“Normally, I don’t go for political jokes ”” too many of them are getting elected.”

—Bob Hope

Meanwhile my father drifted into what nurses call “the dwindles”: not sick enough to qualify for hospice care, but sick enough to never get better. He fell repeatedly at night and my mother could not pick him up. Finally, he was weak enough to qualify for palliative care, and a team of nurses and social workers visited the house. His chest grew wheezy. My mother did not request antibiotics. In mid-April 2008, he was taken by ambulance to Middlesex Hospital’s hospice wing, suffering from pneumonia.

Pneumonia was once called “the old man’s friend” for its promise of an easy death. That’s not what I saw when I flew in. On morphine, unreachable, his eyes shut, my beloved father was breathing as hard and regularly as a machine.

My mother sat holding his hand, weeping and begging for forgiveness for her impatience. She sat by him in agony. She beseeched his doctors and nurses to increase his morphine dose and to turn off the pacemaker. It was a weekend, and the doctor on call at Rogan’s cardiology practice refused authorization, saying that my father “might die immediately.” And so came five days of hard labor. My mother and I stayed by him in shifts, while his breathing became increasingly ragged and his feet slowly started to turn blue. I began drafting an appeal to the hospital ethics committee. My brothers flew in.

On a Tuesday afternoon, with my mother at his side, my father stopped breathing. A hospice nurse hung a blue light on the outside of his hospital door. Inside his chest, his pacemaker was still quietly pulsing.

After his memorial service in the Wesleyan University chapel, I carried a box from the crematory into the woods of an old convent where he and I often walked. It was late April, overcast and cold. By the side of a stream, I opened the box, scooped out a handful of ashes and threw them into the swirling water. There were some curious spiraled metal wires, perhaps the leads of his pacemaker, mixed with the white dust and pieces of bone….

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How many times in life must we engage in self-description? Let us count the ways: There’s the anxiety of college applications. The ignominy of Match.com dating. The embroidery of a C.V. sent to prospective employers. And, of course, there is Facebook.

The profile page of every Facebook acolyte has an enticing little Info tab, presenting the opportunity to demonstrate wit or wisdom, bravado or timidity, personal agenda or professional bona fides. A few categories are suggested by default ”” Likes and Dislikes, Favorite Quotations ”” but there’s a big yawning hole in the section labeled Bio. There’s no pull-down menu: the format is fill in the blank, every man for himself.

“It’s unnerving to sum yourself up and convey your personality,” said Gretchen Rubin, a former lawyer in New York and author of “The Happiness Project,” who opted for tongue-in-cheek: Red-haired, left-handed, legally blind, massive consumer of Diet Coke.

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United Methodist pastors in North Carolina are more obese than their neighbors like them, an “alarming” reflection of their isolation and job stress, according to a Duke University study.

It’s the latest in a series of troubling studies on the state of clergy health, and that has experts saying that some ministers are working themselves to death — perhaps even seeing that as part of the job description.

The most recent survey says it is the first in which researchers have directly compared a set of clergy with their immediate neighbors for rates of various health conditions, and the results aren’t good.

The obesity rate is nearly 40 percent for white United Methodist clergy aged 35 to 64, according to a survey of 1,726 ministers. That’s 10 percent higher than comparable North Carolina residents (white, in the same age group, with jobs and health insurance.)

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Genomics may reveal that humans really are brothers and sisters under the skin. The species is young, so there has been little time for differences to evolve. Politically, that would be good news. It may turn out, however, that some differences both between and within groups are quite marked. If those differences are in sensitive traits like personality or intelligence, real trouble could ensue.

People must be prepared for this possibility, and ready to resist the excesses of racialism, nationalism and eugenics that some are bound to propose in response. That will not be easy. The liberal answer is to respect people as individuals, regardless of the genetic hand that they have been dealt. Genetic knowledge, however awkward, does not change that.

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Take a look.

[BOB] FAW: Other parents who have adopted troubled children from Eastern Europe have taken more drastic measures. Dr. Ronald Federici runs a clinic for families wrestling with difficult adoptions.

DR. RONALD FEDERICI (Developmental Neuropsychologist): I’ve picked up children at the baggage carousel at airports. I’ve had them left in my office, in my office””they drove off. I’ve seen some horrific situations where parents, good people, totally lost it and wound up in prison for murdering their child. The amount of child abuse cases have been enormous.

FAW: When a Tennessee mother packed off her adopted son on a plane back to Russia with only a note, many people were outraged. But others who have walked in that mother’s shoes, were more understanding.

JULIE HARSHAW: My first reaction was that I could empathize with her, knowing that she must have been going through probably a lot of the same things that we go through, and certainly don’t condone how it was done.

FAW: You could understand?

JULIE HARSHAW: I could understand, and unfortunately, people like to judge you before they know what you’re going through.

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Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation’s homeland security chief said Friday.

As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans’ civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

But finding that balance has become more complex as homegrown terrorists have used the Internet to reach out to extremists abroad for inspiration and training. Those contacts have spurred a recent rash of U.S.-based terror plots and incidents.

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took over a foreclosed home roughly every 90 seconds during the first three months of the year. They owned 163,828 houses at the end of March, a virtual city with more houses than Seattle. The mortgage finance companies, created by Congress to help Americans buy homes, have become two of the nation’s largest landlords.

Bill Bridwell, a real estate agent in the desert south of Phoenix, is among the thousands of agents hired nationwide by the companies to sell those foreclosures, recouping some of the money that borrowers failed to repay. In a good week, he sells 20 homes and Fannie sends another 20 listings his way.

“We’re all working for the government now,” said Mr. Bridwell on a recent sun-baked morning, steering a Hummer through subdivisions laid out like circuit boards on the desert floor.

For all the focus on the historic federal rescue of the banking industry, it is the government’s decision to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008 that is likely to cost taxpayers the most money.

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Good dads know. Sometimes it doesn’t take much.

Ask Scott Buie, a Kansas City, Kan., father of five: “Nothing glamorous, just doing things with the kids. Everyday things. Talking, biking. Listening to my daughter after she’s read a book.”

For Anthony Barber of Parkville, it’s as simple as asking for a day off to spend at his daughter’s school. For Dustin Boatright of Independence, it’s making hot chocolate and hashing out on the couch a third-grader’s woes.

“We’re not out to make perfect fathers,” said Carey Casey, chief executive officer of the National Center for Fathering, headquartered in Shawnee. “Some of the greatest moments I have with my son are when I say I’m sorry.”

You’ve perhaps never heard of his organization. But the White House has.

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Defending champion Italy was held to a second 1-1 draw, this time by lowly New Zealand in the latest World Cup stunner.

The 78th-ranked All Whites took the lead after only seven minutes of Sunday’s Group F match when Italy’s 36-year-old captain Fabio Cannavaro made a horrendous error, handing a goal to Shane Smeltz. A long free kick from Simon Elliott sailed deep into Italy’s area, off Cannavaro’s hip as he fell and directly toward the waiting Smeltz for the tap-in.

It was New Zealand’s only shot on goal the entire match.

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We also appreciate his gracious clarity in defining current divisions within the Anglican Communion as well as suggesting consequences of the continuing actions by The Episcopal Church that have “not brought us nearer to full reconciliation” as the body of Christ. As members of The Episcopal Church, we humbly accept the consequences that may result, such as our provincial representatives and leaders being asked to step down from various roles on Communion bodies and commissions. Furthermore, as members of The Episcopal Church, we are not seeking escape from these thoughtful and loving judgments long-contemplated as far back as the Windsor Report and clearly held forth before the Communion in recent years. Rather we stand firmly with the Archbishop of Canterbury in desiring to safeguard the integrity and witness of the Communion. With him and with Anglicans throughout the world, we also yearn for a “more coherent Anglican identity.” We are steadfastly committed to the principles of the Windsor Report and Lambeth Resolution 1.10 for the parishes and dioceses we serve. In addition we continue to call for the adoption of the Anglican Communion Covenant as a means of deepening our ties to one another and furthering Christ’s mission for the world.

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For the first time in four decades of collecting data, the National Governors Association (NGA) reports that total state spending has dropped for two years in a row. In hard-hit Arizona, for example, the state budget has sagged to 2004 levels, despite blistering growth in population and demand for government services. Starting with the 2008 fiscal year, state governments have closed more than $300 billion in cumulative budget gaps, with another $125 billion already projected for the coming years, says Corina Eckl, fiscal-program director at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Similar figures aren’t collected for the nation’s counties, villages and towns, but when the National League of Cities surveyed mayors recently, three-fourths of them described worsening economic conditions.

Accustomed to the ups and downs of the ordinary economic cycle, elected officials and budget planners are facing something none of them have experienced before: year after year of shortfalls, steadily compounding. Ordinarily, deficits are resolved mostly through budgetary hocus-pocus. But the length and depth of the recession are forcing governments to go beyond sleight of hand to genuine cuts. And that makes lawmakers gloomy in all but a handful of states. (It’s a swell time to be North Dakota.) According to an NCSL survey, worry or outright pessimism is the reigning mood in the vast majority of capitals.

Many taxpayers might say that it’s about time spending dropped. But then they start hearing the specifics. Government budgets contain a lot of fixed costs and herds of sacred cows. K-12 education absorbs nearly a third of all spending from state general funds. Add medical expenses, primarily Medicaid, and it’s over half. Prisons must be maintained, colleges and universities kept open, interest on bonds and other loans paid. Real cuts provoke loud howls, and you can hear them rising in every corner of the country. College students have marched in California, firefighters have protested in Florida, and on June 10, Minnesota saw the largest one-day strike of nurses ”” some 12,000 ”” in U.S. history.

And don’t count on the shaky economic recovery for relief.

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So far, European leaders have tried to deal with this spreading disaster by ruses. Existing European treaties ban bail-outs of member states. So the “European Stabilisation Mechanism”, recently set up precisely to provide these illegal bail-outs, does so under Article 122.2 of the Lisbon Treaty. This article gives emergency assistance to a member state “threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional circumstances beyond its control”.

Natural disasters! We are experiencing a totally unnatural disaster, one brought about by the artificial structure of the European project. Exceptional circumstances beyond its control! It was this system that every eurozone member state proudly (though usually without asking their electorates) voted for.

The situation is not funny for the people of Greece, Portugal, Spain, and so on, because their governments have run up dreadful public debts while sacrificing their power to devalue to become competitive. They cannot cut their exchange rate, so they must cut wages and jobs. Unemployment in Spain is already 20 per cent ”“ and 40 per cent among young people.

It is not funny for Germany, either. German banks are overcommitted in the southern countries now afflicted. The German people are fed up with paying for the profligacy of their poorer neighbours and furious at the suggestion that the only solution is that they should pay even more.

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If you pop into a toilet on the Seattle waterfront this summer, you might see over-flowing bins. The reason? A polite notice explains that “because of 2010 budget reductions”, the Seattle government can no longer afford to “service this comfort station” each day. Hence the dirt.

Investors would do well to take note. In recent months, America’s fiscal mess has assumed a rather surreal air. On paper, the country’s federal-level deficit and debt numbers certainly look very scary. But in practical terms, the impact of those ever-swelling zeroes still seems distinctly abstract.

After all, so far the federal government has not been slashing spending; on the contrary, there was a stimulus bill last year. And, as my colleague John Plender pointed out this week, Treasury bond yields have been falling as investors flee the eurozone woes. As a result, those scary numbers still seem to be a problem primarily concocted in the world of cyber finance.

But there is one place where reality is already starting to bite in America and that is in terms of state finances. Just look at the statistics. A report from the US Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued last month estimates that in fiscal 2010 the US states collectively posted a $200bn-odd budget shortfall, equivalent to 30 per cent of all state budgets.

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The overcast streets of South Kensington were oddly, creepily silent Friday evening. This neighborhood resembled the quaintest of ghost towns, with few cars and fewer pedestrians traveling Cromwell Road, save for the occasional tourist.

So empty were London’s streets that the American tennis player Andy Roddick took a rare trip into town for dinner.

“I decided to take advantage of no traffic,” he said. “You’d be amazed how quickly you can get down there when an England game is on.”

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Without losing their engagement with philosophy and the social sciences, modern theologians of the Modern Theology type have drawn eagerly on premodern thinkers. As Nicholas Lash writes, quoting Kevin Hughes, this return to the sources of faith “is not a nostalgic retreat to the theological safety of premodern Christendom. Rather, it is a vital struggle for the proper diagnosis of our present condition.”

Furthermore, whatever a modern theologian is these days, it is usually someone who regards the liturgical and sacramental life of the church as a vital ingredient of theological reasoning. Perhaps most striking of all for a Protestant of 1980 perusing Modern Theology is the extent to which “modern theology” has become a catholic and Catholic enterprise.

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Many states are acknowledging this year that they have promised pensions they cannot afford and are cutting once-sacrosanct benefits, to appease taxpayers and attack budget deficits.

Illinois raised its retirement age to 67, the highest of any state, and capped public pensions at $106,800 a year. Arizona, New York, Missouri and Mississippi will make people work more years to earn pensions. Virginia is requiring employees to pay into the state pension fund for the first time. New Jersey will not give anyone pension credit unless they work at least 32 hours a week.

“We can’t afford to deny reality or delay action any longer,” said Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois, adding that his state’s pension cuts, enacted in March, will save some $300 million in the first year alone.

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After nearly a year of deliberation, Trinity Lutheran Church in Anniston decided this week against separating itself from its national denomination over the issue of allowing gay clergy to be in committed lifelong relationships.

Trinity has been discussing the issue since the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, or the ELCA, concluded with a vote at its 11th biennial Churchwide Assembly in August that openly gay and lesbian pastors living in “committed, lifelong and monogamous relationships” could serve in the clergy.

Before, clergy could be openly gay, but were required to remain celibate.

Heterosexual clergy are required to be celibate if single, monogamous if married.

While the debate over gay clergy and gay marriage in the church has been present in various religious denominations, it has especially become an issue in the Lutheran church as well as the Episcopal Church, which acted on the issue of gay clergy as well as gay marriage about a month before the ELCA’s decision. In July 2009, the Episcopal Church decided to lift a ban on ordaining gay bishops.

It is a divisive issue; 140 congregations have already separated themselves from the ELCA, out of more than 10,000 congregations across the country, said ELCA spokesman John Brooks.

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That said, the most worrisome long-term economic impact of the Gulf spill lies elsewhere: The catastrophe is adding to the gradual erosion in trust in U.S. professional elites and major institutions, from government to business. It has hardly inspired confidence to watch the White House scramble to prove that President Barack Obama wasn’t as detached from the crisis as he often seemed, or to witness the inability of the world’s best oil engineers to stop the underwater gusher.

Confidence in the economy’s commanding heights has taken a beating following a long run of scandals and malfeasance. The list includes everything from the Enron and Worldcom failures, Bernie Madoff’s massive fraud, the subprime loan mess, the government rescues of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG (AIG), the controversy surrounding Goldman Sachs’ (GS) collateralized debt obligations, and so on. The Tea Party movement may grab all the attention with its antigovernment rhetoric, but surveys have repeatedly shown that its sentiment is widely shared. For instance, a series of long-run surveys by the Pew Research Center find that only 22 percent of those surveyed say they can trust government. That’s about the lowest measure in half a century. The ratings are similarly abysmal for large corporations and banks and other financial institutions: respectively 25 percent and 22 percent.

Trust isn’t as easy to measure as land, labor, and capital. It’s more like a recipe or a software protocol that allows for economic exchange and all kinds of innovation. Nobel Prize Laureate Kenneth Arrow famously remarked that “virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust.” Societies with high levels of trust are fertile ground for developing large corporations and innovative enterprises. Low-trust societies feature people who don’t like to do business with folks outside their family or community; smaller, family-run companies are the norm.

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Pope Benedict XVI will meet a German bishop who resigned in April following allegations that he hit children, but is unlikely to consider the bishop’s request to be reinstated, the Vatican said Wednesday (June 16).

Bishop Walter Mixa, who admitted to striking children in the 1970s and ’80s, told the German daily Die Welt he had been pressured into signing a resignation letter and now wants his old job back.

“I can confirm that the pope will have an audience with Monsignor Mixa,” Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said, “but the acceptance of the resignation as Augsburg bishop is not expected to be up for discussion.”

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The World Cup isn’t supposed to be like this.

For all that soccer is known as the “beautiful game,” this tournament has typically offered little for romantics: In this sport, the favorites usually win””and when it comes to the world’s most coveted trophy, that means Europe.

Home to the best professional leagues and the biggest superstars, half of the 18 World Cups have been won by European countries. You’ve got to go back to 1950 to find the last time a team from this continent failed to make the final. But as the 2010 World Cup entered its second week, England was held to a 0-0 draw by lowly Algeria””one of the country’s most embarrassing results in this tournament since its defeat by the United States in 1950. “We are not in a good moment,” said England coach Fabio Capello. “I don’t know if it’s the pressure but it’s not the team I know.”

The long list of underachievers from the old world already comprises France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and””after its shock defeat by Serbia early Friday””Germany.

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Somewhere along the road from Andorra to Croatia, Ukraine and all places in between, Fabio Capello has lost the team that qualified for this World Cup in such decisive style and has in their place the insipid side of England past: the team of Euro 2008 failure, of big tournament paralysis and of the wasted golden generation.

Last night England were the nation’s collective worst nightmare, a sleepwalking shambles who are now third in group C and must face up to the prospect of World Cup elimination. They must beat Slovenia on Wednesday in Port Elizabeth to be sure of reaching the second round and to retain a chance of finishing top of the group. All we know of that is that nothing is certain any longer.

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Mr. Coulibaly’s call, made in the 85th minute after the U.S. had recovered from a 2-0 deficit to draw even, remains a mystery. After Landon Donovan’s free kick from the right side and Maurice Edu’s deflection into the net for the apparent winning score, he refused to explain why he blew his whistle and disallowed the goal.

Slow-motion instant replays show Mr. Coulibaly starting to raise his hand and blow his whistle as Mr. Donovan approaches the ball. Mr. Coulibaly’s eyes are focused on the center of the penalty area where U.S. players Jozy Altidore, Clint Dempsey, and Michael Bradley are all in contact with Slovenian defenders. Mr. Dempsey is closest to Mr. Coulibaly and appears to try to shove his defender aside as he begins a run for the goal, though such a move is typical on free kicks that are sent into the penalty area.

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The Rev. Jim Simons of Pennsylvania asked whether provinces “engag[ing] in ”¦ jurisdictional incursions” will face any discipline. He said the Southern Cone and the Province of Rwanda are “functioning in [the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh] without licenses and laying claim to some of our parishes ”¦ in clear violation of the canons.”

Canon Kearon responded that the Province of the Southern Cone has received a letter relating to these matters and “there is a deadline to this response.” He added that questions related to breaches of the third moratorium of the Windsor Report, which calls for an end to interventions in other provinces, “[have not] been answered by any [instruments] of the Anglican Communion” and he “would like to see it on the agenda of the Anglican Communion.”

Later, the secretary general said he believed “the Southern Cone has breached [the third moratorium]” but refrained from making a similar statement about Rwanda. “What would it mean to be out of fellowship with Rwanda?” he asked.

“I don’t think [Canon Kearon’s] responses clarified matters,” the Rev. Canon Mark Harris told The Living Church.

Sarah Dylan Breuer of Massachusetts said she felt disappointed, particularly over “remov[ing] people from [ecumenical] conversation,” but added: “We have opportunities to get creative.”

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Humans are body, mind and spirit. A body is something we can see, weigh, touch, and even decorate. A mind we can see in operation. We can measure intelligence and observe the inner workings of the brain through modern imaging.

There is, however, no CT scan of the spirit. Like the wind, it cannot be seen, but it is a strong force in our lives. We see evidence of the spirit in a parent’s love for a child. It motivates heroes, fuels curiosity of a scientist and sustains a Holocaust survivor. We see signs of the spirit in the mother who cannot recall her child’s name but can recite the 23rd Psalm and in the musician who cannot sing along with other residents in the nursing home but can whistle previously learned complex tunes.

There is still a person beneath the cloak of dementia. As an Episcopal priest who frequently interacts with people with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, I ask myself, “How can we nourish the soul of someone whose memories are no longer accessible?” After 32 years of ordained ministry, I have found the answer lies in attentive and discerning listening. People with dementia will tell us how to nourish their souls, but we need to listen carefully.

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The crumbling Episcopal church at Niagara and Vermont streets has been sold to a New York City business for $150,000 by the Bronx woman who acquired the property in a tax-foreclosure sale four years ago, according to Buffalo Housing Court Judge Henry J. Nowak.

The St. Mary’s on the Hill site was sold by Julia J. Myrie- Oyewo to Amansie Enterprises. As a result of the transaction, Nowak on Thursday placed the building code violation case on the court’s reserve calender, pending possible city action against the new owner.

Last Month, Nowak converted the unpaid $3,000 fine imposed on Myrie-Oyewo into a civil judgment. She had been sentenced in absentia to 30 days in jail April 27 and still faces that penalty. The new owners of the 117-year-old, three-building site, meanwhile, could face a fine.

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Incense, candles and joyful singing filled St. Mark’s Cathedral last weekend as the Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish celebrated one of her last official acts as Episcopal bishop of Utah: the ordination of five new deacons, four of them bound for the priesthood next year.

It’s almost an embarrassment of riches for the small diocese, and one that Irish, who is retiring in the fall, takes as a sign of the church’s health.

“We are poised in the best possible way,” Irish says, “to engage those who want to think their way through their faith.”

And yet even as an increasing number of Utah Episcopalians feel called to the ordained ministry, the church has fewer paid positions to offer. Two of the four new deacons who hoped to land paying clerical jobs have not found one.

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The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, told the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council June 18 that when Diocese of Los Angeles Bishop Suffragan Mary Glasspool was ordained as the church’s second openly gay, partnered bishop, the church ought to have known that it would face sanctions.

However, he said that in the recent removal of Episcopal Church members from some Anglican Communion ecumenical dialogues “the aim has not been to get at the Episcopal Church, but to find room for others to remain as well as enabling as full a participation as possible for the Episcopal Church within the communion.”

Kearon claimed that the communion’s ecumenical dialogues “are at the point of collapse” and said that the last meeting of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, of which Jefferts Schori is an elected member, “was probably the worst meeting I have experienced.”

“The viability of our meetings are at stake,” he added.

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