President Obama and Congressional leaders have stitched together an agreement to prevent a national default, provided their 11th-hour deal does not fracture on Monday, but the epic budget battle has failed to resolve another question: which party can be better trusted to govern?

The president, with his re-election on the horizon, emerges from the showdown in a diminished state after giving considerable ground and struggling to rise above a deep partisan intransigence that has engulfed Washington. And Republican leaders, especially Speaker John A. Boehner, are bruised after navigating the intractable sentiment of the Tea Party movement.

A full victory lap was not expected ”” or, perhaps, deserved ”” by those on either side of the debate, which has consumed the capital, unnerved the financial markets and infuriated the American public. Yet even as a compromise was announced on Sunday evening, both parties were prepared to try to define the deal as staying true to their respective principles.

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I have found this to be a helpful source, if you are following the debt debate/debacle add it to your list. Cspan 2 has covered the Senate all day.

Now when they had passed through Amphip’olis and Apollo’nia, they came to Thessaloni’ca, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and for three weeks he argued with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded, and joined Paul and Silas; as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.

–Acts 17:1-4

According to whom? Glad you asked:

“With the exception of William Temple, John Stott is the most influential clergyman in the Church of England of the twentieth century”.

–David Edwards, Essentials

I have already gotten a bunch of emails on this subject and it is highly worth of people chiming in on. The more specific the more enjoyable for the rest of us–KSH.

The inability of Congress and President Barack Obama to reach a deal on raising the national debt ceiling leaves retired Air Force pilot Phil Pignataro filled with feelings, none of them good.

“All the negative emotions you can think of I pretty much have when I see that there’s no compromise and they’re willing to ruin the economy,” said Pignataro, a 65-year-old who lives in Algonquin, Illinois. “For better or for worse, my retirement is all tied up in the government.”

Polls and interviews conducted over the past two days show Pignataro is among Americans growing disenchanted by and disconnected from congressional leaders and Obama, even as they face a personal economic reckoning.

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“Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.”

–G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

The financial markets see the Italian premier as a burden on Italy and, by remaining in office, he is unsettling investors, writes the Financial Times. Some of Berlusconi’s own supporters now fear that the prime minister and his scandals could irretrievably drive the country into a debt spiral. “Everyone is afraid of the contradictions between what Berlusconi needs for political survival and what the markets need,” says columnist Francesco Sisci.

“Your government is harming Italy,” opposition politician Anna Finocchiaro told the premier last Thursday. “This great country would be much better off without you.”

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Marshall McLuhan was a committed Christian. How did he come to his faith and did it influence his ideas? And has his work any meaning for the Church today?

Listen to it all (about 48 1/2 minutes).

O thou who hast taught us that we are most truly free when we lose our wills in thine: Help us to attain to this liberty by continual surrender unto thee; that walking in the way which thou hast prepared for us, we may find our life in doing thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Gelasian Sacramentary

But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”

–1 Samuel 16:7

Almighty God, in whom we live and move and have our being, who hast made us for thyself, so that our hearts are restless till they rest in thee: Grant us purity of heart and strength of purpose, that no selfish passion may hinder us from knowing thy will, no weakness from doing it; but that in thy light we may see light clearly, and in thy service find our perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–St. Augustine

Let us hear your thoughts, please. The more specific, the better, especially in terms of geography, family, etc.–KSH.

[It is important at this moment..] that we think about how hard monogamy is, how hard marriage is and about whether we make unrealistic demands on the institution and on ourselves.

That, anyway, is what Dan Savage, America’s leading sex-advice columnist, would say. Although best known for his It Gets Better project, an archive of hopeful videos aimed at troubled gay youth, Savage has for 20 years been saying monogamy is harder than we admit and articulating a sexual ethic that he thinks honors the reality, rather than the romantic ideal, of marriage. In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness.

Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest….
…straight talk about the difficulty of monogamy, Savage argues, is simply good sense. People who are eager to cheat need to be honest with their partners, but people who think they would never cheat need honesty even more. “The point,” he wrote on his blog last year, “is that people ”” particularly those who value monogamy ”” need to understand why being monogamous is so much harder than they’ve been led to believe.”

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O Lord Jesus Christ, in all the fullness of thy power so gentle, in thine exceeding greatness so humble: Bestow thy mind and spirit upon us, who have nothing whereof to boast; that clothed in true humility, we may be exalted to true greatness. Grant this, O Lord, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God for evermore.

But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting; but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.”

–Acts 9:1-6

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists murmured against the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the body of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brethren, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” And what they said pleased the whole multitude, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Proch’orus, and Nica’nor, and Ti’mon, and Par’menas, and Nicola’us, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands upon them. And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.

–Acts 6:1-7

Bishop J. Neil Alexander, who leads the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, which includes some 55,000 members in 96 congregations in Middle and North Georgia, told Northeast Cobb Patch, “The Episcopal Church’s General Convention has not approved rites for same-sex blessings, although it has encouraged bishops and clergy to give appropriate pastoral care to gay and lesbian people. In the Episcopal Church our pastoral care is ritually rooted. This is why liturgies exist for various circumstances, such as ministering to the sick and taking communion to people in the hospital.”

(The) Reverend Paul McCabe, Rector at the Episcopal Church of the Annunciation, said, “Bishop Talton has not deviated from what we are already doing in the Episcopal Church, that is to say, he has not advocated liturgy for same sex marriages, he has only stated that priests may bless individuals who are in same sex civil unions. Blessings then, are prayers for individuals who are seeking pastoral responses to their relationships and relationships they may be involved in. Prayers for all of God’s children is what we are called to do, prayers which means we don’t pick and choose who deserves them or not.”

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I didn’t think much about that until 2006, when I was in eighth grade and my teacher assigned my class a genealogy project. We were supposed to research our family history and create a family tree to share with the class. In the past, whenever questioned about my father’s absence by friends or teachers, I wove intricate alibis: he was a doctor on call; he was away on business in Russia; he had died, prematurely, of a heart attack. In my head, I’d always dismissed him as my “biological father,” with that distant, medical phrase.

But the assignment made me think about him in a new way. I decided to call the U.N.C. fertility center, hoping at least to learn my father’s name, his age or any minutiae of his existence that the clinic would be willing to divulge. But I was told that no files were saved for anonymous donors, so there was no information they could give me.

In the early days of in vitro fertilization, single women and sterile couples often overlooked a child’s eventual desire to know where he came from. Even today, despite recent movies like “The Kids Are All Right,” there is too little substantial debate on the subject. The emotional and developmental deficits that stem from an ignorance of one’s origins are still largely ignored.

I quoted this one to begin adult Sunday school class this morning on Father’s Day. Read it all–KSH (emphasis mine).

…the Fannie Mae scandal is the most important political scandal since Watergate. It helped sink the American economy. It has cost taxpayers about $153 billion, so far. It indicts patterns of behavior that are considered normal and respectable in Washington.

The Fannie Mae scandal has gotten relatively little media attention because many of the participants are still powerful, admired and well connected. But Gretchen Morgenson, a Times colleague, and the financial analyst Joshua Rosner have rectified that, writing “Reckless Endangerment,” a brave book that exposes the affair in clear and gripping form….

The scandal has sent the message that the leadership class is fundamentally self-dealing. Leaders on the center-right and center-left are always trying to create public-private partnerships to spark socially productive activity. But the biggest public-private partnership to date led to shameless self-enrichment and disastrous results.

Read it all.”>Read it all.

So what is the Greek crisis really about? For starters, it’s a solvency crisis, meaning that bailouts can at best postpone, but not avert, the day of reckoning. Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio still tops 150%, and despite touting its efforts at austerity, government expenditures are up 3.6% year-on-year, to €21 billion. Its revenues for the first four months of 2011 were down 9.1% from the previous year.

Greece also suffers from a productivity crisis. The country’s employment rate is under 60%, compared to a eurozone average of 64.2%. In 2009 Greeks produced $34.2 worth of goods and services per hour worked, according to OECD data””compared to $53.1 in Germany and $56.8 in the United States.

The productivity crisis is linked, in turn, to the huge proportion of Greeks employed by the state””fully a third of the workforce, by some estimates, and civil servants are unionized, often militant and politically influential.

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…the contagion into core banks may be being underestimated by investors. Moody’s on Tuesday said it could downgrade France’s BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Crédit Agricole due to their holdings of Greek debt, and the ratings firm is looking at whether other banks could face similar risks.

Disturbingly, the worries have now reached non-financial companies, which have been virtually bulletproof this year. Investment-grade bond issuance has come to a near-standstill. The yield premium on Portugal Telecom’s February 2016 euro bond over German Bunds has widened a stunning 2.3 percentage points in the last two weeks, data from Société Générale show. Italian and Spanish credits are under pressure too. The credit market now starts by pricing government risk and then works back to price debt from financials and companies, one investor says: Greece is a destabilizing influence at the center of the market’s deliberations.

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We do not renounce things, then, except for love”¦ Joy is an expression of love. One who loves nothing and nobody cannot possibly rejoice, no matter how desperately he craves joy. Joy is the response of a lover receiving what he loves”¦

The inner structure of real festivity has been stated in the clearest and tersest possible fashion by Chrysostom; ubi caritas gaudet, ibi est festivitas, “where love rejoices, there is festivity”….

Man cannot have the experience of receiving what is loved, unless the world and existence as a whole represent something good and therefore beloved to him….

–Josef Pieper (1904-1997) as found in Josef Pieper: An Anthology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989; E.T. of the German original), pp. 153, 155

The US will still face high unemployment in 2020 except in “the most optimistic scenario for job creation”, according to a new report to be published on Friday.

America needs to create 21m new jobs to keep up with population growth, say analysts at the research arm of consultancy McKinsey, but that will only happen if the economic trends of the last decade are reversed.

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Six-Word Memoirs: Video Story from SMITHmag on Vimeo.

This is wonderfully inspired! The website is here but BE WARNED–it is totally hypnotizing and addictive.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church abruptly closed its preschool and kindergarten after the school year ended two weeks ago, surprising faculty and parents. Up until the decision was made, the church had still planned to operate the coming school year, but several reasons contributed to the decision to close the 50-year-old school.

The church vestry, a 12-member board that oversees buildings and other assets of the parish, met after the school year ended. The director of St. Luke’s Preschool and Kindergarten had recently resigned, so it was a chance for the vestry to come together and reflect on where they were and where they were called to go, said the Rev. Anne Hodges-Copple, rector of St. Luke’s. After they made the decision to close, they sent a letter out to parents and quickly held another meeting to tell the teachers.

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Almost 40% of homeowners who took out second mortgages””extracting cash from their residences to cover everything from vacations to medical bills””are underwater on their loans, more than twice the rate of owners who didn’t take out such loans.

The finding, in a report to be released Tuesday by real-estate data firm CoreLogic Inc., illustrates the consequences of easy borrowing amid the housing boom’s inflated prices. The report says 38% of borrowers who took cash out of their residences using home-equity loans are underwater, or owe more than their home is worth. By contrast, 18% of borrowers who don’t have these loans were underwater.

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The conversion helps “bridge and heal a wound that has existed between Rome and Anglicanism for nearly five hundred years,” the rector at St. Luke’s, the Rev. Mark Lewis, said on the church’s Web site.

In January, the St. Luke’s vestry, its elected decision-making body, affirmed a decision to become Catholic, and on Sunday the parish community voiced its approval. Only one family expressed reservations, Lewis said.

On Monday, parishioners said that St. Luke’s had long worshiped in the extremely traditional “Anglo-Catholic” style. Leaders of the congregation said they have long struggled with the lack of clear authority in Anglicanism and welcomed the pope’s leadership.

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Wow. Check it out and there is a picture of the winning overtime goal.