Luminous Darkness

Yesterday was World AIDS Day, and even though everyone knows about this disease, we really need to keep pushing our government and others around the world to keep their promise to put real funds at work to do something about it. This is not optional. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first diagnosed in 1981, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. Currently, the World Health Organization estimates that there are about 40 million people living with the human immunodeficiency virus, and in 2005 alone approximately 3 million adults and children died from the disease. In the Anglican Cycle of Prayer, we are asked the following:

Pray for greater awareness of HIV and AIDS, for greater dignity and rights of people living with HIV and AIDS, for more compassion and care, for the rejection of discrimination and stigmatisation, for wider prevention activities that address root causes of vulnerability, for efficient mobilisation of resources and treatments, for increased access to treatments and care, for support for those left behind to grieve the loss of their loved ones, and for trust and hope in our God. Lord hear our prayer.

I leave you with this prayer from the National Episcopal AIDS Coalition

Merciful God,
we remember before you all who are sick this day, and especially all persons with AIDS or HIV infection.
Give them courage to live with their disease.
Help them to face and overcome their fears.
Be with them when they are alone or rejected.
Comfort them when they are discouraged.
And touch them with your healing Spirit that they may find and possess eternal life, now and forever.
Amen.

This is a bit of old news, but I haven’t really read reports of it in too many places. It seems that there were some interesting seating arrangements for world leaders at the Pope’s funeral because they were seated in alphabetical order. In particular, this put Israel very close to Iran and Syria, and amazingly the Israeli president shook hands and exchanged greetings with the leaders of both nations during the giving of the peace near the end of the mass. The Guardian printed this report from the Associated Press. Although all parties are saying that not too much should be read into these gestures, I still think that this might taken as a sign of some hope for the future.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, I strongly recommend reading Jon Carroll’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle about Unitarian Jihad. One never knows where they might strike next! A choice quote from their manifesto:

People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.

Oh, and my Unitarian Jihad Name is Brother Katana of Courteous Debate. Get yours here.

I have finally decided to get out and give some real blogging software a try. I had been feeling for a while that the kinds of posts I was making about theology/history/philosophy/etc. on LiveJournal were not really what people there were interested in, so now I have set up Luminous Darkness. After talking to some friends and looking around a bit on the net, I decided that WordPress was the right program to play around with. Only time will tell if the relationship will work out, but I am optimistic and generally happy so far. I will still use LiveJournal for personal news, so if you are a friend and you want to know about what is going on in my life, then let me know and I will add you to that source of information. One other note is that while I am quite pleased with the theme that I have picked for this blog, I have at least one close friend who uses it as well so I will probably be looking around for something else to use in the future.

In conclusion, you are all most welcome. Please feel free to browse around and enjoy!

NB: All of the posts previous to this one have been moved over from my LiveJournal. However, I have left the comments there, as there were not many, and I didn’t have the permission of the posters to move them here.