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The Vigil
Author: TriSec    Date: 04/04/2015 12:54:51

Good Morning.

It's the day "in between". It was claimed that Jesus lay in the crypt for 3 days by most biblical accounts, but somehow the writers seemed to be using Klingon math to calculate it.

Nevertheless....it's meant to be a somber day of mourning and watching over the gravesite...just because.


But there's other things that need watching over today, too. We'll bounce around a bit, so hold on. Starting in Kenya, there's dozens dead from the latest outrage in the name of Abrahamic religion. The expected backlash is storming through any and every comment section you care to read. (And I don't care to read them.) I've given up even trying to debunk any of them. Nevertheless, the reminder remains that anyone killing in the name of ANY religion really isn't a follower, are they? For our so-called followers of Mohammed, there's one sentence that always gets skipped over in Surah 9:


6. And if anyone of the Mushrikun (polytheists, idolaters, pagans, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah) seeks your protection then grant him protection, so that he may hear the Word of Allah (the Qur'an), and then escort him to where he can be secure, that is because they are men who know not.


Had they been actual Muslims, anyone at the school in Kenya begging for mercy should have been granted it. But we all know that never happens.

We'll take a big leap towards a Pacific archipelago next. Holy Week is one of the biggest holidays around the islands of the Philippines. Families gather, prayers are said, vigils held....and of course mountains of food are everywhere. But this year, an unwelcome visitor is approaching. It's typhoon Maysak.


Around 24,000 people from the Philippines were being evacuated on Saturday with typhoon Maysak a day away from potentially striking the country’s north-east coast, officials said.

Storm surges, flash floods and landslides remained potential threats even though Maysak, once a super-typhoon, had weakened, with maximum sustained winds of 99 miles per hour, they said.

“We plan to move people out of coastal villages,” Nigel Lontoc, a senior civil defence official for the region, said.

In all, some 24,000 people from the coastal province of Aurora, where the typhoon is projected to make landfall early Sunday, would be evacuated, Lontoc added.

Having started out in the Pacific Ocean, Maysak is expected to weaken further as it crosses the main Philippine island of Luzon on Sunday, according to state weather forecaster Alczar Aurelio.

Aurelio said large waves of up to two metres (6.6ft) were expected to hit the area.

Such storm surges caused many of the deaths when typhoon Haiyan struck the country in November, 2013, leaving more than 7,350 dead or missing.

About 20 typhoons and storms hit the Philippines each year, many of them deadly, but such weather disturbances are rare in April, the height of the tropical Asian nation’s dry season.

Maysak is forecast to strike at the tail-end of a long Easter holiday that saw millions of Filipinos flock to the beaches to escape the heat.

Retired army general Jovie Narcise, who was visiting the Aurora town of Dingalan, said the skies there were clear but that there were big waves crashing along the shore.


Pacific Typhoons have a season, much like our own Atlantic Hurricanes. With us being about 8,000 miles away from here, it's gotten virtually no coverage in the American media, and nobody has even noticed that this storm is about five weeks early - Pacific season starts on May 15.

We'll finish up today with the media's current darling "miracle man"...an inexperienced sailor by the name of Louis Jordan, who just spent 66 days clinging to the upturned hull of his sailboat. Yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt.


A man rescued off the North Carolina coast after being missing at sea for 66 days underwent medical evaluation and will meet with the U.S. Coast Guard to provide details of his ordeal, the Coast Guard said on Friday.

A German-flagged vessel alerted the Coast Guard midday on Thursday that it had spotted the man and his disabled boat some 200 miles (320 km) east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and took him aboard.

The man, 37-year-old Louis Jordan of South Carolina, was airlifted from the ship and sent to a hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, the Guard said.

He was getting some rest and will be meeting with the Coast Guard, which wants to learn more of his experience, said Petty Officer Second Class Nate Littlejohn, a Guard spokesman based in Portsmouth, Virginia.

"There's still a lot we don't know," Littlejohn said. "We're very interested to hear more about his story."

Jordan told ABC News that he suffered a broken collarbone when the ship capsized.

“My boat got flipped and did a 180 on me while I was sleeping at night, and I was flying through the air and somersaulting," he told ABC.

While he lost much of his equipment, some supplies survived and he managed to make pancakes, catch fish and collect rainwater, he said.


That's a rather dry account (no pun intended). In several other stories, Mr. Jordan also states that he "prayed a lot" and "relied on God" for his deliverance. Unlike some other stories, I did read a few comments here - and at least one foilhatter speculates that he's going to write some kind of spiritual book about the ordeal, targeted at the evangelical market, of course. Now, I'm a sailor myself (small-craft, not blue-water; there is a difference), so I could probably speculate....He went out fishing and drinking, hung around the Bahamas or Bermuda for a while, and was headed home and crashed a day or two before getting picked up. Like I tell any visibly injured scout attending a meeting - "Nobody comes in here looking like that without a good cover story".

Your mileage, as always, may vary.

So...as the major Abrahamic religions intersect this weekend, no matter which prophet you follow...everyone here at 4F hopes you have a blessed holiday!
 

2 comments (Latest Comment: 04/05/2015 13:19:19 by BobR)
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