I’ve heard her speak and read before. She was mesmerizing. One of the most enjoyable and moving speakers ever.
Nathaniel Hawthorne says, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” I try to pull the language in to such a sharpness that it jumps off the page.
I know when it’s the best I can do. It may not be the best there is. Another writer may do it much better. But I know when it’s the best I can do.
Welcome to race in America. It may be 2012, and we may have a black President, but public discussion of race remains inexorably, insanely binary. American race talk used to be literally black-and-white, leaving no room for other colors. Now the problem is it’s figuratively black-and-white. For all our rainbow multiculturalism, there are still basically two choices — in or out, mainstream or opposition, powerful or powerless.
… since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.
Hebrews 10
I reinterpret that phrase as “Don’t waste your life.” Don’t waste your salvation on a life of quarter-faith (whatever that means). Wary of believing that a lesser career means I’m wasting my potential— I can’t help but feel the conviction in John Stott’s words:
Ambitions for God, if they are to be worthy, can never be modest. There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God. …
May every one of us, in the transitions of our lives, seek the kind of holy fire that gives both the light of discernment and the heat of ambition. All of it for the glory of God. This is my deep longing as I face whatever future God gives.
Not b/c I have large shoes to fill but because a larger God than all else is guiding my feet forward & beckoning my life toward His purposes. Lord may I resemble Samuel and reject the Eli within me.
The funds will be divided equally among five underage victims … but older women commercially sexually exploited in the same brothels are not eligible for assistance:
[The judge] excluded nine other women in their 20s and 30s from benefiting in his decision, though federal officials had argued they too had been beaten, threatened and used by the same criminal group. [The judge] said he was unable to determine how much each woman had collected in cash as a prostitute - willing or not.
Part of this is cool: trafficking victims need money to start a new life; traffickers have been profiting off of their victims. It seems just to provide funds for victims out of the fruits of traffickers’ ill-gotten gains.
But the judge’s reticence to view the older women as genuine victims is troubling.
… what does income from prostitution have to do with the question of restitution? Imagine a woman on another job claiming she was sexually harassed by a supervisor. Would a damage award be docked because she also collected a salary?
descroissants:
Derweze, also known as the door to hell, is a 70 meter wide hole in the middle of the Karakum desert in Turkmenistan. The hole was formed in 1971 when a team of soviet geologists had their drilling rig collapse when they hit a cavern filled with natural gas. In an attempt to avoid poisonous discharge, they decided to burn it off, thinking that the gas would be depleted in only a few days. Derweze is still burning today
(Source: goodnamesgone, via npr)
Glowing bioluminescent plankton in the tide line washes up onto a beach on Vaadhoo Island, Raa Atoll, Maldives, with stars above and a ship’s lights on the horizon. Picture: Doug Perrine / Barcroft Media
(via npr)
fall on my knees in prayer
npr:
The practice of men taking underage boys as sexual partners is on the rise in post-Taliban Afghanistan. This ”open secret” is rarely talked about — including by foreign powers who have neglected to draw attention to the abuse. (via Afghanistan’s ‘dancing boys’ are invisible victims - The Washington Post)
What. Next
Whoa. The MLA has officially devised a standard format to cite tweets in an academic paper. Sign of the times.
#signofthetimes
(via npr)
Lalibela Church, Ethiopia
The town of Lalibela in northern Ethiopia is renowned for 12 Christian churches that were hewed out of solid stone some 800 years ago. The most stunning is Bieta Giyorgis, shown here, a massive monolith 40 feet (12 meters) tall, intricately carved and shaped like a cross.
(Source: thepeacefulterrorist, via npr)
In fact, Cewers has actually become somewhat of a supporter of the ban, although she continues to believe that prostitution should be abolished altogether. “It’s true: There are no happy whores. Most of the ones I’ve met here over the years were sexually abused by relatives when they were young and have serious emotional problems,” she says. “Not much of this is about choice.”
