I have discovered the wonderfulness that is Great Big Sea.Â? Their music makes me wish I was in a pub in the Canadian Maritimes listening to and singing drinking songs while chugging the non-alcoholic liquid of my choice.Â? :)Â? (I’m not a teetotaller — I just have a low alcohol tolerance.)
If they get anywhere within 4 hours of me, I am sooooo going to the concert.
I’m putting this letter behind a cut so that people have a choice of whether they want to read this. If you click on the cut, you are choosing to listen to me and what I believe. If you don’t like it, deal with it. My blog = my choice of content.
–The Management
Apparently, wearing a t-shirt with Arabic writing will cause you to have problems flying.
One of the two men who approached me first, Inspector Harris, asked for my id card and boarding pass. I gave him my boarding pass and driver’s license. He said “people are feeling offended because of your t-shirt”. I looked at my t-shirt: I was wearing my shirt which states in both Arabic and English “we will not be silent”. You can take a look at it in this picture taken during our Jordan meetings with Iraqi MPs. I said “I am very sorry if I offended anyone, I didnt know that this t-shirt will be offensive”. He asked me if I had any other T-shirts to put on, and I told him that I had checked in all of my bags and I asked him “why do you want me to take off my t-shirt? Isn’t it my constitutional right to express myself in this way?” The second man in a greenish suit interfered and said “people here in the US don’t understand these things about constitutional rights”. So I answered him “I live in the US, and I understand it is my right to wear this t-shirt”.
Then I once again asked the three of them : “How come you are asking me to change my t-shirt? Isn’t this my constitutional right to wear it? I am ready to change it if you tell me why I should. Do you have an order against Arabic t-shirts? Is there such a law against Arabic script?” so inspector Harris answered “you can’t wear a t-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a t-shirt that reads “I am a robber” and going to a bank”. I said “but the message on my t-shirt is not offensive, it just says “we will not be silent”. I got this t-shirt from Washington DC. There are more than a 1000 t-shirts printed with the same slogan, you can google them or email them at wewillnotbesilent@gmail.com . It is printed in many other languages: Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, English, etc.” Inspector Harris said: “We cant make sure that your t-shirt means we will not be silent, we don’t have a translator. Maybe it means something else”. I said: “But as you can see, the statement is in both Arabic and English”. He said “maybe it is not the same message”. So based on the fact that Jet Blue doesn’t have a translator, anything in Arabic is suspicious because maybe it’ll mean something bad!
Umm… y’all: they’re winning! Am I the only one (besides Dave who provided me with the links) that sees a problem with this?
Update: I ordered one of the shirts.
One of the trustees from Jon’s last parish died in a tractor accident on Saturday.Â? He was a wonderful person and taught me quite a bit about fixing small things around the parsonage and using the sump pump.
Please keep his family in prayer, especially his wife.
I occasionally proofread articles for Pravmir.Com, a Russian Orthodox site that seeks to evangelize young people on behalf of the Orthodox Church.Â? It gives me a chance to hone my theology skills as well as my grammar ones while doing something to help the mission of the Church.
Today, I found an email from one of the webguru’s in my e-mail.Â? It was the story of a young woman who had an abortion in 1989.Â? In the next few years, she divorced, remarried, joined the church, and had children; but her soul still felt stained by her sin.Â? Finally during the Great Lent, she confessed to her priest, thinking that he would upbraid her and deny her communion.Â? Her priest’s response:
Go take communion.Â? Such wounds need to be healed.
Yeah… that is such an amazing show of grace.Â? If only more Christians were to show God’s grace like that…