COFFEE BREAK 396

+ updated at 12:39pm EST on Saturday, January 4, 2014

+ On Facebook, Robert Reich shared: "Several of you thought yesterday's post arguing that Congess's first priority when it convenes next week should be to restore unemployment benefits for the record number of long-term unemployed was a weak palliative for what's really needed. "We don't need unemployment benefits," wrote Burr Hubbell, for example, "We need real jobs." Mr. Hubbell and others raise an important issue. In fighting for measures that alleviate symptoms of a failing system -- whether chronic joblessness, increasing poverty, widening inequality, or ever greater economic insecurity -- are we staving off more fundamental reform? Or are we taking the only humane approach available until such time as fundamental reform is politically feasible?"

+ On Facebook, J. Barrett Lee shared: (DISCLAIMER: This is in response to an anonymous commenter on my blog, not anyone I know in real-life or Facebook)
 
I think I'm going to start responding to the phrase
"Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out."
 
with:
 
"Don't be so close-minded that you blow other peoples' brains out."
History has many more concrete examples of the latter, I'm afraid.

+ Eleventh Day of Christmas
A verse from the Daily Lectionary:

May God grant your heart’s desire
and fulfill all your plans.”

Psalm 20:4 < http://www.presbyterianmission.org/devotion/daily/2014/1/4/

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Days_of_Christmas we are informed that today is the feast day of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American saint according to the Roman Catholic Church. In medieval times this was The feast of Saint Simon Stylites.

Here is the Spirituality and Practice Christmas quote for today by the great Sufi poet, Hafiz:

A Suspended Blue Ocean

There is only one rule
On this Wild Playground,

For every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,

"Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloved's Divine
Game,

"O, in the Beloved's
Wonderful
Game."

Hafiz in The Subject Tonight Is Love by Daniel Ladinsky