Giraffe Kisses Dying Zoo Worker in Final Goodbye

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Heart-breaking pictures emerged of the moment that a giraffe said goodbye to a terminally ill zoo worker, who’d spent most of his adult life cleaning the animal’s enclosures. Zoo maintenance worker Mario had terminal cancer; he asked to go for one last time to the giraffe enclosure at Rotterdam’s Diergaarde Blijdorp Zoo. Attendants wheeled the 54-year-old into the enclosure on his hospital bed. Within minutes, the giraffes approached him and began to nuzzle and kiss him. The Ambulance Wish Foundation, which transported Mario to the zoo, said that Mario has little mobility and finds speaking very difficult, saying, “However, his face spoke volumes”. Kees Veldboer, the founder of the AWF told Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, “These animals recognised him, and felt that (things aren’t) going well with him. (It was) a very special moment. You saw him beaming”. Mario, who has a mental disability, also said goodbye to his colleagues at the zoo, where he worked for almost 25 years. The AWF relies on 200 volunteers to help make the last wishes of terminally ill patients come true by transporting them in specially designed ambulances.

Various studies suggested that animals could sense illness in humans, including diseases with no visible symptoms. Marine, a Labrador retriever, was successfully trained in 2011 to detect people suffering with bowel cancer. Sniffer dogs also proved successful in identifying patients with lung cancer. A 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that a cat could identify people who were dying of a terminal illness at a nursing home. Oscar the cat appeared to “predict” a patient’s death by sitting next to their bed and keeping a vigil there until they died, which was usually a few hours later. Researchers noted that if someone forced him out of the patient’s room, he’d become distressed and would continue to meow outside the door, researchers noted. Oscar presided over the death of 25 residents during his time at the home. Physicians and nursing home staff viewed his presence at the bedside of a patient as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to tell families in time.

21 March 2014

Heather Saul

The Independent (UK)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/giraffe-kisses-dying-zoo-worker-final-goodbye-9207114.html

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21 March 2014. Here’s a Good Definition of “Christian Culture”… You Won’t Get it from Dreher, Freddie, or Paffso… You Gotta Get It from the Real Deal Mother Church

Contemplation (1)

Mariya Goltsova

2011

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Creating Christian culture doesn’t mean to effect legalistic abstract dogmata or to impel oneself towards philosophising of objects hidden from man’s sight; it doesn’t mean that we deny free deliberation or that we create “correct” church structures using earthly methods. However, it does mean that one reveals the depth of one’s heart to Christ’s Spirit. That brings forth a contemplative perception of the Lord and of the Lord’s world.

A I Ilyin

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Dreher’s claiming to be an expert on religion again. What a maroon! He doesn’t have a clue about Orthodoxy, and his dalliances prove that he shouldn’t be criticising RC paedophiles. Pat Buchanan should make Dreher put a sock in it, as Dreher’s sophomoric utterances make Pat look senile and ineffectual. Look at the quote above… THAT’S CHRISTIAN CULTURE. Dreher should shut up… he knows nothing; he has nothing to say, which makes the Faith look like nothing special, just another typical self-satisfied American suburban spiritual mind-fuck. He’s a typical arrogant neocon Amerikanets… cultureless, rootless, and mindless.

Our Faith is an ENCOUNTER… ergo, our Liturgy is an ENCOUNTER. It isn’t a compendium of rules or insider-only esoteric mantras, magical incantations, and ritual actions (like the konvertsy obsessing over the Lents)… it’s an ENCOUNTER with the Living God… in the context of His Incarnated Church, within the all-too-real and all-too-human Body of Christ. It’s so different from the spiritual pabulum dispensed in the heterodox confessions, that those who come to us from them must spend about a decade in silence and learning (especially, the former clergy… as they have to overcome an alien clerical formation)… or they’re deformed (as you can see readily in Dreher, Freddie M-G, Paffso, Chad Hatfield, the late Peter Gillquist, and Jon Braun, amongst others).

I make no claim to being an exemplar and oh-so-religious, as the konvertsy do… I’m an ordinary sinful-ginful sort who’s going to do her level best to grasp the onion at the end of her days. I’m not holy… I’m not “special”… I’m not “called by God”… I do realise who and what I am… “God have mercy on me, the sinner…”

Take my hand; the days are dark, and reliable guides are few…

BMD

21 March 2014. AsiaNews Issues Lying Shit on Patriarch Kirill Opposing Crimea Rejoining the Motherland

THIS is what AsiaNews opposes. They want us to stop being Orthodox and to kiss the Pope of Rome’s ass… why “dialogue” with such sorts? They hate us and they hate who we are… they want us to become castrated Uniates. 

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Read this. It’s a tissue of lies from stem to stern. It’s proof that the papists aren’t our friends and that we should cut off all “dialogue” with them. That doesn’t mean that we should act nasty to individual papist believers and priests… they didn’t make this policy, so, why should we blame them for what others did in their name (without asking them for advice or asking their approval, I might add)? We should act like “good neighbours”… if a Catholic priest has his anniversary, we should send our sincere greetings on the occasion, and attend the shindig, if invited. If a Catholic friend gets married, or baptises their child, or buries their parent, we should give them a right response and attend if invited. That’s what Christians and decent people do. However, we should cut off all official “dialogues”… all too many of those who take part in such (especially, OCA clergy… the SVSniki are the worst offenders in this) are quislings, who have more in common with their papist interlocutors than they do with real Orthodox believers. In any case, we’ve reached the limits of such. The papists aren’t going to reunite with us, as they refuse to abandon their distinctive heresies. In such a case, we should roll up this useless activity and devote the funds wasted on it to good works. By the way, HH issued no misgivings on the rejoining of the Crimea to the Rodina… there’s nothing on patriarchia.ru to indicate such. In short, this is black propaganda bullshit from top to bottom, issued to split us and to help the American-fomented coup (and its Uniate backers).

The papists stab us in the back with AsiaNews and with the Uniates. As a Greek acquaintance said to me about 30 years ago,”The Franks talk out of both sides of  their mouths”. That hasn’t changed. Note well that the indifferentist heretics such as SVS won’t stop their ecumania… therefore, send them no money. Unhinged konvertsy such as Freddie M-G won’t stop schmoozing with heretics. Don’t argue with them… it’s fruitless… don’t attend their lectures, don’t buy their materials, and oppose them coming to your parish.

Elements in the papal Curia declared war on our Orthodox faith and on our Orthodox motherland. Ergo, we should take the proper responses to that. Most of all, we should cut ALL ties with Uniates. Why should we associate with declared traitors to Christ’s Church? That doesn’t make sense…

Shall the Russophobes EVER Learn?

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Editor:

The grammar, usage, and concepts in this point it up as a Russian essay. I don’t know who wrote it… my correspondent wished that they knew, too. It does illustrate brilliantly the Russian attitude to the West and its hubristic arrogance. It’s a read n’ heed for that reason alone.

BMD

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It blows my mind that the typical Russophobe can’t accept the democratic will of the Russian people and respect its leaders, that somehow a former KGB operative when he stands for a strong Russia and for restoration and strengthening of Orthodoxy is somehow worse than former KGB agents in EU/USA/NATO aligned territories STILL REPRESSING RELIGION, STILL REPRESSING THEIR PEOPLES, STILL ENGAGING IN THE TACTICS OF THE KGB, albeit for the EU/USA/NATO. Then it’s OK. That’s the Red Herring.

Indeed, some Serbs did react to Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians being carried away. After all, if the Serbs were to do in Bosnia what the Kosovars are doing in Kosovo, there’d be all manner of fidgeting, neocon denunciations, and Germany on alert to “right the wrongs in the East” for EU/NATO McCivilisation. Of course, the Bosnian, Albanian, and Croatian ethnic cleansing, gang rapes, and mass graves don’t seem to be at issue at all. THEY DON’T EXIST, AFTER ALL! Nevertheless, Serbian and Balkan history screams otherwise, of course. BURN THE HISTORY BOOK FOR UNCLE SAM AND REPRESS THE ORTHODOX! SHUT THEM OUT! CRUSADE, REEDUCATION, SUBJUGATION! That’s been the message of Western Ostpolitik since Charlemagne. NAKED AGGRESSION AND MASKED ETHNIC CLEANSING WITH HYPOCRISY SHABBILY DRESSED IN “MORAL OUTRAGE!” After all, the West wouldn’t own up to its hypocrisy and live up to its pastiche as a ORTHOphobic oppressor of Orthodox peoples if it didn’t hold to its double standards and literal demonising of Orthodox peoples.

However, dear friends, how far will that get you when you deal with superpowers like Russia and China? What will your children say about you when the day comes and they wonder why they’re at war or are taught to hate the people of Eurasia, whose numbers will grow decade after decade as the double-edged sword of Western decline coupled with gay McCulture and Western economic imperialism sees more and more of New Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia leaving your orbit and rejecting your pogroms, your rape gangs, and your theft of their natural resources? These people will say you aren’t only hypocrites; YOU’RE MORE THAN GUILTY OF WHAT YOU ACCUSE OTHERS! They’ll reject your Greek austerity plan templates for their futures! On that day, every charge you’ve levelled against other peoples would be your indictment of your own history and your oppression of peoples you duped into following you.

The West is in decline and in its twilight years. China is in ascendency. Russia is awakening. All some people have to offer is a sick drumbeat of war, an ignorant hate against peoples they refuse to understand, whose civilisations and cultures are authentic and traditional, not some retrograde degeneracy shipped from a McDonald’s drive-through in Hollywood. Indeed, your children will sit in judgement of you for betraying them, for offering them a future where you taught them God was dead, perverse was moral, and infamy, pain, and scandal were right. You didn’t feel anything, you just blinked and laughed when tyrants lied to you and flaunted it, not realising you were laughing at the pathetic jokes these “democratic” dictators had made of you, the subhumanity they debased you into, what they made of your human condition.

I pity those unstable and envious small people of the West who hate all that they can’t understand, control, or exploit. They’re Kafkaesque cartoons of humanity. Anyone who disrespected others because they won’t sing Yankee Doodle and drink the Kool-Aid of Uncle Sam über alles is a sick and intolerant individual. Rumination on perceptions of intolerance and preaching hate so is a clear sign that these people intend coercion and aggression. Moreover, these types of intolerant and bigoted attitudes are precisely why the West is in its cultural Ragnarök. It doesn’t have to be this way. Just because people don’t want to be like you, and they don’t and won’t think like you, doesn’t mean there can’t be a dialogue and an encounter of civilisations, where differences enrich people and what they hold in common draws them closer. However, if you wave your swords of feigned and hypocritical indignation and erect your cloud castles of hate of other civilisations because they aren’t yours using them as a pretext for war, don’t be surprised if that war occurs and your McCulture and declining civilisation loses because of it and is rebuffed by history as a result. Moreover, your children will reject you.

Unknown author

(No URL available… sent to me in an e-mail)

Editor:

The HATE of the West for Russia is truly amazing. They’re upset that we won’t live according to their lights… as if they’ve the right to dictate to all mankind. I have news for them… Russian civilisation started at the Dnepr baptismal fount in 988… that was FAR earlier than 1776 was. The Anglo-Saxon Amerikantsy are posturing and hubristic cretins with no history, no culture, no real religion, and no compassion… “Winning is the only thing” (the man who said that was a gutless coward who sat out World II hiding behind a teacher’s deferment).

It’s time to decide… shall we stand with Russia and the Orthosphere, for all that’s right and moral… or, shall we stand with Amerika, grasping all that it can in its bloody talons?

Choose well…

BMD