“Rabbi says rampaging monkeys a sign of a plague - The Week UK” plus 2 more

---

• Rabbi says rampaging monkeys a sign of a plague - The Week UK
• Renewal in a time of plague - Prince George Citizen
• How epidemics have changed the world - The Washington Post

Rabbi says rampaging monkeys a sign of a plague - The Week UK Posted: 30 Mar 2020 10:57 PM PDT A rabbi says that rampaging monkeys in Thailand are a sign of a biblical plague. Noting that the monkeys have gone wild due to the lack of people out and about during the coronavirus outbreak, Rabbi Yosef Mizrahi cited a verse in Deuteronomy which states: "Hashem your God will dislodge those peoples before you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them at once, else the wild beasts would multiply to your hurt." Triangular UFO sited for third time this year  A triangle-shaped UFO has reportedly been spotted for the third time this year above Texas. The craft was first seen on January 1st in Houston, before being spotted again over Bogata last month. In a new video, it is seen hovering over Seguin. The man behind the camera can be heard exclaiming: "What the f***?" Englishman is oldest living male  Bob Weighton has been officially confirmed as the oldest living man after celebrating his 112th birthday on 30 March 2020. The Englishman received the record title after Chitetsu Watanabe from Japan passed away at 112 years and 355 days. "I can't say I am pleased to hear that the previous holder has died but I am very pleased that I've been able to live so long and make so many friends," said Weighton. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– For more outlandish tales and news to make you smile, sign up for our Tall Tales email –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Renewal in a time of plague - Prince George Citizen Posted: 31 Mar 2020 10:07 AM PDT Having lately alluded to wordly transformation, it seems only fitting to use these last few days of Lent to discuss ecclesial renewal. This will have to take the place of my usual call for ecumenism, as social distancing has made the reconciliation of papists and Protestants unlikely in the short term, at least in a congregational sense. Yet within our respective silos that we are now confined to, divine renovation is clearly necessary. Thus I have a few observations to offer. Progressive steps towards a traditional Roman Catholic liturgy have been taken over the course of this plague. Before the suspension of public masses, the sign of peace was stopped and the chalice was retained, both of which are optional. Now that the holy sacrifice of the mass is said without choirs or musicians, the entrance and communion antiphons as well as the older tones for chanting the responses have suddenly been rediscovered after decades of neglect. article continues below Trending Stories Furthermore, this virus has silenced the hymns of questionable orthodoxy and chatter in the pews that was always inappropriate. Hopefully this reverence continues once mass is public again - perhaps we will even finally agree on when to kneel.  Of course those best caricatured by Facebook's Susan from Parish Council will take umbrage with the points raised here: my only response is if it takes their absence to create a truly solemn, sacred liturgy, what does that say? Lack of access to the sacraments remains a troubling reality for many Catholics, as our beliefs require faith and works, outward signs of inward grace. We must take solace in what the Church has provided for these times, which are all exceptional means that have been used for other crises. Perhaps that human foible of always wanting what we cannot have will spark a recommitment to fidelity and catechesis. From pope to pauper, each of us has more to learn. By birth, I am a dual citizen of Western Christianity. For my brothers and sisters who do not call Rome home, my first recommendation is to make communion more frequent. This is not some papist plot, but rather a recognition both of the trend in some Protestant circles that is seeing a rebirth of weekly communion, as well as the blunt fact that if the crisis goes on much longer, people will have been without it for months - a hard burden for faithful believers to bear. For an increase in reverence when church resumes, the solution is simple - cast out all mugs from the sanctuary. I am fairly certain the congregation will survive without sipping on hot drinks during the worship and preaching. This is a house of God, not a cafe. Also, for those who have a less liturgical celebration,  it is advisable to return to a method of teaching that requires believers to open their bibles and read along, which used to be a core tenant of Protestantism. Thematic sermons and programs have their place, but it is familiarity with the Scriptures that will bear the most fruit. Indeed, during this pestilence where pastoral visits are curtailed, it might be wise for those congregations without a catechism to begin discussing what might be put into one - what does it mean to be in this conference? Are we still pacifists? Is communion only a symbol or is it something more? Which particular reformers do we trace our origins to? A last observation for all of us who call Christ the King: this crisis is an opportunity for us to double-down on corporal acts of mercy. Obviously, the requirements of social distancing are to be observed, but from helping our elders to feeding the homeless, bringing comfort to those in quarantine to the proper burial of those who have died during this plague, there is a role for all of us to play. If we are able to help, we are morally required to do so, regardless of denomination. In short, all of Western Christianity is in need of renovation. But with our spirits renewed, after this plague has passed, how much better might we be able to run the race of eternal life?

How epidemics have changed the world - The Washington Post Posted: 08 Mar 2020 01:33 PM PDT Airlines are cutting flights amid growing fears over contagion and travel bans. The cruise industry is in crisis. Stock market jitters show few signs of abating, while governments plot emergency stimulus funding to reckon with the mounting economic pain born of snarled supply chains and lost business. Major sporting events have been called off or will be held behind closed doors. Worshipers hoping to pray for better times have been barred from some of the world's holiest sites. There's nothing new about this scale of disruption. "There's not a major area of human life that epidemic diseases haven't touched profoundly," Frank Snowden, a professor emeritus of the history of medicine at Yale University, said in an interview with the New Yorker. Epidemics, he said, "have tremendous effects on social and political stability. They've determined the outcomes of wars, and they also are likely to be part of the start of wars sometimes." It's a macabre way of recasting how you think about human history: not as a succession of ages and epochs, but of apocalyptic death rattles and societal collapses. In the 6th century, a plague that swept through the Roman Empire killed an estimated 30 million to 50 million people — perhaps as much as half the world's population at the time. Ancient sources described one hideous scene in what was then Constantinople, where the bodies of thousands were tightly piled in a mass grave, "and in the little space between them the young and infants were pressed down, trodden with the feet and trampled down like spoilt grapes." The waves of epidemics that rocked the empire over the span of 400 years played a significant role in its ultimate demise. The Black Death in the 14th century led to the deaths of as many as 200 million people in North Africa, Asia and Europe (some 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population perished). "Such was the multitude of those who died in the city by day and by night that it was an astonishment to hear tell thereof," Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, who survived the era of pestilence, wrote in his book of tales, the Decameron. The effects of such a catastrophe were vast and far-reaching: It hollowed out cities, halted wars, reversed the evolution of languages and jolted the stultifying control of landowning noble elites, who were forced to reckon with massive shortages in labor. European colonization killed so many people in the 16th and early 17th centuries — largely because of the spread of diseases to which the indigenous populations of the Americas had no immunity — that the reduced human footprint in one hemisphere of the planet may have actually led to temperatures dropping in a period of global cooling, according to a study published last year. Epidemics are shared experiences that imprint themselves indelibly on societies. We are arguably still living in the shadow of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed about 50 million people worldwide and reduced the average life expectancy in the United States by about 12 years. Scholars hold up the bungled, secretive management of the crisis then by the U.S. government as evidence of the necessity of transparency and truth-telling in the face of an outbreak. As my colleague Gillian Brockell wrote, it's not clear to some historians if the Trump administration has heeded that lesson. "Epidemics are a category of disease that seem to hold up the mirror to human beings as to who we really are," Snowden told the New Yorker. "That is to say, they obviously have everything to do with our relationship to our mortality, to death, to our lives. … They show the moral relationships that we have toward each other as people, and we're seeing that today." "We should be on guard against the ways that outbreaks of disease have historically led to the persecutions of marginalized people," Hannah Marcus, a historian of science at Harvard University, wrote in the New York Times. "One of the best documented social outcomes of the plague in late-medieval Europe was the violence, often directed at Jews, who were accused of causing plague by poisoning wells." And then there's the overwhelming impact on daily life. Social media platforms are swollen with videos of people around the world trying to amuse themselves while in quarantine, dancing and joking their way through the dread and dullness of it all — much like the characters in Boccaccio's Decameron, who hole up in a villa to ride out the Black Death and entertain one another with tales. "Early modern historians used to be interested in the idea of the 'world turned upside down': in moments of inversion during carnival when a pauper king was crowned and the pressures of a deeply unequal society released," wrote Maglaque. "But what emerges … is a sense that for many the world stood still." Read more:

You are subscribed to email updates from "plague sign" - Google News. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States