Daily Archives: April 21, 2020

(Local Paper) Many South Carolina retailers start to reopen after Gov. McMaster relaxes coronavirus closures

Though its locations have been closed, Goodwill has still been receiving donated goods. Limited staff have been sanitizing donations. Fink said when doors open, the retail stores should be fully stocked. Customers will notice some changes, like limits on how many people can be inside at once and directional signage.

“We want to make sure we’re protecting our community,” Fink said.

And given Goodwill’s purpose helping people get back to work, its services are more important than ever during coronavirus. Revenue from the retail stores funds the career centers.

Half-Moon Outfitters, which operates stores in Charleston, Greenville, Columbia, Mount Pleasant and North Charleston, said its stores were open Tuesday only for curbside service.

Katherine Smith, the company’s marketing director, said the sporting goods retailer was not ready to open its doors to customers just yet. The staff, she said, was busy restocking the stores and ensuring they had the right safety measures in place for when business does resume.

Half-Moon locations will have hand sanitizer available at the entrances to the stores and the employees will police how many customers are in the stores at one time.

Read it all.

Posted in * South Carolina, Economy, Ethics / Moral Theology, State Government

(NYT Op-ed) Richard Levitan–In Treating Covid19 we need to focus on Hypoxia–The Infection That’s Silently Killing Coronavirus Patients

Widespread pulse oximetry screening for Covid pneumonia — whether people check themselves on home devices or go to clinics or doctors’ offices — could provide an early warning system for the kinds of breathing problems associated with Covid pneumonia.

People using the devices at home would want to consult with their doctors to reduce the number of people who come to the E.R. unnecessarily because they misinterpret their device. There also may be some patients who have unrecognized chronic lung problems and have borderline or slightly low oxygen saturations unrelated to Covid-19.

All patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus should have pulse oximetry monitoring for two weeks, the period during which Covid pneumonia typically develops. All persons with cough, fatigue and fevers should also have pulse oximeter monitoring even if they have not had virus testing, or even if their swab test was negative, because those tests are only about 70 percent accurate. A vast majority of Americans who have been exposed to the virus don’t know it.

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Posted in Health & Medicine

Ian Paul–The surprise of the resurrection

It is all such an unexpected surprise. So does Easter Sunday catch you by surprise? As winter is followed by spring, so for us Good Friday is followed by Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. I don’t suppose anyone woke up this morning and cried out ‘Easter Sunday—I wasn’t expecting that!’ As the seasons roll on, the church calendar helps us in many ways, but I wonder if in this regard it doesn’t serve us well. You probably expected Easter Sunday, expected an Easter egg, expected to come to church and perhaps even expected to hear this reading.

Yet the message of Easter is not (apologies Mr Cameron!) about taking responsibility, and hard-working families, and doing your duty. It has nothing to do with that! Easter is about the unexpected thing that God does—that he surprises us with his grace. No-one was expecting this. No-one was expecting one person to be raised from the dead, now. Of course, faithful Jews were looking for the resurrection of the dead—but this was going to come at the end of the age, when (as Isaiah prophesied) the heavens and the earth were going to be wrapped up like a worn-out garment, and there would be a new heaven and a new earth—and the dead would be raised, and all would be judged. That is what they were expected—but this, Jesus’ resurrection, caught them completely by surprise.

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Posted in Easter, Theology: Scripture

A Prayer for the Day from the Church of England

Risen Christ,
for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:
open the doors of our hearts,
that we may seek the good of others
and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace,
to the praise of God the Father
Amen.

Posted in Church of England (CoE), Easter, Spirituality/Prayer

(Prospect Magazine) Bp Graham Tomlin–How coronavirus is giving us a crash course in a different moral universe

Over the past few weeks, we have seen something quite extraordinary. Without too much legal threat, we have voluntarily submitted to severe abstinence, denying ourselves the rights to mix freely, to go to pubs and restaurants, to watch live sport, to shake hands, to travel to work. As we go through this period of collective self-abnegation, the suppression of our personal ambitions and desires, we are learning how to redirect our personal longings for a greater good, to sacrifice what we would normally like to do for the good of the whole.

We are learning that for a society to work, and to stave off the threats that confront it, the prioritisation of individual choice on its own is not enough. A society cannot survive if each one of us pursues our own self-chosen goals independent of everyone else. We have to exercise restraint, the Queen’s “self-discipline and resolve,” to learn the capacity to sacrifice our own desires for the sake of the wider community.

To address the potentially even more serious challenges of climate change, or the elimination of global poverty, for example, will require an even greater and longer exercise in self-restraint. The question is, when this is all over, whether we will go back to what we have been used to in the recent past, or whether we will restore something of an equilibrium between the demands of individual ambition and the common good.

Saint Paul once wrote that the Christian idea of grace, the notion that we are recipients of goodness that we didn’t create, “teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” It may sound quaint and Victorian. But unless we can learn to live self-controlled, disciplined lives, a little more like the ones we’re having to lead right now, there will be little future for our planet or the people who live on it. Maybe coronavirus is giving us a crash course in a different moral universe—one that might just be the saving of us.

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Posted in Anthropology, Church of England (CoE), CoE Bishops, England / UK, Ethics / Moral Theology, Health & Medicine, Philosophy, Theology

([London] Times) St Bride’s priest who stayed to serve during Great Plague is my inspiration to hope

In recent days I have found myself thinking a great deal about Richard Peirson.

In 1665, the year of the Great Plague, Peirson was the priest here at St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, the post that I now hold. Faced with the unimaginable horror of the plague, many clergy fled London. Peirson was one of the few who chose to remain. He stayed at his post, faithfully serving his people as best he could, for the whole of that terrible year.

Our burial register for the year 1665 makes for startling reading. Our parish was a densely populated area and the impact of the plague was devastating. In the month of September alone, when the plague was at its height, Peirson buried 636 people — 43 of them on a single day. There are so many burials that he signs his name at the bottom of each page of the register, rather than against individual entries. He buries whole families; he buries his church officials; he buries unknown and unidentified strangers: some entries read simply: “A child from Kingshead Ally” or “A man from new street”. The symptoms of bubonic plague were horrific and the recovery rate was effectively nil.

I can’t help wondering how Peirson kept going during that year. I wonder what he prayed about and how it affected his faith; I wonder what kept him here, quietly and steadfastly ministering to his flock, day after dreadful day, when every human instinct within him must have craved escape. And Peirson was not alone….

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Posted in Church History, Church of England (CoE), England / UK, Health & Medicine, Ministry of the Ordained, Parish Ministry, Religion & Culture

(Christian History) For His Feast Day–Anselm on the Incarnation

BOOK 1. 11. What it is to sin, and to make satisfaction for sin.
Anselm.We must ask how God gets rid of men’s sins, but first what is sin itself means.

Boso. You explain and I will listen.

Anselm. If a man or angel always gave to God what is due to him, he would never sin.

Boso. I cannot deny that.

Anselm. So sin is simply not giving God what we owe.

Boso. What debt do we owe to God?

Anselm. To subject every wish to his will.

Boso. That’s perfectly true.

Anselm. No one who pays this debt commits sin. Everyone who does not pay it does sin. This is the righteousness of the heart, of the will, and it is the sole and complete debt which we owe to God, and which God requires of us. If someone sins, he has to restore what he has taken away, before he can be clear of fault . So then, every one who sins ought to pay back the honor of which he has robbed God. This is the satisfaction which every sinner owes to God.

Boso. This is somewhat alarming, but I cannot make any rational objection to it.

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Posted in Anthropology, Christology, Church History, Theology

A Prayer for the Feast Day of Saint Anselm

Almighty God, who didst raise up thy servant Anselm to teach the Church of his day to understand its faith in thine eternal Being, perfect justice, and saving mercy: Provide thy Church in every age with devout and learned scholars and teachers, that we may be able to give a reason for the hope that is in us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Posted in Church History, Spirituality/Prayer

A Prayer for Easter from the Book of Common Order

Almighty God, who broughtest again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the glorious Prince of Salvation, with everlasting victory over sin and the grave: Grant us power, we beseech thee, to rise with him to newness of life, that we may overcome the world with the victory of faith, and have part at last in the resurrection of the just; through the merits of the same risen Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.

Posted in Easter, Spirituality/Prayer

From the Morning Bible Readings

Therefore gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” And if you invoke as Father him who judges each one impartially according to his deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.
You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake. Through him you have confidence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brethren, love one another earnestly from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for

“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers, and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord abides for ever.”

That word is the good news which was preached to you.

–1 Peter 1:13-25

Posted in Theology: Scripture