My good friend Amy Quillen sent this to a number of people – me being one of them. How about that…
Click below to read the whole article. It is long, but worth of reading. Here is just a paragraph:

I confess, even as I write these words, to a feeling close to embarrassment. Because in public we tend not to talk about such things – my theory of what Jesus mostly meant seems like it should be left in church, or confined to some religious publication. But remember the overwhelming connection between America and Christianity; what Jesus meant is the most deeply potent political, cultural, social question. To ignore it, or leave it to the bullies and the salesmen of the televangelist sects, means to walk away from a central battle over American identity. At the moment, the idea of Jesus has been hijacked by people with a series of causes that do not reflect his teachings. The Bible is a long book, and even the Gospels have plenty in them, some of it seemingly contradictory and hard to puzzle out. But love your neighbor as yourself – not do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but love your neighbor as yourself – will suffice as a gloss. There is no disputing the centrality of this message, nor is there any disputing how easy it is to ignore that message. Because it is so counterintuitive, Christians have had to keep repeating it to themselves right from the start. Consider Paul, for instance, instructing the church at Galatea: “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment,” he wrote. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”

Continue reading →

The New York Times has a webpage devoted to all those who have died in Iraq. It is quite moving.
Click here

What is the purpose of the Church?

A good opinion piece on lust, faith, and making love in the Guardian, UK.
Click here to read the article.
An exerpt:

But Christians – and, of course, others – insist that sex should primarily be the climactic expression of affection and tenderness: of love, indeed. Human beings (uniquely?) have sex face to face – a posture that symbolises relating to, rather than simply using, another person.
It is true that two people may happily agree to give their bodies to one another without any kind of mutual commitment, and that is a long way from the rape of Tamar. But offering one’s body in this way is also a long way from offering one’s self, a long way from saying: “I give myself to you because I love you exclusively; and there is no more intense and beautiful way of doing so than what we share together in this act.”

Beloit College in Wisconsin puts out a new “Mindset List”every year detailing interesting tid-bits on income college freshmen. These lists always make the rounds in higher-education, and I’ve always found them quite interesting. The Journal of Higher Education puts out a very detailed and comprehensive profile of new freshmen every year, for those who really want the low-down on our new students. The Mindset List is a bit more whimsical and fun.
Here is the Mindset List for the new traditional aged freshmen for the class of 2008:
BELOIT COLLEGE MINDSET LIST®
FOR THE CLASS OF 2008
1. Most students entering college this fall were born in 1986.
2. Desi Arnaz, Orson Welles, Roy Orbison, Ted Bundy, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Cary Grant have always been dead.
3. “Heeeere’s Johnny!” is a scary greeting from Jack Nicholson, not a warm welcome from Ed McMahon.
4. The Energizer bunny has always been going, and going, and going.
5. Large fine-print ads for prescription drugs have always appeared in magazines.
6. Photographs have always been processed in an hour or less.
7. They never got a chance to drink 7-Up Gold, Crystal Pepsi, or Apple Slice.
8. Baby Jessica could be a classmate.
9. Parents may have been reading The Bourne Supremacy or It as they rocked them in their cradles.
10. Alan Greenspan has always been setting the nation’s financial direction.
11. The U.S. has always been a Prozac nation.
12. They have always enjoyed the comfort of pleather.
13. Harry has always known Sally.
14. They never saw Roseanne Roseannadanna live on Saturday Night Live.
15. There has always been a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
16. They never ate a McSub at McD’s.
17. There has always been a Comedy Channel.
18. Bill and Ted have always been on an excellent adventure.
19. They were never tempted by smokeless cigarettes.
20. Robert Downey, Jr. has always been in trouble.
21. Martha Stewart has always been cooking up something with someone.
22. They have always been comfortable with gay characters on television.
23. Mike Tyson has always been a contender.
24. The government has always been proposing we go to Mars, and it has always been deemed too expensive.
25. There have never been any Playboy Clubs.
26. There have always been night games at Wrigley Field.
27. Rogaine has always been available for the follicularly challenged.
28. They never saw USA Today or the Christian Science Monitor as a TV news program.
29. Computers have always suffered from viruses.
30. We have always been mapping the human genome.
31. Politicians have always used rock music for theme songs.
32. Network television has always struggled to keep up with cable.
33. O’Hare has always been the most delay-plagued airport in the U.S.
34. Ivan Boesky has never sold stock.
35. Toll-free 800 phone numbers have always spelled out catchy phrases.
36. Bethlehem has never been a place of peace at Christmas.
37. Episcopal women bishops have always threatened the foundation of the Anglican Church.
38. Svelte Oprah has always dominated afternoon television; who was Phil Donahue anyway?
39. They never flew on People Express.
40. AZT has always been used to treat AIDS.
41. The international community has always been installing or removing the leader of Haiti.
42. Oliver North has always been a talk show host and news commentator.
43. They have suffered through airport security systems since they were in strollers.
44. They have done most of their search for the right college online.
45. Aspirin has always been used to reduce the risk of a heart attack.
46. They were spared the TV ads for Zamfir and his panpipes.
47. Castro has always been an aging politician in a suit.
48. There have always been non-stop flights around the world without refueling.
49. Cher hasn’t aged a day.
50. M.A.S.H. was a game: Mansion, Apartment, Shelter, House.
Click below for the list for the Class of 2007 –

Continue reading →

I just don’t think our President understands what a Conservative is all about. He may proclaim himself a “compassionate conservative,” but I am not convinced he understands conservatism.
He can chart his own course, but we need to understand that his course is not philosophical conservatism.

From what I know, which I admit is limited, most all of the business ventures our current President was involved with throughout his adult life either failed or did very poorly. I will not speculate why, but that is the information I have.
Now, we have a war with no end in sight, a natural disaster, a probable additional nation disaster with hurricane Rita, an incredibly high and ever increasing fiscal deficit, and there is nothing about raising taxes to pay for the billions needed to take care of the Katrina tragedy or for the war, and a continued push for continued tax cuts.
A budget surplus was squandered. I just don’t know what goes on inside our President’s head, and the heads’ of his advisors, as they continue down a path that suggests fiscal ruin. I don’t understand how a Republican, as the party that supposedly champions fiscal responsibility, continues down this path. It makes no sense.
Pork barrel spending by Congress is no better. There is no restraint. They are raiding the treasury for their own benefit and not for the benefit of the nation as a whole or for future generations. Where are the responsible leaders?
I am troubled by the greed, the self-serving, and the short-sighted fiscal policies. Will this administration be just another example of our President’s string of failures? And, just so we are clear, I am not a liberal nor a socialist.

Go to my friend Andy Lang’s weblog for another’s commentary on the recent War of the Worlds movie and our current endeavors as a nation.
Blue in a Red State

From Sojourners, this quote:

“To be poor in America was to be invisible, but not after this week, not after those images of the bedraggled masses at the Superdome, convention center and airport. No one can claim that the post-Reagan orthodoxy of low taxes and small government, which does wonders for the extremely rich, also inevitably does wonders for the extremely poor. What was that about a rising tide lifting all boats? What if you don’t have a boat?”
– Eugene Robinson, columnist.
Source: The Washington Post

I don’t know whether it is post-Reagan orthodoxy or not, but I will always say that the best route for the prosperity of people is to help them be self-sufficient, not dependent on the government. Katrina shows us that it is dangerous to depend on government. If Mr. Robinson advocates a return to the Great Society programs that lead to 1970’s style welfare system, then I will say he is absolutely wrong.
Teach a person to fish, rather than simply giving them fish. Big government will get us no where and give us nothing much more than dependence, corruption, waste, and graft. Smaller government that focuses on the constitutionally given responsibility of protecting the people will encompass helping the poor to have equal opportunity to be as self-sufficient as anyone else. (Self-sufficiency, I believe, incorporates community. Self-sufficiency is not about not needing anyone else.)

From The Living Church
Personal Stories after the Hurricane
9/8/2005
As thousands of displaced persons left New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, others were moving into the ravaged area as caregivers. The stories are intriguing:
The Rev. Jerry Kramer, rector of Church of the Annunciation, New
Orleans, provided a valuable service by posting frequent updates on the internet. Fr. Kramer was writing from St. Luke’s Church, Baton Rouge, where he and his family fled for safety following the arrival of Katrina.
“As of this evening I have 28 parish families remaining on our missing list,” he wrote on Sept. 4. “Found two more earlier in the day and I wanted to cry with joy. One family with two children made it to Tennessee, another to this area. The search goes on; we are working the phones and internet sites feverishly.”
On Sept. 7 he told of returning to New Orleans and traveling by boat to visit his church: “I could never have been prepared to view the state of our beautiful old church. The waters peaked at five to six feet, now resting at about four. Pews turned over, Bibles, prayer books and hymnals all floating. The water had reached one foot up the high main altar where someone had put out a cigarette.
“Praise God the sacristy was still locked. We filled a garbage bag full of vestments and the remaining silver, locked everything up, loaded the boat, and began paddling for my house about seven blocks north. There we discovered the water still about seven feet high. You can’t even see the front door. Most of our things were on the first floor, completely submerged. Again we docked the boat, filled a few garbage bags with clothes for the kids from the intact third floor and then paddled back down Napoleon to where our journey began. Almost immediately I broke out in a rash and now have stomach issues. Taking antibiotics and threw away most of the clothes I was wearing.”
* * *
The Rev. Rob Dewey, founder of the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy in Charleston, S.C., was deployed by FEMA as part of D MORT, the disaster mortuary response team, to the Mississippi coast. He found there “six blown-out churches, nothing but slabs.”
Fr. Dewey and Bishop Duncan Gray III of Mississippi visited a makeshift morgue before it began to operate. “He blessed it, sprinkled it and all the people working, and the trailers on site already containing remains,” Fr. Dewey said.
Fr. Dewey has been sleeping at the morgue in Gulfport. “It’s a way to
reach out to people doing a tremendous job,” he said. Asked how he was
able to do this, he answered, “It would be tough to do this and not be a Christian. There is grief, devastation, loss; nobody’s at the acceptance stage yet.”
He said a highlight was when he was on his way to meet Bishop Gray at St. Mark’s Church, Gulfport. He saw an Episcopal flag and stopped. “All the walls were blown out but the roof was held up by the columns,” he said. “There were about 20 people gathered outside. They asked me if I was their supply priest. When I said no, but that I was a priest, they asked me to do a service. So we had a service and the
laying-on-of-hands, around what used to be the altar. It was very moving. It was a God thing.”
Fr. Dewey expressed frustration at the lack of coordination by the Episcopal Church for responding to disasters.
“We do not have a plan in place,” he said. “The bishops and priests here are very frustrated that more is not being done to assist them. And they’ve had personal tragedies, too. They need help. I hope after this the national Church will have a plan ready for the next disaster.”
* * *
Daniel Muth, of Prince Frederick, Md., a member of TLC’s board of directors, participated in the rescue of his 92-year-old grandmother from her home in Metairie, La. Mr. Muth, his father and brother, drove to Louisiana, arriving on the Saturday following the hurricane. They found Dorothy Muth safe but without water or power for a week and in need of evacuation.
“We convinced her to leave, got her packed and out in just over an hour,” he said. “By this point she wasn’t much into putting up resistance.
“Lacking a TV or newspaper, she…did not know the extent of the devastation … She appears to be in good health and amazingly good spirits, all things considered.” Mrs. Muth is now residing with relatives in St. Leonard, Md.
Mr. Muth described the scene in Metairie as “surreal.” The buildings “were largely empty with the exception of the occasional stunned-looking resident cleaning up the odd bit of debris. My grandmother’s street, normally shaded by oaks, was open to the sun because of so many limbs were torn off the trees. Her yard was a mass of leaves, branches, and limbs. The house appeared undamaged. The air was filled with a constant buzz of military helicopters coming and going from the airport a few miles west. The sun was hot and the mosquitos were incessant.”
* * *
Kimberly King, a member of Christ Church, Bay St. Louis, Miss., told of her visit to her church’s site after the storm:

“… the church is gone except for part of the bell tower. The entire church, all buildings, the rectory, all gone. We did find a brass cross that was on the altar, and the processional cross, as well as several brass plaques, the Episcopal Church flag, and some stained glass parts. Two of the stained glass windows were intact, and laid on the ground. The rest was gone.”

* * *
Howard Castleberry, a member of St. John the Divine, Houston, assisted with relief efforts at the Astrodome, where many of the evacuees from New Orleans were taken by bus. He told of his experience on a private listserv:

As new survivors poured in, there were hundreds … of single moms with children under the age of 2,” he wrote. “Many had babies only weeks old. These babies hadn’t eaten formula or milk in days. Mothers had lost the bottles while wading through floodwaters, or had reeking ones that were now useless.
There was powdered formula donated everywhere, but only a few new bottles at the Dome. There were jugs of water. So I began to mix
formula like mad. I distributed what I could, but realized there was an immediate need for 50 baby bottles, or some of these infants were going to fall into shock. I called friends on my cell and begged for them to immediately get in their cars, run to the store, and then meet me at the edge of the complex parking lot. I stood there and caught bags of bottles tossed to me from their cars. I ran back to the Astroarena, where we filled bottles as quickly as possible. The looks on the mothers’ faces was a mix of tearful thanks and exhausted relief.
* * *
Among the casualties of Katrina was the venerable bell tower at Church of the Redeemer, Biloxi, Miss., erected in 1891. When Hurricane Camille struck in 1969, the church was destroyed but the bell tower remained. Katrina’s power took down the red wooden tower, which had become somewhat of a landmark for residents along the Gulf Coast. Even though the bell lay in the rubble of the tower, it was rung for the Eucharist on Sunday, Sept. 4.
* * *
On the website http://www.dioms.org/ of the Diocese of Mississippi, the Very Rev. Joe Robinson, dean of St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Jackson, wrote of a trip to the Gulf Coast to deliver some relief supplies. He described the scene as “decimated for a 50-mile stretch. There is nothing but matchsticks up to 10 blocks deep from the beach in some places and banana containers tossed for miles like a deluxe-sized set of dominoes.”
* * *
The Rev. Jean Meade, rector of Mt. Olivet, New Orleans, told of her house catching fire from an ember of a fire two blocks away. Her husband, Louis, was home and asked firefighters from the other blaze to provide assistance. “They were from Alabama, Aspen, Colo., and New York City,” she wrote. “They came into New Orleans even though they were told they were not needed.” The fire was extinguished before there was major damage.
To find more news, feature articles, and commentary not available online, we invite you to subscribe to The Living Church magazine. To learn more, click here https://storefront.livingchurch.org/TLC.ASP.