Date for
ezine: 20-06-2009
Subject for ezine:
Partners in the Good Fight
Father Dave's Partner's Ezine
Partners
in the Good Fight
When
one man dreams, it is just a dream, but when we all dream together, it
is the beginning of a new reality.
Dom Helder Camara
Welcome
Fighter
I
hope you are in good health and spirits. I must confess that
it's been quite a wonderful week for me:
The
teleconference with Brother Andy last Sunday was truly
fantastic
On Monday I
had lunch with Brother Peter Bray - vice-chancellor of
Bethlehem University and a fascinating man.
I
followed that by taking the kids to Luna Park (which, for those who
don't know it, is Sydney's a very, very, very small version of
Disneyland).
I
finished the week with a trip to Brisbane to support Holy Trinity's own
- Solomon Egberime - as he won the vacant Australian Light Welterweight
title.
Well
... now I'm stuck in front of the heater with a bad head cold, paying
the price for living the high life, but it was well worth it!
Anyway,
I'm hoping to share all of these wonderful moments with you today
(except the Luna Park trip). We've got a streaming audio version of
the teleconference, a video interview with brother Peter Bray, and an
album full of photos from the fight. Some of
those pics are thumbailed below. Click for full-size.
click
any of the thumbnails to
see these pics full-size
This Month's Freebie:
Twitter Videos
Grab it now
while you can - the complete Twitter
Video Tutorial series
Free
members and guests can get the package for $7 instead of $17 by using
the promo code TWIT. Just go to the salespage
and enter TWIT in the promo code box..
And the big question: can you sign up for a free trial membership at www.fighting-fathers.com, download
the software and then cancel the membership, thus paying nothing?
And the answer is absolutely.
It's been
an amazing month of historic speeches around our world, and we should
not
let them pass by without taking careful note of where they are taking
us.
Barack Obama's Cairo speech is
surely the most significant of the bunch, and quite possibly the most
significant speech from an American President since World War II.
Israeli
peace activist, Uri Avnery, hails Obama's speech as "The masterpiece of a man
bringing a new message to the world." Read the full text
of Avnery's response here.
Less
encouraging are the responses seen in this
video (which has been flagged by YouTube
and banned from a number of sites already). Certainly it
contains stupid statements from drunk people, but the sentiments are
still indicative of much anti-Obama feeling.
Former US
President, Jimmy Carter, follows up Obama's lead, addressing the people
of Gaza with a message of hope. Read the full text here.
Equally
inspirational (for me) is an interview from our sister in the Order, Eileen Flemming, with my dear
friend, nuclear whistle-blower, Morde Vanunu. Read that interview here.
Meanwhile,
on our member site (thanks to
the ever-helpful Ranjitha) we've had
an enormous stash of new sermons uploaded to
the audio library. There are now 39 audio sermons available to be
listened to at your pleasure.
And most
exciting of all, I've finally completed the editing of our
teleconference with Brother Andrew Blair - our brother who was born
female but 'crossed the
gender divide'
as an adult. You can hear it now by pressing the 'play' button below.
The teleconference lasts for the best part of an hour, more than half
of which is taken up with questions and responses between Andy and the
other members on the call. If you're a Fighting-Fathers.com
VIP member and would prefer to download the MP3 version, to listen to
it at your leisure, right-click here
and chose 'save target
as'
(nb. you may need you username and VIP password to access this
download).
Virtual Pulpit: Exploring the Mystery
of God
"Thus
the Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God: And yet
there are not three gods, but one God.
Thus
the Father is Lord; the Son is Lord; the Holy Spirit is Lord: And yet
there are not three lords, but one Lord.
As
Christian truth compels us to acknowledge each distinct person as God
and Lord, so catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three
gods or three lords."
What
you have above is a short excerpt from the 'Athanasian Creed'
- the longest and most complex of the church's three historic creeds
(the other two being 'The
Apostles' Creed' and 'The
Nicean Creed').
All mainline churches (Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Pentecostal,
etc.) accept these three creeds, yet few church members have any
knowledge of them or understand the significance of the
doctrine of the Trinity that the above creed especially tries to spell
out.
I'm not normally considered to be a preacher of doctrine and dogma, but
once each year, when Trinity
Sunday comes around, I find myself drawn back to these
creeds and feel compelled to preach on them!
If you're one who readily dismisses the significance of church dogma,
my hope is that this sermon might give you good cause to reconsider
your position. At the very least it may help you to see that
the church's composition of doctrine (such as the doctrine of the
Trinity) is not simply a pointless exercise in academic speculation,
but the result of the church's honest struggle to explore the mystery
of God.
If you'd
prefer the written version of this sermon, you'll find an older written
version here.
www.fighting-fathers.com
members can also download the MP3 version of this from the 'Members Benefits' area
or by right-clicking here and choosing 'save
target as' (you'll need your member name
and password).
Video of the Week: Dave Interviews Brother Peter
Bray
(Vice-Chancellor of Bethlehem University)
Peter
Bray is a Catholic Brother of the De
La SalleOrder, and
Vice-Chancellor of Bethlehem University, which is an
unashamedly
Christian University in the middle of Occupied Palestine!.
Brother
Peter speaks of the privilege and challenge of running an
academic
institution in the middle of a war zone.
The students (both Christians and
Muslims) struggle each day through army checkpoints to get to class,
yet, against all odds, students continue to come and they continue to
achieve high academic standards.
To
keep up to date with Father Dave's video uploads, subscribe to my video
channel
here.
Recommended Webmaster
Resource: Traffic Python (click on
Fighting Father Todd to get the full story)
Traffic
Python is a new ad-exchange system that claims it guarantees
more web visitors and online advertising with little effort or
cost.
You can sign up for free, and while there are two upgrade options on
offer, neither are required in order to get the system working..
Once you've signed up, you get access to the member site, where
you create your links and ads.
For the links, you simply feed any URL's you want to promote into the
generator and it transforms them into 'Python links'.
.
After you've
created at least one link and one ad you just promote the new Python link instead
of the original
link you had. Every time the Python link is clicked, the page
loads with a hover ad window at the bottom, and every time
that ad links gets clicked, you earn credits
that gets your ad displayed in the ad windows of other members'
sites. The more times you promote your links, the more clicks
you get, and the more times your ads get displayed. Simple.
A clever
idea and a free source of traffic. Sign up for
Traffic Python here..
And before I let you go today, let me tell
you that there's at least one position
vacant here at Holy Trinity for a part-time Youth Worker.
Even though it's a part-time position, we can promise you the usual
package of high stress, long hours and low pay. If this sounds
attractive to you, send an email to youth-worker@holytrinity.org.au
(a blank email will do). This won't add you to any mailing list but it
will bounce back to you an email with more details about the job/s.
May the Lord bless and strengthen you for the work
to which you have been called.
P.S.
If you missed out on the last ezine, you can
access back issues here.
P.P.S.
If you haven't done so yet, please do me a
favour and download and install my special RSS notifier from here. It solves the problem of my
emails to you not getting through.
