5 Lessons Learned from the Apocalypse Fail, Or, It’s Not the End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel So-So

[via Religion Dispatches]

"Hear That? It's The Sound Of Truth."



[via wheezywaiter]

Postponing by Predicting?

“It has been taught that three things come when the mind is diverted: The Messiah, finding a lost article and a scorpion.

So don’t postpone his coming by thinking about it![ii]”

I was taught as a young man that we can speed up the coming of Christ by reaching the whole world with His message. Now here, the writing of Jesus’ colleagues suggest that there are also ways we can slow it down.{emphasis in original}

Can this be true?

And if so, why?

....If we expect things, we tend to handle them. Our humanity wants to handle God. We secretly hope to force Him into some kind of deal. Deadlines and deals seem to go hand in hand.

But God is not only unimaginable. He is also unmanageable.

[via BROOKE GALE LUBY WRITES, HT: comment at this post at Jesus Needs New PR]

[via Slacktivist]

Disappointment, despair and Harold Camping

Of Things Unseen, Not Of Fears Unknown



[via Jesus Needs New PR]

It's *So* Predictable...



[appropriately via Surviving the World, here]

Not Overlooking the Obvious

HT: Brain Pickings, noticed here



[from The Jubilee Project]

And We're Off!



First Orbit, recalling and recreating Yuri Gagarin's *first* human orbit ever. Has it really been 50 years? Maybe warp drive will be next, to go where no one has gone before. :)

The Definition of Love

[via SpokenVerse]



"L'Amour et Psyche, enfants", by William Bouguereau (1825-1905)
"Two Lovers", 1906, by Marcus Stone (1840-1921) Two Lovers 1906,

MY Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis, for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by Despair,
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

As lines, so love's oblique, may well
Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

Weathering the Storm...Over and Over, Bing!



[via HomeStarRunnerTron, inspired by Pogo]