Tuesday Trivia

I haven't done a bullet-like sequence of my stuff for awhile, so I guess that's what is up for today:

• Cold fronts are finally blowing through to the Gulf of Mexico, so we are getting some dry and cooler weather. I feel happier and more energetic with this promise of cooler weather, which always reminds me of Bellingham (WA) summer days. It is lovely to have temperatures below 78 degrees F. in the mornings!

• I made applesauce today (also including five pears). This brought back memories of making applesauce in cooler weather with my four children around to eat it. It was good to use up various apples from the refrigerator, some of which were in lone plastic bags.

• Two weeks from right now, I will be with 15 other women on a jet heading to Russia! This is for the Russian Initiative of the United Methodist Church. It is interesting to learn that this began in 1991-92, which is when I first vaguely heard about it at the Morristown, NJ United Methodist Church. I never imagined I would be involved in this.

• The Wisdom Class met today and we discussed chapter 6 "Jurisdiction" in Tattoos of the Heart by Gregory Boyle. The word "jurisdiction" is used by gang members in east LA to indicate the so-called "gang territory" for each gang. Here is something from this chapter:
  

"Sometimes you're thrown into each other's jurisdiction, and that feels better than living, as the Buddhists say, in the 'illusion of separateness.' It is in this place where we judge the other and feel the impossibility of anything getting bridged. The gulf too wide and the gap too distant, the walls grow higher, and we forget who we are meant to be to each other. . . . Bridging the gulf of mutual judgment and replacing it with kinship is tricky indeed." (133)

• I got the next book for the Wisdom Class from Amazon this afternoon and have started reading it: The First Christmas by Crossan and Borg. They are stressing that (they believe that) the two nativity stories in Matthew and Luke should be read as parables, giving meaning to Jesus and his time and our current civilization. (Empires in both!)

• For our Wisdom Class meditation, I copied yesterday's post of Stephen Colbert (underneath this one). We have both liberals and conservatives in the class and that prompted a good discussion before we even got to the book. I am still thinking about the comment that helping the needy is from a position of power, unlike the equal acceptance of Gregory Boyle. But can a nation only proceed from that position?