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| Venezuelan Christmas Dish (Photo by Sosuna27) |
Claiming to defend the Venezuelans' “right to happiness,” President Nicolas Maduro decreed that Christmas 2025 shall begin on October 1st. One recipient commented that a prolonged and ghoulish Halloween might be more reflective of the general mood.
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| Where there's smoke... (Photo by Tomasz Sienicki) |
So it should come as no surprise that caches of what are currently believed to be “the world’s oldest mummies” have recently surfaced in – of all places – Southeast Asia and China. And never mind a long, drawn-out process of natron desiccation. These newfound mummies were likely smoke dried without further ado.
A sooty solution which seems to have worked out just fine… Scientists estimate such rituals to have occurred a whopping 10,000 years ago.
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| Moses and the Golden Calf (Painting by William Blake) |
Some may talk the talk, and even walk the walk, but have they strayed from the path of enduring faith?
If you profess to be a Christian, ask yourself this question: “Are you merely religious, or are you truly born again?” Joseph Mattera lists a number of ways that people tend “to deceive themselves about their faith.”
These include the following: going through religious motions but lacking “inner transformation,” viewing baptism as an endpoint rather than as a progressive beginning, feeling near to God but not actually with God, dabbling in spiritual gifts without developing spiritual fruits, railing against God rather than conversing with God, reciting prayers rather than taking them to heart, and mistaking idolatry for love.
Mattera concludes: “You can be sincere – and sincerely wrong.” Beware the self-deception that threatens “a believer’s walk.”
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| Schloss Goldenstein (Photo by Eigenes Werk) |
Although nursing facilities are often called homes, they rarely feel like such. Elderly folks especially thrive upon the familiarity and congeniality of their actual home-sweet-home.
Three Austrian nuns who were “moved to a Catholic care” facility, “a decision they claim was made against their will,” returned to their convent home “with the help of former students and a locksmith.” All in their 80s, each had felt “homesick and out of place” while away from the convent they had lived in for decades. One claimed the right to remain in the convent “until the end of our lives,” a promise which she then stated “was broken.”
Church authorities have been “highlighting concerns about... health and safety,” insisting that “the nursing home provided essential medical care.” The nuns, however, have resumed their daily convent routines with the loving assistance of community supporters. Such mutuality may very well outweigh any so-called care that clinicians might provide.
