Category: Higher Power of Lucky

Is it bad luck?

I have long been fascinated with all things related to the calendar. Last February, I received three biweekly paychecks, a phenomenon that’s possible only once in about every 56 years.

This year, we’re having two Friday the 13ths in a row, in February and March. This only happen when February 1 is on a Sunday AND February is NOT a leap year, or about thrice every 28 years. (I say “about” because the non-leap year century marks such as 1900 and 2100 throw off the calculation.)

I was born in 1953, which was one of those years. Subsequent paired Friday the 13th years were in 1959, 1970, 1981, 1987, and 1998. The next ones will be in 2015, 2026, 2037, 2043, and 2054, when I’d be 101.

This means my birthday will be on a Saturday, same as my birth day. (Hey, hearts players, game at my house on that day.) This would be more special had I not made the decision years ago to take off my birthday from work anyway. So this year, I’ll take off the day before my birthday and get a massage.

The one downside is that I was unable to go to the annual MidWinter’s party in the MidHudson of New York State, about an hour and a half south of Albany. Usually, the first Saturday of February is followed by the first Sunday of the month, and I can blow off that one church service. However, this year, the first Saturday is followed by the SECOND Sunday, which begins our church’s Black History Month celebration.

In fact, I was leading the conversation in the Adult Education class this past Sunday, using that NAACP timeline as a starting point. Conversations about whether to show the D.W. Griffith movie “Birth of a Nation” or how public education has become resegregated in the decades after Brown vs. Board of Education ensued.

All in all, I’m feeling pretty lucky today, all things considered.
I’m Lucky by Joan Armatrading, from the Walk Under Ladders album

I’m lucky
I’m lucky
I don’t need a bracelet
No salt
For my shoulder
I don’t own a rabbit
No clover
No heather
No wonder
I’m lucky
ROG

ROG

By the Secrets

In anticipation of the first Sunday in Lent, which was last Sunday, my Bible group was reading Deuteronomy 26. It is a lovely piece about appreciation for God and how we need to offer our first fruits to God, which one could look up, in several versions, here. Deuteronomy, BTW, means “second law”. But scanning the page, I saw in the Bible something I’d never seen before.

I’ve read the Bible all the way through twice. Once was in 1977, seven months with the King James Version. The other was 1996-1997, 13 months with the New International Version or maybe the Revised Standard Version.

Anyway, here’s Deuteronomy 25:
KJV
(11)When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets:
(12)Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.
NIV
(11)If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, (12) you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
New American Standard Bible
(11)”If two men, a man and his countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals,
(12)then you shall cut off her hand; you shall not show pity.”

OK, forgetting the creepy payoff: yes, I had never seen “genitals” in the Bible, and it’s the fault of the lectionary. The lectionary is a mechanism by which the Scripture is read over a three-year period, each year featuring one of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke). If you go here, then click on the Index of Lectionary Readings by Biblical Books, you’ll see that Deuteronomy 24 and 25, which are full of all sorts of arcane laws, are not included. So, it’s unlikely that most church attendees will hear a sermon on this Scripture (though you’ll see it illustrated in LegosTM here), or that lovely story about a man refusing to marry his dead brother’s widow, so she gets to spit in his face, also in Deuteronomy 25 (and illustrated in Legos here).

So just how much of the Bible IS in the lectionary? I don’t have a definitive answer, but this report on the Catholic version of the Bible suggests that it’s most of the New Testament, but a very small portion (less than 15%) of the Old Testament, except for the Psalms.

Of course, ministers do vary from the lectionary at times, but I’ll be shocked the first time I hear this text as a basis for a sermon. I’ll be certain to be intrigued by how one could take that message and apply it to today’s world.

Also, this means that one of these days, I’m going to need yet another translation of the Bible all the way through.
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And since I seem to be on the topic, I’m loving the controversy about the Newbery Award-winning book ‘The Higher Power of Lucky’ over the use of the word scrotum, referring to a canine’s private parts, which has propelled the book’s sales.
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According to a new book, Americans are the most religiously ignorant people in the West.

ROG
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