediately the cock crowed.

Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the praetorium.

It was morning.

And they themselves did not enter the praetorium,

in order not to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover.

So Pilate came out to them and said,

“What charge do you bring against this man?”

They answered and said to him,

“If he were not a criminal,

we would not have handed him over to you.”

At this, Pilate said to them,

“Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law.”

The Jews answered him,

“We do not have the right to execute anyone, “

in order that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled

that he said indicating the kind of death he would die.

So Pilate went back into the praetorium

and summoned Jesus and said to him,

“Are you the King of the Jews?”

Jesus answered,

“Do you say this on your own

or have others told you about me?”

Pilate answered,

“I am not a Jew, am I?

Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me.

What have you done?”

Jesus answered,

“My kingdom does not belong to this world.

If my kingdom did belong to this world,

my attendants would be fighting

to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.

But as it is, my kingdom is not here.”

So Pilate said to him,

“Then you are a king?”

Jesus answered,

“You say I am a king.

For this I was born and for this I came into the world,

to testify to the truth.

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

When he had said this,

he again went out to the Jews and said to them,

“I find no guilt in him.

But you have a custom that I release one prisoner to you at Passover.

Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?”

They cried out again,

“Not this one but Barabbas!”

Now Barabbas was a revolutionary.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged.

And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns and placed it on his head,

and clothed him in a purple cloak,

and they came to him and said,

“Hail, King of the Jews!”

And they struck him repeatedly.

Once more Pilate went out and said to them,

“Look, I am bringing him out to you,

so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.”

So Jesus came out,

wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak.

And he said to them, “Behold, the man!”

When the chief priests and the guards saw him they cried out,

“Crucify him, crucify him!”

Pilate said to them,

“Take him yourselves and crucify him.

I find no guilt in him.”

The Jews answered,

“We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die,

because he made himself the Son of God.”

Now when Pilate heard this statement,

he became even more afraid,

and went back into the praetorium and said to Jesus,

“Where are you from?”

Jesus did not answer him.

So Pilate said to him,

“Do you not speak to me?

Do you not know that I have power to release you

and I have power to crucify you?”

Jesus answered him,

“You would have no power over me

if it had not been given to you from above.

For this reason the one who handed me over to you

has the greater sin.”

Consequently, Pilate tried to release him; but the Jews cried out,

“If you release him, you are not a Friend of Caesar.

Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.”

When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus out

and seated him on the judge’s bench

in the place called Stone Pavement, in Hebrew, Gabbatha.

It was preparation day for Passover, and it was about noon.

And he said to the Jews,

“Behold, your king!”

They cried out,

“Take him away, take him away! Crucify him!”

Pilate said to them,

“Shall I crucify your king?”

The chief priests answered,

“We have no king but Caesar.”

Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus, and, carrying the cross himself,

he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull,

in Hebrew, Golgotha.

There they crucified him, and with him two others,

one on either side, with Jesus in the middle.

Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross.

It read,

“Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.”

Now many of the Jews read this inscription,

because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city;

and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.

So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate,

“Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’

but that he said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’.”

Pilate answered,

“What I have written, I have written.”

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus,

they took his clothes and divided them into four shares,

a share for each soldier.

They also took his tunic, but the tunic was seamless,

woven in one piece from the top down.

So they said to one another,

“Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be, “

in order that the passage of Scripture might be fulfilled that says:

They divided my garments among them,

and for my vesture they cast lots.

This is what the soldiers did.

Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother

and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas,

and Mary of Magdala.

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved

he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.”

Then he said to the disciple,

“Behold, your mother.”

And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

After this, aware that everything was now finished,

in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled,

Jesus said, “I thirst.”

There was a vessel filled with common wine.

So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop

and put it up to his mouth.

When Jesus had taken the wine, he said,

“It is finished.”

And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.

Here all kneel and pause for a short time.

Now since it was preparation day,

in order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath,

for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one,

the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken

and that they be taken down.

So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first

and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.

But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead,

they did not break his legs,

but one soldier thrust his lance into his side,

and immediately blood and water flowed out.

An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true;

he knows that he is speaking the truth,

so that you also may come to believe.

For this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled:

Not a bone of it will be broken.

And again another passage says:

They will look upon him whom they have pierced.

After this, Joseph of Arimathea,

secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews,

asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus.

And Pilate permitted it.

So he came and took his body.

Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night,

also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes

weighing about one hundred pounds.

They took the body of Jesus

and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices,

according to the Jewish burial custom.

Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden,

and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.

So they laid Jesus there because of the Jewish preparation day;

for the tomb was close by.

***

FOCUS AND LITURGY OF THE WORD

Today is Good Friday a holy day of remembering as Jesus demonstrates his perfect obedience to his Father’s will and his love for us. At Gethsemane, Jesus said “Sit here while I pray. My soul is sorrowful even to death…..take this cup away from Me, but not what I will but what You will” (Mark 14: 32-36). Next, Judas betrayal and Peter’s denial before Jesus is handed over to Pontius Pilate. Then beaten, scourged, dressed in purple, with a crown of thorns placed on his head (Matthew 27: 26-31; Mark 15: 1-20; John 19: 1-3). 

We witness the crowd chanting  “King of the Jews” and watch with heavy hearts as Christ picks up his cross (Matthew 27: 32; Mark 15: 21; John 19:16-17) and is whipped by Centurions on the path to The Place of the Skull or Golgotha. Along the way signs of loving mercy emerge towards Jesus Simon of Cyrene  (under orders by Centurions) assist Jesus in carrying the cross; a loving exchange occurs between Jesus and his mother as she reaches out to him; the women of Jerusalem show distress; and Veronica provides Jesus a cloth to wipe the blood and sweat from his face. The soldiers shamefully strip Jesus and secure him to the cross with nails through his hands and feet. The cross is raised. 

Christ suffering for us.  

At approximately 3 pm the skies darken and Christ crys out “Father into Your hands I commend my spirit..and when he had said this he breathed his last” (Luke  23-33-46).  Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and other women at the cross (Matthew 27: 55-56; Mark 15:40; Luke 23: 49; John 19:25) are torn with grief; Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus assist as Jesus is removed from the cross, his body prepared, and transported to the tomb. 

We venerate the cross and pray for what is yet to come. 

Lent has been a time for us to  journey with Jesus. To silently reflect on scripture, to pray, and to deepen our understanding and faith in the risen Christ so we can open our hearts to love each other more deeply, to stay the course from sin to freedom and death to life. 

I pray we have responded to the whisperings of Jesus during these past weeks. 

***

【Build your Faith in Christ Jesus on #dailyscripturereadingsgroup 📚: +256 751 540 524 .. Whatsapp】

[ngeche-nt]

RESURRECTION OF THE LORD YEAR B

RESURRECTION OF THE LORD YEAR B

April 4, 2021 John 20:1-18 https://youtu.be/3MiiOOYOohE 20:1 Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. 20:2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have…

[stephsmith321]

Marijuana landlord turns activist, arguing local policies are slowing legal weed

Originally Published On Ocregister.com By Brooke Staggs On May 23, 2018

Stephanie Smith, a Pacific Palisades real estate developer, is challenging the constitutionality of a portion of Moreno Valley’s marijuana ordinance. (Courtesy photo)

Stephanie Smith was balancing one of her 2-year-old twins on a hip during a quiet morning in December when she heard a commotion outside her home in Los Angeles’ affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood.

Someone began banging on her front door. As she moved to open it, she saw a line of police officers in her front yard and red laser gun sights coming through the windows, bouncing off her and her children.

Officers searched her home. They found and took blueprints for a kitchen remodel project and her cell phone.

At the same time, 80 miles due east in San Bernardino, dozens of officers were raiding two warehouses and another home owned by Smith. They seized nearly 25,000 marijuana plants and arrested eight men for growing cannabis in the three locations without city permits.

Smith wasn’t arrested or fined. But headlines the next day painted the 43-year-old as a “queenpin” and the “mastermind” of a multimillion-dollar illegal marijuana-growing operation.

“To be labeled a ‘drug lord’ in international press was a surprise,” she said.

“I don’t even have house plants.”

Though the mother of five boasts that she’s the biggest cannabis landlord in California, Smith insists she’s just that, a landlord. She says she isn’t involved with the marijuana businesses ran by her tenants.

Smith also insists her San Bernardino clients weren’t hiding. She says they’re part of California’s entrenched cannabis industry that’s struggling to join the emerging legal market, and that those efforts are being hampered by “corrupt” and “regressive” city policies.

Smith shrank from public attention when she was part of a very different scandal a decade ago, legally changing her last name to something that’s as anonymous as it can get.

This time, she says she’s fighting back.

Smith has filed lawsuits against San Bernardino and three other Inland Empire cities over their marijuana policies. And she’s floating marijuana ballot measures in six communities, determined to make conditions fairer for the industry that’s been so good to her.

First brush with infamy

Smith, whose name at birth was Stephanie Darcy, was raised in Minneapolis by a single working mom. She grew up dreaming of being an artist, and she still nurses a passion for painting.

After studying marketing in Boston, and using her artist’s eye to flip houses in the Phoenix area, she moved to Southern California in 2005 to attend business school at UCLA.

She was dating and working for Dr. Craig Alan Bittner, who had a successful liposuction practice in Beverly Hills. Things were going well until 2008, when a trio of lawsuits claimed Bittner had let Smith perform botched liposuction procedures even though she had no medical training. The lawsuits were eventually dismissed.

“At the end of the day, I made a regulatory mistake a decade ago and paid a $242 fine,” Smith said.

Things got more complicated when authorities caught wind that Bittner was violating medical waste laws by using fat removed from his patients to power his and Smith’s cars.

Smith said the intent with “LipoDiesel” was never to suggest that people could actually run their vehicles on human fat. She said it was simply a way to illustrate what was possible if people opened their minds to alternative energy sources. And she said they asked permission from every client, with all but one of some 8,000 patients enthusiastically consenting.

There was no word for internet “trolls” then, but Smith said she was intimidated into silence.

“If I could go back in time, I would have talked very openly about our goals for changing our view of energy,” she said. “I would have talked about my passion for the environment instead of being afraid.”

Becoming a cannabis landlord

Smith’s foray into another controversial industry started as a favor.

With the housing market in crisis a decade ago, Smith dove into commercial real estate.

A friend of a friend was growing cannabis under California’s loose medical marijuana laws as he put himself through law school in 2009. But he was struggling to find space to house his operation, with local and federal policies that made it risky for landlords to take on marijuana tenants.

Smith says she’s never been a “hardcore” marijuana consumer herself. “But like a lot of people, I wanted the laws changed.” So she let the small-time grower lease one of her L.A. properties.

The tenant finished law school and moved on. So Smith put the site back on the market, thinking its water and power stations would make for a good laundromat or nail salon.

She said she had no idea then that anyone would recognize signs of a grow house. But 45 minutes after the property went up on Craigslist, a cultivator offered double the asking price. Soon, she was in a bidding war, eventually landing a grower who paid three times the requested rent.

Stephanie Smith in San Bernardino, CA., Friday, May 18, 2018. Smith is the self-proclaimed largest cannabis landlord in California and has become a major advocate for the industry. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Sun/SCNG)

Stephanie Smith helps canvas for signatures, for a San Bernardino ballot initiative, with Alexander Navarrette in the Verdemont neighborhood of San Bernardino, CA., Friday, May 18, 2018. (Staff photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, The Sun/SCNG)

Today, she said her company, Industrial Partners Group, owns two million square feet of industrial space. Most of it is in Southern California, but she has property as far north as Sacramento. And, while she rents buildings to Walmart and bakeries, many of her warehouses are leased to cannabis growers and manufacturers.

One reason Smith believes she’s been so successful is that many cannabis entrepreneurs were accustomed to dealing with landlords who refused to sign leases or made them use fake names so they could feign ignorance. Smith said she tried to “inject some professionalism” by treating them like other valuable tenants.

She’s also discreet.

B-Real, stage name for lead Cypress Hill rapper Louis Freese, leases a Downtown L.A. warehouse from Smith. When asked if she has any other famous tenants, Smith pauses, flashes her frequent smile and says: “I have a nice reputation among hip-hop and sports celebrities.”

Smith considers her work with the industry a form of activism. But this election cycle, she says, is different.

“This is my first time taking it to the streets.”

Raid prompts activism

Smith wore a gray cotton shirt, jeans and colorful sneakers on a recent Friday evening as she joined a political support team canvassing San Bernardino’s Verdemont neighborhood. The goal is to collect the 8,602 signatures needed to get her proposed cannabis measure on the November ballot.

Residents seemed largely receptive, though they’ve been through this before.

When Californians voted to legalize recreational marijuana under Proposition 64 in 2016, San Bernardino voters also approved Measure O, which laid out a framework for cannabis businesses to operate in town.

The measure was needed because Prop. 64 gives cities the rights to regulate businesses in their borders. And a study of local marijuana policies shows more than two-thirds of cities in California still bans all marijuana ventures.

San Bernardino awarded its first business permit under Measure O last year, to the owners of Flesh Showgirls. They now run a strip club in one half of the building and Captain Jack’s marijuana dispensary in the other.

But multiple lawsuits were filed over Measure O, and in December a judge threw the initiative out because, he said, it used spot zoning to create a monopoly that allowed just two shops in town. That ruling is being appealed.

Smith says her San Bernardino tenants had applied at least eight times for licenses to operate their businesses legally under Measure O, inviting city officials to inspect their high-end security and odor filtration systems.

A week after the raids, she said two of the tenants received letters from the city saying they could legally grow marijuana if they paid $140,000 in fees. Smith said they paid up but still haven’t been cleared to operate, leaving 100 people out of work. And she said police have been called 10 times since the raids over reports of vandalism and homeless people squatting in the vacant buildings.

The city is now accepting applications under its own licensing scheme. But a new policy says companies previously deemed to be operating illegally aren’t eligible for permits, leaving Smith’s clients with no route to run legal cannabis businesses in San Bernardino.

City and police officials declined to comment on any of Smith’s claims, citing pending and potential litigation.

Branching out

Spurred by what happened in San Bernardino, Smith has filed additional lawsuits against Colton, Hemet and Moreno Valley.

Concerns raised in the suits include Colton’s requirement that residents get permission from the city if they want to grow marijuana plants at home for personal use, as allowed under Prop. 64. And that anyone working for a marijuana business in Moreno Valley, from contractors to janitors, first get a city permit.

Her team is also collecting signatures for marijuana ballot measures in Colton, Hemet, Upland, Bakersfield and Kern County.

The initiatives are tailored for each area, Smith said. That means Central Valley policies support a cultivation-heavy market while San Bernardino is encouraged to put its affordable industrial properties to work by becoming a manufacturing hub, making vape pens and edibles popular with cannabis consumers.

California is close to an inflection point, Smith believes, where marijuana businesses won’t have to hide or beg cities to let them in. When that happens, Smith said she hopes Southern California cities will have fair policies in place that position them to compete for the jobs and tax revenue the cannabis industry can generate.

And Smith, of course, will have properties ready to house those valuable tenants.

[spiritualdirections]

Fasting from the Eucharist: A silver lining to a Triduum without Communion?

“Today too, I think, fasting from the Eucharist,” wrote Joseph Ratzinger in 1984, “really taken seriously and entered into, could be most meaningful on carefully considered occasions, such as days of penance—and why not reintroduce the practice on Good Friday?"

In Behold the Pierced One  (pp.97-98), Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) suggested that the Church reintroduce an ancient practice of not receiving communion for a time, not because the person is in a state of sin, but for other spiritual reasons (most prominently, solidarity with those who can’t receive). This idea never went anywhere, but today it’s a helpful Plan B for how to think about a Triduum in which most of the faithful cannot receive our Lord:

“When Augustine sensed his death approaching, he ‘excommunicated’ himself and undertook public penance. In his last days he manifested his solidarity with the public sinners who seek for pardon and grace through the renunciation of communion. He wanted to meet his Lord in the humility of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for him who is the Righteous and Merciful One. 

“Against the background of his sermons and writings, which are a magnificent portrayal of the mystery of the Church as communion with the Body of Christ, and as the Body of Christ itself, built up by the Eucharist, this is a profoundly arresting gesture. The more I think of it, the more it moves me to reflection. Do we not often take the reception of the Blessed Sacrament too lightly? Might not this kind of spiritual fasting be of service, or even necessary, to deepen and renew our relationship to the Body of Christ?

“The ancient Church had a highly expressive practice of this kind. Since apostolic times, no doubt, the fast from the Eucharist on Good Friday was a part of the Church’s spirituality of communion. This renunciation of communion on one of the most sacred days of the Church’s year was a particularly profound way of sharing in the Lord’s Passion; it was the Bride’s mourning for the lost Bridegroom (cf. Mk 2:20). 

“Today too, I think, fasting from the Eucharist, really taken seriously and entered into, could be most meaningful on carefully considered occasions, such as days of penance—and why not reintroduce the practice on Good Friday?... A fasting of this kind—and of course it would have to be open to the Church’s guidance and not arbitrary—could lead to a deepening of personal relationship with the Lord in the sacrament. It could also be an act of solidarity with all those who yearn for the sacrament but cannot receive it. It seems to me that the problem of the divorced and remarried, as well as that of intercommunion (e.g., in mixed marriages), would be far less acute against the background of voluntary spiritual fasting, which would visibly express the fact that we all need that ‘healing of love’ which the Lord performed in the ultimate loneliness of the Cross.

“Naturally, I am not suggesting a return to a kind of Jansenism [in which people refrained from communion for years out of a false humility]: fasting presupposes normal eating, both in spiritual and biological life. But from time to time we do need a medicine to stop us from falling into mere routine which lacks all spiritual dimension. Sometimes we need hunger, physical and spiritual hunger, if we are to come fresh to the Lord’s gifts and understand the suffering of our hungering brothers. Both spiritual and physical hunger can be a vehicle of love.”

[poisondog2]

Launchpad: The Mask we Wear- Chapter 2

Ring Ring!...

Ring Ring!...

Ring Ring!...

Ring Ri- Click!

“H-Huh? Yes, hello?”

“Launchpad, finally!” Came the voice of the fowl’s employer.

“Mr. McDee! What can I do for you?”

“The boys are getting out of school soon, so you should start heading out to get them.”

“Oh, right! Of course! I’ll be right over the get them!” He responded, jumping out of his hammock and rushing to take a shower.

“Very good, and I’ll want you to stay when you get to the mansion. We have things to discuss about the next trip we're taking.”

“No problem Mr. McDee!” Was all Launchpad said before ending the call and jumping into the shower. Cleaning off the sweat and irritation from earlier he jumped out and towelled off and grabbed a clean, by his standards, olive coloured collared shirt and yellow tie from his drawer.

Throwing on his clothes, cargos, jacket, and hat in all, before standing in front of the limo and composing himself, “Smile… People trust you when you smile, a smile makes others happy. They make you feel safe,” he finished the mantra he’s told himself many times before as his beak pulled into a “genuine” smile before getting in and starting the car.

The sun was waning in the sky as Launchpad took the route to the triplets’ school like he’s done many times before, parking just outside. Drumming his fingers against the wheel he didn’t have to wait long before the boys rushed out and entered the limo.

“Hey Launchpad!” Came the chorus of voices from the red, blue, and green-clad brothers.

“Heya! How was school today?” He asked, leaning against the window between them.

“Good, Louie almost got us in trouble at lunch,” answered Huey, crossing his arms in a huff.

“I did not! If all I did was sell delicious snacks to our schoolmates.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, you can’t do that!”

The boys devolved into a tussle as Launchpad chucked to himself before he started driving towards the mansion. It was a quick trip to the Manor and during that time Huey, Dewey, and Louie out everything out of their system and were onto other topics as the limo pulled up to their still new home. Once the car was parked, everyone exited only for the boys to be tackled by a Webby shaped bullet, “You’re back!” Webby rambled on with questions and whatnot about the boys’ day and what normal school was like as they entered the Manor, LP tracking behind.

Dropping off their backpacks in their room they all headed into The Study, “Ah lads, Webby, Launchpad, good to see you all. We have much to discuss.”

“Are we going on another adventure Uncle Scrooge?” Dewey asked calmly in voice but bouncing in place.

“Yes Dewey we are,” cheers erupted from the four children, which put a smile on both Scrooge’s and Launchpad’s face, “but it won’t be until next Friday,” the cheers shifted into groans, all except for Webby who was now cheering in anticipation.

“Sorry lads money and education are the most important things, especially to a Duck in this family. Now, we're going to The Tomb of Kar-lek, a tomb never discovered and left to rumours… until now. Aye sent Donald and Launchpad out to gather things for this trip and one of those items were curse shielding amulets,” he handed out the necklaces to the kids, Donald… and Launchpad, to his surprise, “Now it wouldn’t be an adventure without curses and traps and luckily we can handle one of those problems right away.” He held up his own amulet, thin black rope connected to a silver bail and ruby pendant, “As long as the Jewel is intact we're impervious to anything magical that the tomb throws at us, so don’t break’em!”

“Yes Uncle Scrooge,” Came the robotic response from the four children.

“Good, now I don’ know exactly what the tomb had in store for us, so stay close when we go. I’ll give more details when we’re on the way. Any questions?” Everyone was quiet for a moment and right before Scrooge adjourned the meeting Launchpad cleared his throat.

“Um, Mr. McDee sir?”

“Yes, Launchpad, what is it?”

“I think you mishanded these out,” holding up the amulet in his possession, “I know I’m flying the plane, but I don’t think I’ll need if if I’m standing guard.”

“Who said you’re standing guard? We’ll need an extra set of hands, so you’re coming with us into the tomb.”

LP was shocked by this, “W-What?”

“Yes, lad, you’re comin’ along. Beakley would be the one helpin’ us, but she told me that she’s staying.”

The burly maid crossed her arms, glaring at Scrooge, “Someone has to make sure this place is up to standard when you return, lord knows the mansion will fall apart if I’m not here,” the triplets and her granddaughter were laughing at the look of disdain Scrooge threw at Mrs. Beakley.

“Anyway, that’s why we need you Launchpad. I know you’ve come along before, against my wishes at times, so that why I’m officially inviting you along. Think you can handle it?”

Launchpad didn't know what to do… other pull his employer into a bone-crushing hug, “Thank you Mr. McDuck, I promise you won’t regret this!”

“Ack! Ah- Yes Yes Launchpad, that’s fine- N-Now put me down!”

“Oh,” he gently set Scrooge down who started coughing, trying to breath, “heh, sorry about that Mr. McDee,” LP apologized, rubbing his neck in embarrassment.

“Quite right McQuack. Now that I all I wanted to tell you all today, boys I believe you have homework to do,” the triplets muttered in disappointment but otherwise followed Donald out of the study, “and like I said Launchpad I have nothing else happening today so you can go home a rest, but I expect you-“

“Here at 8 sharp, no problem Mr. McDee! I’ll see you tomorrow, bye Mrs. B!”

“Have a nice day Launchpad,” Beakley saluted off as the large duck left the Manor. His drive was partially distracted by the sheer excitement LP had for the upcoming adventure. Scrooge McDuck trusted him as an extra set of hands, as muscle, but anyway that he could help out Launchpad would jump at the opportunity.

He was his driver, after all, his job was to get him and his family places- safely or not was up to debate.

As Launchpad pulled up to his hangar and parked inside he sat in the driver seat for a moment before cheering until his lungs gave out, he was ecstatic. Smiling from cheek to cheek he panned up to see the amulet dangling off the rearview mirror, grabbing it before exiting the limo, “Better this in a safe place,” he said to himself and he stuffed it in one of his cargo pockets.

Only to feel the cold sting of metal grace his feathered hand.

The smile and happiness he built up shattered in an instant as it registered with him exactly what he was carrying. Something that he shouldn’t even have on him.

Letting the necklace go and fishing the other object out he raised his closed fist in front of him, breathing deeply, before opening it to reveal what he already knew…

Brass knuckles.

Only one set, but he recognized the scratches in the metal, the dents that never buffed out, the stains that never really washed out.

It was his original set, the set he hadn’t touched in years. Why were they in his pocket? He didn’t remember grabbing them, so when would he-

And then It clicked. That morning when he was first getting ready: groggy, disassociated, and oblivious. That’s how he woke up.

“I must’ve grabbed them when I was getting ready,” he said to no one in particular, rolling the knuckles in his palm. The cold, unforgiving metal felt so familiar to him, but at the same to feeling so alien, “Never again.”

Rushing up the stairs to his loft he went over to his dresser, pulled out a medium sized ammo box from the third drawer, and unlocked it with the key he normally kept stored in one of the inner pockets of his flight jacket. Unlocking the box revealed a plethora of assorted items he dare not touch again, dropping in the brass knuckles with a resounding Clack! When it landed.

Locking the box up tight he stored it away and placed the key where it always laid. After storing the box away he felt… more at ease. He didn’t feel comfortable when it was out and even more so when it was open.

Like digging away at an old wound.

His eye began to darken, only to be stopped by the shine of glass only s few feet away. He glanced over at the picture frame he kept above his hammock, and as he came closer the image came into focus, it was of his family: Ripcord, his father, who was a brick wall of a man with a chin to boot; Birdie, his mother, who despite her smaller size was feisty and passionate; Loopy, his sister, who had frizzy blond hair and a nonchalant attitude; and Launchpad, easily the smallest as it was an old picture. He was wearing an old leather flight helmet and goggles and cream scarf that belonged to his father when he was younger, wearing the biggest smile you had ever seen.

It was the last time his family was ever really happy.

The picture never failed to bring a smile to his face… but never failed to ruin it when he glared at the torn off section of said picture.

The picture was incomplete, but it didn’t matter to Launchpad as the people in the picture were who he considered family and that’s all that mattered. His smile was soon restored when he panned over to see the picture next to it: a complete photo of everyone at McDuck Manor, including him. A newer addition to his home, but nonetheless important.

After reminiscing for a bit the large fowl soon realized that he had a few hours to kill before he headed off to bed, normally returning home around 7- or if an adventure took a while longer a little later. So after changing into some pj’s he headed downstairs and posted up on his couch and turned on the t.v., the channel he was on was running a marathon of his favourite superhero Darkwing Duck. There was no way he was gonna miss this!

                                                       _____

As night fell overhead the city of Duckburg, and most were turning in for the day, there was still one duck that stood wide awake.

It had been many years since he set his eyes upon the city or the free outside for that matter, but even so, he felt right at home.

The cold sea breeze blessed his feathers, standing above what would soon be his… all he had to do was find one duck and his plans could begin. It had been many years since he sine the duck but had no doubt he would run into them eventually.

If not… then he would just have to tear the city apart until he found what he wanted, “Hello Duckburg… I’m back! And I’m excited to see what you have in store for me, after all,” the mysterious duck reached into his pocket, pulling out a set of broken aviator goggles, “I already got what I wanted out of St. Canard, I just need the final piece.”

[brotherseph]

GOOD FRIDAY OF THE LORD'S PASSION (B): Jesus Dies On The Cross

April 02, 2021, Friday GOOD FRIDAY OF THE LORD'S PASSION (Red) CYCLE B - YEAR I

Lectionary: 40

Reading I Is 52:13—53:12 See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted. Even as many were amazed at him -- so marred was his look beyond human semblance and his appearance beyond that of the sons of man-- so shall he startle many nations, because of him kings shall stand speechless; for those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it. Who would believe what we have heard? To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up like a sapling before him, like a shoot from the parched earth; there was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by people, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom people hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed. We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; but the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all. Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth. Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away, and who would have thought any more of his destiny? When he was cut off from the land of the living, and smitten for the sin of his people, a grave was assigned him among the wicked and a burial place with evildoers, though he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood. But the LORD was pleased to crush him in infirmity. If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him. Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days; through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear. Therefore I will give him his portion among the great, and he shall divide the spoils with the mighty, because he surrendered himself to death and was counted among the wicked; and he shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses. Responsorial Psalm 31:2, 6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25 R.   (Lk 23:46) Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. In you, O LORD, I take refuge; let me never be put to shame. In your justice rescue me. Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me, O LORD, O faithful God. R.   Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. For all my foes I am an object of reproach, a laughingstock to my neighbors, and a dread to my friends; they who see me abroad flee from me. I am forgotten like the unremembered dead; I am like a dish that is broken. R.  Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. But my trust is in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God. In your hands is my destiny; rescue me from the clutches of my enemies and my persecutors.” R.  Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your kindness. Take courage and be stouthearted, all you who hope in the LORD. R. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Reading II Heb 4:14-16; 5:7-9 Brothers and sisters: Since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help. In the days when Christ was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all

who obey him. Verse Before the Gospel Phil 2:8-9 Christ became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every other name. GOSPEL Jn 18:1—19:42 Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to where there was a garden, into which he and his disciples entered. Judas his betrayer also knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. So Judas got a band of soldiers and guards from the chief priests and the Pharisees and went there with lanterns, torches, and weapons. Jesus, knowing everything that was going to happen to him, went out and said to them, “Whom are you looking for?” They answered him, “Jesus the Nazorean.” He said to them, “I AM.” Judas his betrayer was also with them. When he said to them, “I AM, “ they turned away and fell to the ground. So he again asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” They said, “Jesus the Nazorean.” Jesus answered, “I told you that I AM. So if you are looking for me, let these men go.” This was to fulfill what he had said, “I have not lost any of those you gave me.” Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave’s name was Malchus. Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into its scabbard. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father gave me?” So the band of soldiers, the tribune, and the Jewish guards seized Jesus, bound him, and brought him to Annas first. He was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year. It was Caiaphas who had counseled the Jews that it was better that one man should die rather than the people. Simon Peter and another disciple followed Jesus. Now the other disciple was known to the high priest, and he entered the courtyard of the high priest with Jesus. But Peter stood at the gate outside. So the other disciple, the acquaintance of the high priest, went out and spoke to the gatekeeper and brought Peter in. Then the maid who was the gatekeeper said to Peter, “You are not one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.” Now the slaves and the guards were standing around a charcoal fire that they had made, because it was cold, and were warming themselves. Peter was also standing there keeping warm. The high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his doctrine. Jesus answered him, “I have spoken publicly to the world. I have always taught in a synagogue or in the temple area where all the Jews gather, and in secret I have said nothing.  Why ask me? Ask those who heard me what I said to them. They know what I said.” When he had said this, one of the temple guards standing there struck Jesus and said, “Is this the way you answer the high priest?” Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?” Then Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest. Now Simon Peter was standing there keeping warm. And they said to him, “You are not one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off, said, “Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?” Again Peter denied it. And immediately the cock crowed. Then they brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the praetorium. It was morning. And they themselves did not enter the praetorium, in order not to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover. So Pilate came out to them and said, “What charge do you bring against this man?” They answered and said to him, “If he were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” At this, Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law.” The Jews answered him, “We do not have the right to execute anyone,“ in order that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled that he said indicating the kind of death he would die. So Pilate went back into the praetorium and summoned Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this on your

own or have others told you about me?” Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.” So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” When he had said this, he again went out to the Jews and said to them, “I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I release one prisoner to you at Passover. Do you want me to release to you the King of the Jews?” They cried out again, “Not this one but Barabbas!” Now Barabbas was a revolutionary. Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns and placed it on his head, and clothed him in a purple cloak, and they came to him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck him repeatedly. Once more Pilate went out and said to them, “Look, I am bringing him out to you, so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple cloak. And he said to them, “Behold, the man!” When the chief priests and the guards saw him they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him. I find no guilt in him.” The Jews answered, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.” Now when Pilate heard this statement, he became even more afraid, and went back into the praetorium and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” Jesus did not answer him. So Pilate said to him, “Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.” Consequently, Pilate tried to release him; but the Jews cried out, “If you release him, you are not a Friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” When Pilate heard these words he brought Jesus out and seated him on the judge’s bench in the place called Stone Pavement, in Hebrew, Gabbatha. It was preparation day for Passover, and it was about noon. And he said to the Jews, “Behold, your king!” They cried out, “Take him away, take him away!  Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, and, carrying the cross himself, he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus in the middle. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews.” Now many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that he said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’.” Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.” When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four shares, a share for each soldier. They also took his tunic, but the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top down. So they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be, “ in order that the passage of Scripture might be fulfilled that says: They divided my garments among them, and for my vesture they cast lots. This is what the soldiers did. Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of

Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home. After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.” There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit. Here all kneel and pause for a short time. Now since it was preparation day, in order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath, for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken and that they be taken down. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out. An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows that he is speaking the truth, so that you also may come to believe. For this happened so that the Scripture passage might be fulfilled: Not a bone of it will be broken. And again another passage says: They will look upon him whom they have pierced. After this, Joseph of Arimathea, secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus. And Pilate permitted it. So he came and took his body. Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom. Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried. So they laid Jesus there because of the Jewish preparation day; for the tomb was close by. REFLECTION: Good Friday puts the cross before me and challenges me not to look away. If I have followed Jesus’ footsteps to Calvary, I do not have to fear because I, like him, am confident in God's enduring presence. Wherever there is suffering or pain, I look again, seeking the face of Jesus. I ask him for the strength I need to be a sign of hope wherever there is despair, to be a presence of love wherever it is most needed. All of us will one day give up our spirit. All of us will one day say either with words, breath or gesture that it is finished. It will not be like Jesus on a cross, but it may be in pain or in loneliness or fright. There is nothing better for the time of death than to feel and read the gospel, nothing better than to pray for strength in time of death so that it won't take us too much by surprise. In prayer we can offer our death to God; we can do so with Mary - 'Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us, sinners; now and at the hour of our death'. PRAYER: Dear Jesus, thank You for dying on the cross for me and taking away all my sins. Forgive us, Lord. I know & we know that you do not deserve to suffer such agony by our sins. Instead, we are the ones to carry our crosses, cause we are all sinners. But because of Your unconditional love for us, You sacrifice Yourself from everything. May we venerate You in agony. AMEN.

[ngeche-nt]

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER Year B Gospel John 20:19-31

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER Year B Gospel John 20:19-31

April 11, 2021 John 20:19-31 20:19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 20:20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 20:21 Jesus said to them again,…

[justgotham]

Madonna’s 1998 album, “Ray of Light,” bore many gifts, not least of which was the friendship between Billy Eichner and Robin Lord Taylor.

Mr. Eichner, Emmy-nominated at last for “Billy on the Street” and currently starring in Hulu’s “Difficult People,” and Mr. Taylor, a breakout star as the Penguin on Fox’s “Gotham,” which returns Sept. 28, first met in their sophomore year at Northwestern University, at a release party (of college-aged sorts) for the album given by Mr. Eichner. As roommates in New York in the early 2000s, they started their own live comedy talk show, “Creation Nation,” in the basements of bookstores and bars.

The first “Billy on the Street” videos, with Mr. Eichner surprising passers-by with questions and games and Mr. Taylor often holding the camera, were a popular recurring segment. “Creation Nation” put them on the very map they’d been studying since childhood, and today, they each wreak havoc, via their respective shows, on the citizens of this fair city.

Over lunch at Tavern on the Green, in their signature rhythm and ratio, Mr. Taylor, 39, and Mr. Eichner, 38 — who will also soon appear in FX’s “American Horror Story: Cult” — recalled cherished VHS tapes, the glory days of gay night life, and apartments with curtains for doors.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

ROBIN LORD TAYLOR I was at the student union, and my booth was next to Billy’s. Billy was telling jokes about, I swear, like, Elaine Stritch and Jennifer Holliday. I think it was something about the Tonys that year, maybe?

BILLY EICHNER I don’t remember that at all.

TAYLOR My back was to Billy’s back, and I remember hearing him and being like, “That’s exactly the kind of conversation I came to Northwestern for. I’m gonna make you my best friend.”

EICHNER He came to this “Ray of Light” party and he was this little boy from Iowa, and he wore these fake cat ears that I guess you could buy at Bloomingdale’s at the time? And I was like, “No. Who’s that person? I’m not into it.”

TAYLOR I knew you were going to bring up the cat ears.

EICHNER To this day, I don’t understand why you would walk in with cat ears.

TAYLOR I was from a very small town, I had just come out of the closet, and it was very proto-radical faerie, without the hallucinogens.

EICHNER It was like our generation’s version of cutting. Months later, we decided to move to a bigger apartment and we needed a fifth roommate. They were like, “That guy Robin said he would take it,” and I was against it. But we were desperate. To make matters worse, we had to move in the summer before junior year, and Robin and I had to live — just the two of us.

TAYLOR I had a car.

EICHNER And I was like, “Well, that’s something.” So we would go to the mall, and we would go shopping, and we’d go to the movies.

TAYLOR It was “Living Out Loud” that did it, I think.

EICHNER There was a series of movies we went to see that normal college-aged men were not going to see in the Midwest: “Living Out Loud,” with Holly Hunter and Danny DeVito; “Isn’t She Great,” with Bette Midler and Nathan Lane. We were the only people in the theater, opening weekend of “Isn’t She Great” at the Old Orchard Shopping Mall. We would watch movies at home; we’d watch “Truth or Dare,” and I had a VHS of this thing called “The Oscars’ Greatest Moments.”

TAYLOR We memorized that tape.

EICHNER He was this quiet closeted gay boy in Iowa, and I was this louder closeted gay guy in New York City, but we were both locked in our rooms watching cable TV and sucking it all in. When we found each other, it was like, “Wait, you’re interested in —— ?”

TAYLOR Like, a “Whales of August” joke.

EICHNER We were theater majors in a suburb of Chicago and we were being gay and going to gay bars for the first time, together. Then we caught the last gasp of great New York gay night life. We could go out every night of the week.

TAYLOR And we did.

EICHNER Tuesday nights we’d go to Beige at B Bar. We both met boyfriends at Beige. We’d go to Spa on Thursdays, Starlight and The Cock on Friday, and then ——

TAYLOR Opaline is in there somewhere.

EICHNER Opaline on Saturday, or the Roxy. We were doing ecstasy, and it was the days of big club DJs ——

TAYLOR Twilo.

EICHNER Twilo, Junior Vasquez. We partied, and I’m so glad we did, because it doesn’t really exist at the moment, and we couldn’t do it now. Except, I still do it. I shouldn’t do it. It’s a bad look.

TAYLOR We lived in this crazy loft two blocks south of the World Trade Center. No doors, no walls — just curtains.

EICHNER Ten days before 9/11, we moved.

TAYLOR We lived for about five years, then, in Chelsea. I was doing commercials and little things here and there. I mostly played stoner skater types.

EICHNER I’d gone to a ton of open calls and never got anything. I was temping and bartending. No one was taking me seriously.

TAYLOR Billy was sitting on the couch one evening and asked if I would like to make something together. He even had the title, “Creation Nation.” I was sold immediately. We took where we were in our lives, and created these heightened versions of ourselves.

EICHNER I created this angry, irrationally passionate persona that “Billy on the Street” grew out of, which is not close to me. It’s coming from somewhere, I guess, but it’s very much a character.

TAYLOR I was playing a closeted actor, refusing to come out.

EICHNER Robin’s in the very first video. You can watch it on YouTube. At the end he’s running around with me.

TAYLOR I remember when the woman chased us onto the subway. Billy had yelled “Lucy Liu” in her face and she was screaming for the police.

EICHNER I told Robin to stick the tape in your underwear or something?

TAYLOR It’s funny: our current projects are the closest we’ve ever been to working on very similar things.

EICHNER I think he’s so brilliant on that show, but I’m not a superhero person. Robin would call me and tell me what’s happening on “Gotham” and I’d be like, “Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You walk with that cane and put on that prosthetic makeup, and I’m gonna go write some jokes.” Now, I’m on “American Horror Story,” and I honestly do — he would call me and tell me about these violent scenes he had to do, how you have to choreograph it, how much time it takes — I have a new appreciation for it. Our careers also never were a source of tension between us, ever. There was no friction. Maybe friction because I didn’t clean the apartment.

TAYLOR Well, just that time you vacuumed vomit into the non-wet dry vac.

EICHNER I was the roommate who paid half the rent that he paid and still wouldn’t clean. I always had a great sense of entitlement.

TAYLOR Billy has always been completely unafraid to speak his mind and tell people what he believes. And that’s something I struggle with.

EICHNER I do feel like I’ve made Robin meaner, in a good way. When I met Robin, he was wearing those stupid cat ears, and he wanted everyone to like him. If I taught Robin anything, it’s that not everyone needs to like you. Granted, everyone does love Robin. He’s, like, the nicest person in the entire world. Not everyone loves me, but I think between the two of us, it’s a yin and yang.

TAYLOR All I want to give Billy would just be a connection to love and family. I just want to be a constant in his life and a connection to someone who loves him unconditionally.

EICHNER That’s nice. I said I made people hate him! But that’s why this works.

[iwatchedyougoinghomeeveryday]

yo. i just watched the season 3 finale of friday night lights. wow.

first... i felt so validated by my prediction of matt going to school for art. i really didn't know if it would happen because the show kind of dropped that interest of his, but they brought it back and i was so happy. i was trying to adjust to matt going all the way to chicago... then the end of this episode happened and he decided to stay in dillon. i really was not expecting that for matt, but his reasoning made sense. his role as caretaker to his grandmother makes up such a large part of his identity. (and their scenes this episode made me tear up, good lord.) i am heartbroken that he felt he had to sacrifice his needs yet again, but this could be the catalyst for some wonderful matt moments in the next season. (and i'm glad he gets to stay around because he's probably my favorite character next to the taylor's... who i'll get to...)

i thought i was going to be validated in my prediction for tim (the show was hinting hard that he would stay in dillon to work at his brother's garage), so it was sort of a nice surprise that he is sticking with college. i loved that he would've stayed if not for his brother pushing him. (in parallel to matt, who the viewer expected to leave, but feels obligated to stay for his family.) i have no clue how the show will incorporate the non-dillon characters moving forward, but i can't see them just checking in with tim every now-and-then, so i am super curious about how everything plays out.

like the situation with eric being replaced as coach, then offered the position at the new school. wow. this whole time i've been watching this season i've been wondering why they haven't introduced more panthers football characters for fans to know before our favorites leave. we had j.d. and that was it. i assumed they were just focused on building up j.d.'s story because he was going to be eric's quarterback from here on out, so they thought they'd start with the biggest position then throw in some drama with his family to give eric more battles on-and-off the field. but, wow, instead they weren't going to be the complicated characters that eric would have to learn to get along with - they were setting them up as his rivals all this time. i really thought that switcheroo was brilliant. now we'll get to see what eric can do with a school, team, and players with practically zero resources. i am super intrigued by this development. (also... is this when michael b. jordan comes into the show?! i just randomly remembered that he was on this show a few days ago, thinking he was gonna be a new panthers player. surprise! i remember people loving his performance so i am hyped for that.)

overall, season 3 was a HUGE improvement over season 2. which is not even as much of a compliment as it should be, considering how much i hated everything about season 2. season 3 felt like a more natural and realistic continuation of season 1 storylines anyway. (tyra and landry bond organically vs that weird murder plot, matt and julie are still together and navigating more serious parts of their relationship, etc.) i'm just gonna pretend that season 2 didn't happen, okay? i'm always nervous when a show has to undergo huge changes, like season 4 will bring for fnl, but it's also when a show can step up and impress even more, so i am super excited to see where everything goes!

EDIT: getting ready to start season 4 and i just thought about how eric's situation is kind of, sort of karma for benching matt. it's almost the exact same thing. he replaced matt, who was passionate but understated, who had been reliable and putting in the work for him for years, never complaining and always rising to the task, even if he wasn't at the top of his game he should've had the respect and trust to do his job... and instead eric went with someone new and flashier. the mccoys took over matt's role then took over eric's. he should've seen that coming.

me watching season one of friday night lights: wow, this show's commitment to the realism of these teenager's struggles while still traversing typical teen tv show tropes is incredible. a lesser show would have given in to the schmaltz or added some television shine, but the grittiness of these characters and their world is never lost. this was a show about football, family, and small towns, through and through. it was just so nice to stay with these characters in their daily lives and i absolutely cannot wait to see what the other seasons hold. no way can the writers mess this up after they pulled off this consistent of a season. no way.

me watching season two: oh... oh no... what is happening... why are we doing this... no no NO

[naomidryden-smith]

North Country Gentleman

NORTH COUNTRY GENTLEMAN – by Dermott Ryder (taken from Solstice Sunset – Features From Folk Odyssey)

This tribute to Colin Dryden, first published to the on-line magazine Folk Odyssey as ‘Echoes of a North Country Trilogy’ has gained a title change.  Within days of publication Folk Odyssey received several emails suggesting that the final line in the endnote ‘Appreciation’ could provide an alternative title.  Then, at a social gathering, a truculent woman with piercing eyes accosted the mild-mannered editor and virtually ordered the change, the editor, an affable individual, acquiesced.

Colin Dryden was born to John and Doreen Dryden on July 23rd 1942 in Bradford, West Yorkshire.  He was the second of four children.  He had an older brother, Donald, and two younger sisters, June and Christine.  He was a war baby and, on the way through boyhood to youth he experienced the post war austerity years of the late nineteen forties and fifties.

The great Yorkshire conurbation was a tough industrial environment. Daily working life there presented a history of hardship and struggle.  The ‘dark satanic mills’ of the industrial revolution still cast a long shadow.  The war memorials standing in every village and town square, with weathered names in one panel and freshly carved names in another, were a constant reminder the of the tragedy and loss of the two world wars.  The betrayal and defeat of the general strike and the haunting recollections of the Great Depression were never far from memory.

Colin Dryden’s boyhood world was a world recovering from the rigours of the Second World War and at the same time battling rationing, savage winters, nationalization, factory closures and unemployment.

He attended junior school and later Lepage Secondary School in Bradford. After finishing school, being strong and fit and not afraid of hard work, he had a number of very physical jobs with International Harvesters, a local tractor company. When not working for a living he worked at life.  He loved the outdoors, particularly camping, walking and climbing, east of the Pennines in the Yorkshire Dales and far west of the Pennines in the Lake District of North West Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmoreland.

As he grew through and out of his teen years music became his greatest and most enduring passion.  His early influences included Bill Broonzy, Huddie Leadbetter and Django Rhinehart; later influences Davy Graham and John Renbourn were largely inescapable. He was a totally self-taught guitar and fiddle master and he played at every opportunity.

Although extremely important, music was not his only diversion.  In the early nineteen-sixties he followed his actor director brother Donald and turned to acting for a while.  He appeared in several plays, including Under The Milkwood by Dylan Thomas and, with Bradford Civic Playhouse Drama School, Green Fingers productions, the Mad Woman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux, Knit Yourself A Lost Weekend by David Climie, and Working to Rule by Michael P Walker at the Bradford Playhouse, now The Priestley.

He was naturally adventurous, questing almost, and when the opportunity to travel to Australia came to him he accepted the challenge with some enthusiasm. Colin Dryden departed the United Kingdom by air on May 20th 1965. He travelled as a ten quid tourist under the Assisted Passage Migration Scheme, and he brought with him to Australia his observations and experiences of working life in the North of England, and his talent as a songwriter and musician.

One of his earliest recorded involvements with the popular folk movement in Sydney, in the middle nineteen sixties, was with the Friday Night ‘Sydney Folk Song Club’ at the Hotel Elizabeth, a small agreeable hostelry near to central Sydney’s green and pleasant Hyde Park.  There, for a while at least, he performed and he shared the organizational load with Mike and Carol Wilkinson and Mike Ball.

The Wilkies build a reputation for their English folk song harmonies, for their uncompromising attitudes towards material presented at their folk club, and for Carol’s occasionally incendiary letters to various folk publications. The influential and renowned Mike Ball, concertina virtuoso and fine singer, claimed a place in folk-time for his intuitive musical setting of Charles Causley’s evocative poem, ‘Timothy Winters’.  In time Wilkie, Wilkie and Ball moved back to Old Albion, the Albonian’s gain was our loss. Colin Dryden, however, soldiered on in the antipodes.

For a time, after the departure of the peripatetic three, there was a slight hiatus in smooth running but there were willing workers to help bridge the Friday Night gap until expatriate Liverpudlian and expatriate Highland Scot Morag Chetwyn joined Colin Dryden on the all-singing, all-playing management team.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday Night at The Hotel Elizabeth, the irrepressible Australian Irish tidal wave ebbed and flowed in rebellious sheep shearing chorus.  The Wednesday Night had several organizers; they came and went, some like lions and some like lambs.

It was about this time that ‘The Leaf – The Sydney Folk Song Magazine’ made a brief but interesting appearance.  Colin Dryden wrote the editorial, a couple of articles and a couple of record reviews, Keith Finlayson wrote about Huddie Leadbetter and Derrick Chetwyn of the Sydney Folk Song Club, John Francis of the Jug of Punch Folk Club and G R Tomkinson of the Bower Folk Club, Bankstown, provided activity reports and comments on their neck of the woods.  It was a good read, pity it didn’t run to a second edition.  Too many other interesting things to do, I suppose.

The Chetwyn, Chetwyn, Dryden team eventually made way for another expatriate Englishman, the highly focused Mike Eves.  Under his direction the club consolidated Friday Night and expanded into Saturday Night.  He proved to be one of the most able folk club organizers in the western spiral arm of the galaxy.  He was also one of the prime movers of the 1970 Port Jackson folk festival.

A name that resonates across the years from that formidable festival is ‘Extradition’ – Colin Dryden, now at rest in Bradford, Yorkshire, UK, Colin Campbell, now residing in England, and Shayna Carlin, now in transit – were at that time far ahead of their time.  All I can say is ‘Hush’ you had to be there.  

Colin Dryden rejoiced in both the traditional and contemporary songs he had learned from others but told a much more personal series of stories in the songs of his own devising.  For ease of identification I have taken to describing three of his songs as a North Country Trilogy.  I list them as Sither, Factory Lad and Pit Boy because in this order they came to me.

The trilogy captures enduring impressions of the industrial North of England.  The cotton mills, coalmines, terraced houses, cobblestone streets, and clogs, are all here.  He has captured an echo of race memory and recorded a culture and lifestyle fast fading into history.

In the nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies, in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, Colin Dryden had a voice among voices. His interpretation of folksong, both traditional and contemporary, made him a leading folk activist of the day.  Working alone, with a partner or in a group, in a great hall or small folk club he had the power to charm and capture an audience and keep it working with him from introduction to encore.

Colin Dryden’s North Country Trilogy has a readily definable place in the common stock of Australian singers singing on.  The songs pass from one to another, in the main, b oral transmission or by hastily scribbled notes.  Some singers aim at an accurate performance of a known writer’s works, in text, tune and style.  Others add their own stamp of individuality to tune and style.  That is the nature of things.

The folk process in its way a force of nature, is always with us and a few word changes have occurred in some performances over the past thirty years or so. Even in the presentation of the songs by the most diligent of singers.

Transcription errors, copious quantities of amber fluids or the ravages of time and the failing of memory account for minor accidental changes. The only changes that I have encountered, that I find worthy of comment, are those where the delicate and contemplative North Country ‘were’ is replaced by the harder antipodean ‘was’.  To me, at least, the ‘was’ accidental modification disrupts the flow and diminishes the strangely ethereal qualify of the original words of one particular song.

The words, structure and order of verses of the three songs as written down here come from direct contact with Colin Dryden and have been tested for accuracy against the aging audiocassettes of his recorded singing.

So…moving right along, there I was, sitting at what became my favourite table in the Sydney Folk Song Club, otherwise known as the upstairs lounge of the Hotel Elizabeth, in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, one surprising Saturday evening early in nineteen seventy.  Mike Eves started the entertainment, as usual, and we all joined in with Three Score and Ten, Poverty Knock and Rough Tucker Bill.  The Port Jackson Folk Festival was still resonating in the background and there was an air of excitement around all things folk, especially at the Sydney Folk Song Club.

I was there to hear and enjoy everybody but I had a particular interested in Colin Dryden.  I had met him at the festival, at an impromptu session after a riveting Sunday night concert.  On stage his songs of choice were: Lord Franklin, Lassie With The Yellow Coatie, High Germanie, and Silver In The Stubble. Maintaining an after-part song list was too hard.

Performing alone or in a group, on stage or in the corner of a noisy, smoky, boozy room Colin Dryden was impressive.  His appearance at the Sydney Folk Song Club was my first opportunity to hear him in such an intimate venue.

Colin Dryden, introduced by Michael Eves, came to the small stage and sat for a moment in silence. Then, in his characteristically unhurried way, he told a story.  He checked the tuning on his guitar as he spoke, quite softly.  The good audience listened attentively.  Everybody laughed in the right places.  His first song, Pleasant And Delightful, selected to allow the audience to share the moment, and a chorus, worked well, then he introduced Sither.

This is a song in which he remembers, with obvious affection his paternal grandfather, James Dryden.  It tells a simple and engaging story of the old man’s retirement from full time work in the mill. It bears, as title, his grandfather’s nickname.  Sither, or Zither, translated perhaps as ‘see thee’ or ‘look here’ was the name the family used for James Dryden because it was one of his catch phrases.

SITHER Colin Dryden © The Dryden Estate

Forty years in the mill, your day’s near done, but it’s going still. Time to be thinking o’ makin’ your will, for you’ve nowhere to go, no intentions.

Weft and weave it was your game, ten thousand hours upon the frame, then walking home in the driving rain, with a brand new watch and a pension.

Time now to bide, to sit and to dream, on bygone days and the changes you’ve seen, in coal and in diesel, the power of steam, black shawls, coal stockings and courting.

Clogs on the frost on a cold winter’s morn, the smell of the grease and oil on the loom, and the wife wi’ the kids by the gateway at noon stand waiting for your wages on Friday.

Six in the morn and it’s time to rise, sleep on, old man, you’re weary and wise, to the ways of the mill, aye, and all of the tries for a part time job in the doffing.

Puffin’ and pantin’ past the mill, up to the local to get all your fill, though you’ve only got enough brass for a gill, there might be a job in the offing.

But the shuttles have flown, it’s time to roam, back to the armchair and fire at home, and leave all the mill hands and weavers alone  to their beer and their laughter and joking.

But many’s the time when you’ve stood with the best, although the looms have near turned you deaf, they’ve all got a few miles of weaving as yet before they’ll have bested old Sither.

If Sither records working life as observed from the outside, by a grandson perhaps, then Factory Lad describes working life experienced from the inside. Cold early mornings in winter, the cruel demands of the alarm clock, the desire to remain warm and snug in a cocoon of blankets are experiences shared by many.  The early shift at the engineering workshop or factory is calling and you have to go.  Travelling to work at dawn, on shank’s pony, bicycle, or double-decker bus, hurrying to clock-on almost before waking up is a way of life, if not a rite of passage. These may be memories best forgotten but they can’t be.  

           Here too, indelible and indestructible, is the manufacturer’s mark made by the mind-numbing and soul-destroying ordeal of bondage in the factory system.  So many people who have shared this song can say ‘been there done that’.  Others, of a different generation perhaps, can enjoy the song and gain some insight into the work-a-day life of a fitter and turner. Although this begs the questions: Who would want to, and why?

           Factory Lad surfaced, for me at least, at a fairly quiet drink, chat and sing a round night in a cockroach castle in Chippendale in May or June 1970. I can date the event with reasonable ease because I had recently received the first ever copy of the New South Wales Folk Federation newsletter.  It was a masthead, in small print under the larger print of the main title, ‘incorporating the Port Jackson Folk Festival Committee’.

           We discussed it at length.  It contained as much useful event information, local and interstate, that a journal that size could.  Very useful, we decided unanimously.  However, the editorial was a little disturbing in one respect.  There was an aura of ‘we’ve done good and are on our way to glory’ leeching out of the page.  ‘Big is good and bigger is better’ we inferred.  A dark omen indeed, we agreed.  The curse of the folk scene, we decided was the ambitions of some people to tur a popular music movement into a three-ring circus.  Time, we prophesied, will tell.  Then we consumed a little herbal tobacco, made several jokes about camels being horses designed by committees and got back to singing and drinking or was it drinking and singing?

           Colin Dryden sang Factory Lad.  He didn’t say as much but I gained the impression that it was a relatively new song that had been some time in the growing and cone to a performable completion during his Kings Cross sojourn during 1969.  In any event it achieved instant acclaim and there was something of a scramble to get the words. Factory Lad entered the song stock and became a favourite and the ‘Turning Steel’ chorus always gets a powerful response.

FACTORY LAD Colin Dryden © The Dryden Estate

You wake up in the morning and morn’s as black as night. Your mother’s shouting up the stairs, And you know she’s winning the fight. So you venture out of the bed, me lad, for you know it’s getting late, and it’s down the stairs and up the road, and through the factory gate.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

Sleet and dark the morning, as you squeeze in through the gate, as you clock in aye yon bell will ring, eight hours is your fate. Off comes the coat, up go the sleeves, and “right lads” is the cry, with an eye on the clock and t’other on your lathe, you wish that time could fly.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin? If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

But time can’t fly as fast as a lathe, and work you must, the grinding, groaning, spinning metal, the hot air and the dust, and many’s the time I’m with me girl and I’m walking through the park, whilst gazing on the turning steel or the welder’s blinding spark.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin? If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

Well old Tom left last week, his final bell did ring, with his hair as white as the hair beneath his oily sunken skin. Well he made his speech and bid farewell to a lifetime working here, but as I shook his hand I thought of hell as a lathe and forty years.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin. If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

So, when my time comes as come it must, I’ll leave this place. And I’ll walk right out past the chargehand’s desk and never turn me face, out through the gates into the sun and I’ll leave it all behind, with one regret for the lads I’ve left to carry on the grind.

Turning steel, how do you feel as in the chuck you spin? If you felt like me you’d roll right out and never roll back in.

Pit Boy, the third song in my ordering of the trilogy, is evocative and lyrical, a song at the edge of memory.  I can only recall Colin Dryden sing it ‘live’ twice. The first time was in the winter of 1970 at a Sydney Folk Song Club Saturday night after-party at a very interesting house in Cambridge Street, Paddington.  The second occasion was at the Sydney Folk Song Club a year or so later.

           The Cambridge Street after-party had a very special resonance.  Colin Dryden hadn’t appeared at the club that night, even though he was expected, but he had a sixth sense when it came to party locations. He arrived just after midnight with a tall fair-haired girl from a different planet and a guitar swathed in a tartan car rug, because it was bloody cold out there.

           He was in good spirits, and in good voice and sang several songs.  Lark In The Morning, Cocaine and Pit Boy come to mind. Time, I regret to say has hidden the others.

PIT BOY Colin Dryden © The Dryden Estate

The times are hard, the days are long, I wish I were a farmer’s son – out in the green fields all day long – away from the dark of the day.

When the sun is hanging in the sky, the days are long, long are the sighs, down in the darkness, where we bide, passing our lives away.

And if I were a robber bold I’d rob the rich of all their gold. And if I were caught, well I’ve been told it’s better down Botany Bay.

When the sun is hanging in the sky, the days are long, long are the sighs, down in the darkness, where we bide, passing our lives away.

And if I were a sailor, I’d sail the main, and robs the ships of France and Spain. Now if we lost perhaps we’d gain for the French might raise our pay.

When the sun is sagging in the sky, the days are long, long are the sighs, down in the darkness, where we bide, passing our lives away.

Like pit ponies, down the mine going blind without the shine – though if we do we’ll never mind – ‘cos we’ll never want the sun no more.

When the sun is hanging in the sky, the days are long, long are the sighs, down in the darkness, where we bide, passing our lives away.

In terms of performance by others of a North Country Trilogy – in total, Sither, Factory Lad and Pit Boy – the only Sydney folk activists I can recall singing all three songs at one time or another are the late David Alexander and the encyclopaedic Robin Connaughton. However, I have encountered several other singers and groups of singers presenting one or other of these eminently singable songs on numerous occasions stretching over thirty years.

           Only one performance caused me to recoil with horror.  That was at a chorus cup session, when a gathering of ponderous choristers managed to turn Factory Lad into a turgid facsimile of a high church hymn.  It was the dark side of harmony singing.  Choirs, I thought, belong in far distant cathedrals, with the doors locked and bolted on the outside.

           The clock’s ceaseless ticking counted the folk at the Hotel Elizabeth on a pace through the early and into the middle nineteen seventies.  Changing fortunes hurried the departure of the Irish Musicians club and brought a new team, David Alexander and Keri Levi, to the Wednesday Elizabeth.  Within weeks they made way for Darts Kelimocum – Dermott and Alison Ryder, Tony Suttor, Maureen Cummuskey, with Keri Levito to ease the changeover.  Competing ambitions saw Mike Eves, a most able man, move on from the Friday and Saturday ‘Sydney Folk Song Club’, and the merging of the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday operations under the Darts Kelimocum banner as the ‘Elizabeth Folk Club’.

           Folk organisations always suffer the attrition of competing objectives; Keri Levi’s stay was short, and later Tony Suttor and Maureen Cummuskey sought different roads to travel.  That left yours truly and partner to run the three nights a week ‘Elizabeth Folk Club’. It was a time consuming, challenging, rewarding experience.

           A significant event in the folk lifestyle of Sydneysiders, Andrew Saunders reminded me of it, was the closing down of Tommy and Joan Doyle’s pub, the Westworth Park Hotel in Ultimo, an inner city suburb of Sydney.

           This ever-hospitable couple had made the pub a home from home for folk musicians for eight years or, as Declan Affley put it on several occasions, from time immoral.  The last Saturday, 27th November 1976, at Tommy Doyle’s was an almighty wake. The pub actually closed on the following Tuesday, many of the Saturday revellers were still there.  The Wentworth Park Hotel, and Tommy and Joan Doyle, had a mother and a father of a send off.  One of Colin Dryden’s contributions on the Saturday evening of the event was an English folk song that seemed to fit the passing of an era wonderfully well.

WHAT’S THE LIFE OF A MAN English – Traditional

As I was a-walking one morning at ease, A-viewing the leaves as the hung from the trees, They were all in full motion or seeming to be, And those that had withered, they fell from the tree.

What’s the life of a man, any more than the leaves? A man has his seasons, so why should he grieve? Even though in this wide world he seems bright and gay, Like the leaves he shall wither and soon fade away.

Did you not see the leaves but a short time ago? How lovely and green they all seemed to grow, When a frost came upon them and withered them all, Then a storm came upon them and down they did fall.

What’s the life of a man, any more than the leaves? A man has his seasons, so why should he grieve? Even though in this wide world he seems bright and gay, Like the leaves he shall wither and soon fade away.

If you look in the churchyard there you will see Those who have passed like the leaves from the tree. When age and affliction upon them did call, Like the leaves they did wither and down they did fall.

What’s the life of a man, any more than the leaves? A man has his seasons, so why should he grieve? Even though in this wide world he seems bright and gay, Like the leaves he shall wither and soon fade away.

 Russ Herman and Tom Zurycki captured that historical folk event at the Wentworth Park Hotel on half-inch reel-to-reel video p/pack film and later transferred it to VCR when they discovered that only one machine in the known universe could lay it.  It was sad to say farewell to Tommy Doyle’s but the legend lives on.

           Community access FM radio arrived in Sydney in 1975 and in early 1976 folk musicians were performing ‘live’ on 2MBS-FM on a regular basis.  The programme ‘Burn The Candle Slowly’, a magazine in pages broadcast from Tuesday midnight until 6:00am every week.  One of the pages, ‘Looking at it Sideways’ later became ‘Ryder Round Folk’.

           Derrick Chetwyn of Liverpool UK, then Sydney, later Brisbane, performed Colin Dryden’s songs Sither and Factory Lad live to air on the 2MBS-FM programme ‘Looking At It Sideways’ in September 1976.  Pit boy, performed by Colin Dryden and recorded live at The Elizabeth Folk Club, also appeared in that programme.  Recorded for posterity, and for playing in the car on the way to reunions, this moment in radio history can be found on the 2004 Screw Soapers Guild project CD, On This Michaelmas Even, SSG-sideway-760928-Z41020.

           Sither, performed live to air by Robin Connaughton on the 2MBS-FM programme ‘Ryder Round Folk’ in July 1983 generated a spirited listener response. The programme segment also included Sandy Hollow Line by Duke Tritton and Sergeant Small by Tex Morton with a tune by Brad Tate.  It was rebroadcast several times and also found a home on the 2002 Screw Soapers Guild project CD, Cross-Section of Connaughton, SSG-RRF-830723.

           Factory Lad has become, over the years, the most performed, and recorded, of the songs.  In 1977 Sydney singer Andrew Saunders, late of Folk’sle, Steamshuttle and later of the Larrikins, Balmain Light Haulage and The Symbolics, recorded it for the concept album, On My Selection, Larrikin LRF 017.  In 1982 the Melbourne group Cobbers included it on their album, By Request, Festival L37919.

           The producers of Dave Alexander’s late nineteen nineties posthumous CD, Singer At Large, DAS27/24H selected Factory Lad as the first track.  In live performance, Andrew Saunders included Factory Lad in his set at the Screw Soapers Guild 2003 Christmas convocation. Robin Connaughton of Roaring Forties, in 2004, still sings it occasionally.

           Pit Boy is also part of Robin Connaughton’s song stock.  He remembers that he first heard Colin Dryden sing it at one of the Newcastle folk festivals in the early nineteen seventies.  A short time later, in 1972 perhaps, on Connaugton’s entry into Sydney’s big city society, he heard him sing it at the Red Lion Folk Club in the Red Lion Hotel in Sydney.  There he got the words directly from the singer.  He started singing the song almost immediately and has sung it ever since. He presented it in his set at the Screw Soapers Guild 1997 Christmas convocation.

           This performance, including Old Ben by CJ Dennis and Monday Morning by Cyril Tawney, appears on the Screw Soapers Guild 2002 Limited Edition CD, Another Saturday, SSG-collect-070.  Sadly, Pit Boy and Sither are finding quiet times now.  I am hoping for a renaissance.

           Colin Dryden popularised his own songs, and others, during the nineteen sixties and seventies.  His strong, rich voice, his skill as an entertainer, his musicianship and his easy-going personality made him a popular addition to any folk club night.  Then our world moved on, tick tock.

           I have a theory, one of many, that older singers singing Colin Dryden’s songs can still hear Colin Dryden singing them, and that younger singers singing his songs wish that they could hear him singing too.

           Colin Dryden, in failing health, returned to the United Kingdom in 1986. He and his family were fortunate enough to be able to spend some valuable time together.  He died very suddenly of an aneurysm on July 28th 1988. He has found a lasting peace at Lidget Green in Bradford, Yorkshire.

Resting there, safe, home at last, a travelling bard of the hero caste, in gentle sunlight, in soothing rain, in whispering winds he’ll sing again.

People of my generation remember Colin Dryden for his personal warmth, his good companionship, his generosity, his free spirit, his delicate touch on the acoustic guitar, and for his singing of those songs we will always think of as a North Country Trilogy.

An Appreciation

Folk Odyssey – The Magazine and Dermott Ryder take this opportunity to thank the Dryden Family of London, Bradford and Newark in the United Kingdom for the help freely given in the writing of this short personal tribute to Colin Dryden [1943-1988].  He was to all that knew him, a North Country Gentleman.

FAREWELL SHANTY English Traditional

It’s time to go now, haul away the anchor. Haul away the anchor.  It’s our sailing time

Get some sail upon her. Haul away your halyards. Haul away your halyards. It’s our sailing time.

Set her on her course now, haul away your fore sheets.  Haul away your fore sheets, it’s our sailing time.

Waves are surging under, haul away down channel. Haul away down channel, on the evening tide.

When my days are over, haul away for heaven. Haul away for heaven, God be by my side.

Dermott Ryder

[destinyclass-blog]

Hello fam,

So, I am back from the “dead.” Praise God!

I had a terrible cough and nose bleeding for a week. And traveling didn’t make it any easier. But it wasn’t all cough, blood, and tears. I met, connected with and drove with a wonderful young man for 10 hours from Redding, California to Los Angeles.

Meet Landon from Idaho.

…

He is an organic farmer (7 years running), world traveler, and extreme hiker from a wonderful family. Plus, he is only 23. Our drive was fun.

Landon shared his passion for storytelling, script writing, film, and production. But, he had questions and these questions was the sign “from heaven” to share with you.

Initially, I felt that it was premature to share this, but Landon inspired its release.

Exception: I like writing short posts. But, because of the weight and life changing nature this will be slightly long. But, it will benefit you greatly. It will change your life. I will try to be brief. (That said…)

  Here’s the deal –

We all have God-given gifts and talents. Let’s call these cluster of gifts and talents – your circle of competence. They are your strengths and can cause you to blossom.

“The gift makes way for the man.”

But –

Having gifts and talents does not mean you will succeed. Finding them doesn’t mean you will automatically grow.

However –

Understanding the lifecycle of your gifts and talents (circle of competence); and understanding where you are in that lifecycle can help you to – become clear, find peace in your search for meaning, and enable you to grow intentionally and effectively on your journey toward destiny.

And this understanding is which I share with you below is what I shared with Landon.

The Lifecycle

I found this insight from my study of the biblical account of King Solomon’s life. After King David died and Solomon became King, God visited him and asked him what he wanted.

“That night the LORD appeared to him a dream and asked him, “What would you like me to give you?” – 1 Kings 3:5

King Solomon asked for wisdom to rule wisely. God was pleased and blessed Solomon with wisdom and wealth. Then, in the following chapter (1 Kings 4), King Solomon is displays his wisdom when he solves a problem between two harlots fighting over a baby.

Here’s is where I think there is a misconception and where the unraveling of the parable begins –

I often thought that since God gave King Solomon wisdom, Solomon instantly became wise. I was wrong. Solomon was given wisdom BUT NEVER INSTANTLY became wise 

Being given wisdom by God was –

The Gift.

The gift (your gift/talent) is the profound ability to easily understand huge chunks of data in that particular field because God has wired your mind that way. It is also the capacity to easily absorb huge chunks subject matter in the field your gift is related to without becoming overwhelmed.

Though the gift is both capacity and ability, ability is dormant because the capacity is zero. That is, there is no knowledge for the ability to work on. Or the knowledge you have is little for your ability to dissect and find insight to problems, mysteries and enigmas.

Hence, the capacity first has to be filled with some knowledge for the gift ability to have fun deciphering insights, thoughts, ideas, processes, formulas, logistics, and simplistics of that knowledge (data) as it relates to that particular field.

Therefore, initially, the gift is only the capacity NOT the ability. This capacity is like a deep empty well. Key word – EMPTY!

This emptiness is like dryness and causes a thirst. Anything that is empty desires to be filled.

The Desire

This empty well and its emptiness awakens in you the thirst “to want to know” facts, laws, rules, expectations, truths…in the field that gift is related to. That is, it awakens the desire to search for “water” to fill that empty well.

The waters represents the brand/taste of knowledge (answers) that the empty well desires. The desire is to know the mechanics of how “things” work all the way to the core.

The unrest you feel, and the thoughts about that dream/vision/calling/field you are always having is ignited because of the deep desire to learn and know more: know intricate details of how something work in that field (or area of life or sphere of influence).

Feeling the unrest and having those numerous thoughts means that somehow, if you are not already aware, you perceive your gift, talent, and God-given destiny to an extent.

and, if you perceive it, it means

It about time. God is calling you from the future to take action. Its time to explore. Its time to grow. Its time to walk on ahead. Its time to take risks NOT take care. Its time to have faith.

Passion

Your quest to engage in learning in order to acquire the brand of knowledge (answer, waters) to fill the empty well is what we then refer to as Passion. When you put actions and efforts behind your quest to acquire a lot of information (as it relates to your interest) to fill the empty well and quench that insatiable desire, people observing you will describe you as Being Passionate.

And by the way,

That action and effort behind your quest to engage in learning in order to know…is all the faith you need. That’s it. That’s the first step.

Now! Because of the capacity and ability your gift creates, when you acquire knowledge, you will be able to easily understand. Thus, learning and acquiring understanding in less time so you can know and do more.

The ease with which you can learn and understand in that particular field which your gift is relates to is what you feel or and people will describe as –

“This thing (topic, subject, theory, law, algebra, cooking, painting, dancing…) comes naturally to you.”

  Referring Back to King Solomon’s Story

Solomon was given wisdom.

Wisdom, was the gift to Solomon. It gave him the ability to understand mysteries about how the world really functioned (The Mystery of Life and Existence). But, he was young when God gave him the gift of wisdom.

He had little knowledge of life and little r no life experience to work with. His capacity was still an empty well that needed filling. Sure, with God’s help, he could solve some problems. But not the majority. Thus, his unfilled capacity invoked the empty well feeling.

This empty well caused a thirst and a hunger in Solomon to explore life. It ignited a desperate desire to know the the truth about existence. He searched for answers to the questions –

Who am I? Why am I here? How then should I live?

Thus, on his quest to know (to fill the empty well), he made efforts to learn and research in order to know what he needed to know (Passion). Solomon didn’t instantly become wise.

As it says in Ecclesiastes, a book about life which King Solomon himself wrote,

“I, the Philosopher…I determined that I would examine and study all the things that are done in this world…I know what wisdom and knowledge really are. I was determined to learn the difference between knowledge and foolishness, wisdom and madness (Ecclesiastes 1:12 GNT).”

Note the words – examine, study, determined, and difference – in the verse above.

These words describe someone seeking to now, find answers, and discover patterns. Plus, no one become a philosopher without extensive reflection, study, and research across several disciplines of life. Won’t you agree?

This was why Solomon was almost obsessed with knowing more about life. That feeling of unrest to know

Because Solomon now acquired vast chunks of data about life, love, laughter, death, work, people…etc, he was now able (gift ability) to process and understand what he knew (gift capacity filled).

He was now ready through gathering insight from his understanding to apply himself and his reasoning/answers to difficult questions/problems and invent solutions.

In a sense, King Solomon received Inspired Wisdom from God. But through taming that inspired wisdom, Solomon turned Inspired Wisdom into Established Wisdom & Real Life Counsel.

  Finally,

Regardless of the industry Solomon branched into or tried his hand in, Solomon succeeded because he centered his efforts only around his core gifts and talents (circle of competence).

“God gave Solomon unusual wisdom and insight and knowledge too great to be measured…He was the wisest of all men…He composed 3000 Proverbs and more than a thousand songs…Kings all over the world heard of his wisdom and sent men to listen to him (1 Kings 4:29-34).”

Wisdom – gift

Insight – capability to understand chunks of specific subject matter

Knowledge – learning and research (student, botanist, philosopher)

3000 proverbs (writer, leader, teacher, professor), over a thousand songs (music, entertainment, poetry), and people came to learn from him (life coach, counselor, business consultant)

Now think this through.

…

This is what I picked up during my quiet times with Jesus. It is what I shared with Landon.

So, what do you think? Where are you on the lifecycle and what do you think you need to be doing in order to grow? Can you see God in the process?

Have you found yourself interested in something that you just want to read more, know more, or do more without anyone influencing it? It may not be related to your current field of work or study. Often, this is the case. How often are you on wikipedia and what are you researching? 

Do you now see why Solomon was almost obsessed with knowledge of life? He was feeling that unrest in his soul. Yes! you can trace your steps back from your quest, desire, and obsession to your gift (physical and spiritual).

But…

Come back Friday for the final piece of the Post (Demonstrated Application)

Wishing you all good health and prosperity.

  One Love – One Spirit,

Ish’mael A. Ngu

Landon is searching for a good training program that specializes in storytelling, script writing, film, and production. If you know of any in California, NY, etc…add a comment with the name of the program/institution.

CIRCLE OF COMPETENCE: YOUR GIFTS & TALENTS Hello fam, So, I am back from the "dead." Praise God! I had a terrible cough and nose bleeding for a week.

[geekade]

The Descent Into Madness

Have you ever been in a rocky relationship? Embroiled in a mess break up? Caught in a vicious love triangle and think, “How did we get here?” More often than not, the answer to that question is a sticky one that probably goes back much further than recent memory can offer. I find myself in a very similar predicament when I look at the New York Knicks. While I have no great love for the Knicks, it’s not hard to recognize New York as a great basketball city or identify its fans as some of the most passionate and loyal in the league. For New York, it’s almost unthinkable that their marquee franchise can be mired in a second decade of terrible management and leadership that ultimately led to former Knick great Charles Oakley being ejected from Madison Square Garden in handcuffs last week. (More on that event to come). So how did we get here? It was a strange event for sure, but when you add it to the end of an equally bizarre timeline, sometimes all you can think is “Thank the Lord that’s not my team.”

Let’s start after hall of famer Patrick Ewing was traded to Seattle in 2000 (Why are we now deprived of a pro sports team named the Super Sonics? *sigh*). Shortly thereafter in 2001, we have our first unusual event featuring Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy. Van Gundy led the Knicks to the NBA Finals in ’99, but in 2001 he unexpectedly resigned indicating that he was “losing focus,” and stepped down. Perhaps Van Gundy had some premonitions about the future of the organization. However, I’d be remiss to not bring up an incident from a game that season versus the Spurs. In this game, Knick Marcus Camby took a cheap shot from Spur Danny Ferry. While pleading his case to the ref, Camby absolutely lost it and went after Ferry with a savage overhead haymaker that completely whiffed. Camby did however, successfully head butt Van Gundy. Enjoy. 

Boom. 2001 season, first year the Knicks missed the playoffs since 1986. When you make the post season for 15 years, and suddenly, you might be bad, organizations respond differently. Some go into rebuild mode, call it Plan A, take their lumps, and come back later with solid team ready to make a run. The other option is Plan B, try and sign injury risk veterans to bad contracts (Antonio McDyess), resign underperforming players to contracts that would hobble an organization for years, ruin your chances at the draft lottery and frustrate your fan base, all for a shot to scrap into the playoffs. Now, what do you suppose the Knicks do?

In 2003 the party really gets started when the Knicks name Isiah Thomas Team President. Thomas brings on the legendary Lenny Wilkens to coach the team, and orchestrates a trade that brings in Stephon Marbury. Plan B works like a charm. The Knicks make the playoffs and are promptly swept in the first round by the Nets.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. After a rocky start in 2004, Coach Lenny Wilkens resigns. Sound familiar? At least it didn’t take a blow to the head to prompt it. Predictably the Knicks miss the playoffs. Thomas, still trying to keep the obviously dying Knicks on life support, brings in universally respected coach Larry Brown, and makes of ton of plan B type moves trading for marginal centers with unprotected, what turn out to be, lottery picks. CBS ranks this as the second worst Knick trade of all time: the Knicks complete a trade for Eddy Curry, sending the Bulls the Knicks 2006 first round draft pick, the 2007 and 2009 second round picks, and the right to swap first round picks in 2007. Curry posted one good year for the Knicks in 2006-07, averaging 19 points and 7 rebounds per, and none of those picks were protected in anyway. This is the type of move that can cripple a team for years. The only reason this is the second worst Knick trade, is because the shipment of Ewing out of town needs to be sentimentally atop that totem pole of awful. The Knicks ended the 2005 season with a league worst 23-59, (you’d love to have that lottery pick right? The Bulls use what turned out to be the 2nd pick in the draft to take 5 time all-star LaMarcus Aldridge) they fired Coach Larry Brown, and were forced to eat $18.5 million of his salary in the process.

Now, with a coaching vacancy facing the 2006 season, who would be one of the wackiest candidates to fill the void? That’s right, team President Isiah Thomas! In 2007, after another abysmal season, we took it up a notch when Thomas was slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit. Both Thomas and Madison Square Garden were found to be liable and MSG had to cough up $11 million in damages. Are we crazy yet? Knick fans were getting there, and with “Fire Isiah” chants cascading from the rafters, on 11/29/07 the Knicks ate an epic punishment at the hands of the rival Celtics, losing 104-59.

In April of 2008, Thomas was relieved of his role as President, and by the end of May he was relieved of the rest of his responsibilities. It may seem at this point that the ship is righting. Knicks management is about to start getting draft picks back, they are moving bad contracts off of their ledger, they are priming for a big 2010 free agent season, one that features names like LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh (who obviously went another way). Tortured Knick fans weren’t let off that easily though. January 24th 2010 showed ticket holders the worst home loss anyone in New York had ever seen. The Knicks losing 128-78, a fifty point drumming at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks was enough to make any fan start questioning reality.

In 2010 the Knicks finally returned to the playoffs led by new acquisitions Carmello Anthony and Amare Stoudemire, along with their first winning season since 2001 only to be swept by the Celtics, butsometimes going mad isn’t all tragedy. There are highs as well as lows, and you can’t do any damage while the league is on strike. After the 2011 NBA lockout, something magical, weird, and irrational happed: LINSANITY. Jeremy Lin, a third string point guard who was picked up about a month earlier found his way onto the Garden’s floor. What followed was wins in streaks, Sports Illustrated covers, global attention inspired by Lin’s Asian heritage, and must see TV every time the Knicks played. The fact this took place in NYC gave it extra juice and this little known player who was playing under the most auspicious of contracts was headlining SportsCenter nightly. But, yeah, it was predictably unsustainable.

While the Knicks made the playoffs in the 2011-2012 season, every silver lining has a dark cloud. Since they lost the first three games of this series to the Heat, coupled with the previous year’s first round sweep at the hands of the Celtics, 2003’s first round sweep to the Nets, and dropping the last two games of the 2000 first round series against the Raptors, the Knicks were the proud owner of the NBA’s longest postseason losing streak, congratulations.

The following year, the Knicks came out like wildfire, had a great season and actually set a then-NBA record for three pointers in a season. They won the Atlantic Division, and got first round revenge on the Boston Celtics. After falling to the Pacers in round two, we haven’t seen New York in the playoffs since.

In the years that followed, we saw the Knicks hire Zen guru Phil Jackson as team president, experiment with head coaches like Derek Fisher, set a team record losing streak ending at 16 games, and forced to eat large contracts. Suffice it to say, if you are around 30 and Knick fan, you’ve seen your fair share of turbulent times for your team. If you’re any amount younger than 30, that’s all you’ve seen. You’ve experienced a few highs, but mostly you’ve been subject to just awful leadership, sightless “win now” moves, and poor judgement on and off the court. Which brings us to the night of Wednesday February 8th…

Anyone who ever gave a damn about the Knicks has a right to be critical of their moves over the last decade plus. Anyone who ever gave them a dime, bought a ticket, a hot dog or a program has a right to express their frustration with this organization. What about former players, who bled for them, who dripped sweat on the Garden’s hardwood, who Spike Lee high fived after playoff wins? I’m sure they’d have a lot of opinions on the matter. Charles Oakley, a stalwart of Pat Reilly’s 90’s teams, did just that. Sitting just a few rows behind team owner James Dolan, expressing some harsh criticism landed Oakley, before the night was out, with three counts of assault, one count of criminal trespass, a pair of silver bracelets and a police escort out of MSG. Evidently being critical in earshot of Dolan has its price. Dolan may have “won” that battle but what do the optics of this do for the war he’s in with his fan base and their frustration. The Knicks PR team released a statement in a matter of hours following the incident:

“Charles Oakley came to the game tonight and behaved in a highly inappropriate and completely abusive manner. He has been ejected and is currently being arrested by the New York City Police Department.”

“He was a great Knick and we hope he gets some help soon,” 

Um, ok? What’s the insinuation here? Are the Knicks accusing Oakley of having a drinking problem? A drug problem? An anger management problem? A mental problem? To make matters worse, last Friday the Knicks issued Oakley a lifetime ban. Regardless, the Knick faithful are behind Oakley, and Dolan, recognizing what a horrible look this gives him has to course correct. Dolan’s next move is to invite Latrell Sprewell, who he also formerly feuded with, as well as a cavalcade of former Knicks to join him for a game. This pathetic, obvious, cover to show he’s in good with other former players isn’t fooling anyone.

Dolan, left without options, four days after banning Oakley, informs him that he’s now welcome back to a game soon. Oakley, however, isn’t having it, telling the Dan Lebatard show:

“Right now, no. I told him [Monday],” Oakley said. “I want to have a press conference and I want him to apologize to me and the fans. They’ve had my back and they’ve felt the pain. I really appreciate the people all around who’ve had my back.”

So that’s where we are. It’s Valentine’s season and love for your favorite sports team is strong, but just like any relationship there are good times and bad. Love can make you do crazy things. Love can get you into trouble, it makes you passionate, irrational, and emotional. So just like you’d do for your buddy who got dumped, cheated on and done dirty, buy a Knick fan a beer. They’ve earned it.

[kasiebingham]

Easter isn’t over....

 And nor should it ever be!

Humanity passions for freedom. Free will. Free speech. Free choice. And, if not most of all, freedom from judgement.

As I reflected on my mindsets, my focus and how each day throughout the Easter Weekend made me feel, I came to realise that my everyday life should be lived with this same awe, surrender and devotion; no matter the date of the calendar.

As I drove to a family event on Good Friday, I listened to an online preservice where to MC’s were commenting, “If today is Good Friday, and Sunday is Resurrection Sunday, what is Saturday?” There was also naive and vague remarks regarding Thursday. I talked to YouTube the same way I attempt to advise NRL players and referees on the television, contributing input as though they could hear me. Their curiosity quickly awoke critical thinking and evaluation of what I’ve been taught over my years, studied and read in my own personal devotions recently. 

So, what do the days of Easter Weekend signify?

Thursday - Through student-led inquiry in the classroom, we briefly learned about Lent. “The last day of Lent is Holy Thursday, which reminds us of when Jesus had the last supper and washed the feet of his disciples.” Watching the ABC Behind the News segment, I watched, with a recently opened-mind and understanding of this act, people sitting lined up and having their feet washed. John 13:7, “Jesus replied, ‘You don’t understand yet the meaning of what I’m doing, but soon it will be clear to you.’” Jesus was replying to Peter who was objecting that his LORD would be on his knees taking a position “beneath” Peter. Elaborating, Dr Brian Simmons explains, “By removing their sandals and washing their feet, Jesus was showing them that he was granting them a new inheritance - his own. The sandal is often used in covenants of inheritance in Hebrew culture. Every defilement would be removed so that they could ‘place the sole of their feet’ upon the new covenant inheritance.” (See also Joshua 1:3, Ruth 4:1-12 and Exodus 3:5.) The day before Jesus’ crucifixion, he removed defilements so that his disciples could walk into the new inheritance in Christ that was about to come!

Friday - Good Friday. The day we reflect on the ultimate sacrifice of our God and Saviour. What is the significance of the sacrifice? The Old Testament Law required that blood would be spilled for the sanctification from their sin - something had to be substituted in place of the person, (Leviticus 4:20-35). The root of the Hebrew word translated “atonement” in the Old Testament is kaphar, which has the idea of “covering,” not total removal. Ron Dudek explains, “Tens of thousands of animals were ceremonially slaughtered by Jewish priests for centuries, the spilling of their blood vividly illustrated the deadly seriousness of sin. However, these sacrifices were essentially like a bandage, only acting as a covering for sin. They did not, and could not, remove sin.” What these sacrifices ultimately point toward is the significance of God’s biggest plan - Jesus Christ who would be the only one to remove the sins for all people, (Hebrews 10:4). Friday is good because it leads to the resurrection and victory that is to come.

Saturday - What is Saturday? Some consider it Silent Saturday or Holy Saturday; a time to reflect on what had happened on the Friday. On that Saturday, Jesus lay dead in the tomb and his disciples experience the absence of God. In some cases, it is silent. The heavens are silent. Hope has come crashing down before their eyes. Faith has been given its ultimate challenge. In shock. In disbelief. But, in unknown waiting. The disciples have no words. 

As I drove and reflected, I thought of Passover. I recalled the night the Jews, in captivity under Egypt, had been waiting for their promised freedom. Faith was activated in the action of sacrificing a lamb and smearing its blood over the door posts of their houses so that death would passover their families and save their sons. Here I was, realising more intimately and personally the connection of Jesus’ blood - my passover. And not just my passover, but the final passover for the world. The spirit of death passes over me that my life is spared. Imagine the waiting and the extent of faith required on that first Passover. Did the mums sleep? Did they hold their sons in their arms the entire night? Did the dad’s sit by the doors watching and ready to defend their child’s life if need be? Silent. Waiting. 

I believe there is so much more in the Saturday.

The voice of WM. B. Eerdman shares that, “for much of Christian history the church has given no place to Holy Saturday in its liturgy or worship. Yet the space dividing Calvary and the Garden may be the best place from which to reflect on the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection.”

Sunday - Resurrection Sunday. The difference between every sacrificial event throughout the Old Testament and this one is, this sacrifice came back to life. I mean, on what grounds could Satan have been confident to think he had an ounce of any form of power to defeat God; his own creator. Life. This resurrection life is more powerful that the physical because Christ has overcome the physical. One of my favourite pieces of literature has a bold yet mistake-ridden character being told, “Every day is fresh of mistakes,” (Anne of Green Gables). Even Lamentations tells us that! “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness,” (Lamentations 3:22-23). Jesus’ life defeats eternal death. It defeats any battle because life is in him - a fresh and new chance everyday.

Each and every day my life exists due to this coherent narrative - this mind blowing expression of love and grace. What is reflected upon and celebrated at Easter should not be an annual moment, it should be an everyday moment, because each and every breath I breathe each and every day, I breathe with God. And this is only possible because of Jesus.

Everyday life should be lived with this same awe we come on our knees with at Easter time, surrender and devotion; no matter the date of the calendar.

[ngeche-nt]

Good Friday Year B Passion Of Our Lord

Good Friday Year B Passion Of Our Lord

April 2, 2021 John 18:1-19:42 18:1 After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Ma Yesù boŋnǝ mitǝ la, bwo bǝ̀ ngaŋǝ-ndzǝ̀mǝ̀ jwi ti’ì nfu nghǝ nchya mǝmǝ nǝ̀bǝ̀mnǝ̀ nǝ Kindronǝ̀ nti’i nghǝ nkû mǝmǝ nsuŋǝ tsǝ. 18:2 Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, because…

[dailybiblelessons]

June 28 to July 4 (Ordinary 13)

What's ahead in the Bible readings for this week The Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost

Faith

Sunday's and Wednesday's Gospel readings are about faith. The Sunday one has two intertwined stories. The first concerns Jairius, who comes to Jesus begging that his daughter, who is at the point of death, be made well and live. The second is about the woman with a flow of blood. As the reading the Hebrew Scripture for Tuesday makes clear, this woman was ritually unclean. Whoever touches her (or whoever she touches) is unclean, and everything she has touched is unclean. Everyone who touches what she has touched must wash his or her clothes and bathe. Her transgression in touching Jesus' garment was very serious, which makes Jesus' response to her so much richer. Jesus tells her the healing came because “your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” It is remarkable not just that she believed that touching Jesus would cure her, but also that her faith made her strong enough to ignore the limits placed on her by society and find healing in Jesus. Jesus then proceeds on to Jairius' home, reviving his daughter. In Wednesday's reading from Mark Jesus casts out a demon his disciples were unable to handle. In it he tells the father of the boy with the demon “All things can be done for the one who believes,” and the father responds “I believe, help my unbelief!” When the disciples ask why they could not remove the demon, Jesus said that this kind came out only through prayer. Together, these readings call us both to faith and to prayer.

The Wednesday reading from 2 Kings (in the complementary series) also concerns faithful prayer. King Hezekiah, with bitter tears, prays “Remember now, O Lord, I implore you, how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” God answers his prayer and allow him another fifteen years of life.

Blood

I have been thinking about the ways in which the scriptures treat women, in light of the #MeToo movement. First, I notice that neither the woman with the flow of blood nor Jarius' daughter are named. This disempowers women, and probably was pretty standard in the first century. Second, it is interesting that the passages relating to a man being unclean after an emission of semen do not appear in the lectionary, although they are more frequent in Leviticus than those related to menstruation. It seems, at least to me, that calling a woman unclean because of a natural bodily process is unfair. Nevertheless, the many passages about avoiding blood probably were sensible in an era when blood borne infections hadn't even been identified. Even the idea that illness may be caused by an infection wasn't yet apprehended. Animal blood is also forbidden. Recall that the agreement at the Council of Jerusalem ( Acts 15:22-29), which relieved Gentile men of the obligation to be circumcised, did require that all Gentile Christians refrain from blood or meat containing blood. The parable of the Good Samaritan becomes richer when we realize that the priest and the Levite passed this bloody body by in order to remain ritually clean. The Samaritan put those considerations aside to help the man. Jesus isn't depicted as running off to bathe, as the law required of him, after being touched by the menstruating woman. Instead, he reassures her and continues on to save Jarius' daughter. It is another lesson about putting aside the law in order to do the will of God.

2nd Corinthians

The epistle lessons this week all come from Second Corinthians. Paul's relationship with the church at Corinth has changed. He had written a harsh letter referred to in Thursday's reading, and now is seeking to repair the relationship. In Friday's reading, he writes about the success of the mission to Macedonia (the area north of Greece where Philippi and Thessalonica are located), where money was raised for the poor in Jerusalem. He is concerned that the Corinthians won't live up to the standard the Macedonians have set. In Sunday's through Tuesday's readings he urges them to finish what they started in raising money for the saints in Jerusalem. He is sending Titus and two unidentified companions to collect the offering. Paul reminds us of the importance of faithful giving.

Complementary Series: Laments

Hezekiah's bitter weeping is an expression of lament, a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. We have four readings this week from Lamentations. The lamentations we read on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are searing examples. The symbolic language does not tie the laments to any specific event, so we can find our own meaning in them. Still, scholars think that the book was written in the aftermath of the Babylonian invasions of Jerusalem, which led to overwhelming physical and social devastation and the collapse of the community's entire symbolic and theological world. And yet we have the Sunday reading, where the sufferer finds assurance that God will have compassion, according to the abundance of God's steadfast love. These readings remind us that God is with us, even in our deep despair.

Semi-Continuous Series: First and Second Samuel

The Sunday Hebrew Scripture in the semi-continuous series is also a lament. David's sorrow at Jonathan's passing is understandable, even expected, given their relationship. (In last Saturday's reading, 1 Samuel 18:1-4, Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as much as his own soul.) What is surprising is his lament for Saul, who has tried to kill him several times. The rest of the readings tell us more about David, Saul, and Samuel.

Thursday to Sunday Psalms Complementary Psalm 30 You have turned my mourning into dancing and clothed me with joy. Semi-continuous Psalm 130 My soul waits for the Lord more than those who wait for the morning.

Thursday: Preparation for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Lamentations 1:16-22 God is in the right, for I have rebelled against God's word. Semi-continuous 1 Samuel 19:18-24 Saul sends men to take David, who is with Samuel at Ramah. The men fall into a prophetic frenzy, even when Saul sends others a second and a third time. Finally, Saul comes and also falls into a prophetic frenzy. Both 2 Corinthians 7:2-12 Paul's joy that the Corinthians grief has led to repentance. They have welcomed Titus.

Friday: Preparation for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Lamentations 2:1-12 God destroys without pity. Semi-continuous 1 Samuel 20:1-25 Jonathan makes a pact with David to find out if Saul intends to murder David. Both 2 Corinthians 8:1-7 Paul encourages the Corinthians to be as generous as the Macedonians have been.

Saturday: Preparation for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Lamentations 2:18-22 Cry out to God! Pour out your heart like water. Semi-continuous 1 Samuel 20:27-42 Jonathan warns David that Saul intends to kill him. Both Luke 4:31-37 Jesus, in the Capernaum synagogue, drives out an unclean spirit.

The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Lamentations 3:23-33 God's mercies never come to an end. Alternate Complementary Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24 God did not make death, and does not take pleasure in the death of the living. Semi-continuous 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 David laments the deaths of Saul and Jonathan. Both 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 Finish what you have begun, giving according to your means. Both Mark 5:21-43 Christ heals a woman with a flow of blood, and raises Jarius' daughter.

Monday to Wednesday Psalms Complementary Psalm 88 A cry for help in desolation Semi-continuous Psalm 18:1-6, 43-50 The Lord lives! Praise be to my rock, who saves me from my enemies.

Monday: Reflection on the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Leviticus 21:1-15 A priest shall not go where there is a dead body. Semi-continuous 1 Samuel 23:14-18 Jonathan acknowledges that David will be king. Both 2 Corinthians 8:16-24 Titus sent from Macedonia with two companions to receive the collection.

Tuesday: Reflection on the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary Leviticus 15:19-31 A woman having her period or blood at another time is unclean. Semi-continuous 1 Samuel 31:1-13 Saul and his sons die in a war with the Philistines. Both 2 Corinthians 9:1-5 Paul wants to assure that neither he nor the Corinthians are embarrassed should some of the Macedonians come with him.

Wednesday: Reflection on the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Complementary 2 Kings 20:1-11 God heals King Hezekiah. Semi-continuous 1 Chronicles 10:1-14 Saul, Jonathan, and Saul's other sons die in a war with the Philistines. Both Mark 9:14-29 Jesus heals a boy of a spirit that convulses him. The boy's father said, "If you are able to do anything, have pity on us." Jesus answered, "If you are able-all things are possible for one who believes." The father replied, "I believe. Help my unbelief!"

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Selections from Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings, copyright © 1995 by the Consultation on Common Texts. Unless otherwise indicated, Bible text is from The New Revised Standard Version, (NRSV) copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All right reserved. Image credit: Hands in prayer via Pixabay. This is a public domain image.

What's Ahead B Ordinary 13

[liebesyhhra]

rahmah

Bismillaah

This post is inspired by my friend, A, who attended the camp in this post with me. Thank you always for your patience and kindness while being in my company, and the company of others. May Allah Bless you always <3</p>

dear A, 

i still remember feeling soo fatigued and lazy on that friday morning and i regretted signing up to go for the camp. when we met you told me the same but after getting through the weekend i’m glad we both made it. 

here’s the poster

the camp mainly centered around the theme rahmah, or mercy, in line with this year’s (every year’s???) ramadhan theme ‘rahmah begins with me’. there were three main components; talkshow on rahmah, social experiment and team building activities. apart from those there was also qiyam, morning tazkirah and kurma sessions. 

1. talkshow  

the talkshow was titled ‘selfie vs wefie: rahmah’. the use of selfe vs wefie is to enjoin us youths to engage in acts of kindness together, and not merely as individuals. blessing is in togetherness after allll. i loved the talkshow moderated by ustaz saifuddin and panelled by ustaz izhar and ustaz faritz. insyaAllah i will share some of the beneficial pointers i’ve gained!

1) what is rahmah? 

the root word of rahmah is found in two arabic words: rahima and rahim

the verb rahima means to have compassion and mercy

the noun rahim, as in silaturrahim, means womb. thus silaturrahim means familial ties, bonded by the womb.

therefore rahmah means mercy, kindness and humanity

2) who gives rahmah?

ultimately, Allah ar-rahman ar-rahim (Most Merciful, Most Kind) is the giver of rahmah. and although we can never compare to the magnitude of His mercy, we should try to emulate this blessed quality and shower it upon fellow human beings, animals and the environment. every act counts, no matter how small you view it. an act of kindness goes a looong way! recently with the rising awareness of saving the ecosystem, the call to eradicate the use of plastic have been very popular. switching to reusable utensils instead of using one-time use plastic utensils may be a good start! we might just save a turtle <3 </p>

3) everyone has a part!

i have been quite hard on myself whenever i vow to do something good for the world, but never being as good as *person A* or *person B* or anyone i come across doing something significant and positive for the world. haha remember the inferior complex? ya i guess looking at people doing so much more than i could ever imagine myself doing totally wiped out my own initiatives to put in any effort. which doesn’t do anything for anybody! 

so it was such a timely and consoling reminder when ustaz shared that everyone of us have different capacities of spreading rahmah, and that is ok. because Allah created us all different, with different strengths and weaknesses so that we can complement one another. i might be better in maths and my friend might be better at expressing ideas, together we could help each other out in our own ways :) i remind myself and i hope everyone too will not compare the degree of our efforts to spread rahmah. furthermore being kind is not an individual effort and it’s not something mutually exclusive. collectively, all our efforts would surely bring lots of amazing positive changes and ultimately a continuously better world for all. everyone has a part in being kind, and everyone plays a part in being kind. so never compare, and focus on giving our best! 

Allah has stated in surah az zukhruf ayat 32

أَهُمْ يَقْسِمُونَ رَحْمَتَ رَبِّكَ ۚ نَحْنُ قَسَمْنَا بَيْنَهُم مَّعِيشَتَهُمْ فِي الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا ۚ وَرَفَعْنَا بَعْضَهُمْ فَوْقَ بَعْضٍ دَرَجَاتٍ لِّيَتَّخِذَ بَعْضُهُم بَعْضًا سُخْرِيًّا ۗ وَرَحْمَتُ رَبِّكَ خَيْرٌ مِّمَّا يَجْمَعُونَ - 43:32

Do they distribute the mercy of your Lord? It is We who have apportioned among them their livelihood in the life of this world and have raised some of them above others in degrees [of rank] that they may make use of one another for service. But the mercy of your Lord is better than whatever they accumulate.

so that we may help one another, and be kind to one another. really the differences that bind us. 

ustaz also mentioned that muslims aren’t people who merely go with the flow of situations. we are capable of making decisions and taking action. and it is our responsibility to make choices that are wise and in Allah’s favour. choose kind always! we have the power to change situations.

may Allah grant us the patience, ability and strength to always be kind to all that surrounds us! 

4) humanity

it is the quality of being human. towards ourselves first and foremost, then towards fellow human beings and other creatures. 

one thing that hit me hard was this statement: if we are good to others but not good to ourselves, we wont last in the long run. sometimes i gungho action wanna be all selfless putting others 100% before myself, but time and again people have reminded me not to forgo my own needs. selflessness i guess has its limits. self-care is crucial, because as cliche as it sounds, how can i give my best to others when i am not at my best? perhaps i could, but then again in the long run i’d burn out. i believe fulfilling our own needs is important so we may function optimally, and in turn be at optimal service to others. we are not striving to be candles, burning ourselves and fading away to give light. we aim to be like the sun, giving light while still shining bright insyaAllah. 

5) empathy 

rahmah begins with the heart!!! let’s strive to spread impactful rahmah, so the world may go round and round with kindness!

since it stems from heart, the sincere intention to spread kindness and be kind should also be planted in the heart. may we always sustain this intention and act upon it. 

6) some examples of rahmah  

spreading rahmah or kindness is lyfeee and there are so so many ways to do it. any act has the potential of making the world a better place for somebody, even if that somebody is ourselves. here are some examples:

raising awareness on pertinent issues

having humility in leadership

seeking guidance 

engaging in volunteer and humanitarian work

ustaz izhar shared that he started an instagram page @abandonedsharedbikes to let relevant shared bike companies know of the locations of....abandoned shared bikes. ofo/obike/mobike vigilante like that, so they can take it away. this also was in line with his principle of do something for nothing. 

he also shared that a way to spread kindness is by first, finding a cause to do so. it might be youths, eldercare, ecosystem, refugees or food wastage. find something that is close to your heart. from there, the least someone can do is to genuinely care, and then raise public awareness.

i’d love to listen to what the people around me are passionate about, and i’d love to know yours too, A :)) i also believe these causes may be personal! i will roll the ball and share the causes that are close to my heart and which i am passionate to learn more about and be of service to; youths, mental health and equality. haha in macro das quite sumting to put on my plate but i promise i will start small and hopefully work my way up. in my best capacity. insyaAllah!!! 

7) Allah’s rahmah in ramadan!!! 

there are 3 things that are testament to His abundance of rahmah towards His servants in this blessed month:

multi-fold rewards for worship

Allah’s forgiveness

lailatul qadr

granted, fatigue and lethargy is extraaaa due to lack of food and water intake. however Allah has promised the incentives of multi-fold rewards of worship and doing good in spite of the lack of energy! i feel so loveeed and appreciated :’) i hope we take this opportunity to be steadfast in performing good deeds. there is probably no better time! alhamdulillah plenty opportunities are within arm’s length. saying bismillah while unlocking our phone (thank you H for this!), volunteering with various organisations, qiyam organised by mosques and so so many more. anywhere and anytime is an opportunity to do good and spread kindness. at the same time don’t feel pressured if you are not in the capacity to do as much as the people around you! our battles and hardships are relative and unique for ourselves, so don’t discredit the yourself for not doing ‘enough’! cannot do all does not mean cannot do none at all. Allah is asy Syakur, most appreciative and He always acknowledges your efforts. 

furthermore every act can be considered as an act of ibadah or worship, whether at work, in school or even making kuihs! by planting the right intentions, we can make ordinary tasks an act of goodness. maybe these daily tasks take up much of our time and by the time we are done with them, we don’t have much energy left to continue with the extra ibadahs we wish could do. seize the opportunity and make daily tasks and commitments as acts of ibadah :)

would like to share a hadith on rushing to do good (and not procrastinate it huaha ya Allah please ease our affairs)

عن أبي هريرة رضي الله عنه أن رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم قال‏:‏ ‏ "‏ بادروا بالأعمال فتناً كقطع الليل المظلم يصبح الرجل مؤمنا ويمسي كافراً ويمسي مؤمنا ويصبح كافراً، يبيع دينه بعرض من الدنيا‏"‏ ‏(‏‏(‏رواه مسلم‏)‏‏)‏‏

Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, "Be prompt in doing good deeds (before you are overtaken) by turbulence which would be like a part of the dark night. A man would be a believer in the morning and turn to disbelief in the evening, or he would be a believer in the evening and turn disbeliever in the morning, and would sell his Faith for worldly goods." [Muslim]

fastabiqul khairaaaat!

that’s it for the talkshow i am so thankful for all the valuable and might i say holistic insight! the panelists are amazing masyaAllah. 

2. social experiment

one of the youths acted using crutches carrying loads of ntuc plastic around the neighbourhood’s shopping and transport complex. when anybody from the public came forward to help, the rest of the camp pax would surround him/her and do a mini flashmob reciting quotes on kindness, cheering and saluting the kinddd so kind person. i loved this so much because it was #humanityrestored and it felt so so heartwarming. there are still kind people, and this brings me hope. honestly if i saw someone in distress, would i have come forward to help? seeing people across the age spectrum coming forward to help our fellow youth actor was ughhhhhh so emotional and heartwarming. i hope i will do the same, maybe start with giving up my seat on the bus :))))))) my heart was so full, and i was never prouder of the citizens of my home country huehe. 

here are the quotes to motivate us to be kind!!!

an act of kindness goes a long way

we cant help everyone but everyone can help someone

the reward of goodness is nothing but goodness

humanity begins with me

3. everything else 

of course i’m not doing justice by compiling everything else into one and saying they were great!! haha alhamdulillah i had an amazing with the pax and my group members participating in teambuilding games, listening to beautiful reminders from beloved asatizah and performing the night prayers together. 

an interesting aspect of this camp was kurma (date) sessions (not the matchmaking kind...fortunately? unfortunately? :p) where anybody could come forward and gift a kurma to someone they’d like to express their appreciation towards. sis didn’t give or receive any extra kurma, but please know i appreciate each and every one of you! despite me nodding off every other hour (nat kidding it reached the point where i fell asleep during prayers ha....haa) and wanting to go back to sleep on my bed, i’m glad i stuck through till the end. i managed to gain so many amazing new insights and the social experiment we prepared for together was super memorable, i’d do it again even if it meant using up lots of energy. 

A, i haven’t the chance to properly thank you yet. thank you for patiently entertaining and sticking by this klingy friend of yours!! thank you for sharing this beautiful experience with me although we were both so tired, especially you being from work. you’ve always been so kind to me in your own ways and words, and i hope i will be able to return the same if not more towards you insyaAllah. i guess one of the most memorable moment we shared was the ‘reenactment’ of the story of prophet musa when he helped take water for two ladies hahahahaha (we were both waiting to take milo but a bunch of guys hogged the area when our dear guy fren offered to take water for us huaha dun weri reenactment insyaAllah wont until the part where prophet musa married one of the two ladies he helped take water for coughs hahahah) xD 

ultimately, the message i took home was to be kind. to myself, to people, and to God’s creatures; the living and non-living. may we all do our part to be kind and collectively make this world a better place, and work for the best home in the next world, amin! 

it’s a shared responsibility in this world that we share, lesdudis togedaaaaaaaaa. remembering the sun that gives and never expects anything in return, let’s also do good for nothing ;-) 

semoga Allah redha

lots of love,

<3