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Second Annual Student Art Exhibit

Featuring VSA arts of New York City ‘Murals Program’ & NYS Alliance for Arts Education ‘Side by Side Program’ (a VSAarts Sponsored Program)

April 27 – May 8, 2009, Empire State Plaza – South Annex East Wall, Albany, NY

Opening Reception: April 29, 2009, 1:00 – 3:00 PM

VSA arts is proud to present this Collaborative Exhibit highlighting the artwork created by students in the NYC ‘Murals on Parade’ and ‘Side by Side’ programs.

VSA arts is an international, nonprofit organization founded in 1974 by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith to create a society where all people with disabilities learn through, participate in and enjoy the arts. For more information on VSA arts in NYS click here.

Current Events,

Upcoming in the Albany, NY area

From the North Colonie Ministerial Association:

The Martin Luther King, Jr. And Coretta Scott King Lecture Series will present a lecture given by Dr. Michael Eric Dyson on “(African) American Leadership in the 21st Century: King, Obama and the American Dream” to be held on Tuesday, April 7, at 7:00 p.m. at the Alumni Recreation Center at Siena College, 515 Loudon Rd., Loudonville, NY.

The book Tortured for Christ by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand on Christian persecution in Romania during the Cold War is available for purchase by contacting the Redemption Church of Christ in Watervliet, NY at 518-272-6679.

Christian Witness, Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, , ,

Exhibitions at the Tate

From ArtDaily: Miroslaw Balka to Undertake Next Commission in The Unilever Series at Tate Modern

LONDON.- Tate and Unilever announced that the Polish artist Miroslaw Balka will undertake the tenth commission in The Unilever Series for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern (13 October 2009 —“ 5 April 2010).

Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1958, Balka lives and works in Warsaw and Otwock. This will be the artist’s first public commission in the UK, which will be unveiled on Monday 12 October 2009. Miroslaw Balka is one of the most significant contemporary artists of his generation. His work has had critical acclaim both in this country and internationally. Comprising installation, sculpture and video, Balka’s works explore themes of personal history and common experience drawing on his Catholic upbringing and the fractured history of his native country, Poland. Intimate and self-reflective, his works demonstrate his central concerns of identifying personal memory within the context of historical memory.

In works such as Oasis (C.D.F.) (1989), he suggests a domestic setting in which the daily rituals of human existence are played out. Eating and sleeping, love and death are evoked using materials which have a particular resonance for Balka such as milk, wooden planks from his childhood home and pine needles salvaged from the tree that grew outside his window. In this work dedicated to the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, Balka invokes both the spiritual and the everyday.

Central to Balka’s work is the use of materials of humble quality such as ash, felt, soap, salt and hair to give a sense of spirituality through their association with lives lived and memories left behind. Salt, for example, alludes to human emotions in the form of sweat or tears, whilst soap evokes the intimate yet universal daily rituals of cleansing as explored in Hanging Soap Women (2000), in which used bars of soap donated by women are strung together on a wire. In the installation, 190 x 90 x 4973 (2008), Balka constructs a wooden walkway with walls measuring 190cm high (the artist’s height) without any ceiling and made from simple common building materials such as plywood, creating a claustrophobic tunnel with no visible destination.

Memorials play an important role in Polish society but also in Balka’s personal experience —“ his grandfather was a monumental stonemason and his father an engraver of tombstones. His early performances and sculpture referred to his experience of the rituals of Catholicism, perhaps made more intense in a country where religion was repressed…

I would love to see this. If we reflect on this work we see the underlying Catholic connection – the communion of saints, the Church triumphant. It is our connection, raw and closest to the heart, seen through eyes of faith, made beautiful.

For more information visit the Tate

Also from the Tate: Symbolism in Poland and Britain from 14 March to 21 June, 2009.

Current Events, PNCC

Again, what celibacy is and is not…

From the Morning Sentinel: Church acknowledges Dumoulin fatherhood, but takes issue with other details

The Rev. Marcel Dumoulin never denied that he fathered Judy Soucier’s child, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland said last week.

“We have a fair amount of documentation on this,” Diocese spokeswoman Susan Bernard said Tuesday.

…

Asked if a priest fathering a child is an unusual occurrence, Bernard said: “It certainly isn’t something that happens every day. Of course it’s unusual. Priests take a vow of celibacy.”

…

She said Dumoulin made a decision that he still wanted his vocation and recommitted to that vocation. Church officials said he needed to be responsible to the child, but did not force him to leave his vocation or to marry, according to Bernard.

…

“It’s not a crime,” she said. “This is not about a crime, to father a child. He certainly did break his vow of celibacy and that is a mistake to do that.”

First, just to cover what the PNCC teaches, celibacy is not mandatory, in fact most PNCC clergy are married because they are called to that grace. The grace of Marriage and Orders are not mutually exclusive. If the Holy Spirit grants a man with the gift of celibacy that is a great gift, and something they are called to. Celibacy is not a gift that can be demanded, nor is it anything other than a man made discipline as instituted in the R.C. Church.

Now to the issue above. The R.C. Diocesan spokeswoman, the official spokesperson for the diocese at that, has no idea what celibacy means. She is either misdirecting or is ill informed.

Put simply, celibacy means that one pledges that they will not marry. Now certainly, if one is not married one shouldn’t be engaging in sexual relations (the normal requirement of abstention from sexual relations applies to all unmarried persons). However, engaging in sexual relations and fathering a child is not breaking ones vow of celibacy. If Church officials had “forced him to marry” (something they cannot do — you can’t force someone to get married), or if he had chosen to marry Miss Soucier, then he would have broken his vow of celibacy. The statement: “This is not about a crime, to father a child. He certainly did break his vow of celibacy and that is a mistake to do that.” is wrong. He did not break his vow. Rather he sinned against chastity.

Christian Witness, Current Events

Russian Orthodox Church elects Kirill 16th patriarch

Patriarch KIRILL

Thanks to the Young Fogey for the lead on this. The L.A. Times reports:

“It is with humility and full understanding of my responsibility that I accept the divine choice through which I am being handed the mission to serve as patriarch,” Kirill said after the results of a secret vote were announced. “At the center of this mission is the cross of Christ.”

Amen and Sto Lat!

Christian Witness, Current Events, PNCC, ,

Honoring Dr. King in Stratford, Connecticut

From the Stratford Star: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to be honored Sunday

The annual Stratford Community Interfaith Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration will take place Sunday, Jan. 18, at 4 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Bridgeport, 96 Chapel St. in the Putney section of Stratford.

This service is organized by clergy serving congregations in Stratford in an effort to create a service that is respectful to people of all religions. This year’s preacher will be Bishop Anthony Kopka of St. Joseph’s National Catholic Church.

There will be music from two church choirs and a combined choir. All who would like to sing in the combined choir are asked to arrive at the church at 3 p.m. that day for rehearsal.

Each year at this service a collection is taken to support scholarships in King’s name which benefit students at Stratford’s high schools.

Questions can be directed to the host pastor and president of the Stratford Clergy Association, the Rev. Julie-Ann Silberman-Bunn, at 378-1020.

Current Events, Perspective, Political, ,

Grief and Rage at Stricken Gaza School

From the NY Times: Grief and Rage at Stricken Gaza School

Israel's killing of women and children in Gaza

The bodies of the children who died outside the United Nations school here were laid out in a long row on the ground…

Hundreds of Gazans crowded around, staring at the little faces, some of them with dark eyes still open, but dulled.

Abdel Minaim Hasan, 37, knelt, weeping, next to the body of his eldest daughter, Lina, 11, who was wrapped in a Hamas flag. —From now on I am Hamas!— he cried. —I choose resistance!—

Can you see yourself, your children, your sons and daughters in this picture. I do. I look at my daughter every night, with her dark hair and expressive eyes, and I know what these folks are going through. I feel it to the depth of my soul.

Anybody recall the Israeli hostages in Uganda under Idi Amin? The Israeli armed forces could fly to a country in central Africa, extricate their hostages, take action against the kidnappers, and fly home. Yet, against terrorists living right next door, amongst millions of people forced to live in a cage, they choose to kill indiscriminately? Something wrong morally, strategically, functionally? Yes, it is called killing for the sake of terrorism, and you and I paid for the shells that killed these women and children.

Current Events, Perspective, Political,

My tax dollars paid for revenge

From the Times: Israeli jets kill ‘more than 200’ in revenge strikes on Gaza

A wounded child awaits medical attention at the Shifa hospital
A wounded child awaits medical attention at the Shifa hospital

Israel yesterday launched its largest raid on Gaza with two waves of air attacks that killed at least 205 people and injured more than 700, according to Palestinian doctors.

Children on their way home from school and policemen parading for a graduation ceremony were the principal victims of a bloody few hours that left the territory in flames…

One Gaza City man brought the body of his seven-year-old son to hospital but, finding no place in the morgue, took him home in a cardboard box. He said the boy would be buried in the back yard.

Shifa hospital, the main medical centre in Gaza, was overwhelmed. Bodies lined the corridors, relatives screamed in the emergency room, cars and trucks pulled up into the courtyard with their doors open, the wounded piled inside because there were not enough ambulances. Huge pillars of black smoke rose over the city.

—There are heads without bodies . . . There’s blood in the corridors. People are weeping, women are crying, doctors are shouting,— said Ahmed Abdel Salaam, a nurse…

So much for the “civilized and democratic nation in the heart of the Middle East” supported by my tax dollars; the munitions and aid I have paid for have killed innocents.

Of course the response to terrorism should be more terrorism, it only makes sense, right? It is time to break down the differentiation between civilized nations and terrorism, to show that those differences are just labels. It has been proven in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Israel over and over.

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