Stone of Witness: 11.11.11 Friday Five

Friday, November 11, 2011

11.11.11 Friday Five

Friday, November 11, 2011 11.11.11 Friday Five

Songbird is doing one of her weird things today. 11/11/11 is on her mind:

It's 11/11/11, a date you can read forwards and backwards, American-style and European-style.It's Veteran's Day/Armistice Day, which seems to be celebrated more someplace than others. The kids here are out of school and some communities have ceremonies of remembrance scheduled.

My denomination (UCC) is finishing up a drive called Mission 1, which ran from 11.1.11 to 11.11.11.

It's a popular date for getting married, or so I'm told, just like other memorable dates (for instance 09/08/07).

But mostly, it's a big day for Nigel Tufnel, in celebration of "maximum elevenness."

For today's Friday Five, share five ways you or someone you know likes to turn it up to 11. How have you gone beyond the usual expected limits? Feel free to interpret this as eccentrically as possible.

I am not one for numerology. I am dyscalculate as well as dyslexic.

1. The only thing that 11/11/11 brings to mind is my mother. My mother was born on 11/12/12. Next year I will celebrate her 100th birthday. She just died 2 years ago so I had her for a long time, but it is now a bittersweet time.

2. I always remembered the birthday of the Girl Scouts because that was 1912.

3. I always remember Armistice Day (Veterans Day) because my mother remembered “the parade in her home town inn which they “dragged an effigy of Kaiser William down the street on the day before my birthday”.

4. My niece got married on 6/6/06. And it has been a good marriage for both of them. This year he turns 60, she turns 50, and her daughters turn 30 and 20 respectively. Numbers mean something to her.

5. I am not sure what ‘turning it up to 11”really means. If it means “living large”, I think I have always lived large. It hasn’t occurred to me to turn it down. But now with my financial options fairly curtailed, I can’t live as large as I would like. Retirement has a tendency to dampen one’s enthusiasm. Now if we can get Superwoman to be silverhaired, I know what I am going to wear NEXT Halloween!

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Quotes

"Faith is different from theology because theology is reasoned, systematic, and orderly, whereas faith is disorderly, intermittent, and full of surprises.... Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on than a movement toward, less a sure thing than a hunch. Faith is waiting." Frederick Buechner “I realized that an oyster is an organism that defends itself by excreting a substance to protect itself against the sand of its spawning bed. The more sand in the oyster, the more chemical the oyster produces until finally, after layer upon layer of gel, the sand turns into a pearl. And the oyster itself becomes more valuable in the process. At that moment,” I said, I discovered the ministry of irritation.” Joan Chittister

Quotes

So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.(Molly Ivins 1944-2007)

Dorothy Sayers (Creed or Chaos?)

Let us,

In Heaven's name,

drag out the Divine Drama

from under the dreadful accumulation

of slipshod thinking

and trashy sentiment heaped upon it,

and set it on an open stage

to startle the world

into some sort of vigorous reaction.

If the pious are the first to be shocked,

so much the worse for the pious

--others will enter the Kingdom of Heaven before them.

If all men are offended because of Christ,

let them be offended;

but where is the sense

of their being offended at something

that is not Christ

and is nothing like Him?

We do Him

singularly little honor by watering down

'til it could not offend a fly.

Surely it is not the

business of the Church

to adapt Christ to man,

but to adapt man to Christ.

Just Something to Think About...

"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision." (Lynn Lavner, an American comedian and musician from Brooklyn, NY). and...none of the six came from Jesus

"Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness." - Karen Armstrong

"A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — what gospel is that?"

-Archbishop Oscar Romero

"If the truth be told, my attitude towards all gatherings of bishops is to avoid them. I have never seen a good outcome to any synod, or asynod which produced deliverance from evils rather than the additionto them … rivalries and manoeuvres always prevail over reason … and intrying to decide between others it is easier to get accused ofwickedness itself than to deal with their wickedness. Consequently Ihave withdrawn to myself. I consider retirement to be the only meansof saving my soul." Gregory of Naziansus (bishop, 4th century)

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision." (Lynn Lavner, an American comedian and musician from Brooklyn, NY).