Salt and Light

It's funny how I though that, once school was over, I'd have lots of free time. Oh, I had plans for what I'd do: I'd finish that collection of books I've been meaning to read, finish up the scarf I'm knitting for my dad, get some actual content on my website, help out more at the church (maybe help update their website ...), work on Audioman, have lots of time to spend with friends whom I couldn't see while working on my degree ....

So, almost a month in and this 'free time' has yet to appear. I'm still waiting ...

So Blogger has teamed up with Atom to get site feeds ... yay! Only ... my newsreader is unable to read them :(. I'll keep the link up for a while, but I'd appreciate knowing if anyone else is able to get it to work with their newsreader.

Aack! Still have work to do ... man I'm good with procrastination!

I read an article about this in the Citizen that had a really good one-liner: "I wish I could talk to the Pope on this. He's made a mistake"

Wha???

And them another gem: "We would like to see a renewed church with shared discipleship and women who are not considered as half-baptized"

So, I'm not fully baptized? Last time I checked, the sacrament was the same for men and for women ... now that's putting a spin on things for the sake of your own agenda. That statement on its own does more for the viewing of women as lesser in dignity than the 2000 years of Catholic teaching that has maintained that Christ calls only men to the priesthood.

Mark Shea points out what many pushing for women's ordination seem to forget: the sacrament of ordination is a gift, not a right. As with all sacraments; they are gifts from God. If God were to give us what we rightfully deserved ... well, did we DESERVE to have Christ come down and die for our sins?

I think not.

Well, all my marks are in, and it has been a good semester. It has been a good 4-something years, actually; I'm quite happy with the grades that I achieved.

What's really interesting, though, is that despite my very busy semester, my marks remained at the same high level that I have come to expect of myself: 2 A's and 3 A+'s. This despite: leading and participating in 2 different weekly Bible Studies, volunteering at 2 schools, being on Challenge exec and serving on a weekend and volunteering about twice a month at youth group. Not to mention the friendships that have developed over the past 4 months.

I would be a little baffled, but I guess that it just proves that with God, anything is possible. If you give your time to Him, He will always give back to you.

I had a really enlightening discussion with a friend of mine a few days ago. Now I've always been a bit of a girly-girl, with silly romantic notions about being rescued (from what, I don't know ...) by a good-looking knight on his valiant horse. But I kept this pretty much to myself, figuring that I was odd and that no other girl, let alone guys, would have the same ideas.

So imagine my surprise when a good friend told me that guys fantasize about the same thing. But from the other side, of course. In his words: "Guys have a hero complex. They fantasize just as much about rescuing girls as girls do about being rescued"

Ya learn something new every day.

You tell me.

I went the Museum of Civilization last night, to see the exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls If you have a chance, I recommend going. There is something incredibly powerful about seeing physical evidence of that which I take on faith. Kinda cool, really.

One thing that struck me really hard was a display of a very plain ossuary and a replica of parts of the bones it contained. I had this strange fascination with this display; I felt drawn to it a number of times throughout the night, but at the same time, I could not look at it for very long. As it is, the image of it burns into my mind and sends chills down my spine at the memory of it.

The descriptive text told of a man, Yehohanan ben Hagkol, who died by crucifixion and whose remains were placed in the ossuary. The ancient Jews (and today's orthodox, I am told) believe in the resurrection of the dead, so it was important to keep all the remains of the deceased together, hence the use of ossuaries. The remains were placed in the ossuary a year after the person's death to hold them until the resurrection of the dead. At the exhibit they had two very ornate ossuaries, with the remains of very rich people, but this particular ossuary was very plain, indicating that its owner was very poor. It was not known what crime he was accused of committing to deserve his fate.

But the ossuary didn't fascinate me; the remains did. On display beside the ossuary is a replica of the foot that was found. During crucifixion, the feet and hands are often nailed to the wood of the cross, and in this case the nail was bent and could not be removed from the foot without damaging it. So they left the nail in the foot to keep it together.

Now, I know that Jesus was crucified, nailed to the cross like this man was. During my prayertime, I sometimes meditate on this, because it calls to mind His sacrifice in a very real way. Often during the Stations of the Cross (the eleventh station: Jesus is nailed to the cross) or during the 4th sorrowful mystery of the rosary, I really meditate of this, trying to imagine what it must have felt like. Sometimes I would be moved to tears.

But my imagination is limited. This I discovered last night.

The nail that pierced the foot on display was a large iron nail, about 5 inches long, and about 1/2 of an inch in diameter (a guess, I'm horrible at measuring by eye). It was larger than a tent spike. It was rough, primitive and painful-looking. I actually found a picture of it here. The sight of it is just repulsive to me, which is why I couldn't look at it for more than about 3 seconds at a time.

So, while this is only a replica, and while it was nailed into the foot of another man, when I look at this I see Jesus. I see a nail, just like this one, that was pounded into His hands and feet, nailing Him to a cross where he died to pay for my sins. And it just serves to further confuse me, why an all-powerful God would choose to come to the earth to suffer a fate such as this one. Such is the great mystery, and great joy of Christianity: that our God loves us so much that he would make this sacrifice for us.