At a recent demonstration held by Napa employees demanding better safety measures, finding people who had been attacked by patients wasn’t difficult.

There’s Chris Cullen, a psychiatric technician who says he was punched in the face; and Zach Hatton, a recreation therapist who recounted two injuries. “I was punched in the face about a year and a half ago,” Hatton says, “and then my wrist was twisted up pretty badly and just has never healed.”

Dr. Richard Frishman, a psychiatrist, was attacked while interviewing a new patient. “He came flying across the table, fists flying,” Frishman says. “He was able to hurl me against the wall where I struck my head and fractured my wrist.”

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American companies say they plan to hire. If they do as they say, the unemployment picture will brighten considerably.

In a quarterly survey of chief executives, the Business Roundtable found that 52 percent of companies planned to hire workers in the United States over the next six months, while just 11 percent said they expected to reduce employment.

Never before have so many chief executives said they planned to hire, or so few said they planned to cut payrolls. The survey has been taken every three months since late 2002.

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For all of its lewd jokes and potty-mouth banter, “The Book of Mormon” commingles the profane and the sacred, dramatizing the culture shock, the physical danger and the theological doubts that infuse what one might call the missionary narrative. That narrative has been lived out for centuries by Western missionaries in a range of denominations, and it has been expressed in recent decades in a spectrum of art and literature.

“The Book of Mormon” forms part ”” admittedly a loopy and idiosyncratic part ”” of that corpus of work. Both the musical’s respect for faith-based idealism and its criticism of fundamentalist certitude have informed such films as Roland Joffé’s “The Mission” and Bruce Beresford’s “Black Robe,” novels including “The Call” by John Hersey and “The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver, as well as nonfiction accounts like “The Rebbe’s Army” by Sue Fishkoff, which is not even about Christians but the Hasidic Chabad movement’s emissaries to wayward, far-flung Jews.

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Experts say honoring someone’s life and legacy has always been part of the hospice philosophy. There are 25 volunteers with the Lumina program, and most are not trained medical personnel. Instead, they’re storytellers who learn how to interview dying people so they can help them leave tangible statements of values and legacy ”” books, CDs, photo albums, letters.

Volunteer Susan Kissinger says it’s difficult and emotional work. She helped a middle-aged ALS patient write a series of letters to his wife and kids before he died. But Kissinger says it’s a gift to be let into hospice patients’ lives.

“There will be times when the emotion will rise up,” Kissinger says. “And I guess that’s just a gift I have to offer: I can just be present here and accept the gift without being overwhelmed.”

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Americans like stuff.

That’s a given. But it turns out that lots and lots of stuff piled onto shelves or stacked in the middle of store aisles can coax a shopper to buy more.

After the recessionary years of shedding inventory and clearing store lanes for a cleaner, appealing look, retailers are reversing course and redesigning their spaces to add clutter.

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…we can begin to tell a coherent story. Stress and inflammation produce derivatives of cortisol and cholesterol, which trigger misfolding in A-beta proteins. This, in turn, overwhelms the cells’ quality-assurance mechanism and results in growing numbers of insoluble proteins, which aggregate in plaques and tangles. And this blocks the transport of vital ingredients around brain cells, which causes the cells to die.

Somewhere along this chain, there is a link, we must hope, that can be attacked by medication””to prevent inflammation, discourage ozone reactions, encourage the refolding apparatus, improve protein solubility or boost the plaque-removal mechanism.

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Christianity.com:An Evening with Eric Metaxas from ChristianityDotCom on Vimeo.

Watch it all (and careful blog followers may note where it took place)–KSH.

In the spring of 1933, Bonhoeffer was declaring it the duty of the church to stand up for the Jews. This would have seemed radical to even staunch allies, especially since the Jews had not begun to suffer the horrors they would suffer in a few years. Bonhoeffer’s three conclusions””that the church must question the state, help the state’s victims, and work against the state, if necessary””were too much for almost everyone. But for him they were inescapable. In time, he would do all three.

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy ( Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p.155

This is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without Church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without contrition. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows Him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His son: ‘ye were bought at a price,’ and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Precisely because of our attitude to the state, the conversation here must be completely honest, for the sake of Jesus Christ and the ecumenical cause. We must make it clear””fearful as it is””that the time is very near when we shall have to decide between National Socialism and Christianity. It may be fearfully hard and difficult for us all, but we must get right to the root of things, with open Christian speaking and no diplomacy. And in prayer together we will find the way. I feel that a resolution ought to be framed””all evasion is useless. And if the World Alliance in Germany is then dissolved””well and good, at least we will have borne witness that we were at fault. Better that than to go on vegetating in this untruthful way. Only complete truth and truthfulness will help us now.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer as quoted in No Rusty Swords, my emphasis

Bonheoffer’s life and death belong to the annals of Christian martyrdom”¦his life and death have given us great hope for the future. He has set a model for a new type of true leadership inspired by the gospel, daily ready for martyrdom and imbued by a new spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty. The victory which he has won for us all, a conquest never to be undone, of love, light and liberty.

–Gerhard Leibholz (1901-1982), Bonhoeffer’s brother in law

Gracious God, the Beyond in the midst of our life, who gavest grace to thy servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer to know and teach the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, and to bear the cost of following him: Grant that we, strengthened by his teaching and example, may receive thy word and embrace its call with an undivided heart; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O God, who by the lowliness of thy Son hast raised a fallen world: Grant to thy faithful people perpetual gladness; and as thou hast delivered them from eternal death, so do thou make them partakers of everlasting joys; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race. They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen.

–Romans 9:1-5

With great sadness we have been witnessing a day of tragedy in a school environment, at Tasso da Silveira elementary school, in Rio de Janeiro.

It is time for us to discuss our security system, especially the security in our public schools. It was a beautiful day, which looked like a normal day, just one more day of school for so many young students of Tasso da Silveira elementary, in Rio de Janeiro.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury said this week that there was “no for-ever-and-a-day prohibition” on Anglican and Ordinariate congregations’ shar­ing buildings, but “pastoral sen­sitivities” meant that it was too early to happen yet.

Speaking after the fourth bilateral meeting of Anglican and Roman Ca­tholic diocesan bishops, which was held at St George’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, Southwark, on Monday, Dr Williams said: “I don’t think there’s any objection in principle [to sharing buildings], but if you have a congregation that’s just divided, it’s not ideal that they’re sharing the same church.”

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All ecclesiology is about our belonging together, and our belonging together in Christ. The great images of the Church in the New Testament ”” the people of God, the vine and the branches, the living temple, the Body of Christ ”” all point in their different ways to the fact that to share in the redeemed life of the new creation is not something anyone of us can do alone, either as an individual or as a group or province. To be in Christ is to be bound together in mutual responsibility and interdependence.

That mutual responsibility and interdependence is expressed through the structures of the Church which flow from our common baptism and our common participation in the Eucharist. We belong to each other and what one does affects all. The four marks or notes of the Church ”” unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity ”” are all outworkings of this “belonging together.” They are expressions of the “belonging togetherness” ”” the communion, the fellowship, the koinonia, of the Holy Spirit, or, to use an image from today’s world, the internet of the Holy Spirit. In a divided Church seeking unity we have learned to be sensitive to how we tell our history, and how we can go back behind statements and understandings coming from past battles and entrenched positions, to learn what we share in common. The ecumenical dialogues have produced remarkable convergences and agreements in the statements of the ARCIC dialogues and the recent report of the Anglican-Orthodox dialogue, The Church of the Triune God.

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The Republican budget released on Tuesday is a daring one in many ways. Above all, it would replace the current Medicare with a system of private health insurance plans subsidized by the government. Whether you like or loathe that idea, it would undeniably reduce Medicare’s long-term funding gap ”” which is by far the biggest source of looming federal deficits.

Yet there is at least one big way in which the plan isn’t daring at all. It asks for a whole lot of sacrifice from everyone under the age of 55 and little from everyone 55 and over. Representative Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who wrote the plan, calls the budget deficit an “existential threat” to the United States. Then he absolves more than one-third of all adults from responsibility in dealing with that threat.

This decision doesn’t make him unique in Washington. There is nearly a bipartisan consensus that any cuts to Medicare and Social Security should spare the baby boomers and the elderly. And, certainly, retirees or people on the verge of retirement shouldn’t have their benefits changed radically. But the consensus, like Mr. Ryan’s plan, goes too far.

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It may seem odd that Madonna, who is not Jewish, is the public face of Kabbalah. It was the Berg family that repackaged an esoteric body of Jewish thought”””the secret life of Judaism,” in Scholem’s words””into a universal self-help theosophy open to Jew and Gentile alike. In the process, the Centre stripped Kabbalah of much of its Jewishness. The website states it plainly: “Kabbalah is not a religion.” Yehuda Berg, though himself a rabbi, has said that he doesn’t consider himself Jewish, and in a cover blurb for his 2002 book, “The Power of Kabbalah,” Madonna underscores this point, writing that Kabbalah has “nothing to do with religious dogma.”

So what does the Kabbalah Centre have to do with classical Jewish mysticism? Not much, according to critics. The great Talmudic scholar Adin Steinsaltz has likened the connection to “the relationship between pornography and love.” Allan Nadler, a professor of Jewish Studies at Drew University, is even less charitable: “The Bergs hijacked an ancient, highly secretive Jewish tradition and popularized it as pseudo-mystical, New Age nonsense.”

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The line between cyberspace and the physical world is blurring with a new search technology being demonstrated by Autonomy, a British software publisher.

The firm is demonstrating a software-based machine-vision recognition system intended for smartphones and tablet computers that embeds images and videos directly on top of the image of a real object on the user’s display.

Today so-called augmented reality is already widely available on both iPhones and Android phones through software applications like Google Goggles. Hundreds of other apps overlay geographical information on smartphone displays.

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The March 30 meeting of the Church of Ireland Episcopal Electoral College for the United Diocese of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, meeting at Church House in Armagh was unable to appoint a new bishop for the small rural diocese.

Under the constitution of the Church of Ireland, the appointment of a new bishop rests with the House of Bishops. However, the appointment of a successor for Dr Richard Henderson, who stepped down as bishop last year to take up a parochial cure in Cumbria is uncertain.

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On its website this week, the Church of England posted a prayer (below) for Prince William and Catherine Middleton and other couples preparing to be married, as well as an online video to promote church weddings.
The prayer “can be used in private prayer, in groups or within public worship”, a Church House statement said. The prayer asks that God will “look in favour on William and Catherine and all who are made one in marriage . . . deepen their love and strengthen their wills to keep the promises they will make”.

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Despite the fact that the predominant use among converting Catholics is the language of the novus Ordo, what Shawn Tribe calls “hieratic” (roughly “priestly”) English does have its place in the Anglican patrimony””and let’s face it, we’re mostly talking here about the English of Thomas Cranmer, who although a heretic and apostate was nevertheless a master of the English language, and who formalised a style of liturgical English which is still unsurpassed: we recognise that every time we say the Our Father at Mass””in Cranmer’s translation (with one or two minor adjustments) because, frankly, nothing else was good enough.

But Cranmer wasn’t the only master of liturgical English: arguably greater (and himself a clear influence on Cranmer) was Miles Coverdale, translator of the Book of Common Prayer’s very beautiful psalter, and author (in his days as an Augustinian canon) of a majestic pre-Reformation English translation of the Roman Canon, which was authorised for the first time by Pope John Paul over 4 centuries later for use in traditional language parishes of the Anglican Use jurisdiction in the U.S. (a kind of forerunner of the Ordinariate).

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Jesus teaches that nature’s misfortunes are not the will of God, but the handiwork of the ruler of this world. Birth defects, accidents, and natural disasters arise from an innate disordering of creation that God is in the process of straightening out. In Mark 13:8, Jesus cites earthquakes as labor pains of age to come: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

This age to come will be when Christ returns and breaks the universe’s bondage to decay, or entropy, as he presides over the “renewal of all things” (Matthew 19:27). The whole universe will share the resurrection on this final Easter morning, when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” as Isaiah 11:9 reveals.

With a firm foundation of faith in Christ, we have nothing to fear from the earth’s labor pains. Labor pains hurt, but they bring the exhilarating joy of new life, whether in the form of a gurgling baby or a peaceful earth that no longer endures 4,000 earthquakes a day.

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Nato has refused to apologise for a “friendly fire” attack on rebel tanks in eastern Libya that killed at least four people.

Rear Adm Russ Harding said that, until Thursday’s incident, Nato had not been aware that rebel troops had started to use tanks.

“Our job is to protect civilians,” he told a news conference.

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Oil at $175 a barrel; copper at $12,000 a tonne and corn at $10 a bushel. As commodity prices rally, the world’s largest trading houses have been busy ”˜stress testing’ to be sure their finances can withstand a “super spike”.

The levels are not a forecast ”“ indeed, executives tell me they do not expect such hefty prices ”“ but do signal a “worse case scenario” for which oil, metals and food commodities traders need to prepare.

I sincerely hope not–read it all.

American composer Eric Whitacre is a rock star in choral circles. His music is performed by amateur and professional choirs alike, his chiseled good looks have earned him a modeling contract, and, Thursday night, he unveils his Virtual Choir 2.0 on YouTube. It features more than 2,000 singers from around the world, including this reporter.

I’ve been singing in real choirs since I was a kid, so I was intrigued to participate in a virtual one. I recently asked Whitacre how he came up with the concept.

“Well, it all started with this video ”” a young girl named Britlin Losee, who was 17 at the time, posted to YouTube a video of herself singing the soprano part to a piece of mine called ‘Sleep,’ ” Whitacre says.

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God of justice and truth, let not thy Church close its eyes to the plight of the poor and neglected, the homeless and destitute, the old and the sick, the lonely and those who have none to care for them. Give us that vision and compassion with which thou didst so richly endow William Augustus Muhlenberg and Anne Ayers, that we may labor tirelessly to heal those who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ, who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.