NorCalUrban

The Latin phrase, simil iustus et peccator , encapsulates how I've been feeling lately in my struggle to have good character. This is highlighted by the fall of NY governor Elliot Spitzer.  It means simultaneous saint and sinner . The  excellent article on the Sojourners website called "Latin Tattoos and 24 Hours of Televangelism" (by Nadia Bolz-Weber)  The article deals with the duality of life and the redemption of the Cross of Christ. We are all 100% sinners - but Christ's sacrifice (as Christian's believe) makes us righteous in His eyes, making us 100% saints. It's not a licence to sin -we all are called to live holy and righteous, but it speaks of the state of grace we live in when we are committed to Christ in spite of our failings. It also reminds us of our hopelessness without Christ's sacrifice. Appropriate thoughts during this Lenten and Easter season.  The article states: "The really liberating thing about this is that when we all come to t...

At the Sojourners  website, author Danny Schechter has an interesting comments about the current mortgage meltdown, the forces that drove the crisis and the dramatic impact on the broader market and the eventually on the poor. He writes:  "How was this allowed to happen? These days, instead of holding onto mortgages they make, most banks sell them to Wall Street. There, prominent firms make millions recycling mortgages into securities and other exotic financial instruments, often using them to provide financing for even bigger deals—and sanctioning the unrestrained greed and unregulated chicanery of the predatory lending industry. It became a classic “the emperor has no clothes” story when it was revealed that many of those “asset-backed securities” had no real assets behind them. Suddenly, the paper proved worthless and the markets panicked. Soon there was a “crisis of liquidity” in financial circles, as it became clear that bad deals had been funded by bad debts. That’s where we...

Found this at the Sojourners website. There seems to be much concern lately over the people being referred to as "illegal immigrants." Let's define our terms: "Immigrant" - somebody who has come to a country and settled there. "Illegal" - forbidden by law. Concern about illegal immigrants has a familiar ring to us Native Americans. We have been empathizing with those concerns for over half a millennium. Let's see ...Were the first immigrants to America illegal? By every definition - yes! But perhaps if they had a good reason it makes their trespass less offensive. What of their motives? The stated intent of some of the earliest European settlers in America was first to establish military superiority over the inhabitants and then "civilize" them by assimilating them into their form of government and converting them to a foreign religion. Such was the case in the earliest American colonies: From the First Charter of Virginia, April 10, 160...