stepnwolf's New Writeups

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity (thing)

2001-06-10T22:21:10Z

After Good Friday, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost, the following Sunday in the Roman church is the "Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity," as intellectual as the preceding observances were emotional. In most people's minds, I suspect, the mystery of "Three persons in One God" is accepted on faith. Theologians have belabored the point with little success in explaining how God could be Father, Son and Holy Spirit at one and the same time. They explain that, "the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son." The last phrase, in Latin "filioque" (= "and the son"), was an addition to the Creed, which was rejected by the church in the East and has been a sore point between the Rome and Orthodoxy for hundreds of years.

Proponents of the doctrine of sola scriptura, that scripture is the only authority for belief, will be hard pressed to find the…

Epiklesis (idea)

2001-06-10T21:19:12Z

Epiklesis

Definition

The Greek word means invocation and refers to the prayer that originally appeared in all rites of the early church and continues in the Orthodox churches, but it has been dropped from most of the liturgies of the west. It's place in the Latin Mass was after the words of Institution that begin Hoc est enim corpus meum..., ("This is my Body..."). In the Epiklesis the celebrant prays that God will send his Holy Spirit to change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. An example of the epiklesis is taken from Orthodox Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom that reads in part:
Priest (silently): Again we offer to You this spiritual and unbloody sacrifice, and we implore and pray, and entreat You, send down Your Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts here present. (Blessing the bread) And make this bread the precious body of Your Christ.

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Lovebug (thing)

2001-06-09T20:50:18Z

Last year in Memphis I happened to be sharing a park bench with a very proper southern lady. I glanced down to see two strange bugs in copula as they say. Protecting the lady's sensibilities, I brushed them off the bench so she wouldn't see them screwing in front of everybody. Not minutes later, another pair, and still another. appeared on the bench, all of them in copula. The woman noticed my sudden interest in the sex life of bugs and she dismissed them with "they're nothing but love bugs." I should say so! As far as I could tell that's all they did was copulate.

The scientific name for them is Plecia nearctica. In polite society they are called marsh flies, belonging to the Family Bibionidae. Evidently they have migrated up from Mexico and they appear to have taken over parts of Florida. At the moment they are moving both to the southern reaches of Florida and northward into Georgia and South Carolina. Male love bugs live…

Zeraim (Talmud) (thing)

2001-06-09T13:16:34Z

The Talmud is divided into six large subdivisions, called Orders (in Hebrew, Sedarim). While at first glance they bear little relevance to life today, scholars extrapolate from these commentaries to formulate modern applications. The first of these Orders is Zeraim, meaning "seeds;" it deals primarily with agricultural matters in the land of Israel. This Order contains the following tractates:

Berakhot ("blessings"): Somewhat out of place with the other tractates in this order, Berakhot deals with the format of daily prayers, including the Shema, the Amidah, and the blessings before and after eating.
Peah ("corner"): The subject deals with laws covering gifts to the poor. They include gleanings from the corners of one's field and charity in general.
Demai ("doubtful"): This tractate deals with produce about which

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Exposition and Benediction (thing)

2001-06-09T09:01:31Z

Exposition and Benediction

These are rituals in the Roman Church which are not seen much any more. Of course, if there is no belief in transubstantiation it all seems rather pointless. If, on the other hand, there is a strong belief that during the Mass the elements of bread and wine do actually become the body and blood of Jesus, while retaining the appearance of bread and wine, then these devotions have enormous meaning and significance.

The priest places the consecrated host, now the body of Christ, also called the Blessed Sacrament, in a monstrance, which is a receptacle, usually in the form of a golden sunburst, with a chamber in which the consecrated Host is exposed through a crystal or glass panel in the front. (A ciborium, or covered vessel, containing the Blessed Sacrament may also be used, but the monstrance allows one to view the Host.)

It is placed on the high…

Fort Lauderdale, Florida (place)

2001-06-04T23:28:02Z

The first I heard of Ft. Lauderdale was in the days when every year college kids attacked the beaches during Spring Break. But, as they say, "All good things must come to an end." As I understand it, the party was over in 1985 when the wild parties overwhelmed the city fathers, who clamped down on the influx of some 350,000 students hell-bent on sex, booze, and mayhem. This year we had less than 15,000 students.

So, what's left? The ocean front is as beautiful as it ever was and the stores lining the strip on Las Olas as pricey as ever. We have clubs for every taste, if you're fixing to try to get a tan inside a bar. If nature is your thing, you can certainly find tours into the swamp at reasonable prices. As a matter of fact, I'm just a couple blocks from a small lake, lined by a swamp. My fees for conducting a tour are quite reasonable. The Anne Kolb Nature Center and Marina is a wetland mangrove forest habitat that…