UNITED CAMPUS MINISTRIES @ NIU

This Sunday our Service will be led by Jay. The liturgy will be Celtic Christian Designed using "A Celtic Liturgy" and "A Celtic Primer" The Readings for this week come from "The Prophet" By Kahlil Gabran. The gospel of John, 1 Peter, and Philippians. The subject or main theme of the passages is pain. The sermon is on "The things we don't see."

the Specific verses are as follows

  John 5: 1-16                                                                                                            

"On Pain” from the Prophet by Kahlil Gibran  

 Philippians 1:29

 1 Peter 4: 1, 8, 11-13, 19 and 5:10                                                                                                                                                                                              

This week we will be showing

Pan's Labrynth (El Laberinto del fauno)

Spain, 1944. Officially, the Civil War has been over for five years, but a small group of rebels fights on unbroken in the northern mountains of Navarra. Dreamy 10-year-old Ofelia moves to Navarra with her delicate, pregnant mother Carmen, to become acquainted with her new stepfather, Captain Vidal, a Fascist officer under orders to rid the territory of rebels. Ofelia, who is fascinated by fairy tales, discovers an overgrown, tumbledown labyrinth behind the mill. In the heart of the labyrinth she meets Pan, an ancient satyr who claims to know her true identity and her secret destiny. But first, she must complete three tasks before the moon grows full. And no one must know: not her ailing mother, or her new friend, Mercedes. Time is running out, for Ofelia, and for the rebels. Both will have to battle hardship and cruelty in order to gain their freedom. But, who can be trusted in a time of lies and danger? Is Pan telling the truth...? And if not, who is?

Plot info brought to you by www.imdb.com

This week in food and film we will be operating our "Way Back" Machine and taking a trip into the fabolous world of, that's right, you guessed it. Black and White television. Woohoo. This week we will be showing episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. For this venture into another dimension, one of sight....one of sound....oh you get the idea lol, we will be using only episodes from the original serise. TZ Fans rejoice.  Our two episodes chosen so far are

From season 2

The Obsolete Man.

In a distant future the last librarian finds himself obsolete in a totalitarian state.

From Season 5

 I am Night Color Me Black

After killing a bigot a man, about to be executed for the crime, finds himself in a town where the sun doesn't rise and night remains at nine in the morning.

Please note, while we have chosen these two already there may be time for more depending on discussion. As always a meal will be provided.

Strive to discover and maximize joy in all your activities rather than begruge a chore or duty. Consider your ability to perform a task  a blessing in and of itself.

Be a tree with roots reaching into the earth.

What kind of branches do you have?

Blossoms?

What characteristics do you possess?

How does the environment around you affect your being?

our Food and Film Movie for SEPTEMBER 13TH 2007 is...

(drum roll)

Crash.

Several stories interweave during two days in Los Angeles involving a collection of inter-related characters, a police detective with a drugged out mother and a thieving younger brother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race, the white district attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist white veteran cop (caring for a sick father at home) who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets, and more.

PLOT SUMMERY TAKEN FROM www. ImDb.com

and yes there will be food lol

11 September

Cutting Through the Celtic Twilight

Facks are chiels that winna ding. [ Facts are things that cannot be shifted.]

Scots Proverb

The reappreciation of the Celtic tradition in the nineteenth century led to an overly romantic view known as the "Celtic Twilight." Professor J. R. R. Tolkien once remarked that " anything is possiblein the fabulour Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason." It is a very dangerous place to inhabit, this twilight, as the poet W.B. Yeats discovered; he, who had himself been instrumental in the formation of that twilight, hit the hard iron of reality during the savage Irish civil war , writing in "The Stare's Nest by My Window":

We had fed the heart on fantasies,

The heart's grown brutal from the fare;

More substance in our enmities

Than in our love. 

Many of the popular myths and fantasies that have been woven around the Celts--some self fabricated--have been designed largely to mantle the unpalatable facts of conquest, colonization, and cultural deminishment . Romantic traditions are tales that both colonizers and the colonized have spun after the event. The living, transformative myths are those that speak to us in all eras and conditions. But the minute that we listen to romantic traditions, with their victimhood and their inadequacy thinly veiled by bombast and boast, we mire in a quicksand that will suck us out of reality into a jealous cauldron where bitter nationalism and retributive terrorism  can be brewed.

Take a hard look at the romantic traditions concerning your own people. What enemies to the common good are lurking behind them?

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Consider your own romantic illusions or traditions with family, friends, and country. Explore them. Dig until you uncover the truth and see if what you belive to be the truth is in fact true, or if it is just designed after the fact. Take the path of wisdom and fight for the truth you find beyond the illusion or tradition. Even if you are the only one fighting, in the the beginning, in the end you will have made a difference.

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 All Meditations are taken from Daily Meditations for the Turning Year: The Celtic Spirit By Caitlan Matthews. New York: HarperCollins, 1999. UCM Staff composes the bold section (when it seems necessary to have one) in the hopes that you will be able to implement the lessons of the meditation or perhaps provide and additional perspective that you might not have considered before.