WEDNESDAY 10-25-23
Wednesday 10-25-23
Verse(s) for today:
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand;
Joel 2:1 KJV
And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
Matthew 4:23 KJV
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Matthew 6:10 KJV
HOW TO MAKE YOUR (LONDON) CHURCH A 'SAFE PLACE' IN TIMES OF TROUBLE:
DISASTER PLANNING AND FOLLOW UP IS FOR YOUR CONGREGATION LIKE BUYING INSURANCE.
You can't rely on first-responders to identify churches that will take victims in, people who know how to pray with victims, homes with stores of food, or helpers who will not burn out. You don't need to hear the voice of the prophet to know when disaster is coming. You need to know your congregation well enough now to assist at any time. Build an intimate resilient community with our help.
"A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences." - Proverbs 22:3
You can prepare members of your congregation to cope with any crisis big or small by attending a London workshop that gives you this 76-page manual:
This National VOAD resource on Emotional and Spiritual Care in Disaster is not intended to be one more training manual or another “how to” book for disaster response. Our intention is to encourage i standards of best practice for all of us, whether we care for children, give spiritual counsel, help survivors sort through the remains of their home, or answer phones at a call center.
Create an inventory of your congregation identifying potential "captains", create a "telephone tree", family kits, partnerships with other community groups, Learn about how to triage, what questions to ask at each stage, how to interpret symptoms to detect the difference between emotional care and spiritual care, how to prepare for people who have another faith or no faith at all. And most of all, how to care for the care-giver. Here's a sample page:
Compassion fatigue is a state experienced by those helping people in distress; it is an extreme state of tension and preoccupation with the suffering of those being helped to the degree that it is traumatizing for the helper…The helper, in contrast to the person(s) being helped, is traumatized or suffers through the helper’s own efforts to empathize and be compassionate. Often, this leads to poor self-care and extreme self-sacrifice in the process of helping. Together, this leads to compassion fatigue and symptoms similar to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)...Helping other people—whether you’re a volunteer or a medical doctor—requires empathy and compassion. You have to see the world through an individual patient’s perspective, and compassion in that you not only understand their world view, but you’re motivated to assist them…The main thing with regard to self-care is that those who are selfless and compassionate have an Achilles heel—they don’t pay enough attention to themselves. So we have to save them from themselves. I’m a psychologist working at a college of social work, and one of the reasons I’m here is because there’s a calling among social workers to help mankind, and to help the less fortunate. The people who are drawn to that are extraordinarily vulnerable to compassion fatigue. The same is true for the faith community, for nurses, even certain specialties within the military and Red Cross volunteers. There’s a tendency to be selfless and to help other people. So they have to recognize that they’re more vulnerable than most people because they neglect their own needs, despite what their children or spouses say. And even when they recognize it, when they have a choice to put a victim, a client, or a survivor ahead of themselves, they do that (Gould, 2005)
REGISTER NOW FOR YOURSELF AND SOME KEY MEN AND WOMEN TO ATTEND A FREE WORKSHOP SPONSORED BY THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES NETWORK OF LONDON.
It takes place Wed. Nov. 15 from 9-12 am at the Byron Fire Station where Canada's foremost Command-and-Control Centre is leading the way to work with churches in any London area emergency operation.
For more information please contact Barry Slauenwhite Executive Director of Christian Churches Network of London: barry.ccnl@gmail.com.
To register your church, visit the website ccnl.org/emergency
[Patrick Bestall]
[Don Brooks]
Antisemitic incidents spike in NY since Hamas attack:
FranCon, an annual gathering of fans of the curmudgeonly Jewish writer.
Good morning, New York. “It’s like SantaCon but we dress up like Fran Lebowitz.” So goes the origin story of FranCon, an annual gathering of fans of the curmudgeonly Jewish writer. “SantaCon is awful,” founder Jane August tells Gothamist about the annual December gathering in Midtown of drunk Santa Clauses. “I think it’s some of the worst people. And Fran Lebowitz fans are the exact opposite of that.” The third annual FranCon will be tomorrow night at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark’s Place, one day prior to the icon’s 73rd birthday. Expect lots of button-down shirts and blazers, candy cigarettes in lieu of the real thing, and a book exchange.
Antisemitic incidents have spiked in New York since Hamas attack on Israel, new data shows The day Hamas attacked Israel, two young men shoved a Jewish boy to the ground in Brooklyn. In Rockland County, an assailant fired a BB gun at two women on their way to synagogue. The following day, three Jewish men were shot with a BB gun in Brooklyn. Those attacks came amid what, according to the NYPD and a local Jewish security agency, is a spike in antisemitic incidents since Hamas' Oct. 7 invasion of Israel and Israel's ensuing war against the terror group in Gaza. The NYPD tells New York Jewish Week that it counted 33 antisemitic hate crimes in the first three weeks of October, already surpassing the monthly average of 18 so far this year. Jewish security groups say many antisemitic incidents go unreported. READ MORE
We're also talking about... Families of Hamas hostages are in New York City this week, and two days of events planned to show support and increase international pressure on releasing them are underway, including a rally yesterday outside the United Nations, where U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres incensed Israeli officials by linking the Hamas atrocities to Israel’s control of the West Bank and Gaza. Some 70 Jewish New Yorkers gathered at the German Consulate last week for a first-of-its-kind event designed to welcome new Jewish citizens of Germany, and help them learn about German culture and the country’s Jewish life. The New York Consulate naturalized roughly 900 citizens who are descendents of Holocaust survivors in the last two years. Upper Manhattan resident Christopher D’Aguiar, 28, was arrested yesterday for an unprovoked assault earlier this month against a woman who was waiting for a 7 train at Grand Central. When the victim asked why he had punched her in the face, D’Aguiar allegedly replied: “Because you are Jewish.” A strikingly long list of celebrities launched a campaign Monday aimed at pressuring President Biden to continue to work to secure the release of the hostages taken by Hamas. Among the many bold-faced names signing on to #NoHostageLeftBehind are New Yorkers Amy Schumer, Adam Sandler and Jerry Seinfeld. MORE NY NEWS
3. ‘Very much a family thing’: US Jewish summer camps mourn Israeli alumni killed in Hamas war
[NY Jewish Week]
Drag Queen's New "Christian" Song Instantly Hits Number 2 On Christian Gospel Charts:
https://disntr.com/2023/10/25/drag-queens-%f0%9f%a4%ae-new-christian-song-instantly-hits-number-2-on-christian-gospel-charts/
In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve committed a glaring offense against their Maker. Yet, in a twist of irony, they sought to hide from His all-seeing gaze by using the very elements of the world He so generously gifted them with. Since then, not much has changed. So, what do we get when a depraved and licentious culture tries to hide their shame from God? You get an even more perverse culture who tries to hide their own identity, typically through aberrant sexuality—drag queens, transvestism, transgenderism—and they try to transform God into someone who approves of it. In essence, you get...Flamy Grant.
If you want to know just how low we’ve gone not only as a nation, …
[DISNTR Media]
Hamas Already Has Personnel in The US Thanks To Biden’s Open Border Policies:
Hamas backers "have long operated in the United States" and they "are still engaged in various forms of support" for the organization, a new academic report claims.
The Program on Extremism at George Washington University (GWU) released an account of Hamas' presence in the U.S. on October 13, which said that while many of its domestic activities have been foiled, networks and individuals remain in America providing "at times purely political and not material" backing for the group.
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on the report when approached by Newsweek, but said the agency "will investigate any individuals here in the U.S. who provide material support to Hamas or any other foreign terrorist organization."
The findings come days after the federal government announced a new set of sanctions against 10 Hamas operatives around the world, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken said are "directed at Hamas terrorists and their support network, not Palestinians."
None of the individuals named by the U.S. Treasury Department reside in America, but the sanctions mean any U.S. assets they have will be "blocked and must be reported," while people living in America are prohibited from making any transactions with the designated people.
There has been fresh scrutiny over Hamas' ties to the U.S. after the militant wing of the Islamist organization—designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and which effectively controls the Gaza Strip—launched a surprise attack against Israel along with Islamic Jihad militants on October 7.
