FROGS KNOW THINGS

GOLFING LESSON

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Ladies, Read Only The First Part – Men, The Rest
A Woman was out golfing one day when she hit the ball into the woods. She went into the woods to look for it and found a frog in a trap. The frog said to her, “If you release me from this trap, I will grant you three wishes.”
The woman freed the frog, and the frog said, “Thank you, but I failed to mention that there was a condition to your wishes. Whatever you wish for, your husband will get times ten!”
The woman said, “That’s okay.” For her first wish, she wanted to be the most beautiful woman in the world.
The frog warned her, “You do realize that this wish will also make your husband the most handsome man in the world, an Adonis to whom women will flock.”
The woman replied, “That’s okay, because I will be the most beautiful Woman and he will have eyes only for me.”
So, KAZAM-she’s the most beautiful Woman in the world!
For her second wish, she wanted to be the richest woman in the world. The frog said, “That will make your husband the richest man in the world. And he will be ten times richer than you.”
The woman said, “That’s okay, because what’s mine is his and what’s his is mine.”
So, KAZAM-she’s the richest woman in the world!
The frog then inquired about her third wish, and she answered, “I’d like a mild heart attack.”
Moral of the story: Women are clever. Don’t mess with them.
Attention female readers : This is the end of the joke for you. Stop here and continue feeling good.
Male readers, continue reading….
The man had a heart attack ten times milder than his wife
Moral of the story: Women think they’re so smart. Let them continue to think that way and just enjoy the show.
PS: If you are a woman and are still reading this; it only goes to show that women never listen!

CATHOLIC CHURCH ABUSE

A POOR RESPONSE

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Another damning report on the scale of child sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic clergy in this country has been published this week. In the report of the commission on child abuse within the Dublin diocese several Bishops are named as having not acted honourably when alerted to the activities of their clergy, most of them did nothing and many just moved the offending cleric on to another parish where the abuse continued on more children. I have been listening through this week to many ‘good’ Catholics venting their frustration at the lack of response of their church to these atrocities in any meaningful way. All the Church officials can muster to date are verbal apologies (they have never been at a loss for words, both inside and outside the pulpit ! ) and paltry sums of compensation offered to some of the victims. It is heart rending to hear fair minded members of that Church tearfully baffled as to the stony response of their spiritual leaders in the light of these awful happenings, as many have asked over the last few days, where has basic Christianity gone ?

A Bishop lies, a Cardinal lies, even a child preparing for Communion knows from their Catechism that it is a ‘sin’ to tell an untruth. But there seems to be one code of morality for the man or woman in the pew and an entirely opposite code for the Church hierarchy. Of course I am looking at these events from the outside having long ago substituted dead religious practise for a living faith in Jesus Christ. I could never understand how anyone with even a basic knowledge of the Gospels could confuse that heartless monolith which is the Roman Catholic Church with the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. While much good has been done by individual clergy and laity within the Church the structure of it, headed or lorded over by a Pope who lives in palatial grandeur, runs so counter to the way Jesus admonished His disciples to behave that it beggars belief. Jesus model of church leadership was that of a servant in fact He said that the greatest in His Kingdom would be the servant of all. ( Matthew 18: 1-4). As the Roman church strengthened its power base over the centuries it lost its spiritual clout and diluted the early teachings of Jesus with clever sounding theologies and doctrines that owed more to human ingenuity than to a revelation from God.

When I first opened the pages of the New Testament to read it for myself I was so surprised that much of what I had been taught to believe as a Catholic was no where to be found within its covers. Staples of my childhood like Confession, Mass, Praying for the Dead, worship of Mary and the reverential place of the Priest were all absent from the Four Gospels and did not appear in the early written works of the first Christian communities. Sadly, to people of my parent’s generation, reading the Bible had been deliberately discouraged by the Church , her ministers alone would explain and interpret the Book in line with its own peculiar belief system. The result of this rigorous authoritarianism was to allow generations of Irish people to have a dread of the Scriptures and thereby deny them the possibility of nurturing a vibrant personal faith in the Jesus of the New Testament. Compounded to this spiritual theft as we now know, was the scandalous behaviour of large numbers of the Churches clergy in the sexual abuse of thousands of children. Over the last few years as details of the awfulness of those crimes have been exposed, the once intimate relationship between the Irish and the Catholic Church has been altered beyond recognition. To the religiously sceptic these revelations of clerical wrongdoing have confirmed their disdain of any type of a faith based approach to life, to those who refused to live under any personal moral code it has shown how hollow that code was in the first place and to the majority of ordinary church going Catholics it has been a massive act of betrayal inflicted on them by the Church they loved.

Those of us looking on from outside the Roman fold do not have reason for any smugness or quiet satisfaction ,as the Catholic Church crumbles before our eyes. For most people here the terms Catholic and Christian are interchangeable, however misguided that opinion might be. So as the R. C Church looses ground, so too in common perception does the message of the Gospel. The opportunity must now be grasped to present the plain teachings of Jesus without the ecclesiastical razzmatazz or clerical sleight of hand. As Paul recalled his first encounter with the people at Corinth, “ My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.” ( 1 Corinthians 2: 4,5 ) All religious life is littered with the dead ash of human wisdom and persuasive oratory, what the disillusioned ‘faithful’ of the Catholic Church in Ireland now deserve to hear is a message of power and purity that emanates from the very heart of God. My hope is that the baby wont be tossed out with the bathwater as the distinction between the glorious message of Jesus and the moribund works of failed religion are muddled in the public mind. The challenge is for those of us who have tasted the goodness and mercy of God to pass it on as urgently and gently as we can, our fellow citizens deserve nothing less in the present trying circumstances.

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Gerard O'Shea

Christmas Bible Study

Did this artist get it right, is this

the way it might have looked ?

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READY FOR THE CHRISTMAS ?

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We are approaching that time of year dreaded and loved in different measure by one and all - Christmas. For some it is one big party and a social whirl of activity, for many it is all about making ends meet to ensure that Santa doesn't disappoint and for some Christmas can be the loneliest time of the year where difficult circumstances become accentuated. In all of these various reactions to Advent it is too easy to loose the original focus for the whole big shebang - the coming of Jesus to this earth. While church attendance declines and our attitude to an authoritarian structure that has let us down so badly in the past wavers, never has it been more important to distinguish Jesus message from his flawed messengers. In other words we need to get back to the man Jesus, that one who came among us as a man, and embodied in himself the very nature of God. The New Testament is our primary source where we can discover the real Jesus and make sense of His incarnation through those mysterious beginnings in Bethlehem and beyond. With this in mind I would like to recommend a 4 week Bible study on the Incarnation by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson of Joyful Heart Ministries that you can get through your e mail for free. The lessons arrive once a week and you study at your own pace, there are no 'catches' or hidden obligations and Dr, Wilson has a light style of teaching that make the lessons relevant and dynamic. To enrol simply click on the link below and fill out a short registration form, these few lessons will truly focus your attention on the reason for the Season - Jesus Christ. ~GOSh.~

Click here...
Christmas Bible Study

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COMATOSED

AWAKENING

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The story emerged during the week of the Belgian man who spent 23 years diagnosed as a comatose, and who now with the help of ultra modern therapy has described how he was conscious all the while. Rom Houben appeared to be in a vegetative state after being involved in a car crash, according to the expert diagnostics of the 1980’s. Now however with the aid of a specialised brain scan and computer technology he is able to communicate by pointing to letters on a screen using his little finger. He has described the loneliness and isolation of the last two decades as he lay there fully aware of his surroundings but unable to communicate. He wrote of his ordeal, “Just imagine. You hear, see, feel, and think but no one can see that. You undergo things. You cannot participate in life”. He went on to describe his new found ability to interact as being reborn. The doctor who discovered that Mr Houben had been wrongly diagnosed is now re-examining dozens of other cases. His studies have revealed that 40 pc of patients with consciousness disorders are wrongly given a diagnosis of a vegetative state.


When my uncle Frank had a stroke last year he spent several days just lying in the bed apparently oblivious to his surroundings. The medical staff essentially told us that his chances of any further recovery were negligible and they wanted to withdraw his naso-gastric feed and hydration. At the time we strenuously protested and he did recover limited mobility and full mental recognition within a week or two. One doctor was gracious enough to admit that they had got it wrong and he described Frank’s progress as nothing short of miraculous. Sadly Frank died after an unfortunate circumstance that I wont go into here. My point is that when medical professionals play God with human life they sometimes get it wrong.

There is a clamour in some quarters for so called ‘mercy’ killing to be made lawful in extreme cases where someone is terminally ill or whose quality of life is deemed to be very poor. The problem with this is who will adjudicate on the length or the quality of a human life. Traditionally God has been seen as the giver and the taker of life, but in our post-faith age rational humanism has opened up the pandoras box of mercy-killing at the latter stages of a life, having already established the right to abortion at the very beginning of life. I recall listening to the late Philosopher and Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer back in the 1980’s predicting that after the abortion battle, euthanasia would be next and then infanticide.At the time these words seemed somewhat dramatic now however they are chillingly true. Life is God’s gift (1Corinthians 3: 16 and Genesis 1: 26) and we are not the arbiters of when it is extinguished, even Job in his distress declared, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away” (Job 1: 21). The recent story of Rom Houben reminds us powerfully of how sacred and mysterious the gift of life is and even with our expertise we can sometimes read the signs incorrectly, pointing us towards a course of action that could be catastrophic.

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Gerard O'Shea

DYLAN'S HEARTFELT CHRISTMAS

TIMES ARE A CHANGIN'

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Already the air is beginning to fill with sounds seasonal as stores belt out their well worn Christmas soundtracks and even some of the local radio stations have dared to spin the occasional Yuletide ditty. Gone are the days when Christmas music belonged exclusively to the festivity itself, now the jingle jangle of reindeers, sleigh-bells and gathering angels are used to extend the shopping extravaganza way beyond even the month of December.


I must admit that I am a sucker for Christmas carols and there are a few Christmas cracker songs that also rock my sledge, like John and Yoko’s 'Happy Christmas, War Is Over’ and Jona Lewie’s ‘Don’t Stop The Cavalry’ and of course Jackson Browne’s ‘The Rebel Jesus’. ‘Oh Holy Night’, ’ Adeste Fideles’ and ‘The Coventry Carol’ would be my top three carols whose musical light burst through the morass of woolly thinking and mulled-wine-filled days that are part and parcel of this ambiguous festival. As an avid collector of Christmas albums from the Muppets to Mario Lanza I was excited to hear that my venerable musical icon Bob Dylan has this year ,surprise, surprise ,released his very own addition to this musical genre, ‘Christmas In The Heart’.


As I write I am listening to Dylan’s seasonal offering and a very upbeat, Pogueish version of ‘Must Be Santa’. Already I have heard a jaunty Dylanesque rendition of ‘Here Comes Santa Clause’ and a scratchy sky stretching ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. Now he is singing ‘The First Noel’ as no one else can, punctuating the powerful lyrics of the old hymn in that distinctive drawl “ The first Noel the angel did say / Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay; / In fields as they lay, keeping their sheep, / On a cold winter's night that was so deep. / Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, Born is the King of Israel. “ Such is the potency of that voice that old favourites like ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ and ‘Silver Bells’ lose their familiar banality and are endued with a freshness and immediacy that present those ancient and hallowed themes in an arresting and different way. Anyway Bob could sing the telephone directory and attach a gravitas to it with the awesome quality of his singing that has droned and sometimes hollered over the last five decades. The album is very much a traditional package with a Victorian painting of a lady and driver being pulled through the snow on a sledge with two horses on the cover, and a night scene of the Magi following the star on the back. Inside there is the slightly mischievous picture of a smiling brunette beauty posing in a Santa suit ! Whatever about the red suit with the fur trimmed collar this album should have pride of place in any stocking hung over the yuletide hearth this year.

Gerard O'Shea

THE ISLAND

The Grand Parade in Cork resembling Venice ,

in the flooding of the last few days.

ANOTHER DELUGE

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The water rushed in
Set free from the broken banks,
Submerging domestic life
In it’s swaddling ooze.
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Stranded upstairs
Land dwellers look out to sea
Where lately lawns were trimmed,
And streams of murky brown
Torrent through the garden swing.
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Dogs and cattle call
Alarmed at this fluid pasture
While experts crow again
Of changing climate
And further plans of action.
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Meanwhile the island sinks
Beneath swamped hopes
And tidal waves of disappointment.
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What Ark will now save us
From these foolish habitations
Built on the shifting sands
Of our heart-wrenched plains.
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Gerard O'Shea

JUST ONE WISH

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A GOOD MAN - WHO CAN FIND HIM ?

A woman rubbed a bottle and out popped a genie
The amazed woman asked if she got three wishes.
The genie said, "Nope, sorry, three-wish genies are a storybook myth.
I'm a one-wish genie. So... what'll it be?"
The woman did not hesitate.
She said, "I want peace in the Middle East.
"See this map? I want these countries to stop fighting with each other
and I want all the Arabs to love the Jews and Americans and vice-versa."
"It will bring about world peace and harmony."
The genie looked at the map and exclaimed, "Lady, be reasonable. These
countries have been at war for thousands of years. I'm out of shape
after being in a bottle for five hundred years.. I'm good but not THAT
good! I don't think it can be done. Make another wish and please be
reasonable."
The woman thought for a minute and said, "Well, I've never been able to
find the right man. You know - one that's considerate and fun, romantic,
likes to cook and help with the house cleaning, is good in bed, and gets
along with my family, doesn't watch sports all the time, and is
faithful. That is what I wish for...a good man."
The genie let out a sigh and said, "Let me see the map again."