I walk down the garden-paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden-paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.
And the splashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon–
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” I told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

–Amy Lowell (1874–1925)

Today, we honor America’s veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice and we remember their lives, courage, legacy and service.

Learn more about today's free #MemorialDay activities and schedule: https://t.co/6ehUv5CeFG pic.twitter.com/jdOOpMa9I0

— National Museum of the United States Army (@USArmyMuseum) May 27, 2024

From here:

Despondency breaks off its course.
Anguish breaks off its course.
The vulture breaks off its flight.

The eager light streams out,
even the ghosts take a draught.

And our paintings see daylight,
our red beasts of the ice-age studios.
Everything begins to look around.
We walk in the sun in hundreds.

Each man is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.

The endless ground under us.

The water is shining among the trees.

The lake is a window into the earth.

This #MemorialDay, we honor the brave men & women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Their courage & dedication to protecting our freedom will never be forgotten. Join us in reflecting upon their legacy & expressing our deepest gratitude. pic.twitter.com/3ZcVHsSJO0

— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) May 27, 2024

The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
The soldier’s last tattoo;
No more on life’s parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few.
On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.

No rumor of the foe’s advance
Now swells upon the wind;
Nor troubled thought at midnight haunts
Of loved ones left behind;
No vision of the morrow’s strife
The warrior’s dream alarms;
No braying horn nor screaming fife
At dawn shall call to arms.

Their shriveled swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed,
Their haughty banner, trailed in dust,
Is now their martial shroud.
And plenteous funeral tears have washed
The red stains from each brow,
And the proud forms, by battle gashed
Are free from anguish now.

Read it all.

Honoring all the members of our armed forces who gave what President Abraham Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion," Memorial Day is one of the most important and solemn days on the National Mall.#WashingtonDC 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/7Vy2dw513R

— National Mall NPS (@NationalMallNPS) May 27, 2024

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Read it all.

Throughout this #MemorialDay weekend, we #HonorTheFallen who sacrificed for our freedom.

Their courage and dedication will never be forgotten. Let us pause and pay tribute to our fallen heroes. pic.twitter.com/SHVorTn7Ux

— U.S. Army (@USArmy) May 24, 2024

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

–Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

In thanksgiving for all those who gave their lives for this country in years past, and for those who continue to serve; KSH.

P.S. The circumstances which led to this remarkable poem are well worth remembering:

It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915 and to the war in general. McCrea had spent seventeen days treating injured men — Canadians, British, French, and Germans in the Ypres salient. McCrae later wrote: “I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days… Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.” The next day McCrae witnessed the burial of a good friend, Lieut. Alexis Helmer. Later that day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the field dressing station, McCrea composed the poem. A young NCO, delivering mail, watched him write it. When McCrae finished writing, he took his mail from the soldier and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the Sergeant-major. Cyril Allinson was moved by what he read: “The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.” Colonel McCrae was dissatisfied with the poem, and tossed it away. A fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915. For his contributions as a surgeon, the main street in Wimereaux is named “Rue McCrae”.

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." – G.K. Chesterton

#MemorialDay pic.twitter.com/r6E9PGiSqi

— Sachin Jose (@Sachinettiyil) May 27, 2024

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead: We give thee thanks for all thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence; and give us such a lively sense of thy righteous will, that the work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.

Good morning.

Who are you remembering today?#MemorialDay pic.twitter.com/JLaJo21OdM

— Arlington National Cemetery (@ArlingtonNatl) May 27, 2024

I recently heard about the response of one vicar several years ago, upon learning that another had been appointed to lead a Charismatic-renewal ministry: “Congratulations on joining the lunatic fringe.”

In all honesty, I think such descriptions still endure in some quarters, but, in this piece of scholarly theology, Helen Collins seeks to show that Charismatic thought and practice has an important contribution to make to the whole Church.

She neither shies away from the weird excesses of some Charismatic spirituality nor proposes an academic domestication of the Spirit’s work. (There is, for example, a helpful and careful discussion of demons, with an exhortation to “remain Christ-centred rather than demon-obsessed”.) In seven tightly argued chapters, she portrays Charismatic theology “as a valid and coherent expression of the wider Christian tradition”.

Publication Day! We are very excited to announce the publication of Charismatic Christianity by Revd Dr Helen Collins, our Vice Principal (Academic) and Tutor in Practical Theology. Available today in hardback and kindle, and in November in paperback: https://t.co/BwWXcDZDQI pic.twitter.com/62PKIkdPmk

— Trinity College (@trinity_bristol) September 26, 2023

In another investigation, [Marshall] Allen reported that Dignity Health, a large religious health system that described itself as carrying on “the healing ministry of Jesus,” had refused to cover the medical expenses of an employee’s three-month-premature baby. Dignity claimed the woman hadn’t filled out the necessary paperwork and that she bore sole responsibility for a nearly $1 million hospital bill, though she had enrolled her baby with the insurer from the NICU.

After Allen called the company with questions, Dignity reversed its decision and retroactively covered the baby, who survived.

“Some people might think that Christians are supposed to be soft and acquiescent rather than muckrakers who hold the powerful to account,” he wrote in The New York Times. “But what I do as an investigative reporter is consistent with what the Bible teaches.”

Allen argued that the Bible “teaches that people are made in the image of God and that each human life holds incredible value.”

A Christian journalist, he said, should be comforted by God to be a comfort to others. A Christian journalist should rebuke deception and unfair practices. A Christian journalist should get all sides of the story, in line with Proverbs’ call for hearing multiple witnesses. And a Christian journalist should admit and correct mistakes with humility. He also shared this vision of Christian journalism in lectures to journalism students at The King’s College.

“He saw this work as redemptive and Christian in nature,” said Paul Glader, a friend of Allen’s and a former journalism professor at King’s. “He did amazing work investigating the health care bureaucracy and bullies, seeking out answers and truth for the little guy—all of us consumers.”

Marshall Allen, a Christian muckraker who held the health care industry accountable, has died at age 52.

His obituary from @emlybelz:https://t.co/jKrQA3nle3

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) May 23, 2024

Oleksiy Bozhko, a volunteer medic whose team examined the men near the eastern city of Avdiivka, identified the gas as chloropicrin, a banned chemical irritant, based on the men’s symptoms and description of the smell. U.S. and Ukrainian officials, as well as medics, soldiers and international researchers say Russian use of toxic gases on the battlefield is increasing as Moscow ramps up an offensive designed to seize more of Ukraine’s territory than the roughly 20% it already occupies.

“This weapon cripples and kills, it’s indiscriminate,” said Bozhko.

After Ukraine repelled initial Russian attacks in 2022, the war has morphed into a grind where each side is looking for an advantage against hardened defensive lines. Seeing an opportunity in Ukraine’s shortage of weapons and reserve forces, Russia has been pressing forward on several fronts, using guided aerial bombs to smash up Ukrainian positions. Toxic gases can impair Ukrainian troops’ ability to defend entrenched positions, even forcing them to withdraw.

.@wsj: Burning Skin, Teary Eyes: #Ukraine’s Troops Say Russia Is Using a Banned Toxic Gas https://t.co/3oIwPVspkt

— Amb Antonio Garza (@aogarza) May 23, 2024

The latest report on the Church of England’s strategic investment shows how funding in the last year has prioritised doubling the numbers of children and young people, and revitalising parishes for mission.

In the year 2023, Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Funding (SMMI) awarded £60 million to Church of England projects and parishes plus an additional £29 million to support lowest income communities around England.

Alongside the focus on growing the church younger and more diverse, funding prioritised parts of society where other sources of support have been withdrawn.

There was also a new structure, with a single Board – the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board (SMMIB) – set up to distribute funding on behalf of the Archbishops’ Council.

Read it all.

Church’s 2023 strategic investment focuses on doubling number of children and young people – reporthttps://t.co/TvsuU2BlC3

— Nick Edmonds (@nickedmonds575) May 21, 2024

So we are celebrating being one-fifth smaller as a church (in terms of attendance) than we were in 2019.

These kinds of figures are always easier to grasp in visual form, so this is what the graphs look like:

(These graphs are from the papers for the Archbishops’ Council in January, when the first figures were known. I am not sure why the information has been released now, four months later, when the figures have not changed much if at all. The release seem to coincide with communication from the meeting of the House of Bishops, in which encouraging stories of growth were shared; this provides important context for that.)

In terms of the goals of the Church to see decline turned around and become growth, this is not very encouraging news. It means that not only have we not seen overall growth, we have not seen an end to decline. In fact, the rate of decline has not yet slowed, and is perhaps getting faster.

It could be argued that this is almost all the result of Covid lockdown losses, and we are still to see the full recovery. But I think that is now quite hard to sustain: this is now the third year since lockdown; other institutions seem to have made any recovery they expected; and other churches seem to have already fully bounced back (this is certainly the case here in my city). The awkward question remains about the national Church’s response, and in particular the comments of the Archbishops, which closed church buildings unnecessarily, and appeared to communicate that in-person attendance was not essential anyway. It appears as though many Anglicans have taken this seriously, and the habit of church attendance has been lost.

Once more: whither the Church of England? | Psephizo https://t.co/BnPfhGT5ke

— Simon Sarmiento (@simonsarmiento) May 22, 2024

Attendance figures are assembled each year and published in the Statistics for Mission report in the following autumn. This year, however, preliminary figures were released by Church House on Monday. They provide “a snapshot of the overall picture”, and are based on returns from more than 11,000 churches, a statement said. “The totals could be revised as further figures come in and checks continue.”

The returns received so far suggest that average all-age weekly attendance, which includes Sunday and midweek services, increased from 654,000 people in 2022 to 685,000 in 2023: a rise of 4.7 per cent. The number of children (defined as anyone under the age of 16) attending weekly rose from 87,000 in 2022 to 92,000 in 2023: an increase of 5.7 per cent.

In 2021, average all-age weekly attendance was 605,000 people, compared with 345,000 people in 2020 (when churches were closed during periods of national lockdown), and 854,000 people in 2019….

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Archbishops take comfort from small signs of growth in church attendance https://t.co/bHTPyymClZ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) May 20, 2024

Eternal God, who gives good gifts to all people, and who teaches us to have the same spirit of generosity: Give unto us, we pray thee, hearts that are always open to hear thy word, that following the example of thy servant Lydia, we may show hospitality to all who are in any need or trouble, through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

“Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira listened and the Lord opened her heart.” -Acts 16:14

“The Baptism of Lydia” by Marie Ellenrieder (1861) Alte Nationalgalerie pic.twitter.com/B7DKLGgiQF

— Lady of Good Counsel (@ofgoodcounsel) May 23, 2022

Then, as now, the majority of global Anglicans believed that apostolic teaching calls for those engaging in sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriage to be loved by the church and called to repent. Without repentance, such a person cannot be considered a “true shepherd” and therefore should be precluded from ordination or consecration. It was, therefore, TEC’s willingness to consecrate a man in a same-sex relationship which tore “the fabric of [the] communion at its deepest level.”

Returning to the events of Saturday 11th May 2024, Bishop Jill Duff told Anglican Futures that she was asked to attend the consecration of Bishop David Morris as a representative of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York…. She was very clear that it was in that capacity, rather than as an honorary assistant bishop in the Church in Wales, that she did so .

This raises a number of issues of national and international significance:

First, this means a bishop of the Church of England was involved in the consecration of a man whose conduct would prevent him from being consecrated as a bishop in the Church of England.

Read it all.

When @AnglicanFutures publishes a piece like this it quickly becomes obvious that the only real sin for @churchofengland bishops is to dissent from the idea that truth is best regarded as being plural. Nearly 3,000 reads shows how wrong that is. https://t.co/Z5hLAuYA8D

— Dan Leafe (@DanLeafe1) May 19, 2024

The problem of being a poor paymaster is equally evident in the case of Ukraine. For reasons that future historians will struggle to understand, the US suspended its aid to Ukraine in late 2023. Europeans did not fill the gap, with the result that Ukraine’s military capacity was diminished and Russia’s hopes of victory revived. According to the latest Ukraine Support Tracker published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, between the beginning of the war and this March, the European Union plus its individual members together allocated a total of €89.9 billion in military, humanitarian and financial aid to Ukraine. The US pledged less, €67 billion.

The result is that Kyiv listens much less to Washington than it did in 2022 and 2023 — hence the recent spate of deep drone strikes aimed at Russia’s energy infrastructure, operations that cannot possibly have been approved by Team Biden, which it seems will (to quote John F. Kennedy) “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship … to assure the survival and success of liberty” — except for higher gasoline prices in an election year.

This has been a horrible failure of American policy. Turning off aid to Ukraine has unquestionably encouraged Putin to believe that victory can be achieved in a relatively short time frame. Thanks to Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko, we know now that, when their invasion was going badly in early 2022, the Russians were ready to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine. The compromise would have ruled out North Atlantic Treaty Organization membership for Kyiv but provided it with multilateral security guarantees to protect its neutrality, and paved the way to EU membership.

Read it all.

The Biden administration wants other countries to do its fighting in Cold War II, but that approach is economically crippling and rarely achieves victory https://t.co/ogeTcnGAkk via @opinion

— Robert Burgess (@BobOnMarkets) May 20, 2024

Ms Howatch, 52, believes God has been guiding her. Although she made her first fortune writing blockbusters such as Penmarric, success and its trappings left her spiritually empty. She had houses in several countries, drove a Porsche and a Mercedes and after the break-up of her marriage had too many ‘facile, transient liaisons’. In the early Eighties she told her editor she would be late with a novel and he said: ‘What will I tell the accountants?’

‘I was not interested in fame and fortune any more – I’d had it all since I was 30 and it hadn’t satisfied me. So I thought, ‘If I’m not in it for that and I’m not in it to keep my publishers in the black, what the hell am I doing it for?’

‘God seized me by the scruff of the neck, slammed me against the nearest wall and shook me until my teeth rattled. I thought: ‘Okay, what does God actually require of me?”

–From there and quoted by yours truly in yesterday’s Pentecost sermon (emphasis mine)

Followers may be glad to read that @Cambridge_Uni has announced that I am to become a professor in October. This is an ideal opportunity for me to reiterate our gratitude to Susan Howatch for endowing the Starbridge position around thirty years ago. pic.twitter.com/Qk2i5U41f0

— Andrew Davison (@AP_Davison) June 14, 2023

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei wields ultimate decision-making authority in Iran, but Raisi still holds significant power within the regime. Raisi is the deputy chairman of the Assembly of Experts, a regime entity constitutionally responsible for monitoring the supreme leader and selecting his successor.[8] Iranians re-elected Raisi to serve as a representative of South Khorasan Province in the Assembly of Experts during the recent March 2024 Assembly of Experts elections.[9] Raisi also holds numerous ex officio positions. He is a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and the chairman of the Supreme National Security Council, Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, and Supreme Cyber Space Council.

Raisi’s death would have serious implications for supreme leader succession. Raisi is considered one of the top contenders—along with Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei—to succeed Khamenei as supreme leader. Khamenei appointed Raisi to the position of judiciary chief in 2019 and endorsed Raisi during the August 2021 presidential elections.[10] The next several days have the potential to reshape the immediate and long-term dynamics of the regime, including supreme leader succession. Raisi’s death would ultimately not change the regime’s current trajectory toward more hardline and conservative domestic policies and more aggressive regional policies, however.

Read it all.

With the death of President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, becomes acting president.

Here’s what to know about him. https://t.co/mlW89Mh2JD

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 20, 2024

From there:

There’s a lot of water going under the Living in Love and Faith Bridge right now, including today, the 16th of May, a discussion at the House of Bishops. Whilst we do not know what they will conclude and what therefore will be brought to General Synod in July, it is clear that two things are going to happen. One, that the so-called ‘standalone services’ for blessings of same-sex relationships will be made possible.

And secondly, that, probably by the removal of ‘so-called’ discipline, that clergy in some dioceses are going to be able to marry their same-sex partners. Maybe as soon as this autumn. These are big changes, and I think it’s fairly clear that they are indeed indicative of a change of doctrine.

John Dunnett named new national director of the Church of England Evangelical Councilhttps://t.co/jjh3UMgwTm pic.twitter.com/YTRYb1tAkq

— Anglican Ink (@anglicanink) May 9, 2023

The report has been influenced by a series of recent blasphemy cases in Britain that have been inappropriately handled, according to government sources familiar with its findings.

They include the 2021 protests against a teacher in Batley, West Yorkshire, who received death threats and is still in hiding after showing pupils a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in a religious studies lesson.

Another incident understood to have informed the report’s recommendations was the controversy last year in Wakefield, also West Yorkshire, after a copy of the Quran was slightly damaged at a high school. West Yorkshire police recorded it as a “hate incident,” which led to concerns that officers were being pressured into imposing de-facto blasphemy laws by conservative faith groups. It led to Suella Braverman, the home secretary at the time, introducing a new code of conduct for the police to protect freedom of expression.

Read it all (subscription).

Teachers will be given protection from claims of blasphemy by religious groups under proposals set out in a government-commissioned report ⬇️https://t.co/9y7vlpx9gP

— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) May 17, 2024

One reason U.S. inflation is still high: Increases in prices for procedures to prop open clogged arteries, provide intensive care for newborns and biopsy breasts.

Hospitals didn’t raise prices as early in the pandemic as supermarkets, retailers and restaurants. But they have been making up ground since then. Their increases have contributed to stubbornly high inflation readings from the consumer-price index, which in April increased 3.4% from a year ago.

Hospital prices specifically jumped 7.7% last month from a year ago, the highest increase in any month since October 2010, the Labor Department said Wednesday.

Among the procedures with hefty recent price increases are angioplasties placing stents in arteries to improve blood flow, which grew $670, or 4.5%, to $15,640 in the first three months of the year from the same period a year ago, according to Turquoise Health.

Read it all.

Surging Hospital Prices Are Helping Keep Inflation High https://t.co/en50uqXMV4

— Edward Marx (@marxtango) May 17, 2024

Sitting in the front row of a supervisor training in 2016, Stamford Police Sgt. Sean Boeger raised his hand every time the instructor asked who had dealt with a particular experience, including homicides, fatal accidents, and child deaths.

During his nearly 30 years as a police officer, 48-year-old Boeger had helped with body recovery efforts at Ground Zero after 9/11. When 20 children were killed by a lone shooter in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, just 40 miles from Stamford, Boeger volunteered to help the small Newtown police department. He covered midnight shifts as officers took time to recover.

The instructor at the training triggered something in Boeger. Until that class, he had never dwelt much on the effect of witnessing so much trauma. Driving home that evening, he also thought back to another incident, when he responded to a report of a small child falling out of an eighth-story window.

“I felt overwhelmed, kind of panic-stricken,” he recalled of that evening. “I think I was more in shock from the stuff I’d never contemplated and the trauma impact it had on me. Because you don’t stop to think about it.”

Read it all.

Around the country, chaplains are serving police departments: not just showing up for ceremonies and funerals, but providing counsel for the traumatic incidents police so often face.https://t.co/Vaiq3VnlGi

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) May 17, 2024

The Brennan Centre, a think-tank, lists 135 extraordinary powers a president can claim by calling a national emergency—some of the most serious freeze bank accounts and shut down the internet. The president can decide what counts as an emergency. Over 40 remain in force, some years old. Donald Trump invoked one to fund his border wall; Joe Biden, to forgive student loans. Congress is supposed to consider terminating emergencies every six months. It never has. Neither has it removed a president through impeachment.

That makes complacency a danger. And yet so is alarmism, because an emergency, real or confected, is the strongman’s ally. When they believed the American project was at stake, even great presidents asserted extra-constitutional powers. During the civil war Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus; Franklin Roosevelt interned Americans without trial.

Among the biggest constitutional obstacles to dictatorship is the 22nd Amendment, which limits a president to two terms. But what would happen if an iron-willed autocrat stacked the Pentagon with lackeys and, with an army at his shoulder, refused to go? The United States has 247 years of history, but its constitution was copied by several young Latin American republics in the 19th century and they succumbed to strongmen.

Read it all.

Is America dictator-proof? In the worst case, the constitutional order is vulnerable to a despot—yet the republic has many enduring strengths https://t.co/RvM5EZXG6r pic.twitter.com/MU5jxDVhD8

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) May 16, 2024

Overdose deaths in the United States declined slightly last year, the first decrease in five years, according to preliminary federal data released Wednesday.

The rare good news in the decades-old addiction crisis was attributable mostly to a drop in deaths from synthetic opioids, chiefly fentanyl, said researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics, who compiled the numbers.

But the full portrait of the death toll from street drugs remains grim. Even as opioid deaths fell, deaths from stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine rose. And some states, including Oregon and Washington, continued to experience sharp rises in overall overdose fatalities.

Drug overdoses overall in 2023 were estimated at 107,543, down from 111,029 in 2022, a 3 percent drop. Opioid deaths fell 3.7 percent while deaths from cocaine rose 5 percent and deaths from meth rose 2 percent.

Read it all (emphasis mine).

U.S. drug overdose deaths dropped slightly in 2023, the first annual decrease in drug overdose deaths since 2018.

But the overall number of deaths is still extremely high. https://t.co/ptdF17zxED

— The Hill (@thehill) May 16, 2024

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin pledged to intensify cooperation against US “containment” of their countries, as they warned of growing nuclear tensions between rival powers.

Putin and Xi accused the US of planning to station missile systems around the world that “pose a direct threat to the security of Russia and China,” in a joint declaration after more than two hours of talks in Beijing on Thursday. They agreed to tighten coordination, including between their militaries, against what they called Washington’s “destructive and hostile course.”

Putin’s in China on the first foreign visit since his inauguration last week for a fifth presidential term, indicating the importance of the relationship with Xi in enabling Moscow to resist unprecedented sanctions from the US and its allies over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Read it all.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping signaled to Vladimir Putin that ties between the two nations remain strong, as the Russian leader embarks on a new term with the war in Ukraine dragging into its third year https://t.co/xvrekfJjxl pic.twitter.com/xAGy7MdqkI

— Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) May 16, 2024

In smaller churches, filling voluntary vacancies is a headache, not helped by an ever-increasing bureaucracy from the centre. Consider the following recent tweets from C of E clergy and volunteers. ‘No one will be a warden,’ wrote Michael Roberts, vicar of St Michael’s, Cockerham. ‘The volume of stuff from on high puts them off.’ Daniel Thompson, rector of Icknield Benefice, wrote: ‘I am trying to explain the complexity of safeguarding portals and online dashboards to a 76-year-old.’ From Matt Triggs, PCC secretary at St Mary the Virgin in Nottingham: ‘Just had an email from our diocese to put reducing climate emissions on PCC agenda. We really don’t have the time or manpower.’

The C of E does love forms. My co-warden and I recently had a two-hour ‘visitation’ by the archdeacon. We had to fill out a 16-question form on our make-up and attendance figures; answer 55 more on parish finance; fill out a third form on when the drains were cleaned and the lightning conductor checked; and answer the questions ‘Do you have a plan for if the boiler breaks down?’ and ‘How will you make lighting more sustainable?’. My co-warden spent a weekend converting the emails by which our maintenance programme is run into a logbook as required. It wasn’t looked at….

Vanishing volunteers is not just a church problem. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport reports that numbers of regular volunteers has fallen by 11 per cent in eight years. My vicar, Nicholas Cranfield, says there has been a noticeable shift in availability. Early retirees are on grandparenting duty and more women work full time. Some employers ban staff from volunteering in case it damages their professional reputation. ‘There are not so many qualified accountants out there,’ he says.

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The Church of England’s volunteering crisis | The Spectator https://t.co/Cth7QFtfx3

— Simon Sarmiento (@simonsarmiento) May 16, 2024

A lifelike artificial intelligence with a smooth, alluring voice enchants and impresses its human users — flirting, telling jokes, fulfilling their desires and eventually winning them over.

I’m summarizing the plot of the 2013 movie “Her,” in which a lonely introvert named Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is seduced by a virtual assistant named Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.

But I might as well be describing the scene on Monday when OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, showed off an updated version of its A.I. voice assistant at an event in San Francisco.

The company’s new model, called GPT-4o (the o stands for “omni”), will let ChatGPT talk to users in a much more lifelike way — detecting emotions in their voices, analyzing their facial expressions and changing its own tone and cadence depending on what a user wants. If you ask for a bedtime story, it can lower its voice to a whisper. If you need advice from a sassy friend, it can speak in a playful, sarcastic tone. It can even sing on command.

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Financial Times @ft: A.I.'s 'Her' Era Has Arrived – The New York Times. #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #aistrategy https://t.co/9VjteQTn5G

— Nordic AI Artificial Intelligence Institute (@nordicinst) May 14, 2024

Q. To what extent is it important for the rights of religious minorities and religious freedom what happens in these elections?

A. Since the BJP and several extremist organisations have been in power, the situation of Christians and other religious minorities, such as Muslims and Sikhs, has worsened.

Modi recently inaugurated a Hindu temple, something a religious leader should have done. His figure has been deified in a way, and his image appears as someone who is very religious, very dominant and very strong, but in reality he is very afraid.

Some have even placed Modi above the Hindu god Rama, creating images and even statues of him. There are temples in honour of Modi. This has never happened before with any prime minister.

Permits for Christians to receive donations from abroad have been cancelled and we are always accused of buying people to change their religion. In Manipur, for example, Christians are very marginalised everywhere.

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The world’s most populated country is in the midst of a key general election. “People are afraid that there will be no more elections afterwards”, says an evangelical from India. https://t.co/hTGzbHFGV0

— Evangelical Focus (@Evan_Focus) May 14, 2024