ELO: Jefferts Schori arrived at Bolling Air Force Base on December 20, and spent the following day there, preaching at the 8:15 a.m. service and
A roundup of economists blogging on Christmas gift-giving: Are men or women more tolerant of inappropriate gifts? Christmas Signaling – What do our gifts say?
One day you have soon-to-give-the-inaugural-invocation pastor Rick Warren, clear as a bell, telling Beliefnet founder editor Steve Waldman that gay marriage is morally the same as incest. Now, after Warren gets excoriated from all sides for his views, voila, he’s back with a video of his own. In it, Warren blames the media (honestly, doesn’t that ever get old?) for falsely presenting him
The Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, is home in Nevada for Christmas visiting family. She sat down for an hour-long interview with KNPR. Listen here.
Heavenly Father
you made this holy night radiant
with the brightness of your Son Jesus Christ:
help us to welcome him as the world’s true Light
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Middlebury, Vermont was and is a vibrant church in a small college town where the Christmas pageant was a big deal. The pageant had the whole cast, from Mary to the wise men, to scads of shepherds to angels, to scores of sheep, to a donkey and a cow. The pageant was fun for kids, and was (as I now appreciate) a ton of work for the adults in the church, and was a set- up for all kinds of chaos.
Leaders of different faiths, including The Rev. Ed Bacon, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, from throughout Los Angeles talk about what they wish for
“We should keep the spirit of Christmas alive for future generations. I have two small children and I want them to appreciate the importance of the day, so we will have a meal and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.”
Mary’s “yes” is a choice to participate in God’s work of healing the world. … It’s not about taking orders simply because they are written down, or spoken, or demanded. It is about a careful and thoughtful and whole-hearted decision to participate. It is about claiming the authority God has given us.
The young clergyman and his wife do all the things you do on Christmas Eve. They tuck in the children. They lug the presents down out of hiding and pile them under the tree. Just as they’re about to fall exhausted into bed, the husband remembers his neighbor’s sheep. The man asked him to feed them for him while he was away, and in the press of other matters that night he forgot all about them.