rob’s place

This was just a funny quote I wanted to share. It was printed in a blog from the Orlando Sentinel. This morning President Bush was in Miami and went to the Church of the Epiphany for worship.

‘What a great privilege it is for all of us to pray with the most powerful man on the face of the Earth,’ said Msgr. Jude O’Doherty. ‘I want you to know, Mr. President, that I’m not one bit nervous. If I should stumble on a word or two, I know you will understand.’

Now that’s funny!

(I originally wrote this 2 years ago, but thought I’d dig it back up today)

You probably thought this would be about Halloween, huh? But I wanted to take a moment to remind us all that today is a very significant day in Christian, indeed Western, history! Let me take a moment to explain…

On October 31, 1517, in Wittenberg, Germany, Professor and Catholic Priest Martin Luther wrote 95 statements that he cared to discuss with his fellow professors and priests. Luther was upset (among other things) with the abuse of indulgences sold by the church to raise money previously to fund crusades and to fund building churches. For instance, John Tetzel was in charge of a “church building campaign” and was preaching all around Germany, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs”. This manipulation tactic infuriated Luther. As was custom, Luther posted his 95 statements on the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg — it was like the bulletin board or a message board online (blog?) — written in Latin (not German) so that his colleagues could discuss the issues. He wanted to talk reform in the church.

However, someone took that paper, translated it into German, and then used the new invention of the day to spread the word of the “rebellion”. Gutenberg’s Print Press was used to circulate the message all over Germany and soon Luther became a hero of sorts to the Germans. Luther didn’t back down either. Luther preached sermons, wrote books, and printed and circulated these works using the Gutenberg press.

The church didn’t like this stirring and issued an official statement from the Pope for Luther to quiet down. “A wild boar has invaded Thy vineyard” was a statement made in this document (called a papal bull) asking God to judge Luther.

Long story short, Luther continued his protest and call for reform and thus the protesting Protestants began the Reformation on their own.

Many scholars today say Luther was one of the first to really push the improvements of the print press. The technology of the day allowed Luther to spread the protesting reforms. Most, if not all, of western culture was first formed as a direct result of Luther’s works — and his works were made known because of the new technology of the day.

Enjoy today, knowing that God uses us to make a difference in this world using the tools He’s given us.

PS. This post isn’t intended to “Catholic bash”, but there’s no denying reform needed to happen in those days. And it did in two ways: The Protestant Reformation and later a Catholic Reformation under Pope Paul III (1534-1549): the Council of Trent, Spanish Jesuit Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier (one of the first missionaries to India and Japan founding a town for Christian converts named Nagasaki), and Matthew Ricci (first missionary to China).

Alright! The Tigers D does it again. We beat NC State 26-20 today to take us to 4-4 on the season.

Next up: Miami. Ugh.

Go Tigers!

Don’t forget to show up for church tomorrow morning an hour late. Okay, well, sort of. Daylight Savings ends tonight so everyone should set their clocks back an hour.

The concept of DST has always intrigued and confused me. So today I found a site that helped my understand it better. You can learn about how & why it works, along with who in the world does it, and all sorts of other stuff.

This has been your Orangejack Public Service Announcement.

According to Google, there are over 6 billion pages indexed on the web. Just do a search for “the” and look to see how many they say are there. When I just tried it, it told me there were about 6,010,000,000 entries. That’s about one per person.

Interesting. Yahoo found less than 2 billion.

MSN only found 315 million. Got a long way to go, Bill.

The following went out to our eNewsletter list today so I thought I’d share it here also…

Patricia and I have been in Canada over a month now and we wanted to give you a quick update on how we’re doing. Patricia is still sick often so please continue to pray for her. I have been doing well adjusting to this role here.

We also wanted to tell you about a really cool opportunity I received last week. I had the humble pleasure to be interviewed by a ministry in the Washington DC area called For Ministry. The transcript for that interview has been posted on their eQuip channel. You can also access the transcript directly here.

The interview will give you a little more insight into how I got involved in internet ministry and a new website I’ve recently launched about being effective in internet ministry.

Thanks for your continued prayers for us both.

Rob & Patricia

StarWars.com has announced that the Episode III trailer will be released in theaters next Friday as a trailer for The Incredibles (which looks like a good movie in it’s own right!). All the more reason to go see the movie.

They have also released the teaser poster for Episode III. Personally, I don’t like it. But they didn’t ask me. I really liked the one for Episode I. The one for II was okay. This one is the worst of the bunch. You can see them all here.

I’m still excited about the May 19, 2005 release though.

The NFL. Duh! But what is interesting is that college football has now passed the NBA.

Did you see it last night? We did. I took one photo on my digi cam but haven’t looked to see if it came out. Doubt it. But never fear! This guy didn’t miss it.

Thanks to Micro Persuasion for the link.

Cool. NFL.com and the Weather Channel have partnered to provide hurricane relief. All you have to do is visit www.nfl.com/features/relief every day. Each day you visit, they will donate.

Tonight there will be a total lunar eclipse. Keep watching the sky…

This morning wasn’t too bad. I woke up with my radio alarm and my currently new favorite song came on. It’s called They by Jem. Have you heard it? It’s a great song. Some say it’s spooky. I admit it’s haunting, but I think it sounds more like a Christmas song with the boys choir in it.

Then I made my way out the door and to the car. Our first frost! I have a scraper but I just sat in the car with the heat on high until I could see out of the windshield. But the ride in was beautiful! I travel down a highway for just a few miles (oops, kilometers!) but it goes parallel to some snow capped mountains to the north and heads toward some more slightly snow capped mountains to the east. The sun was huge and bright orange coming up over the mountain and made everything around me an orange hue.

Then I was skipping through the radio trying to find something I like. The last song that came on before I got to work took me back. It was Respect Yourself by none other than Bruce Willis. Now ain’t that a strange way to end your drive? Listening to Bruce Willis sing and “play” the harmonica?

But it was good. Just a bit different.