It’s struck me over the last few weeks: I am “the rich” that the Bible talks about. If you and I have sufficient food, decent clothes, live in a house or apartment and have a reasonably reliable means of transportation, we’re among the top 15 percent of the world’s wealthy. That challenges my perspective. After all, I had all those things when I considered myself a “poor as a church mouse” college student.
The Democratic majority has changed the food at the Congressional cafeteria, and the Republican minority is very unhappy. “I like real food,” proclaimed Republican leader John Boehner when asked about the new menu by a producer for another cable news outfit. “Food that I can pronounce the name of.”
No resignations were given. … The members of the committee at this morning’s meeting were quite clear on this point, we did not resign, we were declared unqualified to hold office. The Bishop’s decision affects up to 6 of the 8 elected members of the Committee including all of the clergy members.
David Plotz, the Slate author who blogged the books of the Hebrew Bble last year is now digging the Bible–he is reporting his experiences at various archeological sites in the Holy Land.
The Klu Klux Klan exemplifies overt racism. Institutions that claim to provide equal opportunity but use tests known to disadvantage a minority practice covert racism. Latent racism is perhaps the most insidious and intransigent form of racism, representing the stereotypes and prejudices to which all of us are exposed as a consequence of being born and raised in a racist society.
In the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation there were clear indications of his eternal Godhead. Yet the great events we celebrate today disclose and reveal in different ways the fact that God himself took a human body. Mortals, enshrouded always in darkness, must not be left in ignorance, and so be deprived of what they can understand and retain only by grace.
I think it’s time to admit that the tradition of liberal Anglicanism is finished. Those Anglicans who carry on calling for an “inclusive church” are relics of a previous era. They should face the fact that the religious landscape has changed utterly. For the first time this church has defined itself in opposition to liberalism, taking a decisively reactionary stance on a crucial moral issue.
Paul O’Donnell writes in New York Magazine: Martha Ainsworth rides a bus into Port Authority from New Jersey at least three times a week, twice
Americans are too darn happy, says Eric G. Wilson, who believes there is a war on melancholy. “Why are most Americans so utterly willing to have an essential part of their hearts sliced away and discarded like so much waste?” he asks. “What are we to make of this … obsession with happiness… that could well lead to a sudden extinction of the creative impulse?”
Paul Canady, deputy for youth in the Diocese of Washington, is also a candidate for Holy Orders. As part of his training he has just completed an immersion ministry at a truck stop in Carlisle, Pa. You can read about this off-beat ministry and the people he met on his blog.