See what you make of it.

”˜This is not just a “theological formula”. If we left it out, we would have a Word of God that is separated from God; we would make God the prisoner of our thoughts or theologies. We would have a Word with which we could operate, a Word we could “use”, a Word we could judge. But it could not be the Word of God, the Word which operates with us, uses us, and judges us. Our work in the Church, therefore, can only be a service to this one life-giving Word of God. The clearest expression of this truth is the fact that there is no other way to preach than to preach an “expository sermon”, and even this is not a guarantee’.

—Dietrich Ritschl, A Theology of Proclamation (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1960), pp. 67-68

Christina Gustavsson says she loves school. But her teachers have had a tough time educating her.

In her freshman year at Kennett High School, 15-year-old Christina racked up five months’ worth of absences and never completed a full day of school. Sometimes, she had difficulty remembering assignments, completing homework or even waking up in time for school. Other times, she didn’t.

Christina has chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition whose symptoms have long confounded many medical professionals and now pose peculiar challenges for educators as more adolescents are diagnosed with it. In a time of tight budgets, public schools must consider how far to go to accommodate students with CFS and a range of so-called hidden disabilities that are difficult to observe, evaluate or understand.

Read it all.

From here:

AFTER GOD HAD carried us safe to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship, and led the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. And as we were thinking and consulting how to effect this great work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly gentleman and a lover of learning, there living among us) to give the one-half of his estate (it being in all about £700) toward the ing of a college, and all his library. After him, another gave £300; others after them cast in more; and the public hand of the state added the rest. The college was, by common consent, appointed to be at Cambridge (a place very pleasant and accommodate) and is called (according to the name of the first founder) Harvard College.
The edifice is very fair and comely within and without, having in it a spacious hall where they daily meet at commons, lectures, and exercises; and a large library with some books to it, the gifts of diverse of our friends, their chambers and studies also fitted for and possessed by the students, and all other rooms of office necessary and convenient with all needful offices thereto belonging. And by the side of the college, a fair grammar school, for the training up of young scholars and fitting of them for academical learning, that still as they are judged ripe they may be received into the college of this school. Master Corlet is the master who has very well approved himself for his abilities, dexterity, and painfulness in teaching and education of the youths under him. Over the college is Master Dunster placed as president, a learned, a conscionable, and industrious man, who has so trained up his pupils in the tongues and arts, and so seasoned them with the principles of divinity and Christianity, that we have to our great comfort (and in truth) beyond our hopes, beheld their progress in learning and godliness also. The former of these has appeared in their public declamations in Latin and Greek, and disputations logic and philosophy which they have been wonted (besides their ordinary exercises in the college hall) in the audience of the magistrates, ministers, and other scholars for the probation of their growth in learning, upon set days, constantly once every month to make and uphold. The latter has been manifested in sundry of them by the savory things of their spirits in their godly versation; insomuch that we are confident, if these early blossoms may be cherished and warmed with the influence of the friends of learning and lovers of this pious work, they will, by the help of God, come to happy maturity in a short time.Over the college are twelve overseers chosen by the General Court, six of them are of the magistrates, the other six of the ministers, who are to promote the best good of it and (having a power of influence into all persons in it) are to see that everyone be diligent and proficient in his proper place.

O God, by whose grace thy servant Hildegard, enkindled with the fire of thy love, became a burning and shining light in thy Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and may ever walk before thee as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever.

O Lord Christ, Son of the living God, who at the last assize wilt acknowledge all deeds of mercy to others as done unto thee: Grant, in this world of sin and pain and want, that we may never pass by the poor and helpless whose cry is thine own; for the honour of thy holy name.

This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.

–1 Corinthians 4:1-4

Bishop John Rodgers remembered John Stott as “monumental” in importance, especially as a leader for evangelical Anglicans worldwide. He also played a significant role in the founding of Trinity School for Ministry. It was John that put forth the Rt. Rev. Alf Stanway’s name for consideration as the first Dean and President of the school. He also accompanied the Rev. John Guest on a visit to the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, to present the vision of starting a “school for ministry” in his diocese. Finally, John Stott and J. I. Packer were both consulted in the development of Trinity’s Statement of Faith.

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Retirement plans and living standards for nearly half a million South Carolinians are in the hands of state politicians.

On the line are cost-of-living increases, the number of years public employees must work before they earn retirement pay and future contribution rates, all of which stand to change as the state’s top elected officials try to figure out a way to deal with the retirement system’s $17 billion funding mess.

Risky investment strategies and too-generous retirement benefits over the years coupled with the recession have been blamed by fiscal watchdogs as the reason the state’s pension plan has long-term stability problems.

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

Check it out.

You may find the audio there (today’s entry, about 4 minutes).

Do converts to the faith make better evangelists than “cradle Catholics”? Pope Benedict XVI seems to think so. Christians since childhood should “ask forgiveness,” the pope told a group of his former theological students recently, “because we bring so little of the light of [Christ’s] face to others, and emanate so feebly the certainty that he is, he is present and he is the great and complete reality that we are all awaiting.”

But are Catholics “by birth”””or any believers raised in a religious tradition””indeed less-convincing witnesses, or less motivated, than are converts? Do they have a greater responsibility to live up to the tenets of the faith since they have known Christ from their earliest years? And are they a bigger disappointment to the Mother Church””and the world””when they come up short?

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Hari Kondabolu was born in 1982 in the Little India neighborhood of Flushing, Queens, New York. His parents, both medical professionals, settled there when they first emigrated from Andhra Pradesh, India.

Pursuing the American Dream, the Kondabolu family moved to Floral Park, Queens, when Hari was 8 and his younger brother Ashok was 6. Ashok Kondabolu now performs as Dap, the hype man in the hip-hop group Das Racist. Hari and Ashok occasionally team up for The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Project, an evening of improvised comic cultural commentary. “It was not my parents’ dream to have their sons in the entertainment field,” says Kondabolu, “but they couldn’t be prouder. Our parents provided us that freedom.”

Ravi and Uma Kondabolu raised their sons to be proud of their Indian heritage, so it is not surprising that cultural identity is a prime factor in their respective arts.

Hari (pronounced HUH-ree) complains in his set that Microsoft Word spell check always tries to correct his name to “Hair.”

LOL. Read it all (page 36 ff. of the pdf).

A ban on saying prayers in the street, a practice by French Muslims unable to find space in mosques, has come into effect in the capital, Paris.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant has offered believers the use of a disused fire brigade barracks instead.

The phenomenon of street prayers, which see Muslims spreading mats on footpaths, became a political issue after far right protests.

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(Before you read the full article, guess the answer to this question: What percentage of public sector employees in Italy have lifetime tenure?).

With only 960 residents and a handful of roads, this tiny hilltop village in the arid, sulfurous hills of southern Sicily does not appear to have major traffic problems. But that does not prevent it from having one full-time traffic officer ”” and eight auxiliaries.

The auxiliaries, who earn a respectable 800 euros a month, or $1,100, to work 20 hours a week, are among about 64 Comitini residents employed by the town, the product of an entrenched jobs-for-votes system pervasive in Italian politics at all levels.

“Jobs like these have kept this city alive,” said Caterina Valenti, 41, an auxiliary in a neat blue uniform as she sat recently with two colleagues, all on duty, drinking coffee in the town’s bar on a hot afternoon. “You see, here we are at the bar, we support the economy this way.”

Read it all (including the answer to the question above).

The Dean of Leighlin Cathedral in the Diocese of Cashel & Ossory has become the first serving Church of Ireland clergyman to enter a same-sex civil partnership in the Republic of Ireland.

The public announcement of the Dean’s same-sex civil partnership and his Bishop’s apparent support for the move is likely to pitch the Church of Ireland into the same battle that has torn apart the Episcopal Church and has the potential to divide the Irish church, sources tell CEN.

In an interview with BBC Ulster, the Very Rev Tom Gordon stated he and his partner held the ceremony in a registry office in July. Unlike the Church of England, which requires clergy who have entered same-sex civil partnerships to remain celibate, the Church of Ireland has not taken a position on the matter.

Read it all.

You can see all the candidates here. The names are:

The Rev. Gregory O. Brewer
Rector, Episcopal Parish of Calvary-St. George’s
New York, New York

The Very Rev. Anthony P. Clark
Dean, Cathedral Church of St. Luke
Orlando, Florida

The Rev. R. Jonathan. Davis
Vicar, Episcopal Church of the Incarnation
Director, Canterbury Retreat and Conference Center
Oviedo, Florida
The Rev. R. Jonathan. Davis
Vicar, Episcopal Church of the Incarnation
Director, Canterbury Retreat and Conference Center
Oviedo, Florida

The Very Rev. Charles L. Holt
Rector, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
Lake Mary, Florida

The Rev. Timothy C. Nunez
Rector, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
Belleview, Florida

The Rev. Mary A. Rosendahl
Rector, Episcopal Church of the Nativity
Port St. Lucie, Florida

The Rev. James A. Sorvillo, Sr.
Rector, Episcopal Church of the Ascension
Orlando, Florida

You can also find the search process homepage over there.

To read between the lines here: the Treasurer of the Church, like all of the staff at 815, works for the Presiding Bishop, not for the Executive Council. When she tells him to “find money for litigation”, his job is not to ask “Where?”, but rather: “How much do you need?” And in exchange for such due obedience, she protects him from all incursions into his territory by the likes of the Executive Council — who only imagine that they run the show when General Convention is not in session.

No, this is the Presiding Bishop’s show — lock, stock, and barrel. If the Church needs money to fund her agenda, then it will jolly well have to supply it, without any interference from the Executive Council. The Church is extraordinarily wealthy, with over $140 million in unrestricted securities and investments, the gifts of innumerable donors over the centuries. And in recent years it has not been shy about borrowing against the endowment to provide it with working capital for the Presiding Bishop’s ongoing litigation agenda.

Thus it should now come as no surprise to learn that, in a face-off between the Committee’s alternatives and those explored by the Treasurer and his investment manager, the latter prevailed. The headquarters building did not have to be mortgaged; the Treasurer simply ponied up more of the endowment as collateral for two new lines of credit.

Read it all (and please follow the links).

An unsuspecting Oregon couple’s ascendance to YouTube stardom happened by accident….

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An internet security company has demonstrated a new weapon against deeply rooted malware that takes control of PCs and turns them into zombies.

McAfee said it has activated built-in security features and added software to Intel microprocessors, known as chips, to stop cyber criminals from infecting PCs via advance persistent threats, rootkits and zero-day attacks. Infected PCs can be directed to steal private identities, financial data and to send out spam.

If the new technology catches on, the pain of ensuring anti-virus software is up to date and running on a PC could become a thing of the past. It may even pave the way for similar hardware-based technology to be included in other internet-ready devices such as cars, TVs and teller machines.

Read it all.

Readers of the Independent were in for a surprise this… [week on Thursday]: a lengthy apology from that newspaper’s star columnist Johann Hari, admitting to plagiarism and the online harrassment of rival journalists (via pseudonymous assaults on their Wikipedia entries), and announcing that he was off to take a course of journalism training at his own expense.

Allegations of quote-stealing and factual embellishment by Mr Hari have been swirling for months, at first in the blogosphere and then in the mainstream media. I have not posted about the whole sorry saga to date because””at the end of the day””a hack is only a hack, and the press already spends too much time talking and thinking about itself.

But something about the weasel wording of Mr Hari’s apology today sticks in the craw.

Read it all.

…what I propose at our Mass this Sunday morning, on this tenth anniversary of that day, is that as a matter of fact the side of light actually triumphed, as temptations to despair, fearful panic, revenge, and dread gave way to such things as rescue, recovery, rebuilding, outreach, and resilience. The side of the angels, not of the demons, conquered. Good Friday became Easter Sunday. And once again God has the last word.

Perhaps what gives us most consolation would be our young people, our children. Last night, Cardinal Egan, Monsignor Ritchie, and I were in this Cathedral for the commemoration of the New York Fire Department. It was standing room only. There we heard two young people, Ashley and Patrick, recall with immense gratitude and pride their fathers, firefighters who perished that day. There I quoted Commissioner Cassano, who told us that he is amazed at the number of children of those firefighters who perished that dreadful day who now want to be firefighters and rescue workers. And there I met Anthony Palumbo, whose father Frank was a firefighter who died that day, and who is now preparing for the priesthood. This morning I am honored to welcome our servers at Mass, Conor, Aidan, Kieran, and Declan, whose father, Vincent Halloran, was a firefighter who perished that day. Your Eminence, I understand that you celebrated his funeral here at Saint Patrick’s. They are here with their mother, Marie, and we honor them and their beloved father, Vincent. What consolation you give us. They are living examples that God alone has the last word.

Read it all.

O God, who by the preaching of thy blessed servant and bishop Ninian didst cause the light of the Gospel to shine in the land of Britain: Grant, we beseech thee, that, having his life and labors in remembrance, we may show forth our thankfulness by following the example of his zeal and patience; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Heavenly Father, the Father of all wisdom, understanding, and true strength: We beseech thee look mercifully upon thy servants, and send thy Holy Spirit into their hearts, that when they must join to fight in the field for the glory of thy holy name, then they, strengthened with the defence of thy right hand, may manfully stand in the confession of thy faith, and continue in the same unto their lives’ end; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

–Nicholas Ridley

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are. Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.”

–1 Corinthians 3:16-20

Police in London have arrested a 31-year-old man in connection with allegations of unauthorised trading which has cost Swiss banking group UBS an estimated $2bn (£1.3bn).

Kweku Adoboli, believed to work in the European equities division, was detained in the early hours of Thursday and remains in custody.

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Litigation over ownership of St. Stephens Church in Heathsville and eight other churches that formerly housed Episcopal congregations entered a new phase when the parties filed their post-trial briefs in August.

The briefs followed a 22-day trial at which 67 witnesses appeared and “thousands of exhibits” were filed, according to the brief for the defendant churches all of which have disassociated themselves from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and joined the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). According to the schedule set up by the Circuit Court of Fairfax where the case over ownership of the nine churches is being tried, the parties may respond to each other’s briefs by Sept. 23 and after that the court may hear oral argument and decide the cases.

Read it all.

It sounds like a good plan, but here’s the real risk: even after this restructuring, Greece ends up defaulting on those new EFSF-backed bonds. Remember, this is a solvency problem not a liquidity issue.

So the EFSF takes a loss, and maybe even its partner, the IMF. The debt is removed from bank balance sheets and put directly on the taxpayers of Europe and, via Washington’s 17% stake in IMF loans, Americans.

Read it all.

When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.

“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.

The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”

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Home buyers such as Bob and Janet Zych have fueled the U.S. housing market for decades.

They have excellent credit with scores that top 800, life-long careers and investment portfolios that have set them up for a comfortable retirement, they say.

But this year, “after faxing a ream of paper” about their finances, they got so fed up applying for a home loan that they simply wrote a check for their new $85,000 vacation condo in Phoenix.

Trying to get a loan “was just a nightmare,” says Bob Zych, 65, a manager for Mohawk Industries in Omaha.

Read it all.