It’s the end of spring, and that means engaged couples are putting the last touches on their summer wedding celebrations. Should the cake have three tiers or four? Do the chairs for guests need bows? And, finally, what will they say in their vows?

This wasn’t always a problem, of course. Until recently, everyone just used the words provided by his or her church or synagogue. In recent years, however, more and more couples have decided to write their own vows. This departure from tradition has become so common that some couples now choose to buy the words that will bind them together for a lifetime — online.

In the world-wide Web of wedding options, instantvows.com offers a competitive “Instant Vows Wedding Package” ($17, limited time offer). Ghostwriters Central promises vows “that capture your personal voice while encompassing the appropriate etiquette and emotion” — with “the added advantage” of being written by professionals. You send the site a brief description and some memories of you and your beloved and it will send you the vows (for $125).

Instavows–what a lot that says about where American culture is at the moment. Read it all –KSH.

Most of the time, foreign relations are kind of boring ”” negotiations, communiqués, soporific speeches. But then there are moments of radical discontinuity””1789, 1917, 1989””when the very logic of history flips.

At these moments ”” like the one in Iran right now ”” change is not generated incrementally from the top. Instead, power is radically dispersed. The real action is out on the streets. The future course of events is maximally uncertain.

The fate of nations is determined by glances and chance encounters: by the looks policemen give one another as a protesting crowd approaches down a boulevard; by the presence of a spontaneous leader who sets off a chant or a song and with it an emotional contagion; by a captain who either decides to kill his countrymen or not; by a shy woman who emerges from a throng to throw herself on the thugs who are pummeling a kid prone on the sidewalk.

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Bishop [Nigel] McCulloch said in a House of Lords debate on public service broadcasting: “The BBC insists that its plans for moving departments are on course, and that includes children’s programmes, but what children’s programmes?

“Many of us are dismayed about the diminution of quantity and quality in children’s television provision.”

He pointed to the quality in previous times of Blue Peter, Crackerjack and The Railway Children.

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President Barack Obama faces a dilemma as he fights the recession: The public identifies both rising unemployment and soaring budget deficits as its top policy concerns — but fixing one could worsen the other.

Mr. Obama can ill afford to lose public support on the cusp of the biggest political fights of his presidency, over health care, energy and financial reregulation. Three separate polls this week, including one from the Wall Street Journal/NBC News, have raised red flags at the White House that the president, though still personally popular, is losing some ground with the public on his economic policies.

Officials concede there is little the president can do to please everyone, given the economic Catch-22. If he heeds concerns on the deficit and pulls back on economic stimulus, he risks choking off the “green shoots” of what may be a fledgling recovery.

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Life for New York’s hedge fund wives has changed dramatically. Almost half the city’s 1,000 hedge funds have disappeared. Globally, 10,000 hedge fund workers lost their jobs last year, and a further 20,000 are expected to be out of work this year. An industry that was once worth about $1.9 trillion is now worth half that.

“We’ve been seeing a lot of résumés, a lot of networking ”” and these are not newcomers,” says Neil Morris of Kinetic Partners, a hedge fund consultancy. They are people, he explains, who have been in the industry for years and are now looking desperately for a new home.

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An internal battle in the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island apparently has ended with Bishop Orris Walker Jr. taking a leave of absence and setting a retirement date of Nov. 14.

The Rev. Richard Brewer, head of the diocese’s Standing Committee, would not say what happened, but he said that Walker had stated at public events that he had been urged to resign earlier this year but had refused.

But now Walker, 66, has taken a leave of absence, and will permanently leave his post in November, according to a diocesan announcement. His leave went into effect June 1.

Walker did not respond to telephone messages and a visit to his house seeking comment. “He’s chosen not to offer any of his own comments at this time,” said diocesan spokesman Canon Kris Lee.

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In his first public response to days of protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opponents Friday to stay off the streets and denied opposition claims that last week’s disputed election was rigged, praising the ballot as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”

In a somber and lengthy sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, he called directly for an end to the protests by hundreds of thousands of Iranians demanding for a new election.

“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “This is challenging democracy after the elections.” He said opposition leaders would be “held responsible for chaos” if they did not end the protests.

His remarks seemed to deepen the confrontation between Iran’s rulers and supporters of the main opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who have accused the authorities of rigging the vote.

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So on the relative risks to our God-given bodies, Bishop Gladwin is just plain wrong. He could reasonably retort that what we must now call units of alcohol are as damaging to our organs wherever they are consumed.

That may be strictly true and I’m no physician but I’m guessing that an honest doctor would say that a bellyful of first-growth claret and a decent cognac is going to be less harmful than the equivalent in lager, rum-and-cokes and half-a-dozen alcopops as a digestif.

The middle classes have been the alcoholic villains of late, but I simply don’t buy the case against us. Per capita alcohol consumption in Britain has only recently returned to the levels that we were drinking in 1912, and our diets have improved immeasurably since then.

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The Rt Rev John Gladwin, the Bishop of Chelmsford, criticised the double-standards he claims exist in the attitudes of more affluent sections of society towards Britain’s “binge-drinking” culture.

He argued that they could not condemn teenagers’ behaviour if they are getting drunk themselves, and claimed that they are ultimately responsible for the rise in alcoholism.

His comments follow the release of official figures that show one in four adults are putting their health at risk by drinking too much and that 360,000 11 to 15 year-olds get drunk every week.

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To reiterate my on view of the nature of the church’s blessing, there is a kind of “test” that needs to be m[ad]e, which resolves around answering positively the following kinds of questions:

* Does God “do it”, and does it accord with God’s being and character and will?
* Is it in conformance with creative life?
* Is it obedient according to the common Christian understanding of divine command?

The human blessing of a marriage, understood traditionally, according to this scheme is rather obviously not only congruent but almost necessary. If we take the very language of blessing in the OT as we saw it, the notion of divine blessing is in fact essentially bound to the act of God’s creating human beings as male and female and ordering their existence procreatively within the earth. “And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” (Gen 1:28). And when, subsequently, we are given the shape of this creative ordering, we are told: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). The fact that someone ”“ a priest, the church ”“ “blesses” this reality is but the human reflection of something truly already present. “All your works praise you, O Lord”: one could look at a marriage service as this kind of inevitable praise, “ascribing” to the Lord the honor due to His own work.

The contested issue with same-sex coupling is: is this in fact the “work” of the Lord? If our blessing of something “displays” what God has already more fundamentally enacted in His creative purposes, how would one know, thereby to “bless” it? The question, obviously, has got to get way beyond the silly claims that “the Church blesses all kinds of things ”“ fox hunts and submarines ”“ why not this?” Because, as we have seen, the Church ought not to bless all things, if in fact some things are not aspects of the creative purposes of God’s life-giving and life-extending character and will and do not accord with God’s “command”. If the Church does this, she becomes like the false prophets, trading in lies and ultimately engaging the deep “rebellion” against God: divine blessing and curse are humanly and woefully reversed.

And in this light, I believe that the issue of blessing same-sex unions cannot be construed in terms of whether this is a moral or a doctrinal issue. The distinction between the two, while it may have some canonical bearings within the Church’s decision-making process, has no theological rationale: there is no clear difference, Scripturally speaking, between “moral” and “doctrinal” reality, whether in the OT or NT as a whole.

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Over the next two weeks in hospitals and medical centers across the country, new medical school graduates will begin their internship. Among their many worries ”” moving to a new city, meeting new colleagues, adjusting to medical training ”” is a more profound, existential concern that had once plagued me.

Do I have to lose my self in order to become the doctor I want to be?

I learned the answer to that question partway through my internship. Not in the hospital but in the checkout line of a local grocery store…

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The nation’s three major military academies said Wednesday that applications for the incoming Class of 2013 were up significantly from previous years, citing aggressive marketing, declining casualties in Iraq and the economic downturn as factors.

The rise in applications was most notable at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., where applications reached their highest level since 1988, 15,342, up 40 percent from the class of 2012. About 1,240 are expected to enroll.

Applications were also up at the Military Academy at West Point, where 11,106 people applied for about 1,320 places in the incoming class, an increase of 9.6 percent. And at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, 9,890 people applied for about 1,350 places, an increase of just under 10 percent.

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Eyes roll when Rabbi Hayim Herring tells his fellow clergy that they should spend an hour a day on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Listeners at his seminars smirk when he says blogging should be considered mandatory or that they should post short video clips from their sermons on YouTube.

It’s a lot better than the reaction he used to get.

“They used to look at me as if I’d just said a four-letter word,” said Herring, the former senior rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. Now he’s executive director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal). In its seven years, the organization has seen more converts to what many call one of the dirtiest words in religion: marketing.

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I had a couple of conversations in Cambridge that illuminated the challenges of being a Christian minister in this rapidly changing world.

In the first, I spoke with an older Anglican priest (they’re thick on the ground in Cambridge) who indicated that he was uncomfortable with homosexual unions, but that he felt that he could “bless” them in good conscience. “Love is the standard I use,” he said. He went on to explain that with the steep decline in Christian observance in Britain, it never happens that a (heterosexual) couple comes to him intending to marry, having lived apart. That is, he said, all couples asking for marriage are already living together as if they were man and wife. He said, and I paraphrase, “What am I supposed to do?”

Now, it was my sense from our relatively brief conversation that Father N. had given up entirely on the Christian ideal of sexual relations and marriage. I found that profoundly depressing, to be honest, a total capitulation and accomodation to the post-Christian culture. What kind of witness is that to the truth of the Gospels? I know there are many, many people who wish to wave off the clear Scriptural teaching on marriage and sexuality, but you can no more do that than you can wave off the Bible’s teaching on how to treat the poor. When a priest of the church gives up like that, it’s a defeat.

On the other hand, I had to ask myself what I would do if I were a church vicar faced with a situation like that. I would hope I wouldn’t surrender, as Father N. had done, but what would be the correct pastoral response?

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The Episcopal Church of Rwanda has elected three new Bishops to serve in one of the provinces of the Anglican Church in North America.

The election took place on Saturday 13 at the Anglican Diocese of Kigali.

The Bishops who were elected are: The Rev. DR. Todd Hunter, The Rev. Canon Doc Loomis and Rev. Silas TAK Yin Ng.

According to the communiqué the first two bishops will serve in US while one Silas TAK Yin Ng will serve in Canada.

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Sandra Davis – High Priestess at the Crystal Cauldron – had reserved Our Lady’s Social Club in Shaw Heath, Stockport for her Pagan group’s Annual Witches’ Ball.

But when she rang to make payment arrangements she was told the event could not be held there and – despite already having printed tickets – another venue must be found….

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(ACNS) The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has issued a statement in support of today’s ”˜Sudan Day of Action’ which calls for a renewed commitment to sustainable peace in Sudan. The Sudan Day of Action, organised by Baroness Cox and the Sudan Action Group, aims to raise awareness for the desperate plight of the people of Sudan.

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(Some biographical information on Bill Cohan may be found here).

The most important section begins at 4:12 and thereafter. He places the real core blame at the culture of Wall Street currently and the compensation system where the top traders do not have their own skin in the game.

A friend of mine told me recently that he had received an invitation from a London borough, in which he was a parish priest, that had at the top a statement proclaiming that the borough was “multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-truth”. The first two were clearly descriptive of the number of distinct cultures among the population, and the reality of the existence of churches, mosques and gudwaras and their communities in that borough. What was much more questionable was the commitment to “multi-truth”. Taken to its logical conclusion (and that phrase implies that we have some common measure of what is true) it would be impossible to have a dialogue about any issue because there would be no ground rules. There would simply be assertion. “Your truth” and “my truth” ends in subjective affirmations. In fact, when two people meet, discuss, argue and try to convince one another they are, for all the passion with which they maintain their positions, trying to convince the other of the truth of what they hold. Our convictions are shaped by our experience and upbringing, but also by the understanding of the world that we inherit. Although the scientist needs faith to test a hypothesis, to set up the experiment the very hypothesis is framed in a tradition of scientific understanding. “Your truth” and “my truth” does not work in understanding either the Universe or our human genetic make-up.

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With steep state budget cuts under debate in Sacramento, Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to push for changes to CalWorks and other government aid programs they said would save nearly $270 million.

Included in their suggestions is a novel proposal: Put unemployed parents to work caring for their own children.

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At its best, the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion have so much to offer to the wider Church and to the world. Unfortunately, at the moment we are far from being at our “best.” Like many of you, I am deeply grieved by the growing division within The Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion. I had hoped and still do that the proposed Anglican Covenant could help bring healing into the Communion. As many of you know, the most recent version, the Ridley Cambridge Draft, has been put on hold, due to concerns raised
by some members of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) over Section 4, which deals with the possible disciplinary actions. I remain hopeful that it will be worked out and that we will have an opportunity to vote on the Covenant. In preparation for that, we as a diocese will be studying the Ridley Cambridge Draft and any changes that may be made to it over the coming year. In addressing the ACC, as reported in The Living Church, Archbishop Rowan Williams urged Anglicans not to “put off discussion of the covenant,” stating that, “The texts are
out there. Please pray through them, and talk them through, starting now.” (TLC May 31, 2009)

There has been some question as to whether dioceses will be allowed to officially vote on the covenant if and when it finally comes out. While some within The Episcopal Church believe that only provinces should be allowed to vote, I believe strongly that each diocese should be allowed to vote. That belief is based on my understanding of the true polity or organization and governance of The Episcopal Church, as outlined in its Constitution and Canons and as described in a recently published document entitled “Bishops’ Statement On The Polity Of The Episcopal Church,” signed by myself along with 14 other bishops in the Episcopal Church and three highly distinguished Episcopal theologians.

Read it carefully and read it all.

[David] Bane resigned from Southern Virginia on February 11, 2006 after years of division in the diocese culminated with a report from three Episcopal Church bishops said that the diocese needed “deep systemic change.”

Bane said in an interview with Episcopal News Service that the invitation to work in the Diocese of Pittsburgh came to him after he tried to find a way to minister in the Episcopal Church, but was rebuffed at every turn. “I was not wanted in ministry no matter how hard I tried,” he said.

Bane added that he “never desired” to leave the Episcopal Church and is sad and disappointed both with his status and with the divisions in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

“I don’t have any big vendetta or anger,” he said. “I am just sad and disappointed.”

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Amtrak has never turned a profit since the federal government took it over in 1971 and began shoveling tens of billions of dollars in subsidies its way. The only routes that actually do slightly better than break even are in the Boston-New York-Washington, D.C., corridor, which is little more than a really long commuter line. Yet, the writer lobbies for even greater subsidies.

Amtrak is slow, unreliable and lacks any significant creature comforts. I know. I made the mistake of taking Amtrak from New York City to ”” well, what do you know? ”” Vermont one winter not long ago. The ride took 13 hours and much of the countryside we passed through was not at all scenic. You don’t put railroad tracks in the good part of town. The journey ended with several railroad workers taking axes to the train’s doors, which had frozen shut, to allow us to disembark.

Read it all, a superb letter to the editor in the local paper.

As the midday sun beat down Wednesday, a trio of somber men trudged across a soggy, open field clutching bundles of crisp, new American flags in their hands.

Speaking few words, they moved through the freshly cut grass to deposit the flags in nine holders staked in the soil. Nine flags, each marking the spot where a man died.

The community will come together today to mark the second anniversary of the Sofa Super Store blaze that killed nine Charleston firefighters on June 18, 2007. An open memorial, from 7 to 10 p.m., will be the first time the general public has been allowed onto the site at 1807 Savannah Highway since the fire.

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Europeans are usually shocked that 47 million citizens of the world’s richest country have no health insurance and so could, at least in theory, die because they cannot afford medical care. Whether America’s traditional insistence that citizens should take responsibility for their own healthcare is proud self-reliance or shameful inhumanity is a matter of political perspective. But increasing ideological polarisation has prevented a consensus forming on whether medicine should be viewed as a “public service” or be treated simply as a form of private consumption no different from food, clothes or housing.

But such theoretical and moral issues are no longer the driving force behind US healthcare reform. Whether or not voters have undergone a moral conversion, America has suddenly become aware that its present healthcare system is unaffordable. As Mr Obama pointed out to the American Medical Association, the doctors’ trade union largely responsible for thwarting President Clinton’s health reforms, carrying on with the status quo is no longer an option. The mind-boggling cost of healthcare, not bank bailouts or property foreclosures, threatens the US Government with bankruptcy and the whole economy with stagnation.

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Hoping to make history, the Senate set off on its major overhaul of the nation’s health care system Wednesday, but its first steps were quickly overtaken by fresh cost concerns and partisan anger. An ambitious timetable that called for completing committee action in early summer seemed in danger of slipping away.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee began work on a bill encompassing President Barack Obama’s top legislative priority. It marked the first time since President Bill Clinton’s ill-starred attempt in the early 1990s that Congress was tackling such a broad overhaul.

But the more important Senate Finance Committee announced it would delay action, as senators sought to retool their proposals to slash the cost by more than one-third, from an intial $1.6 trillion over 10 years, to less than $1 trillion. Of the five major panels working on health care, Finance has the best odds of coming up with a bipartisan proposal that could overcome gathering opposition.

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Watch the whole touching and encouraging story.

The number of adults who turn to the Internet for health information has nearly doubled in the past two years, from 31% to 60%, according to a study.

That puts the Internet in a tie for third place (with books and print materials) as the source adults most often turn to for health information.

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Mr Peterson’s memoir is worth reading for three reasons. First, he really has lived the American dream. His Greek father arrived in America in 1912 with only a primary education and no English. Mr Peterson grew up counting out change in the family diner in Nebraska. In 2007 he sold his stake in the Blackstone Group, his private-equity firm, for $1.85 billion. On the way, he notched up some colourful experiences as an advertising executive, as the boss of a camera manufacturer and as the chairman of Lehman Brothers, an investment bank that collapsed in September 2008.

Second, Mr Peterson is a crusader for a noble cause. He has committed the bulk of his immense fortune to nagging Americans to take their fiscal problems seriously. The huge budget deficit is only the tip of the iceberg, he warns, on posters, through his think-tank and in a surprisingly watchable documentary. The federal government has liabilities equivalent to $483,000 per American household, largely in the form of unfunded commitments to provide old people with health care and pensions. Politicians are too scared by looming elections to do anything about it, as he has seen at first hand. He recalls his shock when Bill Clinton sat down with him, agreed that social security (the public pension system) was bankrupt, and then stood up and told a crowd of voters that it was just fine….

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Dialogue and speeches drive the plot, giving Mr Glass the opportunity to create a presidential hero (along with his plain-speaking wife, intelligent daughter and troubled son) who even in his darkest hour is eloquent and unflinching. “I stand before you, I think, as a president who bears the gravest burden a president has ever borne.” Mr Glass, who has worked in America and with human-rights groups, is familiar with the corridors and committee-rooms of power. He is good at portraying diplomatic brinkmanship and political in-fighting, and knows how policy gets made, all areas that a clumsier writer might have struggled to bring to life. This is a novel for politician and non-politician alike. And the ending is brilliant.

Read it all.