When Marci Needle and her husband began to contemplate divorce in June, they thought they had enough money to go their separate ways. They owned a million-dollar home near Atlanta and another in Jacksonville, Fla., as well as investment properties.

Now the market for both houses has crashed, and the couple are left arguing about whether the homes are worth what they owe on them, and whether there are any assets left to divide, Ms. Needle said.

“We’re really trying very hard to be amicable, but it puts a strain on us,” said Ms. Needle, the friction audible in her voice. “I want him to buy me out. It’s in everybody’s interest to settle quickly. That would be my only income. It’s been incredibly stressful.”

Chalk up another victim for the crashing real estate market: the easy divorce.

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The attacks on Israeli citizens have little to do with what Israel does or does not do. They have everything to do with an ideology that despises ”“ and openly seeks to destroy ”“ the Jewish state. Consider that rocket attacks increased substantially after Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, and they accelerated further after Hamas seized control last year.

In the past months, a shaky cease-fire, organized by Egypt, was in effect. Hamas agreed to stop the rockets and Israel agreed to stop taking military action against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. The cease-fire itself was morally dubious and legally asymmetrical.

Israel, in effect, was saying to Hamas: If you stop engaging in the war crime of targeting our innocent civilians, we will stop engaging in the entirely lawful military acts of targeting your terrorists. Under the cease-fire, Israel reserved the right to engage in self-defense actions such as attacking terrorists who were in the course of firing rockets at its civilians.

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On any plane of argument, the contradiction would appear stunning, but, then, neither Jon Meacham nor Lisa Miller are engaged in argument. They’re speaking, instead, in familiar tropes and fused-phrases and easy clichés. They’re trying to convey a feeling, really, rather than an argument: Jesus loves us, love is good, homosexuals love one another, marriage is love, love is loving–a sort of warm bath of words, their meanings dissolved into a gentle goo. In their eyes, all nice things must be nice together, and Jesus comes to seem (as J.D. Salinger once mocked) something like St. Francis of Assisi and “Heidi’s grandfather” all in one.

In truth, of course, Meacham and Miller actually know what everyone else knows: The Bible offers no support for homosexual marriage. Christianity teaches love, mercy, and forgiveness for those who do bad things, true enough. Look, for example, at the story in the Gospel of John where Jesus offers his divine love, mercy, and forgiveness to a woman guilty of adultery. He shamed those who would stone her. He taught us all that we are sinners and often hypocrites. And then he told her, “Go and sin no more.” He did not reinterpret the Old Testament to proclaim adultery another life-style choice.

Miller demolishes the distinction between sin and sinner, thus eradicating any real conception of sin and guilt. But without sin and guilt there is no need for forgiveness–and no basis for morality. An amoral world may be a quite suitable environment for gay marriage, but it is hardly the kind of world in which most Americans want to bring up their children.

Those who tried to live by the Christian understanding have come to amazingly similar conclusions about what God wants in marriage.

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Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor rejected the Anglican bishops views on BBC Radio Four’s Today Programme, suggesting they were playing a “blame game.”

Instead of blaming the Government for materialism and social problems, the cardinal said that responsibility should be shared more widely. Ordinary people and churchmen also bear some of the blame, he said.

“If we are going to accuse people of immorality it is much further than the Government, it is the whole country,” Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor said. “I am not too happy with the blame game because if we say that there has to be a “conversion”, then I always start with myself.”

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There are multiple segments here on various different topics, scroll down and check them out.

It is very tempting to assume that The Acts of the Apostles is talking about the Christian church as it really should be. And it is true that some of the incidents it describes are so deeply embedded in the Christian psyche that, whether consciously or not, they do operate as the standard against which all later church life is judged. What is not so clear is whether Luke intended his account to work that way. It isn’t always easy to tell when Luke is simply chronicling what his research suggests actually happened, and when he is making theological recommendations.

For example, Acts 2 describes the dramatic beginning of the Christian missionary movement in a scene so important that, like Christmas, it is celebrated every year as part of the Christian calendar. We are told that the disciples were all together in one place for Pentecost, the Jewish festival 50 days after Passover. Suddenly, something like a violent wind filled the house, followed by “divided tongues, as of fire”, which rested on each of them. There is a sense of Luke groping for the words to help us visualise something that defies description ”“ the sound is “like” a great wind, the disciples see and feel something “as of fire”, and they are “filled with the Holy Spirit”.

The point of this experience is not that the disciples should feel spiritually-renewed but to enable them to carry out Jesus’ commission to bear witness to him. In other words, Luke is suggesting that the spread of the gospel is primarily the work of the Holy Spirit. The apostles might act, but the Holy Spirit directs.

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(ACNS) Jerusalem – During recent weeks, the three Abrahamic Faiths have observed their Holy Seasons with a sense of peace and goodwill. Therefore, we are greatly grieved by the severity of the ongoing military operations in Gaza that are occurring in heavily populated areas and impacting the civilian population.

As a Diocese with well over a century of an unbroken commitment to the well being and peace of the community in Gaza City through our Al Ahli Arab Hospital, we are both stunned and saddened by the events unfolding in Gaza.

The heavy loss of Palestinian lives and the serious wounds and injuries to many hundreds of innocent bystanders require the immediate cessation of hostilities for the well being and safety of both the Palestinian and Israeli communities, and especially for Gaza and the nearby Israeli population centers. The gravity of the situation threatens to engulf this entire region and we ask the Palestinians and Israelis to return to active negotiations for the well being and safety of both communities.
Read it carefully and read it all.

Question 81. For whom is the Lord’s supper instituted?

Answer: For those who are truly sorrowful for their sins, and yet trust that these are forgiven them for the sake of Christ; and that their remaining infirmities are covered by his passion and death; and who also earnestly desire to have their faith more and more strengthened, and their lives more holy; but hypocrites, and such as turn not to God with sincere hearts, eat and drink judgment to themselves. (a)

(a) 1 Cor.10:19 What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? 1 Cor.10:20 But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. 1 Cor.10:21 Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils. 1 Cor.10:22 Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he? 1 Cor.11:28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. 1 Cor.11:29 For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.

Question 82. Are they also to be admitted to this supper, who, by confession and life, declare themselves unbelieving and ungodly?

Answer: No; for by this, the covenant of God would be profaned, and his wrath kindled against the whole congregation; (a) therefore it is the duty of the christian church, according to the appointment of Christ and his apostles, to exclude such persons, by the keys of the kingdom of heaven, till they show amendment of life.

(a) 1 Cor.11:20 When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper. 1 Cor.11:34 And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And the rest will I set in order when I come. Isa.1:11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. Isa.1:12 When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Isa.1:13 Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Isa.1:14 Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. Isa.1:15 And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Isa.66:3 He that killeth an ox is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine’s blood; he that burneth incense, as if he blessed an idol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth in their abominations. Jer.7:21 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh. Jer.7:22 For I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices: Jer.7:23 But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you. Ps.50:16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?

–The Heidelberg Catechism

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

–Psalm 46:1-3

Somehow oh so very appropriate as this particular calendar year comes to an end–KSH.

The last time his parents saw Liao Mengjun alive, he was heading to school to pick up his junior high school diploma.

A few hours later, they were called to the morgue. They found that their lanky 15-year-old son’s forehead had been bashed in. His right knee jutted through the skin. Both his arms had been broken. He had several stab wounds, internal injuries and a swollen foot.

His index finger was slashed, suggesting his tormentors had tried to make him write something in his own blood.

As if things could be worse, writer Liao Zusheng and his wife, Chen Guoying, concluded that they knew who had killed their son: his teachers. And they believed they knew why: because of their bitter, public complaints about unauthorized fees and systemic corruption in schools and across Chinese society.

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“Information is power,” has become a common mantra. But for many people seeking answers through genetic testing, all the DNA probing ends in this twist: Less certainty, not more.

This sometimes leads to tough personal decisions amid ambiguity. Nashville novelist Susan Gregg Gilmore learned this lesson the hard way.

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Israel was expected on Wednesday to reject a proposal for a 48-hour cease-fire in its military onslaught in Gaza, saying it would keep up pressure on Hamas but was open to ways of increasing humanitarian aid.

With its punishing air attacks on Gaza in their fifth day, and with 10 more rockets fired by Hamas militants landing in southern Israel, including three in the city of Beersheba, Mark Regev, the spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said the country’s leaders “view it as important to keep up the pressure on Hamas.”

“We cannot give them a respite to rearm and regroup. We need a real, sustainable solution, not a Band-Aid,” he said.

He and other officials said Israel was continuing to talk to American and European leaders on ways to build a longer-term cease-fire to end the fighting.

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Here’s the vacation no one wants, courtesy of the recession: Forced time off without pay.

Financially struggling universities, factories and even hospitals are requiring employees to take unpaid “furloughs” – temporary layoffs that amount to one-time pay cuts for workers and a cost savings for employers. This year, the number of temporarily laid off workers hit a 17-year high.

“If they do it once, I think it’s easier for them to try to do it again,” said Carrie Swartout, who researches traumatic brain injuries at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Maryland is requiring unpaid time off for 67,000 of its 80,000 employees as it struggles with a budget crisis. The state says the furloughs will save an estimated $34 million during the fiscal year.

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The Rt. Rev. Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), has been awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree by Nashotah House Seminary.

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Then, hardly a day later, the Church of England let it be known that it intends to press ahead with the introduction of women bishops , while providing “complementary” male bishops for those clergy who are opposed to the change.

This issue of women’s episcopacy has in the recent past excited extreme passions. But the responses from either end of the divide to yesterday’s news smacked not so much of conflict and schism, as weary resignation. There was, inevitably, some grumpiness from both the women’s campaign and traditionalists over the working details, but neither seems likely to throw their prayer books out of their prams.

Both these events ”“ the bishops’ attack on Government policy and the proposed provisions for women bishops ”“ are good news for the Church of England. Actually, they are very good news, because they reflect valuable aspects of our national, established Church that many of us feared we were losing.

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Live through enough bubbles, though, and you do eventually learn something of value. For example, I’ve learned that although getting out too early hurts, it hurts less than getting out too late. More important, I’ve learned that most of the common wisdom about financial bubbles is wrong.

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Ordinarily, when a business/industry fails from poor management and/or (in the case of the banks) overleveraging, what happens? Put aside the issue of what the business/industry is for a moment. Just ask yourself, what happens?

You know what happens intuitively, even if you’ve never opened an economics textbook. It is very simple. Entrepreneurs, seeing the mistakes made by those business/industry operators, rush in to start competing businesses to 1) take advantage of the weakened competition, and 2) operate the business better than the competition having the benefit of seeing their mistakes.

Under normal circumstances, this process happens in every industry. It is the normal cycle of capitalism.

But look at what is happening now. Are there any entrepreneurs setting out to start automotive manufacturing businesses? What about entrepreneurs setting out to charter new banks? You already know the answer to that. The question, then, is why?

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Rick LaChappelle, owner of four pawnshops in Maine, calculates he has lent about 33% more money this year than last. “The banking industry is not giving out any money right now,” he said. “So people are relying on second-tier lending institutions.”

—From a front page WSJ article this morning entitled “People Pulling Up to Pawnshops Today Are Driving Cadillacs and BMWs”

Watch it all (about 47 1/2 minutes).

A painful reminder of the consequences of the current recession–watch it all.

So symbolic for the overall economy.

Sometime in November, as things now stand, the “Christmas season” begins. The streets are hung with lights, the stores are decorated with red and green, and you can’t turn on the radio without hearing songs about the spirit of the season and the glories of Santa Claus. The excitement builds to a climax on the morning of December 25, and then it stops, abruptly. Christmas is over, the New Year begins, and people go back to their normal lives.

The traditional Christian celebration of Christmas is exactly the opposite. The season of Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, and for nearly a month Christians await the coming of Christ in a spirit of expectation, singing hymns of longing. Then, on December 25, Christmas Day itself ushers in twelve days of celebration, ending only on January 6 with the feast of the Epiphany. Exhortations to follow this calendar rather than the secular one have become routine at this time of year. But often the focus falls on giving Advent its due, with the Twelve Days of Christmas relegated to the words of a cryptic traditional carol. Most people are simply too tired after Christmas Day to do much celebrating.

The “real” twelve days of Christmas are important not just as a way of thumbing our noses at secular ideas of the “Christmas season.” They are important because they give us a way of reflecting on what the Incarnation means in our lives. Christmas commemorates the most momentous event in human history””the entry of God into the world He made, in the form of a baby. The Logos through whom the worlds were made took up His dwelling among us in a tabernacle of flesh. One of the prayers for Christmas Day in the Catholic liturgy encapsulates what Christmas means for all believers: “O God, who marvelously created and yet more marvelously restored the dignity of human nature, grant that we may share the divinity of Him who humbled himself to share our humanity.” In Christ, our human nature was united to God, and when Christ enters our hearts, he brings us into that union.

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Not since the days of Margaret Thatcher has the Church of England attacked a Government with such sustained venom. Over the weekend a phalanx of Bishops preached variations on an identical theme. The Bishop of Manchester, Nigel McCullough, described the New Labour administration as “morally corrupt… beguiled by money. The Government believes that money can answer all of the problems and has encouraged greed and a love of money that the Bible says is the root of all evil.”

The Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, fulminated that “While the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer. When a big bank or car company goes bankrupt, it gets bailed out, but no one seems to be bailing out the ordinary people who are losing their jobs.” From the more prosperous Home Counties the Bishop of Winchester, Michael Scott-Joynt, declaimed that “The Government hasn’t done anything like enough to help those less well-off, particularly in terms of tax redistribution.”

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The Church of England last night tried to avoid a split by watering down its plans for the consecration of women bishops, granting an opt-out to parishioners who refuse to accept the spiritual authority of female clergy.

Under the church’s proposals, parishes could bypass women bishops and women priests by taking their leadership from specially consecrated male “complementary” bishops.

Parents could elect to have their children confirmed and baptised by male clergy while congregations could seek to have sacraments and other divine service removed from the responsibility of a female bishop.

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Israel continued airstrikes against Gaza Strip targets for a fourth day on Tuesday, destroying civic and other buildings linked to the militant Hamas movement in a campaign Israeli leaders say will continue until the group is crippled.

Diplomatic efforts to calm the situation are expected to accelerate this week, with European foreign ministers scheduled to meet in Paris today and Arab diplomats set to gather in Cairo on Wednesday.

In advance of the Paris session, the European Commission called for “an immediate halt to military hostilities” in order to spare Gaza’s civilian population, while demanding that Hamas also stop firing its rockets into Israel. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Monday had also called for a ceasefire.

Though the pace of bombing appeared to slow on Tuesday, Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit told Israel Radio that at this point “there is no room for a ceasefire,” according to news reports from the region. “The Israeli army must not stop the operation before breaking the will of the Palestinians, of Hamas, to continue to fire at Israel.”

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The members of Waterfront Community Church attend weekly services in a high school auditorium. Their contemporary Christian music rock band practices at someone’s home. And the pastor relies on a laptop and Starbucks for an office.

The nondenominational suburban Chicago church operates on a shoestring budget and under an unusual financial setup so it can stick to a mission: Give 100% of offerings gathered from the collection plate to those in need.

“We found how little we know about the people around us. We started asking around, ‘What are the needs of the community?”‘ said the church’s pastor and founder Jim Semradek. “When you present that need to people, they’re very responsive. People have very generous hearts.”

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In what is believed to be a “first” in the modern era, two former Anglican priests, father and son, have become Roman Catholics and are now both serving as Catholic priests in the UK.

And in a further ecclesiastical twist, Father Dominic Cosslett, 36, and his father, Father Ron Cosslett, 70, are both serving in the same archdiocese under the leadership of Archbishop Vincent Nichols in Birmingham, the favourite to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor as Archbishop of Westminster when he steps down early next year.

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There are five linked documents to ponder–read them all.

The General Synod will have its first opportunity to consider draft legislation enabling women to become bishops in the Church of England in February, having given in principle agreement to the shape of the legislative package in July. The Legislative Drafting Group on Women in the Episcopate, chaired by the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester, has today published its further report and drafts of a Measure and associated Amending Canon, together with an illustrative draft Code of Practice and an Explanatory Memorandum.

“We have published our further report at the earliest opportunity to give everyone the chance to study it before debate. We finished our discussions only just before Christmas,” said the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester.

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The Church of England has reached an historic agreement on the consecration of women bishops.

After years of struggle to avoid schism, bishops have agreed a formula that enshrines the principle of equality for male and female bishops while appeasing opponents of women’s ordination. The first women bishops could take their place in the Church of England within three years.

The deal, published in a new report yesterday, provides for a class of “complementary” traditionalist bishop for parishes that refuse to accept a woman diocesan bishop. Such “flying” bishops would have to abide by the authority of the woman bishop, according to the accompanying code of practice.

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