Sacred Texts Website

From the British Library, below are two very interesting interactive sites about world religions.

Click here to choose and listen to selected stories from sacred religious texts.

Click here to select and listen to answers from a diverse panel about various religious questions.

Amazing Sacred Places to Visit Before I Die #2

Las Lajas Cathedral
Colombia, South America

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Las Lajas, or the Las Lajas Cathedral [wiki] in Colombia, was built in 1916 on a site where, according to local legend, the Virgin Mary appeared. The story goes like this: an Indian woman named María Mueses de Quiñones was carrying her deaf-mute daughter Rosa on her back near Las Lajas ("The Rocks"). Weary of the climb, the María sat down on a rock when Rosa spoke (for the first time) about an apparition in a cave.

Later on, a mysterious painting of the Virgin Mary carrying a baby was discovered on the wall of the cave. Supposedly, studies of the painting showed no proof of paint or pigments on the rock - instead, when a core sample was taken, it was found that the colors were impregnated in the rock itself to a depth of several feet.

Whether true or not, the legend spurred the building of a gothic church worthy of a fairy tale.

Pope Leaves Native Brasilians with Bad Taste in their Mouth

For all of those out there (including many people I know) who yearn evangelicals to bring back closer ties to the church in Rome, here is the latest 'gaffe' by the new Pope on his visit to Rome:

From BBC news:
"Indigenous leaders in Brazil have reacted angrily to Pope Benedict's comments that their predecessors had willingly converted to Christianity.

One Amazon Indian leader, Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, said the Pope's remarks had been arrogant and disrespectful.

Pope Benedict XVI told Latin American bishops in Brazil that American Indians had been "silently longing" to become Christians 500 years ago."

The Pope had said the Christianisation of the region had not involved an alienation of the pre-Colombian cultures. Pope Benedict also made no mention of the violent history that followed or the documented decimation of native cultures in favour of the Christian model Conquistadores and other Europeans colonisers."

This revision of history has to go right along side fundamentalists in America who paint rosy pictures of America's founding fathers, while neglecting the social injustices that occurred under their watch. Pope Benedict is supposed to be a learned scholar, so how can he actual believe what he is saying? And this begs the question, 'If he is soooo wrong about this view of history, what else is wrong about?'

Celebrate Mother's Day as a Day Against War

Did you know that Mother's Day began as a attempt to form a movement of mother's to be against war? Watch below and speak up for the the anti-war roots of Mother's Day on May 13th.

http://mothersdayforpeace.com/

Clare Short quote from Sojourners

I subscribe to the free weekly email from the Sojourners Community in Washington DC - this week's quote is from Clare Short, a British MP who resigned as Secretary of State for International Development over the U.K.'s involvement in the Iraq War... here it is:

"You can’t take the evil of slavery out of the world and abolish it without making the world more just. You will never prevent people living in bonded labor or from getting caught up in sex trafficking while they are so desperate that they have no other choice but to sell themselves. As long as we in the West crave ever more excess, we conspire in their desperation, exploiting it and make ourselves sick in the process."

A past interview with Clare Short can be found at http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&mode=printer_friendly&issue=soj0401&article=040121

From: http://marttherev.blogspot.com/