UN Secretary General in a speech given at the University of Sydney:
On 31 October (2011), the seven billionth child is going to be born. I’m not sure whether we have to celebrate it or be concerned. For that child, and for all of us, we must keep working to fight poverty, create decent jobs and provide dignified life, while preserving the world that sustains us.
My friends,
Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer.
Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God – what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect.
And because of God’s gracious gift to me I say to everyone of you: do not think of yourself more highly than you should. Instead, be modest in your thinking and judge yourself according to the amount of faith that God has given you.
We have many parts in one body, and all these parts have different functions. In the same way, though we are many, we are one body in union with Christ, and we are all joined to each other as different parts of one body.
So we are to use our different gifts in accordance with the grace that God has given us. If our gift is to serve, we should serve; if it is to teach, we should teach; if it is to encourage others, we should do so.
Whoever shares with others should do it generously; whoever has authority should work hard; whoever shows kindness to others should do it cheerfully.
Love must be completely sincere. Hate what is evil, hold onto what is good. Love one another and be eager to show respect for one another. Work hard and do not be lazy. Serve the Lord with a heart full of devotion. Let your hope keep you joyful, be patient in your troubles, pray at all times. Share your belongings with the needy and open your homes to strangers.
Ask God to bless those who persecute you. Be happy with those who are happy, weep with those who weep. Have the same concern for everyone. Do not be proud, but accept humble duties. Do not think yourselves as wise.
If someone does you wrong, do not repay with wrong. Try to do what is considered to be good. Do everything possible on your part to live in peace with everybody. Never take revenge on anyone.
Do not let evil defeat you; instead, conquer evil with good.
Divine intervention in a modern world
Sydney Morning Herald
Jacqueline Maley
16 October 2010Mary MacKillop has broken beyond the veil of religion, writes Jacqueline Maley.
Mary MacKillop never slayed a dragon. She never led the French into battle and she didn’t drive any snakes from any islands.She was a school teacher who suffered debilitating period pain and died, overweight and sickly, in a cottage in North Sydney, having done many good works. Mary’s ”normalness” endears her to Australians but it also heightens the contrast between the mediaeval version of sainthood – full of martyrdoms, stigmata and heroics in battle – and its modern incarnation.
‘What’ and ‘If’ are two words that are about as least threatening as words can be.
But put them side by side and they can haunt someone for the rest of their lives.
WHAT IF?
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong
H. L. Mencken
This clip was an advertising campaign used by Lopez Murphy, running for president in Argentina.
ABC News, AFP
Hundreds of ash-covered, naked holy men and millions of Hindu pilgrims are making their way to northern India to take part in one of the world’s largest religious gatherings.
For Hindu devotees, the three-month Kumbh Mela, which begins Thursday in the towns of Haridwar and Rishikesh, offers the chance to wash away their sins with a ritual bath in the holy waters of the Ganges river.
Even in a country where mass events are commonplace, the Kumbh Mela stands apart for its sheer size and the enormous logistical task involved in its organisation.
“Putting on the Kumbh Mela is like setting up a city within a city,” said Alok Sharma, director general of this year’s event.
An area of 130 square kilometres has been set aside to host the five million pilgrims expected to participate in the first of four auspicious bathing dates on January 14.
Millions more will pass through the site as the festival unfolds, with the largest gathering of all expected on the final and most auspicious bathing day of all on April 14, which is led by the naked Naga sadhus (saints).
The Mela marks the only public gathering of the Nagas, many of whom live in remote, spartan conditions in mountains, caves and communes in the Himalayas and other regions of India.
The highest ranked among them will ride in chariots decorated with marigolds and pulled by tractors, while others follow behind carrying swords, tridents and saffron flags.
Naked and generally covered in a layer of grey ash, they are regarded by devotees as earthly representatives of the gods because of their self-sacrifice and denial of the material world.
Their isolation does not, however, prevent their organising for particular causes and they plan to use the 2010 Kumbh Mela to highlight the issue of global warming.
“Sadhus like us who go up to the higher reaches of the Himalayas to meditate have a clear picture of how bad the situation is,” Soham Baba, considered as the head of the Nagas, said recently.
“Pristine lakes and waterfalls that existed till a few years ago have dried up.
“The Kumbh Mela will be the appropriate place to protest.”
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The last survivor of a group that helped Anne Frank and her family hide from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War Two and kept her diaries, has died at the age of 100.
Miep Gies, a Dutch office assistant, was one of a handful of non-Jews who provided Anne’s Jewish family with supplies at a secret warehouse annex in Amsterdam between July 1942 and August 1944, before the building was raided by the Nazi SS.
Gies died on Monday night following a short illness, according to a statement on her authorized website.
“There is nothing special about me,” Gies wrote in a book first published in 1987. “I have never wanted special attention. I was only willing to do what was asked of me and what seemed necessary at the time.”
After Anne and her family were taken to concentration camps, where Anne died in 1945, Gies saved her diaries and handed them over to Anne’s father Otto, who survived the camps and published the records in 1947.
As a result Frank became famous posthumously for the diaries she kept during the war. Now translated into more than 70 languages, her diaries remain one of the world’s best-selling books, vividly describing life during those years.
After the war, Gies gave public speeches to keep Anne’s memory alive and corresponded with people around the world. She also campaigned against holocaust denial and other causes.
SAVING ANNE’S MEMORY
Born in Vienna to Christian parents on February 15, 1909 with the name of Hermine Santruschitz, she moved to Leiden in 1920 to escape food shortages and was raised by a Dutch family who moved to Amsterdam two years later and nicknamed her Miep.
She started work as an office assistant at a textile factory but lost her job in 1933 as the economic crisis deepened. She then came under the employment of Anne’s father, Otto Frank, who was director of a pectin producing company.
Gies avoided deportation to Austria by marrying her Dutch boyfriend, Jan, in 1941. Their son Paul was born in 1950 and they lived in Amsterdam until 1993, when Jan died at age 87. Paul has now opened a condolences register on his website.
Gies and her husband became family friends with the Franks and when Otto asked for help, they agreed to hide him and his family at the secret annex, bringing them daily groceries and providing a link to the outside world.
In August 1944, after 25 months in hiding, the Frank family were arrested but an Austrian SS officer spared Gies from captivity out of sympathy on condition she promised not to flee.
Gies found Anne’s diaries in the debris left by the raid and kept them in her desk drawer without ever reading them. After the war ended, when it became clear that Anne was not coming back, she handed them over to Anne’s father.
She received honors from several governments and institutions, and last year had an asteroid named after her by the International Astronomical Union.
Reuters
