President Obama has talked about the deadly dogma infiltrating some Muslim communities and decried the acts of terrorism carried out in the name of what he calls a “distorted” version of Islam.

The President has said, “We are not at war with Islam.  We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

Many Americans, especially conservative American Christians, don’t like the President’s defense of the great majority of the world’s Muslims who, he says, are committed to moral and ethical structures very much like those valued in Judaism and Christianity.  An outcry, including the heard-around-the-world silly remark by a former New York City mayor, is a chorus sung loudly by some politicians and ordinary citizens who self-identify as Christians and insist the President is somehow approving terrorist tactics that put the Christian world at risk.  What a crock…

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-obama-extremism-language-20150219-story.html#page=1

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Today's Photographs:  Sitting in church this morning, in the middle of the third pew from the back of the east transept, I was transfixed by a bee crawling across the jacket of the man sitting in front of me.  The bee seemed healthy, so there was the possibility that it might sting the guy if it got to his neck and he reached to swat it. I confess that I was worried more about the bee than about the guy.  In my consideration of living creatures, bees rank right up there with hummingbirds... and everybody knows how I feel about those little birds.

...so I coaxed the bee onto a piece of paper, and handed the paper to my friend Liz who was sitting closest to the exit.  She took the bee on the paper outside and set it free.  For a couple of minutes I felt my existence was justified.