Almighty God, by whose grace and power thy holy martyr Alban triumphed over suffering and was faithful even unto death: Grant to us, who now remember him with thanksgiving, to be so faithful in our witness to thee in this world, that we may receive with him the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

–Matthew 19: 24-26

O God, the King eternal, who dividest the day from the darkness and turnest the shadow of death into the morning: Drive far from us all wrong desires, incline our hearts to keep thy law, and guide our feet into the way of peace; that, having done thy will with cheerfulness while it was day, we may when the night cometh rejoice to give thee thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Working Americans aged 60-69 have slightly better emotional health than those who do not work, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. This relationship is primarily evident among the relatively small numbers of Americans aged 60-69 who have fair or poor health. Among the 75% of the 60- to 69-year-old population who have excellent, very good, or good health, however, there is virtually no difference in emotional health by work status.

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Eventually sexual adventure, often rendered with graphic directness, would become a staple of Updike’s fiction, as his mission to record the Protestant ethic met the upheavals of the sexual revolution. This was a conflict he explored in “Couples” (1968), with its ritual spouse swapping, and in the Maples short stories, with their intimate picture of a dissolving first marriage. Some of Updike’s last letters, written when his two sons and two daughters were grown, weigh the painful cost those closest to him paid for his high ambition and remorseless work habits.

But he had chosen his course early and at the end had few regrets. At 75, in a reply to questions sent to him by the novelist Nicholas Delbanco, Updike summed up his journey: “I set out to make a living with my pen, in privacy, in the commercial literary world as it then existed, and am grateful that I managed. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure; and it goes without saying that I’ve been lucky. No impairing disease. No war I was asked to help fight. No stupefying poverty yet no family wealth or business to limit my freedom.”

For all his self-sufficiency, Updike acknowledged, he had received much help, above all from “The New Yorker when it still published many pages of fiction and Alfred A. Knopf Inc. when publishing was still a gambit for sensible gentlemen who trusted their own taste.” These advantages reflected “a world where books were a common currency of an enlightened citizenry,” he wrote. “Who wouldn’t, thus conditioned, want to keep writing forever, and try to make books that deserve to last?”

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Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow of the Hudson Institute who has been embedded with U.S. forces in Afghanistan six times, says there have been successes at the local and even provincial levels “but nothing that has lasted even a year.” And the election fraud last August that secured Karzai another five-year term was symptomatic: His “government has become more egregiously corrupt and incompetent in the last three or four years.” Last month Marlowe reported: “The Pentagon’s map of Afghanistan’s 80 most key districts shows only five ‘sympathetic’ to the Afghan government — and none supporting it.” She suggests that Karzai might believe that President Obama’s announced intention to begin withdrawing U.S. troops next summer “is a bluff.” Those Americans who say that Afghanistan is a test of America’s “staying power” are saying that we must stay there because we are there. This is steady work, but it treats perseverance as a virtue regardless of context or consequences and makes futility into a reason for persevering.

Obama has counted on his 2011 run-up to reelection being smoothed by three developments in 2010 — the health-care legislation becoming popular after enactment, job creation accelerating briskly and Afghanistan conditions improving significantly. The first two are not happening. He can decisively influence only the third, and only by adhering to his timetable for disentangling U.S. forces from this misadventure.

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The Council of The Associated Parishes for Liturgy and Mission (APLM), meeting in New Jersey, expresses its grave concern at the distressing news of the dismissal of the Episcopal Church´s members of Anglican international ecumenical dialogues on the basis of the Archbishop of Canterbury´s Pentecost letter. Our alarm, however, goes much deeper than the presenting issues.

It should now be clear to all that the result of the proposed “Covenant” is not only to control those Churches that ordain openly gay and lesbian persons. Rather, the Archbishop has finally come out about the ramifications of the proposed “Covenant:” reshaping the structure of the Anglican Communion into a hierarchically-centralized Communion.

As an association historically dedicated to renewing the liturgy and mission of the Church, APLM is amazed by the Archbishop´s lack of respect for the Constitution and worship of the Episcopal Church, a duly constituted member province of the Communion. Other member Churches should take note.

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In Iraq, the pullout of U.S. troops is picking up pace. By Sept. 1, the number of U.S. forces in Iraq will be pared to about 50,000 troops, part of a massive drawdown to continue in 2011 under an agreement negotiated with Baghdad.

But many Iraqi soldiers, especially at installations recently placed in their control by the U.S. military, have come to rely on American largesse to keep the facilities running.

And as U.S. troops withdraw, many Iraqis feel a growing mistrust of the Iraq security forces that are supposed to protect them. Some of the Iraqi forces behave with impunity, and as a result, Iraqis say, they are now more afraid of them than the insurgency.

That has some Iraqi security officials wondering whether they can trust their government to fund the army and police as the Americans have. And the situation has some Iraqis wondering if they can rely on their own Iraqi forces.

Read or listen to the whole thing from NPR.

Exhibit A: The deeply flawed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that have yet to be overhauled despite endless calls for an overhaul.

As Deal Journal pointed out post earlier today, Washington is seemingly paralyzed by a fear that ending the government guarantee of Fannie and Freddie would bring the housing recovery to a screeching halt.

Well, Exhibit B has to be an amendment to a bill winding its way through Congress. The bill is called the “Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010,” and it would extend $30 billion to small banks to facilitate small-business lending. But the last minute amendment, which was sponsored by Democratic Reps. Brad Miller (N.C.), Joe Baca (Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), would allow builders to tap into the $30 billion to build more houses.

For more than two years, banks have practically shut off all financing to small and mid-size home builders as they pare back their exposure to construction and development loans. The National Association of Home Builders lobbied hard for the amendment to be included in the bill. “The Miller/Baca amendment will expand the flow of credit to residential builders and help promote the sustained growth and vitality of the nation,” the NAHB said in a letter sent to all House members.

The amendment passed 418 to 3.

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Months after Morocco deported nearly 100 Christian foreigners, the US Congress and Morocco are sparring over religious freedom, with both countries opening investigations that could strain relations between the two allies.

On Thursday, a congressional human rights commission is scheduled to hold a hearing on the status of religious freedom in Morocco, which receives nearly $700 million of American aid through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

Rep. Tom Wolf (R) of Virginia, co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, urged suspension of MCC funding “to a nation which blatantly disregards the rights of American citizens residing in Morocco and forcibly expels American citizens without due process of law” in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

That’s unlikely to happen, since the US closely cooperates in military and antiterrorist programs with Morocco and has a long-standing free trade agreement with the country.

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Ever since the 1994 World Cup was played in the United States, we have been reading reports that Americans are no longer thinking of soccer as an amateur game for women and children ”” there are more than three million kids registered with the U.S. Youth Soccer Association ”” but are joining the rest of the world as big-time fans of men’s soccer. And yet, the day when Americans massively embrace the most global sport has yet to come.

But there are signs that, at long last, soccer is catching on in America. Shortly before the start of the World Cup, the Fox network pushed back its usual Saturday afternoon major league baseball coverage for three hours to broadcast the European Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan. It may have been the first time in American TV history that a soccer match not involving the U.S. team or outside the World Cup displaced a baseball game.

Simultaneously, Vanity Fair magazine’s May cover featured Portugal’s national team star Cristiano Ronaldo and Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba in underpants, and shortly thereafter, Sports Illustrated carried a World Cup cover story under the title, “The beautiful game.”

As the World Cup started in South Africa last Friday, FIFA ”” the tournament’s organizers ”” said that 130,000 U.S. residents had flown to Johannesburg to watch the games, more than had come from any other country.

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Internet users are complaining that the privacy settings on Facebook are confusing, and lawmakers are questioning Google about its gathering of e-mail and other personal data from Wi-Fi residential networks. The boundary between private and public information is becoming murkier every day, a blurring that is perhaps inevitable in the world of online surfing and social networking.

But how about religious communities? The boundaries are shifting there as well, because of a growing emphasis in congregations on honest and open sharing in small groups.

Vibrant churches today have Bible studies and support groups for every demographic, and congregational vitality is found in the relationships that develop among people in these groups. I am pushing my own church in this direction, after spending a sabbatical studying Christian hospitality while visiting congregations that are skilled at welcoming and including people.

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The president of a Christian anti-hunger lobbying group won the premier award for fighting world hunger.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton awarded the World Food Prize to Bread for the World President David Beckmann at the State Department on Wednesday (June 16).

Beckmann, an economist and ordained Lutheran minister, shared the $250,000 prize with Jo Luck, president of Heifer International.

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Despite a high likelihood of death, black patients are much less inclined to have surgery for early stage lung cancer than whites, often because of a communication gulf between them and their doctors, scientists at UNC-Chapel Hill report today.

In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, UNC-CH researchers surveyed nearly 400 patients newly diagnosed with lung cancer to determine what factors influenced their treatment decisions.

For black patients, who have long had worse outcomes for lung cancer than whites, just 55 percent chose surgery to remove the tumor – the only lifesaving option when cancer is diagnosed early. Sixty-six percent of white patients chose surgery.

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Thousands of New Agers and neo-pagans danced and whooped in delight Monday as a bright early morning sun rose above the ancient stone circle Stonehenge, marking the summer solstice.

About 20,000 people crowded the prehistoric site on Salisbury Plain, southern England, to see the sunrise at 4:52 A.M. (1152EST), after an annual all-night party.

The event typically draws thousands of alternative-minded revelers to the monument, as they wait for dawn at the Heel Stone, a pockmarked pillar just outside the circle proper, which aligns with the rising sun.

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“While the branch joined may operate as a separate polity from the branch to which the congregation formerly was attached, the statute requires that each branch proceed from the same polity, and not merely a shared tradition of faith,” [Virginia Supreme Court Justice Lawrence L.] Koontz wrote. “The record in these cases shows that the CANA Congregations satisfied the first of these requirements in that there was a division within TEC and the Diocese, but not the second, as CANA clearly is not a branch of either TEC or the Diocese.”

According Kelly Oliver of CRC Public Relations, a spokesperson for Truro Church, the ADV has until June 21 to appeal the decision, but it is not known yet whether the ADV will do so, or choose to fight the case in circuit court again. In the meantime, Baucum and the leaders of the other ADV churches are meeting with their respective vestries and congregations and each other, and will make a decision soon on how to proceed. No matter the decision, however, the ADV is confident that this battle is far from over.

“We are disappointed with the ruling and will review it as we consider our options,” said Jim Oakes, chairman of the ADV and longtime member of the Truro Church. “This is not the final chapter in this matter. The court’s ruling simply involved one of our statutory defenses ”¦ so, we continue to be confident in our legal position as we move forward.”Koontz wrote. “The record in these cases shows that the CANA Congregations satisfied the first of these requirements in that there was a division within TEC and the Diocese, but not the second, as CANA clearly is not a branch of either TEC or the Diocese.”

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Brian Rauber grew up in church, slacked off during college, then stopped going to church altogether.

He stayed away for 10 years.

Caridad Cruz was active as a youth in a conservative congregation, but she stopped, too, and avoided church for eight years.

Even during those years away from church, they considered themselves Christians.

Rauber, 35, and Cruz, 26, are examples of people in a recent Barna Group survey that found that three out of five U.S. adults who don’t attend church are self-described Christians.

A total of 28 percent of the U.S. adult population said they had not attended church in the past six months.

Read the whole article from McClatchy from the local paper’s Faith and Values section.

More than two-thirds of the Charleston County high school students who flunked the state English language arts exit exam entered high school unable to read better than a fourth-grader.

Students’ inability to read likely prevented them from understanding the test, much less answering its content-related questions. And it may have prevented some from earning their high school diploma because they must pass the exam to graduate.

School Superintendent Nancy McGinley said she doesn’t want to see this happen again, and she said that’s why the district is directing its time, energy and money to improving students reading and writing.

“It reaffirms that we have to have a sense of urgency ”¦ to keep reading progress happening because once a student stalls in that area, they are doomed to be a high school dropout or close to it,” she said.

Ugh–read it all.

The first national event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded Saturday night with Justice Murray Sinclair, TRC chair, expressing satisfaction that it had been a “special, excellent start.”

During the event held June 16 to 19, more than 1,000 residential school survivors spoke privately to TRC statement-takers and in some cases, during sharing circles witnessed by the public. The event achieved “remarkable acts of reconciliation,” Sinclair told a crowd gathered for closing ceremonies at the Oodena Circle of The Forks National Historic Site. “We know that this journey is far from complete.”

More than 40,000 people visited the site and took part in various activities during the event, said Sinclair. “We are told this is unprecedented….”

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China’s central bank says it plans to keep the Chinese yuan “stable” and there will be no immediate revaluation of the currency.

The comments come just a day after the bank announced plans to make the exchange rate more flexible.

But Chinese authorities have ruled out a large, one-off adjustment in the exchange rate.

China has come under increasing international pressure to change its currency policy.

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Keep your eyes open. Continue to be human ”“ that is to recognise how many ways there are of asking intelligent questions. Remember that Wisdom’s house is built with many and diverse pillars. To remember this is to guard ourselves against one of the persistent temptations of science and indeed of all scholarship, the temptation””expressed once again in the words of Joseph Margolis””of thinking that the human is dispensable: When the conclusions have been reached and the formulae settled, the human, the unfinished, the time-bound is somehow brushed aside.

The early exuberance of the Royal Society””and exuberance is not I think an unfair word for it””the voracious appetite for the trivial and the metaphysical together, is a very good reminder of the origins of science in the human ”“ human curiosity, yes, and the human willingness to be surprised and to begin again. Which perhaps gives a bit of context to that text with which I began: ‘Whoever finds me finds life’. Searching for and finding wisdom is a process of moving into life, a self-aware life, a self-questioning life, above all a life that is a growing in mind and emotion. Curious that when we speak of finding or discovering life these days we very often mean one of two things at least. We talk of finding life elsewhere in the galaxy or indeed the universe. We talk of finding and forming life in the laboratory. Great and controversial enterprises; and yet to find life for ourselves and our immediate neighbours and our human society is not simply a matter of uncovering mysteries at which we wonder, not simply a matter of finding new means of control. It is surely above all a finding joy in the sheer process of finding, recognising that our unfinished business as human beings is one of the things that gives us fulfilment as human beings. An extraordinary, but a life-giving paradox ”“ joy and fulfilment in not having finished, not having drawn a line, but recognising that another question looms on the horizon; not to have found once and for all the single set of questions whose answer will finish our seeking, but to be gratefully, humbly, and sometimes just a bit jealously, aware that next door another set of questions is in operation bringing a new kind of joy and fulfilment in the unfinished-ness of our business.

Science needs to remain human in that sense, to be self-aware of itself as human science, aware of incompleteness, aware of the joy of non-fulfilment.

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A: When the hat is a bishop’s miter, and belongs to the female head of the Episcopal Church, symbolizing her rank in a church hierarchy dominated by men.

In a public snub that’s being dubbed “mitergate,” Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was told not to wear her miter — a tall, triangular hat — during services in London last Sunday (June 13).

Some observers say it’s a stark sign of how relations have deteriorated between the Church of England, Anglicanism’s mother church, and its headstrong American offshoot, the Episcopal Church. Others call it an attempt by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, to keep conservatives from seceding.

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Since there is no law in force allowing a woman to officiate as a bishop in any church of the Church of England, Bishop Jefferts Schori had to apply for a license to officiate as a priest. That statute provides, in relevant part, as follows (bold emphasis added):

(1) If any overseas clergyman desires to officiate as priest or deacon in the province of Canterbury or York, he may apply to the Archbishop of the province in which he desires to officiate for written permission to do so.
. . .
(4) Any permission granted under this section shall be registered in the registry of the province.
(5) An application for a permission under this section shall be made on a form approved by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.
(6) It shall be an offence against the laws ecclesiastical, for which proceedings may be taken under the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963 for any overseas clergyman to officiate as priest or deacon in the province of Canterbury or York otherwise than in accordance with a permission granted under this section, and for any clergyman knowingly to allow such an offence to be committed in any church in his charge.

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In no uncertain terms, Green Party leader John Gormley has told the Catholic Church to zip its lip in the matter of gay unions in the Civil Partnership Bill. Mr Gormley reprimanded Bishop Christy Jones of Elgin — an ecclesiastical spokesman on family matters — for his opposition to the same-sex clause in the legislation. Gormley opined that we had “left the era of church interference behind us”.

However, a bishop is as entitled to articulate an opinion as anyone else. It would be a poor democracy indeed — it would be an authoritarian state, like East Germany — if a Christian bishop were prevented from preaching the Gospel as he saw fit.

Moreover, bishops also have constituencies and if you want to check that out, just turn up at Sunday Mass — or, more especially, a funeral — in any part of rural Ireland. Actually, politicians generally so well recognise the constituencies of bishops that they even collect money for their political parties at the gates of these locations of Sunday worship.

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A good portion of the book is given over to setting out the problems. This is not as dry as it sounds; Collier has a good line in the wry anecdote, the telling statistic and judicious use of research studies. He makes complex economic theories accessible to the lay reader in a briskly chatty style.

Early on, Collier tells us he is breaking fresh ground. He faces two opposing armies: the environmentalists, characterised as deluded romantics, and the traditional economists, or ostriches as he calls them, who bury their heads in their theories without paying heed to the plunder of the real world around them.

Collier is right to portray aspects of the green movement as foolishly romantic, and many mainstream economists as too doctrinaire….

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1. In a teaching document (Marriage- issued in 19991) the House of Bishops affirmed that “Marriage is a pattern that God has given in creation, deeply rooted in social instincts, through which a man and a woman may learn love together over the course of their lives.” In an introduction the then archbishops noted that “Lifelong marriage itself represents an unchanging ideal, and one which is the bedrock of a rapidly changing society.”

2. In the teaching document the House went on to explore the Church of England’s approach to the pastoral and other issues that arise when, sadly, marriages break down. It noted that, “The scope of God’s holiness is the scope of his mercy, and the more we are ready to open ourselves to the demand, the more we will know of his generosity, forgiving us where we have failed and granting us success where we thought we were bound to fail.”

3. Those called to serve the Church in holy orders are expected to be an example of godly living to those among whom they minister. Before people are selected for training with a view to ordination they are required to give information and assurances about their personal lives and, where relevant, marital history.

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I will sing of thy steadfast love, O LORD, for ever; with my mouth I will proclaim thy faithfulness to all generations. For thy steadfast love was established for ever, thy faithfulness is firm as the heavens.

–Psalm 89:1-2

Grant us, O Lord, to pass this day in gladness and peace, without stumbling and without stain; that reaching the eventide victorious over all temptation, we may praise thee, the eternal God, who art blessed, and dost govern all things, world without end.

–Mozarabic Liturgy

I am being taken by the family to Toy Story 3–KSH.

The oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico must be a lesson in humility for all human activities, not only for the energy industry, a Vatican spokesman said.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, spoke on the latest episode of Octava Dies about the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico following an April 20 well blowout on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform.

“It is difficult to calculate the dimensions of the disaster, but they are certainly enormous and continue to grow,” he said.

“There come to mind other grave environmental disasters connected with human activity,” the priest observed, “like those of the chemical factory in Bhopal, India in 1984, or that of the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986, which caused a number of deaths and serious harm to people.”

He continued, “What is striking in this case is the sense of impotence and slowness in finding a solution in the face of the disaster, on the part of one the largest and most well-equipped multinational oil companies in the world, but also on the part of the most powerful country on earth.”

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