I guess it doesn't count if you don't consider them human to begin with

While La Julia is probably by far the "Hater" with the highest profile, ounce for ounce, even she cannot match the sheer hatred and hypocrisy of Vancouver (BC) Serbian Orthodox iconographer Svetlana Novko. This person, who appears to be considered among the "Haters" to be one of the epitomes of what it means to be a "Godly Christian", has a blog, wherein she, like most of the rest of us bloggers, puts out into cyberspace what we think, feel, believe, and know (or at least in some cases, it's more like "think we know").

Now one of her early posts dealt with rules for those practicing iconography in the Serbian Orthodox Church. I will reproduce them here:

1. Before starting the work, make the sign of the cross. Pray in silence and forgive your enemies.
2. Work with care on every detail of your icon, as if you were working in front of the Lord Himself.
3. Pray during work in order to strengthen yourself physically and spiritually. Above all, avoid all useless words and keep silence.
4. Pray in particular to the Saint whose Image you are writing. Guard your mind from distractions, and the Saint will be close to you.
5. When you have to choose a color, reach out to the Lord inwardly and ask His counsel.
6. Do not be jealous of your neighbor's work - his success is your success too.
7. When your icon is finished, thank the Lord for His Mercy that granted you the grace to paint the Holy Images.
8. Have your icon blessed by putting it in the altar for forty days. Be the first to pray before it, before giving it to others.
9. Never forget the joy of spreading icons in the world, the joy of the work of icon-writing, the joy of serving the Lord shining through the icons, the joy of being in union with the Saint whose Image you are writing.

Now, those rules seem for the most part very sensible, if you want to create art that puts yourself and others in better touch with the Divine. However, two of those rules are of particular relevance here:

1. Before starting the work, make the sign of the cross. Pray in silence and forgive your enemies.

6. Do not be jealous of your neighbor's work - his success is your success too.

I wonder then, before she starts work, how Miss Novko reconciles those rules with things like THIS?:

"But with the Western support rapidly vanishing into thin air, shiptar separatists may as well start packing their suitcases right now.

Part of their problem, IMO, is that they thought it is their doing, their "cleverness" that brought them to the brink of a land-grabbing theft of a century, so they can go on behaving like apes, robbing, stealing, torching, trafficking, killing, destroying, piling up garbage throughout, doing absolutely nothing a decent man would consider work (a Swede asked an excellent question a while ago: How much foreign investment do you really need to grow a cucumber?) and they'll get what they want - that's how charming, irresistible, wonderful they really are and the world has finally acknowledged their marvelousness and will reward it with the chunk of Serbia - for starters."

"A bunch of murderous, dishonest, cowardly terrorists that produce nothing but heroin and sex slaves, might have been useful to the West while it attempted to render Serbia insignificant by dismembering it entirely."

--from comments made by her in the comments section of her POSt "Putin-Wait and See what Happens Next", 18 September, 2007

"....or will they change the current perilous course and find enough moral strength to finally say ‘No’ to the roaches they’ve been nursing all these years?"

--from her blog POSt "serbs ready for all", 30 August, 2007

Hmmm....well, I guess to Svetlana those two rules don't count if you don't consider your enemy to be human to begin with.