My son, Marine Lance Cpl. Justin Wilson, was killed in Afghanistan just over a year ago.So the death of Osama bin Laden is personal and bittersweet.Just knowing that he cannot hurt another soul brings me peace, but at the same time, I can’t help being sad that so many good people had to die to rid the world of this monster.

It doesn’t bring my son back, but it is a landmark event in the battle against terrorism to which he committed his life and for which he gave his life. Justin believed we were winning this war, but the progress he saw was harder to see across the distance of an ocean.The death of bin Laden is progress that the entire world recognizes.

Osama bin Laden played a role in shaping Justin’s patriotism.He was 15 on Sept. 11, 2001, and we lived on Long Island, N.Y., then. The events of Sept. 11 inspired Justin’s commitment to serve his country. He was part of the post-9/11 generation who believed that they could serve their country best by joining the military and defending the nation against foreign terrorists.Some, like Justin, have made the ultimate commitment, risking and losing their lives in the battle to defeat terrorism.I have heard from some of Justin’s fellow Marines and their families this week.Like me, they feel that bin Laden’s death reminds the world that their dedication and sacrifice in this long fight against terrorism is worthwhile.

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At an age when his parents won’t let him go to the mall alone and in an era when he would never open up to a stranger, [Scott] Fitzsimones, who lives in Phoenix, already has a growing dossier accumulating on the Web. And while Congress has passed laws to protect the youngest of Internet users from sharing much information about themselves, once those children become teens, the same privacy rules no longer apply.

“It’s the Wild West for teens when it comes to privacy online,” said Kathryn Montgomery, a privacy advocate and communications professor at American University.

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Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

Almighty God, who art worshipped by the heavenly host with hymns that are never silent and thanksgivings that never cease: Fill our mouths with thy praise that we may worthily magnify thy holy name for all the wonderful blessings of thy love, and chiefly in this season day for the resurrection of thy Son; and grant us, with all those that fear thee and keep thy commandments, to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost may praise from all the world be given, now and for evermore.

Make me to know thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me, for thou art the God of my salvation; for thee I wait all the day long.

—Psalm 25:4-5

(ACNS) The Archbishop, who is a participant at the World Economic Forum in Africa, has written to his faithful that the issue of climatic change must be regarded as a moral imperative for all and hopes that others at WEF will take heed of his call. His full statement follows:

In one sense, I imagine I might be ”˜preaching to the choir’ about climate change, as we sometimes say in the church. But even if we agree on its reality and the dangers which it poses for our planet and our people, we need to make our witness bolder and take more courageous steps to bring others to our state of awareness and to work for real change.

We in the faith communities know that climate change will be hugely damaging to both people and our planet. We know too that it is not only an environmental, economic and social issue but essentially a moral issue. It must therefore be solved through moral principles….

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Imagine an institution that requires its leaders to attend not only college, but graduate school. Imagine that the graduate school in question is constitutionally forbidden from receiving any form of government aid, that it typically requires three years of full-time schooling for the diploma, that the nature of the schooling bears almost no resemblance to the job in question, and that the pay for graduates is far lower than other professions. You have just imagined the relationship between the Christian Church and her seminaries.

Mainline churches are nearly universal in their requirement that their Priests/Pastors/Ministers/Reverends be seminary graduates, and since seminary is a graduate school, this means the students must first be successful undergraduates. So take all of the arguments about a college bubble and add at least three years of tuition cost and forgone income.

But you’re not quite done: My friend Father Jay Geisler counsels seminary students. He tells me that in his experience roughly half of matriculated students do not graduate within three years. In addition, he tells me that the living costs tend to be higher for seminary students than for undergrads because undergrads are almost never married with children, but seminary students often are. As such, dorm room type accommodations for grads will not do….

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Heavenly Father and gracious Lord, we thank thee for our mothers and all that they do for us. Help us to repay their love by being kind and cheerful in our homes, helping our mothers and the other members of our families; for Jesus Christ’s sake.

Manchester United defeated Chelsea 2-1 at Old Trafford on Sunday, virtually clinching the Premier League title. United would have to lose its last two games, with Chelsea winning its final two””a combined scenario which is extremely improbable. It would be United’s 19th championship, putting the club one ahead of Liverpool as the most-successful domestic side in the English game.

…it was somehow fitting that the four men responsible for United’s goals were those who proved crucial to the club this season. Park’s playing time had been limited through injury and participation in the Asian Cup””he was out from late December to early April””but it was the hard-running Korean who scored the winner against Arsenal at Old Trafford, sending United to the top of the table. Vidic, the rugged defensive colossus, played more Premier League minutes than anyone else and gave an injury-plagued back four some much-needed stability. Hernandez, the newly arrived Mexican striker, went from project to super-sub to stalwart, chipping in 13 league goals””many of them late, many of them decisive.

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Because the Roman Catholic Church was a driving force behind the development of a common English translation of basic prayers used by many Christian churches for 40 years, more recent Vatican rules for translating Mass prayers “came as a bombshell,” said an Anglican liturgist.

“I do not contest for a moment the prerogative of churches to change their liturgical texts,” said the Rev. David Holeton, a professor at Charles University in Prague.

But he said other Christians were “both stunned and dismayed” when the Vatican abandoned the English texts of prayers Catholics had developed with them since the Second Vatican Council and when the Vatican discouraged Catholics from consulting ecumenically on the new translations.

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A military crackdown on Syria’s seven-week uprising broadened Sunday, with reinforcements sent to two cities under siege and more forces deployed in a town in a restive region in the south of the country, activists and human rights groups said. Fourteen were killed in Homs, the groups said, and hundreds reported arrested.

The crackdown ”” from the Mediterranean coast to the poor steppe of southern Syria ”” seemed to mark a decisive turn in an uprising that has posed the gravest challenge to the 11-year rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Even though government officials have continued to hint at reforms, and even gingerly reached out to some dissidents last week, the crackdown seemed to signal the government’s intent to end the uprising by force.

At least 30 tanks were said to be inside Baniyas, one of Syria’s most restive locales, where the military entered Saturday. Activists and human rights groups said they had almost no information about the coastal town of 50,000, but one activist said at least six people were killed and 250 arrested since the operation began.

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If Christ turned water into wine, a watery journey has helped turn one of Christ’s churches into a wine store.

On May 5, a converted ferry laboured along the treacherous Bay of Fundy and up the Avon River carrying 30-tonne, 19th-century St. Matthew’s Anglican Church from its original site in Walton, N.S., to Newport Landing in the Annapolis Valley.

“St. Matthews had a journey lasting just over 24 hours riding tides that fell and rose over 43 feet,” says Stewart Creaser, the vintner who, with his wife, Lorraine Vassalo, purchased the church last year. St. Matthew’s had to wait out the winter by the bay before it was safe to move it. From the landing, the pale blue wooden house of worship, begun in 1837 and opened in 1844, will travel this week by flatbed truck about a kilometre down the road to its new home at the Avondale Sky Winery.

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In a scene you don’t see every day at an Episcopal church, 30 Muslims knelt in prayer behind the altar at St. Mark’s Cathedral on Saturday, with a Christian cross as backdrop.

It was a break in “Confronting Islamophobia,” a conference that dissected false images of and prejudice against Muslims, but also heard their critics stereotyped and labeled.

The Yin and Yang were represented in two keynote speakers at the conference, sponsored by about 40 Muslim, Christian and pro-Palestinian groups, even by Jewish Voice for Peace.

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I see her doing something simple, paying bills,
or leafing through a magazine or book,
and wish that I could say, and she could hear,

that now I start to understand her love
for all of us, the fullness of it.

It burns there in the past, beyond my reach,
a modest lamp.

—David Young (1936- )

A battle over scripture has become a war over bricks and mortar at St. Aidan’s Anglican Church.

The Diocese of Huron is taking its former parishioners at the Windsor church to court to evict them from the property at the corner of Wyandotte Street East and Westminster Boulevard.

Monday is the first day of trial in a dispute that dates back to 2008 when the majority of St. Aidan’s members voted to break away from the Anglican Church of Canada and join the more conservative Anglican Network in Canada.

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Ninety-three percent of Americans say they approve of the action that killed bin Laden. This is similar to the 90% of Americans who in an Oct. 7, 2001, poll approved of the U.S. taking military action against Afghanistan. These approval levels are higher than the immediate reaction to the launching of either the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 or the Iraq war in 2003, for which approval was in the mid- to high 70% range.

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Dogs have been fighting alongside U.S. soldiers for more than 100 years, seeing combat in the Civil War and World War I. But their service was informal; only in 1942 were canines officially inducted into the U.S. Army. Today, they’re a central part of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan — as of early 2010 the U.S. Army had 2,800 active-duty dogs deployed (the largest canine contingent in the world). And these numbers will continue to grow as these dogs become an ever-more-vital military asset.

So it should come as no surprise that among the 79 commandos involved in Operation Neptune Spear that resulted in Osama bin Laden’s killing, there was one dog — the elite of the four-legged variety. And though the dog in question remains an enigma — another mysterious detail of the still-unfolding narrative of that historic mission — there should be little reason to speculate about why there was a dog involved: Man’s best friend is a pretty fearsome warrior.

Simply amazing stuff from Foreign Policy Magazine and yes, read it all.

Who really won – America or bin Laden? The answer is as obvious as it is painful: He did.

Bin Laden’s goal was to trigger a clash of civilizations. He sought to pit radical Islam against the West, becoming a galvanizing force for Muslim militants everywhere. He gave new life to the Islamist project of imposing a global caliphate based on Shariah law. Revolutionary Islamism has tens of millions of followers, spreading like locusts across the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Europe. Bin Laden may be dead, but his macabre ghost lives on.

The former Saudi millionaire (and playboy) cut his Islamist teeth in Afghanistan during the 1980s. He was deeply impressed by the Afghan Mujahedeen – Muslim holy warriors who eventually defeated the mighty Soviet army. Having humiliated one superpower, he set his sights on the more powerful one: America.

Bin Laden’s strategic ambition was to suck the United States into prolonged guerrilla wars. Being a man of the East, he understood that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Britain, czarist Russia, the Soviet Union – their armies were broken by Afghanistan’s harsh terrain and fierce tribes. His aim was to bankrupt America, slowly bleeding us as we fought one counterinsurgency operation after another. In short, he set a trap – and we rushed headlong into it.

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O Blessed Lord, who didst promise thy disciples that through thy Easter victory their sorrow should be turned to joy, and their joy no man should take from them: Grant us, we pray thee, so to know thee in the power of thy resurrection, that we may be partakers of that joy which is unspeakable and full of glory; for thy holy name’s sake.

–Frank Colquhoun (1909-1997)

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go.”

–John 21:15-18

Read it all–rah.

William Mark Rust (January 18, 1960 – May 4, 2011)

He lived a selfless life of love, service and kindness to everyone he met.
I will miss my best friend until we see each other again in Glory.
He is with his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and for that I cannot grieve.
We will celebrate his life and legacy at his Memorial Service.

May 30 would have been our 24 year Wedding Anniversary.

He lived his life to the fullest in selfless dedication to others. I am so very proud to have been his wife and the mother of our wonderful children.

Thanks to all our friends for all of your love and support!
God Bless all of you!

From here:

William Mark Rust SUMMERVILLE – Entered into eternal rest on the evening of May 4, 2011, William Mark Rust (Bill), husband of Laura Heiss Rust. Residence, Summerville, South Carolina. The relatives and friends of Mr. and Mrs. William M. Rust are invited to attend his memorial service Tuesday, May 10, 2011, at Cathedral of Praise at 2:30 p.m. Bill was born in Freeport, New York on January 18, 1960, to Dr. Wilbur C. Rust and Marian Jeppson Charm. He was an Information Systems Manager with the Medical University of South Carolina, a member of Project Management Team, Project Manager Development Institute, and an Honorary Tar Heel. He was also a member of Cathedral of Praise. Surviving are his wife, Laura Rust of Summerville; his parents, Dr. Wilbur Rust of Jacksonville, FL and Marian Charm of Mandarin, FL; three sons, William Conner Rust, David Mark Rust, John Branton Rust all of Summerville; a daughter, Kathryn Laura Rust of Summerville; two sisters, Janet Margerison of Myakka City, FL and Kathryn Biggs of Mandarin, FL. Memorials may be made in memory of William Rust to Cathedral Academy, P.O. Box 41129, Charleston, SC 29423.

Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification: Grant us so perfectly, and without all doubt, to believe in his resurrection, that our faith in thy sight may never be reproved; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Then Nebuchadnez’zar was full of fury, and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed’nego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was wont to be heated. And he ordered certain mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed’nego, and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their mantles, their tunics, their hats, and their other garments, and they were cast into the burning fiery furnace. Because the king’s order was strict and the furnace very hot, the flame of the fire slew those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed’nego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed’nego, fell bound into the burning fiery furnace. Then King Nebuchadnez’zar was astonished and rose up in haste. He said to his counselors, “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” They answered the king, “True, O king.” He answered, “But I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.”

–Daniel 3:19-25

While better than expected, Friday’s employment numbers showed that the national economy still had a long way to go to fully recover. Though down from its peak of 10.1 percent in late 2009, April’s unemployment rate reflects only those Americans who are still actively looking for work.

As such, economists said the April jobs report was part of a larger picture of the economy that remained mixed. The rise in the unemployment rate reflects the survey of households, which indicated a 190,000 decline in employment in April. And recent data on initial jobless claims and other employment indicators have been weak.

“Millions of people are unemployed and many have left the labor market and given up,” Mr. Shapiro said. “Against that we are maybe creating 244,000 jobs. That is all well and good but it just shows you how much further we have to go to make a dent into what has happened in the labor market.”

“It gets the basic debate out there about the economy,” he added. “Is all we have seen the product of government stimulus, and are all the problems coming back or not?”

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Is the Episcopal Church any longer capable of significant change for the sake of reclaiming an authentic life as a church of Jesus Christ, as a church having “a name of being alive? To be a church alive, not an institution or organization primarily concerned about preserving itself, the notion of an empowered laity…..

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The Episcopal Church is changing.

”¢ 87% of TEC is “non-hispanic white”
Ӣ 61% of those who attend church are women
Ӣ 33% of Episcopalians have college degrees,
32% have graduate degrees
Ӣ 30% earn $100,000 per year or more

Contrary to what many people believe, everyone in our church is not old. The fact is:

Ӣ 60% of Episcopalians are 49 or younger. Only 13% are 65+.
Kirk Hadaway, research specialist for the Episcopal Church tells
me that just 10 years ago the Episcopal Church had 2.3 million
members. In 2009 it was 2.0 million.
Ӣ Since 1999 our membership has declined by 300,000.

Although the number of ordained Episcopal clergy has increased during the past decade, the number serving congregations dropped by 800, from 6,062 to 5,262.

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Supporters marked the 60th annual National Day of Prayer on Thursday (May 5), just weeks after a federal appeals court dismissed a suit that challenged the law creating the day as unconstitutional.

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When the wartime epic “There Be Dragons” opens in theaters today, it will cap a remarkable evolution in the popular representation of Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic society whose founder, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, is the hero of the new film.

Set during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, when Escrivá was a young man (he died in 1975 and was canonized Saint Josemaría in 2002), “There Be Dragons” was conceived by Roland Joffé, the Oscar-nominated English director and self-described “wobbly agnostic,” who is hardly one to carry water for a group like Opus Dei. But Mr. Joffé offers a human and sympathetic portrait of Escrivá and, by extension, of Opus Dei.

That is quite a change from the sinister portrayal of Opus Dei in the 2006 film adaptation of Dan Brown’s thriller, “The Da Vinci Code,” which included a murderous albino monk in its cast of caricatures. Yet the cinematic shift is more than an artistic choice. At a deeper level it symbolizes a genuine evolution for Opus Dei, an often insular movement that many in the church once considered the bogeyman of the right.

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