bad news, no news, good news...

There is much cause for depression and confusion in today's news.

For example, John Howard is about to finalise his iron-fisted stranglehold on the senate. A sad day for Australian Democracy. Remember how often Howard has lied to us? Remember how occasionally, such as in the ChildrenOverboard™ case, we found out about it (eventually) due to a senate inquiry? Forget it. Never gonna happen again.

In other, more trivial, news - I'd like you to look carefully at this picture. Take note of the two smallish people flanking Nicole Kidman. Remember them? The real question is: Do their parents? Tom Cruise is constantly jumping on couches talking about how happy he is to have finally become a father. (errm - Connor? Isabella? Ring any bells, Tom?) Nicole Kidman is celebrating a paparazzi-dodging birthday, and preparing to marry the most-tedious-man-alive. But where the hell are their kids?! Have they been forgotten altogether?

Meanwhile, the Herald-Sun's describing of a television and a sandwich-toaster as a "lavish life" made me chortle, and I was bemused by coalition MPs yet again screaming and shaking their fists about Big Brother - Adults Only... because apparently it's Channel Ten's fault if parents allow their young children to be up watching smut late at night.

However, there is one story today that is genuinely warming my heart against the chilly Winter. It concerns Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is the contraversial new leader of the US Episcopal Church. And she's not just contraversial because she's the first woman to ever hold the position...

From news.com.au:

Interviewed on CNN, Bishop Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual.
"I don't believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us," she said.
"Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender."
...
Asked how she reconciled her position on homosexuality with specific passages in the Bible declaring sexual relations between men an abomination, Bishop Jefferts Schori said the Bible was written in a very different historical context by people asking different questions.
"The Bible has a great deal to teach us about how to live as human beings. The Bible does not have so much to teach us about what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear -- there are rules in the Bible about those that we don't observe today," she said.
"The Bible tells us about how to treat other human beings, and that's certainly the great message of Jesus - to include the unincluded."

Wait... did I read thiscorrectly? A Christian who actually focusses on the message of Jesus? Imagine! What an outlandish notion! This is true Christianity, but sadly a viewpoint rarely expressed by the figureheads of Western Faith. If only there were less blood-thirsty power-mongers willing to pervert the lessons of Christ to their own selfish agenda. If only more high-profile Christians shared Bishop Jefferts Schori's philosophy, or her bravely compassionate public expression... the world might be a much nicer place in which to dwell.