24 Hours on an Aircraft Carrier from The Seventh Movement on Vimeo.

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First it was Athens. Then Rome. Could Paris be next?

While Italy has replaced Greece as the focus of anxiety amid Europe’s worsening debt crisis, investors are increasingly concerned about the outlook for France, whose banks are among the world’s biggest and are closely linked with their counterparts in the United States.

One crucial gauge of investor sentiment, the difference between what France pays to borrow versus what Germany pays, has doubled since the beginning of October, and last week reached its widest point since the formation of the euro currency zone in 1999. Meanwhile, speculation that France could soon lose the sterling triple-A rating on its sovereign debt intensified after Standard & Poor’s mistakenly told clients on Thursday that it was downgrading France’s debt.

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The global church (and Anglicans) lost a titan not long ago, when John R. W. Stott (1921-2011) passed from this world to the next. One is only now getting a sense of the stone God dropped into the pond of history through this remarkable man, as ever more ripples move through the waters of those who lives and ministries he touched.

John Stott was above all a preacher, and as such he modeled a craft that is increasingly weak in the West.

My mother taught English, and we had a life long conversation about writer-based versus reader-based prose. Good articles and books do the work for the reader, she insisted–they reach out and draw you in.

Dr. Stott was a listener-based preacher. I do not mean by this that he allowed his potential audience to set the topic; nothing could be further from the truth. He was someone who sought to expound Holy Scripture throughout his life.

But he did it though making an argument that one who heard him could follow. As you listened you had the sense that John had wrestled mightily with the text so that you would not need to. More than one person has quipped that John Stott made St. Paul more understandable than Paul himself did!

I will always remember him speaking on the Acts of the Apostles chapter 17 about the mission to Thessalonica. He observed with great care the verbs used in the passage to describe what Paul was trying to do””argue, explain, prove. Then he noted with real force that in response some were “persuaded” by what had been presented. How many times, he asked, do we hear that response to contemporary sermons?

I pray that we might learn to follow in the footsteps of this persuasive preacher. Let us wrestle hard with the text, but let us also present a coherent narrative which is easy to follow. So easy to follow, in fact, that many who did not even wish to hear it will find themselves grabbed and drawn in.

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina and Convenor of this blog

Read it all and consider becoming a regular recipient. Better still suggest it as a possible resource to your family and friends.

I do not often do this but regular blog readers know there is a lot going on in the diocese and I mean it when I say it is a serious request–KSH

You may find information about it here and you can find the schedule there.

Eternal God, who didst bless thy servant Samuel Seabury with the gift of perseverance to renew the Anglican inheritance in North America; Grant that, joined together in unity with our bishops and nourished by thy holy Sacraments, we may proclaim the Gospel of redemption with apostolic zeal; through Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Grant us, O Lord, the faith that rests not on signs and wonders but on thy love and faithfulness; that obedient to thy word and trusting in thy promises, we may know thy peace and healing power, both in our hearts and in our homes; for the honour of thy holy name.

–Frank Colquhoun (1909-1997)

And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Eli’jah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Eli’jah.” He was still speaking, when lo, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Rise, and have no fear.” And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.

–Matthew 17:1-8

What was your life like before the Spiritualist Church became a part of it? How did your life up to then shape your religious convictions?

I am a fourth-generation Santa Barbaran, so I have lived in this community my whole life. I lead a fairly simple existence. I was a self-employed craftsman for many, many years.

My mother and grandmother were the most influential figures in my spiritual life. They didn’t attend any formal churches, but they did hold very strong spiritual beliefs, especially pertaining to the afterlife and the belief that our souls cycle through numerous lives. They would also consult mediums on occasion.

Exposure to these doctrines was essential to my spiritual molding. When I finally came across the Church of the Comforter and saw how it very much complemented my already-existing convictions, welcoming the church into my life seemed so natural.

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Mr [Mario] Monti’s candidature was announced after President Giorgio Napolitano spent the day in 17 meetings with senior politicians.

Speaking to reporters shortly afterwards, Mr Monti said Italy should be an “element of strength and not weakness” within the EU.

“We will aim at solving the financial situation, resume the path of growth. [We want to build] a future of dignity and hope for our children.”

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A euro-zone central banker confesses that he has lately been thinking about historical catastrophes such as the first world war and wondering how the world blundered into them. “From the middle of a crisis”, he says ominously, “you can see how easy it is to make mistakes.”

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was supposed to banish the competitive devaluations that threatened the single market in the early 1990s. It promised to bind a unified Germany into the EU and pave the way for some sort of political union in Europe. Today that dream has not vanished altogether, but the single market is under threat once more. Europe’s nations are at loggerheads, Germany is in a state of outrage, and the link between the euro and the nation state is more fraught than ever. EMU truly is, writes David Marsh, author of a history of the euro, “Europe’s Melancholy Union”.

“The 2008 crisis shows that the dominant economies were not as dominant as they thought,” says Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French former head of the IMF. “If Europe fails, it will suffer from low growth, economic domination and cultural domination.” Can Europe turn back from the abyss? Only if the core countries will support the rest as they submit themselves to radical political, social and economic reform. Nobody should be under any illusions about how difficult that will be.

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“We’ve entered a make-or-break scenario,” said Thomas Klau, a German who heads the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The present situation with Italy now is sustainable for days, perhaps weeks, but not months. This new chapter either writes the endgame of the euro zone, or it precedes a much bigger leap into political and economic integration than all those made so far.”

With each bout of uncertainty, speculative attacks come closer to the core of the European Union. Greece teeters, Italy wobbles and France begins to tremble. The precariousness of the situation was on full view Thursday when a leading ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, mistakenly suggested on its Web site that it had downgraded France’s prized AAA rating, prompting a sell-off in French government bonds….

And it may get worse, with a recession looming. Unless, of course, the crisis has concentrated minds sufficiently, especially in Berlin. One of the first and most effective ways to combat the crisis and the potential downturn, experts say, would be to enable the European Central Bank, or E.C.B., to act as a lender of last resort, or to at least let it print some more money, to try a little inflation as a recipe for growth and debt reduction.

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The lessons of Incognito, The Social Animal, and other popular books drawing on new research on the brain should make us think more highly of the church as the body of Christ, an organism of which we are members. We should think of our spiritual pursuits not as solitary pilgrimages but as an immersion into a wide river. Spiritual disciplines aren’t just enforced time with God, they’re rewiring the circuitry of our brains, forming and shaping disciples. The findings of Eagleman and other researchers call into question evangelicals’ emphasis on a correct worldview as the defining trait of a faithful Christian. How we cognitively rationalize our beliefs is of smaller consequence; those beliefs are shaped more than we think by our passions and desires, our behaviors and habits, which are in turn formed by our families and cultures, genes and neural pathways.

The lesson is not that we cannot help being who we are. The lesson of recent neuroscience is that who we are is much more than what we think. We are not separable from our bodies. The disciple swims in a river pushed by the saints of earlier eras, the biology of our families, and the culture they developed. We swim between banks, pulled by the habits we form, the disciplines we enact, the community we inhabit.

This view of humanity has little in common with the Enlightenment conception of man, the Romantic’s isolated individual, or the evangelist’s decision-maker who at a specific moment chooses for Christ. Instead it sounds like the Old Testament’s covenant community, formed by the ritual of the law into a chosen people, and through whom salvation comes to the world.

–Rob Moll in a review of David Eagleman’s Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain (Pantheon, 2011) in Books and Culture, November/December 2011 edition, p.19

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Chaplain Steven Rindahl served 15 months in Iraq. Now he’s the chaplain at the Fort Jackson hospital in South Carolina, which is also the headquarters of the Army’s Chaplain school. There are 2900 full and part-time chaplains, and many have served at least one tour of duty in a combat zone, and, like Chaplain Rindahl, been haunted by the experience.

CHAPLAIN RINDAHL: We have 17 of our soldiers killed and one of our contracted interpreters, and I did not keep count of how many traumatic amputations and other wounds that caused our people to be evacuated from theater.

SEVERSON: It was his fellow chaplains who took him aside and told him that he was suffering from what has become known as “compassion fatigue.”

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The percentage of American adults who get their health insurance from an employer continues to decline, falling to 44.5% in the third quarter of this year. This percentage has been steadily declining since Gallup and Healthways started tracking Americans’ health insurance sources in 2008.

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The old adage that people should refrain from talking about religion and politics in public has long been thrown out the window.

But questions about the direction that this conversation is going remain unanswered. Voters are trying to figure out how much religion they want in a candidate and are also concerned about the potential impact this religion could have if the candidate is elected.

Two-thirds of Americans think it is important for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs and one in five would prefer if these beliefs were similar to their own, according to a survey released Nov. 8.

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Since work brings man to experience his role as a participant in God’s creative plan, a lack of work — or precarious employment situations — can lead to identity crises, says Benedict XVI.

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Christians should be convicted by Stott’s Kingdom vision and zeal for God’s Kingdom.

“Everything I have read, known, and by all accounts, John Stott’s motives were about as pure as a human being’s motives can be,” asserted Keller. “He was not an ambitious man for his own glory. He did not want power. It was obvious he did not want status. He did not want wealth, he gave it away….”

“Here is my point. Most of the rest of us would be very happy being told you are the best. You are the best preacher, you’re the best of this or that. But he didn’t care about that. He wanted to change the world for Christ,” Keller explained. “I looked at his motives, I looked at his labors, how he spent himself, and how he gave himself. Why wasn’t he ever satisfied? It really was not worldly ambition. He really wanted to really change the world for Christ. We should be convicted by that.”

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[The plenty with which we are surrounded] today is tinged with bewilderment. Drug abuse and violence are rife. Mental illness seems to have become more common, not simply better recognised, over the last generation or so. Rates of self-harm among teenage girls are also high and seem to be increasing. Personal debt has hit a record high.

So what has gone wrong? What has caused the loss of paradise? David Cameron said two years ago: “Research by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in The Spirit Level, has shown that among the richest countries, it’s the more unequal ones that do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator.”

The Prime Minister was right to draw attention to this book. Its essential message, backed up by sound social science research, is that inequality damages community life and the relationships that hold us together. It shows that many social problems are more common in societies with larger income differences. Sadly, Britain is among the more unequal of the rich countries.

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…for our servicemen and women who go and take these massive mortal risks in distant places for people we might regard as strangers, that is one of the most effective tools there could be of building friendship. We show we are willing to take risks, even for those we don’t know, so that they may become friends, so that there may be harmony. And that requires an enormous and unusual level of commitment. Commitment to a vision of a world that might be, and is not yet. A world where it’s possible for every stranger to become a friend. It requires a deep vision of what human beings may become, and are not yet.

For the Christian, that vision is rooted in what we heard in the rest of the Gospel reading. We believe in a God who took the most extraordinary risk ”“ to make us his friends. A God who in life and death served those who wanted to be his enemies, so that he might build community with them. A God who came to us, strangers to his love and his peace, and who offered his life so that there might be peace; lasting peace, universal community.

That inspiration, that vision, the humanity that might be and the world that might be, that continues to be part of what the Christian faith offers to the world. Because what the Christian faith offers to the whole human world is a rationale and a motive for this strange business of taking risks for people we don’t know, in contexts we barely understand, simply because we believe it’s possible that strangers can become neighbours, and that neighbours can live in harmony.

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The Archbishops of Canterbury and York question the rationale for a wholly or mainly elected House of Lords in their submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Government’s Draft Bill and White Paper (the submission can be read on the CofE website).

Whilst welcoming the Draft Bill’s proposals to provide continued places for bishops of the established Church in a partly appointed House, the Archbishops ask that the appointments process also have regard to increasing the presence of leaders of other denominations and faiths.

The Draft Bill and White Paper proposes a House of Lords of 300 members, with either 80% or 100% elected by proportional representation. If the reformed House were to retain an appointed element, there would be places for Church of England bishops, though reduced to 12 from their current 26. Bishops would not be allowed to remain in a 100% elected House under the Government’s plans.

The Archbishops argue in their submission that the test of reform is whether it enables Parliament as a whole to serve the people better.

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Business Secretary Vince Cable has said he sympathises with the feelings of protesters outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

He told BBC’s Politics Show that the anti-capitalist demo reflected feelings about those who had prospered in the economic crisis, as many more suffered.

Mr Cable added that legislation could be introduced to curb executive pay.

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O God, the Lord and leader of the hosts of the blessed: Instruct us in the spiritual warfare; arm us against all foes visible and invisible; subdue unto us our own rebellious affections; and give us daily victory in the following of him who vanquished sin and death, and now goeth forth with us conquering and to conquer, even thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ.

And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations. “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

–Luke 16:9-13

No one should have to stay in an oppressive, violent or mutually corrosive relationship to death. Maureen Waller, in her book The English Marriage, describes the suffering, trapped wives of all classes who could not legally leave greedy or vicious spouses until the laws were changed.

But now divorce has become an exit of convenience for our individualistic and self-indulgent society and that can’t be right.

Couples lie to themselves about the pain they are inflicting on their kids and most can only think of parental ‘rights’, like getting half the house and the joint savings.

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ROFL–read it all.

Vultures Chose Me from Green Renaissance on Vimeo.

Watch it all, yet another reminder as to why Vimeo is one of the best sites on the web–KSH.

For the second time in two years, European debt troubles threaten to slow the momentum of the fragile recovery in the United States.

Although American financial institutions have taken steps to protect themselves from Europe’s long-simmering problems, the likely slowdown in Europe could damage consumer and business confidence in America and strengthen the dollar, making United States exports less competitive.

“Financial contagion can lead to the very rapid global spread of recession,” said Chris Varvares, senior managing director for Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting company. “If trouble intensifies and spills over to equities and other U.S. risk assets, we could see a soft patch.”

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John C. Green’s intellect has earned him a reputation as one of the nation’s experts on the political landscape.

His heart has moved him to be a faithful volunteer in the food pantry at an inner-city ministry that is dedicated to feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, nurturing children and strengthening families.

“I’ve always been interested in helping the hungry,” said Green, director of the University of Akron’s Bliss Institute of Applied Politics. “My religious values teach me that we are to provide for those without the basics in life, and food is one of those essentials.”

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One of the deep disagreements and divisions within the church is over the practice of homosexuality, recently heightened by a group of clergy who have declared that they will perform holy unions in opposition to the Book of Discipline. This has caused different experiences of deep pain throughout the church. As the bishops of the church, we commit ourselves to be in prayer for the whole church and for the brokenness our communities experience. Furthermore, we “implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends. We commit ourselves to be in
ministry for and with all persons” (par. 161F). We will continue to offer grace upon grace to all in the name of Christ.

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