Keeping Vows

A. Unabashed Pacifist:

Violence solves no problems, just shifts the problems to other places.

B. Unabashed Christian:

Holy One,

It strikes me as a bit strange that in marriage vows we promise to be true to our partners in sickness and in health, yet so often when serious illness comes to our loved ones or our selves, we can readily abandon you or believe you have abandoned us in our covenant relationship. It just seems odd…

Perhaps it’s better that we abandon you instead of abandoning our partners… Or, perhaps we need something like marriage vows to seal our covenant with you.

I do.
Amen

C. Un-quoting Jesus:

“Peter, James, John, here’s how it works. I go into the Garden first and hide these colored eggs. Then I’ll call you to come see if you can find them. Got it?”

[No, that’s not how the game originated.]

D. Blog: Word of the Week -- Piracy

Piracy is a war-like act committed by a nonstate actor, especially robbery or criminal violence, committed at sea, on a river, or sometimes on shore, either from a vessel flying no national flag, or one flying a national flag but without authorization from a national authority. It does not normally include crimes on board a vessel among passengers or crew. The term has been used to refer to raids across land borders by nonstate actors.
Maritime piracy, according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982, consists of any criminal acts of violence, detention, or depredation committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or aircraft that is directed on the high seas against another ship, aircraft, or against persons or property on board a ship or aircraft. Piracy can also be committed against a ship, aircraft, persons, or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any state, in fact piracy has been the first example of universal jurisdiction. Nevertheless today the international community is facing many problems to try pirates.

The English "pirate" is derived from the Latin term pirata and that from Greek πειρατής (peirates) "brigand", ultimately from πεῖρα (peira) "attempt, experience", implicitly "to find luck on the sea".

Pirates have been around as long as people have used the oceans as trade routes. The earliest documented instances of piracy are the exploits of the Sea Peoples who threatened the Aegean and Mediterranean in the 13th century BC. In classical antiquity, the Illyrians and Tyrrhenians were known as pirates, as well as Greeks and Romans. The island of Lemnos long resisted Greek influence and remained a haven for Thracian pirates. During their voyages the Phoenicians seem to have sometimes resorted to piracy, and specialized in kidnapping boys and girls to be sold as slaves. By the 1st century BC, there were pirate states along the Anatolian coast, threatening the commerce of the Roman Empire.

On one voyage across the Aegean Sea in 75 BC, Julius Caesar was kidnapped by Cilician pirates and held prisoner. He maintained an attitude of superiority and good cheer throughout his captivity. When the pirates decided to demand a ransom of twenty talents of gold, Caesar is said to have insisted that he was worth at least fifty, and the pirates indeed raised the ransom to fifty talents. After the ransom was paid, Caesar raised a fleet, pursued and captured the pirates, and had them put to death.

In 1523, Jean Fleury seized two Spanish treasure ships carrying Aztec treasures from Mexico to Spain. The great or classic era of piracy in the Caribbean extends from around 1560 up until the mid 1720s. The period during which pirates were most successful was from 1700 until the 1730s. Many pirates came to the Caribbean after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Some people stayed in the Caribbean and became pirates shortly after that. Others, the buccaneers, arrived in the mid-to-late 17th century and made attempts at earning a living by farming and hunting on Hispaniola and nearby islands; pressed by Spanish raids and possibly failure of their means of making a living, they turned to a more lucrative occupation (not to mention more active and conducive to revenge). Caribbean piracy arose out of, and mirrored on a smaller scale, the conflicts over trade and colonization among the rival European powers of the time, including England, Spain, Dutch United Provinces, Portuguese Empire and France. Most of these pirates were of English, Dutch and French origin. Because Spain controlled most of the Caribbean, many of the attacked cities and ships belonged to the Spanish Empire and along the East coast of America and the West coast of Africa. Dutch ships captured about 500 Spanish and Portuguese ships between 1623 and 1638.

[There you have it, a brief history from the article in Wikipedia]