Category Archives: Culture

Ash Wednesday Photo Mosaic

by
A Thousand Words

theologienne's Ash Wednesday Mosaic

Complements of  Flickr

What If God Was One of Us?

by

Paul Mayers reflects with this silent video: What If God Were One of Us?

Our Lady of Kibeho and a Worthy Lenten Intention

by

In Left to Tell, Immaculee Ilibagiza tells her story of the Rwandan genocide. In 1981, many years prior to the Rwandan events( to which the world turned a blind eye,) Our Lady made them known through a series of apparitions (approved by the Church) to seven children, Alphonse, Anathalie, Marie Claire, Agnes, Stephanie and Vestine and Emanuel, a young pagan, known as ‘Sagastasha’ at the time of the revelations.

Approved apparition of Our Lady of Kibeho

In this present day, many of the people who where imprisioned after the genocide are being released and returning home.  The time for healing is upon the village people of Rwanda. If  this suffering country is to go forward with one heart, a healed and merciful heart, much prayer and forgiveness is needed.  Only prayer can win this spiritual battle. A worthy Lenten prayer intention!

Lent “Forgiving the Living”

by

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

“Remember, O man, that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return”

A Lenten reflection on “Forgiving the Living” a phrase used by Immaculee Ilibagiza in her own story:

Left To Tell, Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Most of us struggle to forgive, finding it difficult to put aside our bumps and bruises.  We savor our wounds as though they give us pleasure. We are a strange lot.

Imagine, if you can, living with the memory of genocide.  Not a genocide across the world from you, but surrounding you; a genocide that includes your mother and father, your brothers, friends and all your neighbors in one way or another.  Imagine a genocide you can smell and touch and that touches you, that calls your name, hunts you and haunts you.

For thousands in the world today, that is the reality.  For one particular soul, Immaculee Ilabigiza, the author of  Left to Tell, this reality has sprouted wings.  She flies high above her small village in Rwanda living forgiveness, not as a half-hearted effort, but as a mission.  A dream, that she believes was given her by God, opened her heart to the world.  Her touch is one of grace and healing.  Immaculee was left behind to let us know that in order to truly be alive to Life, we can and must forgive by the living grace of God.

Lenten alms and charity

Lent Links

by

Lent is more than reading but reading can set the stage.

My own recommendation is Left To Tell, Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza.

Linking for Lent:

Fr.Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmacp:

The Word of God in the Life of Christ

The Spiritual Reading of the Bible

Happy Catholic: Julie’s Lenten Reading

The Anchoress:  Lenten Reading Suggestions

The Deacon’s Bench: Ash Wednesday Homily

Black Rednecks and White Liberals

by

Attorney General Eric Holder’s remarks at a Justice Department ceremony Feb. 18, 2009,  commemorating Black History Month:

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, a nation of cowards. Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial.”

Cowards come in all colors.  Cowards usually are incapable of facing the truth about themselves.  The blame for their problems are foisted on any but the obvious.   Case in point: the dysfunctional social patterns leading to the tragic dissolution of black families.  In itself it’s sad, but what makes it even sadder are the black leaders perpetuating and defending this behavior as part of the Black Culture. That to me is cowardly and for the black family it is disasterous, ending in them being victimized for political points.

In Thomas Sowell’s book:     Black Rednecks and White Liberals missing pieces of the Black mystique are researched, revealed, and make for some riveting reading.  This is the history you never read when dealing with slavery and it’s aftermath in this country.

Thomas Sowell is a Black man who has faced the struggles himself.  He makes no excuses and holds no one responsible for his destiny but himself. Town Hall.com includes in Sowell’s bio:

Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem. As with many others in his neighborhood, he left home early and did not finish high school. The next few years were difficult ones, but eventually he joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War.

After leaving the service, Sowell entered Harvard University, worked a part-time job as a photographer and studied the science that would become his passion and profession: economics.After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University (1958), he went on to receive his master’s in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968).

In the early ’60s, Sowell held jobs as an economist with the Department of Labor and AT&T. But his real interest was in teaching and scholarship. In 1965, at Cornell University, he began the first of many professorships. His other teaching assignments include Rutgers University, Amherst University, Brandeis University and the University of California at Los Angeles, where he taught in the early ’70s and also from 1984 to 1989.

Attorney General Holder might do well to note that Black History is best served by scholars and honest men without agendas.