Quite a while back I read St. Patrick’s Gargoyle by Katherine Kurtz. The story of a Gargoyle named Paddy for the Church in Dublin that he guards, stolen alms basins and a roughed up verger, and the desecrated grave of a Knight returned from the Holy Land.

The gargoyles of Dublin meet once a month, on a moonless night, to discuss what’s happening with their various charges (the churches) and what may be happening in the city. The gargoyles explain (both to one another and Paddy to a human, Francis Templeton – an elderly Knight of Malta who helps him out – that gargoyles were once avenging angels. In the Old Testament avenging angels were seen frequently, but they aren’t around in the New Testament.

Templeton sees Paddy’s reflection in the black door of a Rolls Royce…

Reflected briefly in the car’s polished black door, just as his visitor ducked back into the sheltering shadow of the shutters, was not a darkly menacing shadow-shape laced with fire, but the stern, majestic figure of an armored warrior, with a diadem of stars across its noble brow and dark pinions sweeping from powerful shoulders to trail rainbows behind. And what its strong hands were cradling to its armored breast was not a radiator mascot but a tiny winged cherub.

“Oh”, Paddy said apologetically, as Templeton gave a wondering little gasp, slack-jawed with awe. “I guess your car door’s a black mirror. You weren’t supposed to see that. That’s the only way mortals can see us in our true form — unless, of course, they’ve really pissed us off. Then you don’t wanta know. Like I said we used to be avenging angels.

“Not anymore, though. We don’t get to kick ass like we did in the old days. The Boss has mellowed a lot, since the days when He was a Old Testament God. I think it started when His Son joined the Firm. The Son was human for a while, you know, so He’s inclined to be a little softer on sinners.”

The advent of Christ does obviate the need for avenging angels. The Old Testament God punished. After God gave us his Son, there was no need for avenging angels. Through Christ, we are forgiven and saved. Let us remember this as we come into this most Holy season.

Merry Christmas to one and all.

cross posted at The Anchoress

Today the Little Guy is making snow angels and the Shih Tzu is shorter than the snow…

Minneapolis radio station KDWB‘s host Dave Ryan asked if people would trade a baby for a PS3. He didn’t expect that he would have any takers. He was mistaken.

The station received many calls offering to trade a baby for the PS3 system.

The station started with just the offer: trade a baby (for a while) for a PS3. Then, after they received such a high response, they started an “auction” to get the youngest baby for the longest time… The parents were told that they could not check up on the welfare of the child and they were also told that the station did not have a child safety seat for the car.

These parents were still willing to trade their child. The “winner” was a one month old baby for three days (no children or PS3’s were traded).

Fox News played a recording of one mother this morning. She said she had a one month old baby named Alex that she would trade for a PS3. The host asked if the baby’s father agreed. She said he was right there with her. The host asked how old she was. She said she was 22. The host said that Alex was probably her first baby then. She said the baby was her third.

Trading your child to strangers for a period of time for a video game system. What is this world coming to?

cross posted at The Anchoress (where I am guest posting for the weekend – Thank you Anchoress!)

If you aren’t, DJ Drummond has the future if the Democrats win this election cycle.

Be afraid.

Vote GOP November 7^th

For the second Halloween in a row, the Democrats have taken over the Right Place blog. Go check it out.

Can you guess who I was?

I must say that I had a great deal of fun doing this again this year. Thanks Mr. Right!

This is a wonderful program that supplies voice activated laptop computers for wounded soldiers from all branches of service. As I am an Army Vet, I have joined with Blackfive on the Army Team.

Each branch is competing with the others for donations between now and Veterans’ Day, November 11^th.

Use the link above and donate today!

Da Bears slam the 49ers 41-10! Da Bears are 7-0! The last Superbowl they won was 21 seasons ago. Go Bears!!

The Anchoress says it’s like eating Christmas. She’s right. I took the recipe she posted and added some Sunmaid Goldens and Cherries, and some frozen mixed berries and frozen peach slices in addition to the dried cranberries. The other change I made to recipe was replacing half the cinnamon with pumpkin pie spice.

With my oven I can set it to start and run for however long so I cooked this while we were at church this morning. I will set it to start a little later next time, maybe so it’s just done when we arrive home or a few minutes after instead of earlier. Holding it in the warm, turned off oven, dried it a little bit more than it should have been, but this was just wonderful. Warm, creamy/crunchy, fruity. I warmed some milk and poured a little over each serving. The house smelled so good when we arrived home…

I think you can take the basic recipe and add whatever you want for fruit, or nuts. Dried apricots would probably be great as would figs.

Here’s what mine looked like this morning:

Mark in Mexico has been covering this since it started more than five months ago. Go to his site and scroll down.

The situation has been out of hand since it started and it should have been dealt with months ago.

AP story here.

Firefox 2.0! Get it! It has spell check that works anywhere (in text boxes on the Web)! It’s free!