???

I've censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet--a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/39834/uncensor

████ ███████,
████████████ has ██████ and ██████ a ████████ for █████ ████████ for ████ ████ █████. God ███████ has ████████ ██████ █████ ███████ and the way the █████ █████ for ████ ██████ ████ ████. As an ████████ ███████ I am █████ ███████ to ████████ ███████ ██████ █████ ████ ████ ████████ for ████. I am ███████ to █████ ████ it is ██████ to ████ a pre-████ █████ ██████. It is ███████ █████████ to act ████ the ████████ of ██████████ ████████. █████████████ is bad ████████ and ████████ our ██████, █████, and █████████████. ██████████ sex is █████ and ████ █████ you ███████████ ███████. I can █████ say █████ ██████. █████ █████ ████ a day ████ it won't be ███████. Don't let ████ day be ██████ ████ █████.
█████ in █████ ██████.
████

Time Off

I am taking a vacation from blogging until certain projects are finished.
God Bless!

I'm Here... Where Is My Mammogram?

Planned Parenthood claims they provide essential basic health care services to poor and underprivileged women.

Just TRY to find a Planned Parenthood in your area that actually offers the "essential" services (like mammograms) that they say they offer. There is a video you need to see.

Planned Parenthood and Mammograms

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The Gardasil Deception

I had a doctor's appointment today and as I cooled my heels in the waiting room I noticed a display of Gardasil pamphlets. I didn't used to think one way or another about this new vaccine or their intense advertising campaign. I assumed it was like breast cancer awareness and was conducted in the public's best interest. However, I discovered that just like the Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign there is some deception and/or facts purposely left out for the advertiser's benefit. I continue to amaze myself with my own naive willingness to assume the best from others. When I became better informed on the issue I can now see the Gardasil machine as the propaganda that it is.

I am posting an article from ALL's magazine "Celebrate Life". It is readily available on their own site, but since I had problems trying to get the article to download I figured I'd make it available here in another format. Where one has a problem downloading, there will be others, and this issue is important enough to re-post.

Please click on each image in order to read the pages of the article.
(I'd like to point out that when this article was written the advertising was only targeting girls and young women. The pharmaceutical company has since decided to "recommend" that boys receive the shot also.)

I will be following up on this post with more info as I find the time. Meanwhile, stay informed and God bless.

Church by the Future Patron Saint of Artists Blessed

Architect Antoni Gaudi is one of my favorite new obsessions. And , no, he's not canonised yet, but the cause for it has been started. With the recent dedication of the Sagrada Familia Basilica by the pope, I've been looking for more information than one typically finds in the news media about this sort of topic. I was going to write my own article when I happened upon a blog that already had the type of info all put together like I wanted... so I'm stealing theirs. :)

Pope Dedicates a Gaudí Church

During a brief trip to the Iberian Peninsula, Pope Benedict XVI visited Barcelona to dedicate and consecrate Sagrada Familia as a basilica, despite its unfinished status. Construction began in 1882 and is not projected to be completed until 2026, although the sanctuary has been ready for worship for a year. Nevertheless, Sagrada Familia is a beloved symbol of Barcelona and was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1984.

The Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia was a project that began as a simple church in a neo-gothic style designed by Francesc de Paula Villar. But when the Sagrada Familia project reigns passed to Antoni Gaudí, a young Catalan architect who was a devote Catholic with an imaginative spirit who intended that the church would be the last great sanctuary of Christendom.

Gaudí designed Sagrada Familia to depict "the divine history of the salvation of man through Christ incarnate, given to the world by the Virgin Mary". Consequently, the plans for the edifice were imaginatively transformed to have three façades would depict the Nativity, the Passion of Christ and the Glory. The 18 spires symbolized the twelve Apostles, the four Evangalists, the Theotokos (the Virgin Mary) and the Son of God (Jesus Christ). So far, only eight towers have been built. These towers have a hollow middle section which allow for tubular bells to be placed as carillon to combine with the voices of the choirs.

Aside from the Grand layout, Antoni Gaudí’s naturalistic style is most evident in the Nativity Façade where elements of life augment the Incarnation theme. Columns which separate the porticos in this section have tortoises as their base, which symbolize something set in stone and unchangeable. But at the sides of this façade are chameleons, which are symbols of change.

In his remarks during the consecration Mass, Pope Benedict XVI recognized Gaudí’s ambition to unify the book of nature, the book of Sacred Scripture and the book of the liturgy in his architectural design. By incorporating the marvels of nature to glorify god with the mystery of the birth passion and glory of Jesus Christ, the Pope noted that:

[Gaudí] brilliantly helped to build our human consciousness, anchored in the world yet open to God, enlightened and sanctified by Christ. In this he accomplished one of the most important tasks of our times: overcoming the division between human consciousness and Christian consciousness, between living in this temporal world and being open to eternal life, between the beauty of things and God as beauty. Antoni Gaudí did this not with words but with stones, lines, planes, and points. Indeed, beauty is one of mankind’s greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the fruits of our hope come forth. Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness.

These lofty reflections on theology and aesthetics are in marked contrast to the louche libertine protests of the Papal visit outside the Sagrada Familia Basilica by homosexuals and anti-clerical activists.

The Sagrada Familia project was never expected to a completed quickly. It is an Expiatory Temple, which is totally dependent on donations for completion. Gaudí used to quip that “My client is not in a hurry.” Construction was complicated because Gaudí constantly changed his blueprints informed by his evolving imagination. Much of the remaining original architectural design was destroyed by anti-clerical Republican partisans during the Spanish Civil War in 1938. So there are some noticeable deviations from Gaudí’s style in the construction that has continued since his death in 1926.

Gaudí spent the last 15 years of his life totally dedicated to this monumental project living an austere life. In fact, Gaudí spent the last two years of his life sleeping in the crypt of Sagrada Familia and begging for donations. Gaudí died tragically in 1926 when he was hit by a tram driver and was not immediately taken to the hospital because taxi drivers refused to transport the ragged man with empty pockets to the hospital. When Gaudí was recognized in a Pauper’s hospital three days after the accident, Gaudí refused to go to a better hospital, he refused by saying “I belong here among the poor”.

The history of Gaudí is not only intertwined with the Sagrada Familia Basilica but it also may portend canonization. Gaudí has been known as God’s architect due to his devotion to Sagrada Familia but there has also been a cause open for Gaudí’s beatification open in the Vatican since 1992. One of two miracles necessary for sainthood have been identified with case of Monserrat Barenys, whose perforated retina was miraculously healed when she prayed to Gaudí, but the Vatican has not certified this miracle.


LINK.

NIMBY!

Not In MY Back Yard!!! This is the most urgent local issue in Oakland County Michigan. I only live a couple miles from where they want to open this monstrosity!

Opposition grows against Planned Parenthood in Auburn Hills

• January 20th, 2011 2:03 pm ET

Petitions opposing an abortion clinic in Auburn Hills are quickly and quietly being circulated at area churches and throughout the communities of Auburn Hills, Lake Orion, Pontiac, Rochester and Rochester Hills as citizens learn that Planned Parenthood has purchased property nearby on Opdyke Road.

‘People need to know this is our backyard, and it's being attacked especially the young people of Pontiac, Oakland University, and all of Oakland County.’ Says Mark Joyce, one of the Knights of Columbus at St. Mary of the Hills Catholic Church in Rochester Hills.

Calling it our own personal Cuban Missile Crisis, attorney Rebecca Kiessling agrees that it is time to sound the alarm. ‘This threat is in our backyard and aimed at our area. It is the worst thing to happen in our community.’

Monica Miller, president of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society whose group is leading the charge says that ‘…we must work together to stop this clinic from opening its doors. We need to tell our city leaders and businesses that we do not want an abortion clinic in our neighborhood!’

‘This is a community that offers support for pregnant women,’ says Evelyn Van Sloten of Crossroads Pregnancy Center. The CPC helped 197 women last year to change their minds about having an abortion. In addition to pregnancy testing, counseling, adoption referral and supplying clothes and equipment for newborns and their mothers, they teach the benefits of abstinence to students in grades 7 – 12 as the healthy pre-requisite for healthy marriages.

Photo: Monica Miller

Continue reading on Examiner.com:
Opposition grows against Planned Parenthood in Auburn Hills - Detroit Catholic Issues | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/catholic-issues-in-detroit/opposition-grows-against-planned-parenthood-auburn-hills#ixzz1BgoMnaRn

Please pray for this situation, even and especially is you are not from the area. We need all the spiritual help we can get.

Beatification of Servant of God John Paul II

Painting by Anna Truckey


The great John Paul II will be beatified!
May 1st, Divine Mercy Sunday.

John Paul II’s pontificate was an eloquent and clear sign, not only for Catholics, but also for world public opinion, for people of all colour and creed. The world’s reaction to his lifestyle, to the development of his apostolic mission, to the way he bore his suffering, to the decision to continue his Petrine mission to the end as willed by divine Providence, and finally, the reaction to his death, the popularity of the acclamation “Saint right now!” which someone made on the day of his funerals, all this has its solid foundation in the experience of having met with the person who was the Pope. The faithful have felt, have experienced that he is “God’s man”, who really sees the concrete steps and the mechanisms of contemporary world “in God”, in God’s perspective, with the eyes of a mystic who looks up to God only. He was clearly a man of prayer: so much so that it is from the dynamism of his personal union with God, from the permanent listening to what God wants to say in a concrete situation, that the whole of “Pope John Paul II’s activity” flowed.

Info blatantly stolen from HERE.

Art, Truth, Beauty and God

I am going to be doing a lot of posts in the future about "Art, Truth, Beauty and God". I have been saving reference material that I've been wanting to post and or talk about and it has been following a theme.
Anyway, that's your fair warning. Look alive for new posts in the New Year.
Goodbye 2010.
Hello 2011.

Mary's Life: God's Mercy is More Powerful than Evil

Vatican City, Dec 8, 2010 / 12:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News)Pope Benedict said on today's Feast of the Immaculate Conception that the day honoring Mary should give Christians “comfort” and remind them that God's mercy “is more powerful than evil.”

On a cloudy morning in St. Peter's Square, pilgrims came to pray the Angelus with the Pope and to hear his remarks on the significance of the Marian feast day.

Pope Benedict briefly spoke from his study window overlooking the square and recalled that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception – Mary being born without original sin – was proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854. The teaching, he said, is “a source of inner light, of hope and comfort,” in the midst of life's difficulties.

The reality of sin in the world, he explained, can be traced to disobedience to God's will, adding that now evil has its root in the human heart, which is “sick and wounded,” and “unable to heal itself."

But the life of Mary, Mother of Christ, shows us that tells us that God's mercy is more powerful than evil and that grace is greater than sin, the Pope taught.

He added that God has prepared a new and everlasting covenant, sealed by the blood of Jesus Christ who was “born of a woman.” Pope Benedict then explained the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, saying that the Virgin Mary experienced in advance the redeeming death of her Son, since she was conceived without sin.

After his remarks in St. Peter's Square, Pope Benedict greeted pilgrims in several different languages. Speaking in English, he said that Church “joyfully” celebrates the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

“By her prayers, may our hearts and minds be kept free from sin, so that like Mary we may be spiritually prepared to welcome Christ,” he said.

“Let us turn to her, the Immaculate, who brought Christ to us, and ask her now to bring us to Him. Upon each of you and your loved ones at home, I invoke God’s abundant blessings!”

Later in the afternoon, Pope Benedict also led a traditional procession to crown a statue of Mary at the Piazza di Spagna – one of Rome's most prestigious shopping districts. Leading the way in his popemobile, the pontiff and procession solicited curious stares from busy onlookers doing their holiday shopping.

He emphasized to the crowds gathered in the piazza that the message of the Virgin Mary is for everyone, even those not aware of the feast day, and especially for those who may feel alone or abandoned.
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I thought this article had some great nuggets of insight and was worth reposting here.

Featured...ME!

I forgot to let certain non-Facebook friends know about an honor my blog and I received in September. This is a belated announcement of the fact.

On September 12th 2010 the "Catholic Church" Facebook page honored me by featuring a link to my blog and specifically to an article about my stained glass windows. The website uCatholic.com helps administer the Catholic Church Facebook page. It is interesting to note that uCatholic.com was recently named in the "Top 200 Most Influential Websites".

Anyway, I was just pretty darn tickled. :) You can see the post HERE.

A Family Nightmare

Illegal pregnancy and legal abortion... the whole story is here, as I found it. Link.

A woman, 9 months pregnant, is abducted by her government's Family Planning Division, held hostage, beaten, her unborn baby given a lethal injection and then left inside the mother until the officials had time to get around to surgically removing it. The father is terrified that the officials will forge his signature on a consent form for the procedure to frame him. Both parents are in shock and afraid to speak out.

Everyone, we must not grow complacent. Just because injustice does not happen in front of our faces, just because it is in another country doesn't mean there is nothing we can do.
Remember, we are the Body of Christ.
We can pray... and our prayers will be heard.

Alaskan Photos 2010

Some pics are finally up. Some are yet to come. Yay Alaska!!!

Go here for more of my Alaskan pictures.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=22207&id=100000445466952&l=db90459793

September 11 in Stained Glass

My name is Anna Truckey. I am 28 years old. Back in January of 2001 my grandfather died and left a stained glass commission unfinished for my parish church, Sacred Heart of the Hills Catholic Church in Auburn Hills , Michigan. All I had from him was a rough watercolor sketch of what the window design was supposed to be of. That year, after September 11th, I noticed that one panel in my grandfather's design would (eerily) lend itself perfectly to be transformed into a 9/11 memorial window. All I had to add was the two towers in the background. In the panel were already a flight attendant, a businessman,a man of dark complexion, a doctor and a nurse, a fireman and police officer, a partial business woman on a computer (her head is in another frame of the window) and a miscellaneous man in the top right of the panel. I was given permission by the parish priest to do what I wanted with the window. Several of the portraits that I included in the window were people who died on September 11 either in the towers or on the planes. I pulled their faces off of websites of victims. One face is of a man who died that day and was the son in law of a former teacher. I turned the flight attendant into one specifically from American Airlines. I put FDNY 9-11-01 on the fireman's sleeve.
The portrait in the top right corner I transformed into Father Mychal F. Judge. I was so transfixed by his story and the photo of Father Judge's body being hauled away from the scene that I knew I had to include him.

If anyone stumbles across this blog and knew Father Judge personally, I would love to send you a photo or two of my window and his portrait in it (no charge). Please just leave a comment and an email and I will get back to you.

God bless.

Atheist De-Baptism (my rough draft response)

Wow! I just ran across a...well...interesting article. It is shocking, though not surprising, to my Catholic sensibilities. Read on.

"Wielding a blow-dryer, a leading atheist conducted a mass "de-baptism" of fellow non-believers and symbolically dried up the offending waters that were sprinkled on their foreheads as young children. "

Me: Though I appreciate the tongue in cheek humor that this probably arose from, I can't help flinching at this blatant reversal. It smacks slightly of inverted crucifixes to me. I'm sure there are Hellworms loving this particular human antic.

"[Edwin Kagin, American Atheist's national legal director] has reportedly called out parents who subject their children to strict fundamentalist religious education, referring to it as child abuse."

A Cincinnati woman said, "I was born atheist and they were forcing me to become Catholic."

Me: So baptism is now child abuse!? It is not enough for a person to submit to the wisdom of their parents as children and be legally free of their official influence at 18 years of age. Will it become illegal for parents to form their children at all? Is this seriously what these people want? I know there is a spiritual undercurrent here. Of course this is what "they" want. This group just doesn't believe "they" exist. Has no one ever read "Brave New World"? Goodness, even "Ender's Game" would provide a glimpse as to how this would play out. Perhaps they read them, and saw them as paradises, not nightmares inclement.

"They are practicing child abuse in teaching that the world operates in ways other than it does," he told the convention crowd. "And in my opinion, they are engaged in terrorism by weakening our nation and our understanding of science and things with which we can defend ourselves and progress. If it had not been for these fools we could have been at the stars 2,000 years ago."

Me:
2 points:
1)WHO is teaching that the world operates in a way other than it does!? Same could be said of you people.
2) He obviously doesn't know his history very well. Though I will grant that the "2000 years ago" part is dramatic exaggeration, it is actually the irreligious who have held back progress. May I suggest reading "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" by Thomas E. Woods Jr., Ph.D. One example being that King Henry VIII's suppression of Catholicism and his act of closing down monasteries in the 1530's may very well have delayed the industrial era and it's related wealth, life expectancy and technology by two and a half centuries. English monks were making major technological breakthroughs around the time they were all cast out of their monasteries by the king. See chapter 3 of Dr. Woods book.

Kagin said religion should not be used to determine how people ought to live their lives. "They're doing harm to women who want to control their own bodies and their own reproductive rights," he said. "They're doing harm to a great number of people and they're saying that 'what we're doing is sacred and inviolate. We can do whatever we want to your rights, and you can not react.' That's what they're doing."

Me: Irreligion should not be used to determine how people aught to live their lives. Who says you, Kagin, are the right one here.
Rights. So easily invented. Natural law. Rights have become a definition for anything a person or group thinks it should be able to do because they think it will make them happy. You can jump off a cliff right after declaring that flying will make your life better and thus you declare your right to be free from the oppression of gravity. That doesn't mean that is the way the world objectively works. Gravity will still kill you.
They are saying that they should be able to decimate civility, stability, and human biological and psychological science and you religious/logical people should not be able to react to us.


"He recited a few mock-Latin syllables, to the audience's amusement. An assistant produced a large hairdryer, labeled "Reason and Truth," and handed it to Kagin. The man who'd elected himself to be de-baptized stood before him. Kagin turned on the hairdryer, blowing the hot air in his face in an attempt to symbolically dry up his baptismal waters.

"Come forward now and receive the spirit of hot air that taketh away the stigma and taketh away the remnants of the stain of baptismal water," Kagin shouts."

Me: "Jadedness and self delusion" maybe the label should have been. Yeah, I'll agree with the "hot air" part. *Giggle*

"Atheists poke fun at baptisms in this ceremony, saying they believe their waving around a hairdryer holds the same level of magical and spiritual powers as does the baptismal ceremony."

Me: I have no doubt. Such a blatant denial of Christ certainly shows your defiance as surely as the fallen angels refusal to serve. You think it all means nothing. We know it ALL means something.

"Kagin said he thought some people might get overly offended by his poking fun at religion. "If someone is so secure in their faith, why are they the least bit concerned about some little atheist mocking them?" he asked. "I think the reason they are worried and concerned is the very deep fear that if everyone doesn't believe it, maybe it isn't so."

Me: Concern for your soul maybe. Concerned that you might to impose your version of "morality and reality" on us all by taking legal steps as an organisation, yes. If everyone doesn't believe it, maybe it is not so? This doesn't worry me. Not everyone will believe it. We have free will.

""I don't lose much sleep over [it] because everyone has the right to do what they want to do within the law," he said. "That's what I believe in."

Me: Well, there are no laws saying you are required to baptise your children. Baptism isn't intrinsically evil. There should never be a law to criminalize baptizing your children. Okay. I might ask, what makes "law" the absolute for you Mr Kagin? If there was a law that required you to baptize your children, then what? You would lay down and concede, give up because it is "the law" and "you can do what you want to do WITHIN the law"? You will do nothing if you believe that law is wrong!? I don't believe you would. If you didn't oppose a law you thought was unjust, I would be disappointed in you as a human being, Mr Kagin. You should be outraged at the Christians who don't oppose Roe V Wade if "LAW" has a value and a standard it must represent and isn't arbitrary. You may not agree, but you need to decide on a few definitions. All things are not definitionless.

"Kagin said that he saw the conflict between atheists and believers as America's religious civil war. He said bad manners are a reasonable weapon in that war, but he said it was unlikely that atheists would emerge as the victors.

"Atheists have no chance whatsoever of prevailing in a direct confrontation with believers," he said. "There are far too many [believers]."

Me: Yes, bad manners make those offended reflect on why they think something is wrong... or they just get angry, which is not the ideal reaction for an intelligent person. Reflection and reasoning out one's beliefs are a good thing... on both sides of your religious civil war.

Atheists will not loose because of numbers. They very well may win or at least gain ground for a time. They will ultimately lose because their view of reality is false. God will win in the end because He is God and Truth is not relative.

-Anna Truckey

Source. Supposedly you can learn more about all this tonight (Saturday July 17, 2010)on ABC's Nightline.

Been a while...

I haven't posted in a while. I intend to get back into it. Soon.

News: My art necklaces are being sold at Firebrick Gallery in downtown Rochester, Michigan!

Woohoo!