Listen to it all if you so desire.

A stable home might be the single most critical piece of the mental illness recovery puzzle ”” and often the hardest to come by, especially the affordable kind.

Yet [David] Rosier is one of a growing number of chronically homeless disabled residents finding help through a program called Lease on Life. It was created in 2008 by Family Services Inc., a North-Charleston-based nonprofit that operates several programs to help disabled people become self-sufficient.

The program helps find permanent housing for the chronically homeless who have disabilities such as mental illness or substance abuse ”” or both, as often is the case.

Today, the program is at capacity assisting 46 households. Since its birth, Lease on Life has served 117 people, Executive Director David Geer said.

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Rabbi Stephanie Alexander of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, a Reform congregation downtown, said that unlike in a church or mosque, belief in God is not the singular underpinning of Judaism.

At her synagogue, involvement is as much about worship as assembling in a community and studying Judaism.

“It is an openness to God that is essential,” Alexander said. “It’s a willingness to wrestle with whether or not you believe in God.”

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[Many voters]… are angry that their County Council has scheduled its fourth attempt to pass LOST in a special election on Nov. 5, 2013, when they know that low voter turnout and $33,000+ special costs are assured, rather than in a regularly scheduled, no extra cost election in, say, Nov. 2014. They also are angry about Council’s misinformation (until corrected by citizens) that LOST would not tax groceries (it does) and its annual costs would be much lower than they are; some Councilmen’s expressing disdain for opposition to LOST, denouncing citizen statements as false but refusing to give corrections, refusing to provide evidence of Councilmen’s claims, and not understanding the consequences of LOST; and one Councilman at a public meeting uncivilly tossing away two anti-LOST flyers on a nearby table, yelling they were all “lies” and wagging his finger at a LOST opponent as he derisively challenged that opponent to a debate at which the Councilman declared he would “shred” the opponent.

Citizens are angry to realize that, while LOST would give property tax relief to some, large numbers of citizens essentially would not benefit at all; most would pay more sales tax than they would save in property tax; most benefits would go to a wealthy few who need them the least; the costs of getting LOST tax benefits would be exorbitant; and the LOST tax would grow government by increasing government spending.

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Herewith the question as it will read on the ballot November 5.

Listen to it all if you so desire.

[Sunday] evening’s gath­er­ing at All Saint’s Cathe­dral after tea on the grounds was an Open­ing wor­ship freely flow­ing with hymns brought by West­ern mis­sion­ar­ies yet touched by an African vigor and sway. It also brought var­i­ous speak­ers to the podium to focus our atten­tion on the East African Revival of the 1920s and 30s and which had a sec­ond or renewed out pour­ing of the Holy Spirit in the 1970s. Indeed as the Chan­cel­lor of Uganda Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity reminded us in a stir­ring address””“We speak of the East Africa Revival as if it is a relic of his­tory. It is not just a relic”¦not just a move­ment in his­tory; it is a liv­ing move­ment today.” (Para­phrased from my jot­ted notes from his address) This move­ment which has as its cen­ter the Death and Res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ, the call of the Holy Spirit for believ­ers to “Walk in the Light” and the neces­sity of repen­tance, pub­lic con­fes­sion of sins and putting of wrongs right in the believer’s life, as well as a cor­re­spond­ing call for humil­ity and bro­ken­ness, was and remains a mighty pres­ence in the Church in Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tan­za­nia. This revival like so many great revivals in his­tory was pre­dom­i­nately a lay move­ment. It calls every man to be a Bible stu­dent, respon­sive to the lead­ing of the Holy Spirit, tran­scend­ing denom­i­na­tional bound­aries yet seek­ing to keep (in the phrase I remem­ber from sev­eral decades ago in the Renewal Move­ment of the 1970s and 80s) “the fire in the fire­place.” Indeed as the Chan­cel­lor noted, from the heart of this liv­ing move­ment today’s Church is pre­sented with some prob­ing questions:

What is the cause of cold­ness and dead­ness in our churches?
Why are peo­ple allowed to come to the Lord’s Table who are liv­ing in known sin?
What can be done to bring revival to the Church?

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Makes the heart glad–KSH (Photo courtesy of David Ould).

“We took some bread crumbs and left an entire meal on the table,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “This has been a really bad two weeks for the Republican Party”–From the online version of last night’s New York Times

I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Two high school friends reunited for the weekend, with one, now a USC freshman, showing off her new campus to her out-of-town guest.

But the night ended tragically for the young women, when the freshman was struck by a random bullet while waiting for a taxi near the iconic fountain in Five Points. Martha Childress, 18, is paralyzed from the hips down, after a .40-caliber bullet lodged in her spine, said her uncle, Jim Carpenter, who is serving as the family’s spokesman. She also suffered damage to her liver and a kidney, but doctors were optimistic those wounds would heal, he said.

Childress graduated in the spring from J.L. Mann High School in Greenville. She earned a 4.0 grade-point average there and chose to study at the University of South Carolina, her parents’ alma mater, Carpenter said. She had declared international business as her major and was pledging the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority.

Makes the heart sad–read it all.

Millibeth Currie, a nationally board-certified teacher who chairs the science department at Moultrie Middle School, was involved in the first phase of the standards review this go-round.

“Science is everywhere. It’s explaining our system of our universe that exists right now,” which means a student’s family background or philosophy or religion doesn’t even factor into the equation.

When religious concerns are raised, “I kind of neutralize it. There’s no way of being able to answer who’s right or who’s wrong” among different religions, she said. “The focus should be on discovering the commonalities in our universe.”

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The majority of local parishes and clergy, including Bishop Mark Lawrence, disassociated from The Episcopal Church last fall over theological and administrative disputes with that national church. Lawrence’s group filed a lawsuit against The Episcopal Church to retain control of property and identifying titles and marks.

“I’m encouraged by this ruling for the clarity it allows us in continuing with the mission and ministry of the diocese,” Lawrence said after Friday’s hearing.

The…[new TEC] diocese is led by Bishop Charles G. vonRosenberg who was installed three days after the temporary restraining order was issued.

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St. George, SC, October 11, 2013 ”“ South Carolina Circuit Judge Diane S. Goodstein today ruled in favor of the Diocese of South Carolina’s position that her injunction, which prohibits The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the Episcopal Church in South Carolina (ECSC) from using the names and seal of the Diocese of South Carolina, should remain in place.

Judge Goodstein issued the injunction and temporary restraining order in January.

“I’m not going to disturb the injunction,” she said. The judge said it will remain in place to protect the diocese’s duly registered marks. Under South Carolina civil law those are entitled to protection.

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South Carolina news and links can be found here

The statewide Catholic Diocese of Charleston broke ground Thursday on a three-building campus in West Ashley that will become the new center of its administrative and pastoral work.

The $17.5 million center at a quiet end of Orange Grove Road will include a 175-seat chapel, a three-story office building and a high-tech conference center. The conference center will include teleconferencing abilities and be able to accommodate nearly 200 people for meetings and retreats.

The Pastoral Center is scheduled to open around Christmas 2014.

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Fifth-graders’ desks in Vicki Robertson’s class are arranged in clusters for two reasons: It’s easier for students to do group work, and it gives her 29 students more space to move around the room.

That’s one of the adjustments the Pinckney Elementary teacher has made to accommodate her large classes. She has 30 students in one English lesson, which is the maximum allowed by state regulation.

So what does Robertson think about the state potentially eliminating the cap on the size of some classes statewide?

“Oh wow! I’m making it work with the space I have,” she said. “But when you have more students, they have more needs and challenges.”

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Read it all, noting especially the bishop’s first blog entry for those of you who may have missed it.

The little-reported fact is that TEC has filed more than 80 lawsuits seeking to seize the property of individual parishes and dioceses that left the denomination. TEC itself has admitted to spending more than $22 million on its legal action. These efforts have largely succeeded when TEC attempts to seize the property of individual parishes. Parishes across the country have been evicted from their churches.

TEC’s policy is simple and punitive: No one who leaves TEC may buy the seized church buildings. In several cases where TEC has succeeded in seizing a church, it has evicted the congregation and shuttered the building. In some cases, the church has been handed over to remnant groups that remained loyal to TEC. In other cases, the church has been sold to another religious group.

However, TEC has had less success with the lawsuits it has filed against dioceses. Recently, an Illinois Circuit Court judge decided that TEC had no grounds to seize the endowment funds of the Diocese of Quincy. The Texas Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision supporting TEC over the separated Diocese of Fort Worth. And in South Carolina, a federal district court judge decided that the Circuit Court of South Carolina is the proper court to decide the fate of our property, upsetting TEC’s efforts to get the case heard by the federal judiciary.

Read it all from the Charleston Mercury, or alternatively here if that link does not work for you.

South Carolina Circuit Judge Diane S. Goodstein released her decision yesterday that the Episcopal Church (TEC) and its local remnant, the Episcopal Church in South Carolina (ECSC) cannot expand their counterclaims against the Diocese of South Carolina to include almost two dozen parishioners who voluntarily serve as diocesan Trustees and members of the Diocese’s Standing Committee.

In her decision, Judge Goodstein wrote, “This court finds that the individual leaders whom Defendants seek to join as Counterclaim Plaintiffs are entitled to immunity” under state law. She also wrote that “adding the additional defendants would be futile.”

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Biologist Louis Burnett had to move his lab students to a conference room across the parking lot at Fort Johnson. His federal lab, animals and cell cultures are under lock and key.

Burnett’s dilemma is a case example of the ripple effect of the ongoing federal shutdown. As the shutdown enters its third day, the clock keeps ticking insistently for any number of people who don’t work for the federal government but find themselves on the outs because of the political standoff.

Burnett is a research professor at the College of Charleston. But like others in a cadre of college and state researchers, he collaborates on studies, shares office space and makes use of the equipment at the Hollings Marine Lab and the Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research.

Read it all.

Listen to it all if you so desire.

Listen to it all if you so desire.

In a day when greed and self-service seem to dominate marketplace values, more leaders like [Scott} Woods should be coming down the university pike thanks to the new Whitfield Center for Christian Leadership at Charleston Southern University, where Woods is a former trustee and chairman.

The center’s goal: Create marketplace leaders who serve something more than the almighty dollar.

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The nov­el­ist, essay­ist, and poet, Wen­dell Berry said he once knew a bar­ber who refused to give a dis­count to bald­ing men because his artistry was not in cut­ting off hair but rather in know­ing when to stop. Like­wise, I pray there is some artistry or at least crafti­ness in know­ing when to begin. After much coax­ing from sev­eral mem­bers of our dioce­san staff I have finally com­mit­ted to sit­ting down before this com­puter to write a blog. In doing so I’ve been told I need to give the blog a name. So here it is: I chris­ten thee, Midge-buzzings, Mus­ter­ings, and Mus­ings””a name which clearly mer­its a brief expla­na­tion, not merely for the obscu­ri­ties embed­ded therein, but because of what such a name sug­gests about the content.

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Listen to it all if you so desire.

Hugo smashed apart the Lowcountry on Sept. 21, 1989, 24 years ago today. Roll the numbers around in your head: 35 dead, more than 50,000 homeless, half the state without electrical power.

The $6.5 billion in damage the storm did then has been estimated to be more than $8 billion in damage today.

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Statement from Camp St. Christopher

9 September 2013

We met together with a common vision for Biblical, missionary, united Anglicanism to reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ.

As Bishops with jurisdiction in South Carolina, we gathered for prayer, honest conversation about our historic and recent wounds and to identify areas where we can work together.

We committed to praying together and meeting regularly, deepening and broadening communication with one another and furthering missional work of the Gospel.

It was agreed amongst the group that Bishop Mark Lawrence serve as Convener for future gatherings and conversation.

We hope that our work together will serve as an inspiration and foretaste of the unity that we have in Jesus Christ.

Read it all.

It is the attack made on Judge Houck’s factual reasoning in the first seven pages of the Memorandum that I would like to consider. Here the attorneys argue that under an earlier case from the same Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal which would hear any appeal from Judge Houck’s decision Bishop vonRosenberg has certain prerogatives of his office with which Bishop Lawrence is allegedly interfering.

The argument is ludicrous on its face. Consider this point: Bishop Lawrence is also a bishop of a diocese — the one that is paying his salary — and so under that same precedent, he has certain prerogatives of his office as well. What Bishop vonRosenberg wants is to restrict Bishop Lawrence’s prerogatives just so he can exercise the ones he claims are his.

And that is not all. In Dixon v. Edwards (the earlier case in question), Bishop Dixon claimed that it was the vestry and rector of a particular parish in her own diocese that were interfering with her prerogatives as its bishop, and the court decided that her claims warranted relief. But Bishop Lawrence is not in the same diocese as Bishop vonRosenberg, and is not subject to his jurisdiction. If Bishop Lawrence’s activities in his own diocese are interfering with Bishop vonRosenberg’s activities in his, then can a federal court supply a remedy? To do so would be to wade too far into matters that are “quintessentially ecclesiastical” (to quote the Court of Appeal’s decision in the Schofield case), in violation of the First Amendment.

Read it all and please note the link to the South Carolina filing which you can read in full.

More South Carolina Links

In other legal matters, the [new diocese of the] Episcopal Church in South Carolina has filed a separate legal action asking the federal court to rule that its liability insurance policy provides coverage for the state lawsuit.

Attorneys for The Episcopal Church in South Carolina contacted the Church Insurance Company of Vermont in writing in August. The company denied coverage, prompting the legal action to clarify the matter, according to Thomas S. Tisdale, Jr., Chancellor of The Episcopal Church in South Carolina. The case also has been assigned to Judge Houck.

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The Primate of Rwanda Onesphore Rwaje and others are consecrating David Bryan at Church of the Apostles in Columbia, South Carolina and I am following along to learn and get a chance to have fellowship with those present.

A push to forge community partnerships and attack lawlessness at its roots helped Charleston buck a national trend and post substantial declines in violent crime and property offenses last year, according to FBI statistics released Monday.

Charleston saw a 26 percent drop in violent crime in 2012, despite having one more killing than in the previous year. Driving the decline were noticeably fewer rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults than in 2011, the FBI numbers show.

The total number of property crimes such as burglaries and car thefts in the city also dropped, by 10 percent, during the same time period.

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