A Timely and Appropriate Quote of the Day

“We need to understand that there is no formula for how women should lead their lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her God-given potential.”

—	Hillary Clinton

Quote of the Day

When Christ said: "I was hungry and you fed me," he didn't mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that's real hunger.

-Mother Teresa

Quote of the Day

What we are talking about here is access to healthcare. We are talking about mothers and fathers losing their homes and their life savings trying to save their children. We are talking about families helping a loved one to fight cancer. We are talking about people suffering with diabetes, asthma and AIDS. We are not talking about death panels and for God’s sakes we are not talking about Nazi Germany. We are talking about tending to the sick and the poor… does that sound familiar to anyone? You Value Voters out there claim to read the Bible. Maybe you should crack the cover on that one again. You are so damn worried about who is marrying who and what immigrant is getting the best shift at the Taco Bell, but God forbid someone’s suffering doesn’t come with a price tag. Honestly, if I could , I would put the entire Republic party over my knee and give them a good spanking. What does it say about our country if the biggest debate of the decade is no longer about the two wars we are fighting but rather about preventing children and families from having access to affordable healthcare? I’ll tell you what it says to me. It says the Christian Right never really was and Value Voters aren’t very valuable.

--Margaret and Helen

Quote of the Day

Love is fundamental. It’s more important than being right. It’s more important than having all our theological ducks in a row. It’s more important than any commitment to absolute truth or a particular hermeneutic or a “high view” (read: “my view”) of sovereignty or the Bible or faith or the Church.

Writes Greg Boyd, “For the church to lack love is for the church to lack everything. No heresy could conceivably be worse! Until the culture at large instinctively identifies us as loving, humble servants, and until the tax collectors and prostitutes of our day are beating down our doors to hang out with us as they did with Jesus, we have every reason to accept our culture’s judgment of us as correct. We are indeed more pharisaic than we are Christlike.” (The Myth of a Christian Nation, p. 134-135)

What’s wrong with the church when folks like Shane Claiborne who have reputations for loving their enemies, giving without expecting anything in return, and withholding judgment can’t get speaking gigs because of their “questionable” theological positions? What’s wrong with evangelicals when surveys show that people perceive us as gay-hating, judgmental, hypocritical, and closed minded? What’s wrong when people can get kicked out of churches for getting pregnant or being gay, but not for being unloving or prejudiced? What’s wrong when folks in theological societies scream and yell at each other over a disagreement about divine foreknowledge? We’ve labeled all kinds of things fundamental…but we’ve left out love, which is why I think it’s time for a new kind of fundamentalism.

-Rachel Held Evans, A New Kind of Fundamentalist

Read the whole thing. Read her entire blog. Amazing.

Quote of the Day

"Faith is private. It demonstrates itself in good works and love of neighbors but it doesn’t need to hire a publicist. You’re not angling for Christian of the Year and the cover of Believer magazine. Your job is to endure the rampages of the heart and to look in your own heart and ask, Do I really believe or do I not? Jews do this in the fall and Christians in early spring, during Lent. Most people do not believe. They have tried hard to believe and they wish they did believe and are sorry they don’t, because they like to be around people who do, so they come to church, and enjoy the music and candles and the hallowedness of it all, but the faith is not in them. They don’t need to tell me about it—they only need to answer to God on this matter. He will understand if the answer is no. He already knew that…Confession is at the heart of the faith…"

-Garrison Keillor from his book Homegrown Democrat

Quote of the Day

Most, but not all, of these sites were created with Tumblr, a dead-simple two-year-old blogging tool that has swung open the publishing industry for anyone with a gift for snark and lots of extra hours to kill. The term tumblelog—a blog that points to cool stuff elsewhere online—actually preceded the invention of Tumblr, but the software offers a few features that make creating such pages supereasy. Tumblr includes several stylish themes that obviate the need for designing anything yourself, and it comes prepackaged with templates for different kinds of posts—it makes your photos look different from your videos, which in turn look different from quotes you pull from other sites, etc. In other words, Tumblr lets you create a great-looking blog in two minutes flat.

This is Why You're Fat: The Allure of Single Topic Blogs -- Slate.com

Love Tumblr. My absolute favorite way to blog these days. It's like a perfect little internet scrapbook.

Quote of the Day

"We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written. The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another." The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace." The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth."

--Excerpt from President Obama's speech in Cairo (full text at link)

Quote of the Day

The years between college and marriage are in many ways far more self-defining than any others. They're filled with the simplest, yet most complex, decisions in life: choosing a city, picking a career, finding friends and a mate--in sum, building a happy and satisfying life. For me and for my group of friends, these years have been eye-opening, confusing and fabulous at the same time.

The more choices you have, the more decisions you must make--and the more you have yourself to blame if you wind up unhappy. There is a kind of perverted contentedness in certainty born of a lack of alternatives. At my age, my mother, whether she liked it or not, had fewer tough decisions to make. I don't envy the pressure she endured to follow a traditional career path and marry early. But sometimes I envy the stability she had.

Once again I've been unable to resist the lure of a new city. So, as I start my legal career in Chicago, I'm again building friendships from scratch, learning my way around a strange new place. Yes, my friends and I could have avoided the loneliness and uncertainty inherent in our journeys, and gone back to our hometowns or stayed in the college town where we had each other. But I doubt any one of us would trade our adventures for that life. I have a sense of identity and self-assurance now that I didn't have, couldn't have had, when I graduated from college. And I know someday I'll look back on this time--before I had a spouse, a home and children to care for--and be thankful for the years that just belonged to me.

I Can Do Anything, So How Do I Choose? - Newsweek.com

Sometimes I find articles that just speak to me, this was one of those articles. We all take different paths in life, and for those not traveling on the one I am this probably meant nothing to you. But just know, this is where I am as a person. And sometimes it's very important for me to take a step back and really appreciate it. I don't do that enough. I think I spend too much time wishing my life away, or wishing I was living someone else's journey...I really need to stop that.

Quote of the Day

"One of my she-roes is Mother Theresa, she is an icon for what it means to be pro-life but it’s not because she ran around wearing an “Abortion is Murder” shirt. She said, if you didn’t want to have your babies, you can give them to me. That has an integrity that you can not argue with. Jesus had a political manifesto in the Sermon on the Mount and the beatitudes and the poor are at the very center of it. So if our political agenda is not good news to the poor, then it’s not the gospel of Jesus."

Shane Claiborne, a founding pastor of The Simple Way, a church in inner city Philadelphia

I just thought that was an awesome quote, so I had to share it beyond my little Tumblr world (again, if you aren't on Tumblr you don't know what you're missing).

One of my ultimate fascinations with the pro-Life movement is how much it could do if it took all of that mobilized energy and instead of focusing it on ending all abortions, focus it on ending all of the situations that lead women to choose abortions.

If adoption were simpler in this country, what difference would it make? If more families looked beyond biological children and opened their eyes and hearts to the beauty of adoption, what difference would it make? If more emphasis were put on ending poverty, improving conditions in inner cities and providing assistance to those in need, what difference would it make?

Food for thought on this chilly December night, indeed.

I'm sitting here snuggled up under the blankets, still freezing to death though. I made 120 peanut butter buckeyes for my Mom's office Christmas party tomorrow. How I got roped into doing that, I'm still not sure. But there I stood methodically dipping peanut butter into melted chocolate for God knows how long, and I don't care if I never see another one of those damn candies again.

(Ha, yeah right. I call BS on my on BS, you watch me.) ;)

So anyways, there's that tidbit. I leave you with quite possibly Amy Poehler's best Hillary Clinton to date. It's pretty fabulous.



This Saturday is Amy's last official SNL, unless they ever have her back to host I suppose, or if an obscure VP candidate pops up in the future and looks freakishly just like her. Either way, heads up.

Quote of the Day

"Lord, protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will."

--Barack Obama, prayer at the Western Wall

Quote of the Day

"Flip-flops of course, I like Havaianas (a brazilian sandal) because they are so easy to wash off..."

--Rihanna, In Style Magazine interview on her favorite beach accessories

Dude, I totally recommended them first. But...ditto anyway.

Best Response So Far on my Bill Clinton Story

Upon telling said person about shaking his hand: "You washed it right? I mean, you know what he does with it..."

Me: "Uhh, yes, I washed it. But umm, pretty sure he managed to go hands free most of the time."

Quote of the Day

“I would like to know how," says Love. "He should probably get his ass back home if that is the case.”

--Courtney Love on, deceased husband, Kurt Cobain's identity theif. 188 credit accounts have been opened in his name and a $3.2 million dollar home in New Jersey was purchased last year.

Quote of the Day

"I think they want to be judge and jury," Barkley replied. "Like, I'm for gay marriage. It's none of my business if gay people want to get married. I'm pro-choice. And I think these Christians, first of all, they're not supposed to judge other people. But they're the most hypocritical judge of people we have in the country. And it bugs the hell out of me. They act like they're Christians. They're not forgiving at all."

--Charles Barkley