“Before heading to the U.S. Air Force Academy, 17-year-old Kieran Moïse needed a haircut. He donated his 19 inches of hair to children with hair loss, and he’s raised more than $35,000 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.”
Watch it all.
Daily Archives: June 28, 2021
(NPR) Portland Congregation Races To Get Members Vaccinated Before Oregon Reopens
Oregon is counting down to reopening as the state’s vaccination numbers tick up. Governor Kate Brown has established a threshold to lift most restrictions: 70% of Oregonians need to have at least one shot. The state is expected to reach that number in the coming days.
But at Highland Christian Center in Portland, the mood is not one of excitement.
“It feels like a war,” says Senior Pastor Shon Neyland. “It feels like a war of attrition.”
Neyland speaks from experience. Before he retired, he was a chaplain in the Air Force and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now he pastors this church of nearly 700 mostly Black congregants, big enough that it takes up a whole city block and has its own coffee shop and bookstore.
Today, Neyland is fighting an invisible enemy: the forces keeping his congregants from getting the vaccine. He estimates at least half the church isn’t vaccinated. Once the state reaches 70 percent, this could mean hundreds of unvaccinated, unmasked people attending his Sunday service. And that has Neyland worried.
In Oregon, Pastor Shon Neyland is fighting the forces keeping about half of his congregants from getting the vaccine. https://t.co/R0iZHH0Im9
— NPR (@NPR) June 28, 2021
(WSJ) Americans Seek Urgent Mental-Health Support as Covid-19 Crisis Ebbs
PITTSBURGH—Before the coronavirus pandemic took hold, psychiatrist Garrett Sparks usually treated about a dozen patients on his overnight shift in the emergency department at Western Psychiatric Hospital, this city’s biggest mental-health hospital. On a recent Thursday evening, he saw 21 cases.
As the night began, an agitated man sitting on a couch in a space reserved for acute cases loudly demanded turkey sandwiches. Parents of a 7-year-old who had been kicked out of school for emotional outbursts came in, saying their child’s behavior was spiraling and he was becoming more aggressive. A few hours later, police brought in a 17-year-old boy who had tried to commit suicide by jumping from a bridge.
“It seems like everyone has been holding their breath for a year, and now, it’s just a total explosion of everything, both in terms of high volume but also the severity of cases,” Dr. Sparks said. “You see a lot more people who were, pre-pandemic, kind of overwhelmed and stressed, and now they have full-on anxiety disorders or depression.”
In the coronavirus pandemic, a wave of mental-health crises has grown into a tsunami, flooding an already taxed system of care. As the country appears to be emerging from the worst of the Covid-19 crisis, emergency departments say they are overwhelmed by patients who deferred or couldn’t access outpatient treatment, or whose symptoms intensified or went undiagnosed during the lockdowns.
As the U.S. emerges from the pandemic, mental-health providers say they are facing a wave of patients with urgent needs. “It seems like everyone has been holding their breath for a year, and now, it’s just a total explosion of everything.” https://t.co/fat36w5FXI
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) June 28, 2021
Irenaeus for his Feast Day–“The heretics follow neither Scripture nor tradition”
1. When, however, they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not correct, nor of authority, and [assert] that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition. For [they allege] that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but viva voce: wherefore also Paul declared, “But we speak wisdom among those that are perfect, but not the wisdom of this world.”And this wisdom each one of them alleges to be the fiction of his own inventing, forsooth; so that, according to their idea, the truth properly resides at one time in Valentinus, at another in Marcion, at another in Cerinthus, then afterwards in Basilides, or has even been indifferently in any other opponent,who could speak nothing pertaining to salvation. For every one of these men, being altogether of a perverse disposition, depraving the system of truth, is not ashamed to preach himself.
2. But, again, when we refer them to that tradition which originates from the apostles, [and] which is preserved by means of the succession of presbyters in the Churches, they object to tradition, saying that they themselves are wiser not merely than the presbyters, but even than the apostles, because they have discovered the unadulterated truth. For [they maintain] that the apostles intermingled the things of the law with the words of the Saviour; and that not the apostles alone, but even the Lord Himself, spoke as at one time from the Demiurge, at another from the intermediate place, and yet again from the Pleroma, but that they themselves, indubitably, unsulliedly, and purely, have knowledge of the hidden mystery: this is, indeed, to blaspheme their Creator after a most impudent manner! It comes to this, therefore, that these men do now consent neither to Scripture nor to tradition.
3. Such are the adversaries with whom we have to deal, my very dear friend, endeavouring like slippery serpents to escape at all points. Wherefore they must be opposed at all points, if perchance, by cutting off their retreat, we may succeed in turning them back to the truth. For, though it is not an easy thing for a soul under the influence of error to repent, yet, on the other hand, it is not altogether impossible to escape from error when the truth is brought alongside it.
—Against Heresies: Book III, Chapter 2.
Today is the feast of Saint Irenaeus, bishop and martyr. He was bishop of Lyons, the largest trading centre in Gaul. The note of moderation, the desire to win people to Christianity by love rather than by fear, was apparent in all of Irenaeus' work. pic.twitter.com/bQRaL12f95
— CatholicNewsIreland (@CatholicNewsIRL) June 28, 2021
Posted in Church History, Theology
A Prayer for the Feast Day of Saint Irenaeus
Almighty God, who didst uphold thy servant Irenaeus with strength to maintain the truth against every blast of vain doctrine: Keep us, we beseech thee, steadfast in thy true religion, that in constancy and peace we may walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
“He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man … might become the son of God.” – St Irenaeus of Lyons whose feast is today (28 June). Stained glass window from the crypt @MarysShrine https://t.co/8K8AIiMYk4
— Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P. (@LawrenceOP) June 28, 2021
Posted in Church History, Spirituality/Prayer
A Prayer to begin the day from Henry Alford
O God, who hast taught us that in thy mysterious providence suffering is the prelude to glory, and hast made much tribulation the entrance to thy heavenly kingdom: May we learn from this thy will, and also from creation around us, to wait for our deliverance from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of thy children; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
South Carolina sunrise …. pic.twitter.com/myQ8pXa69z
— FITSNews (@fitsnews) June 27, 2021
Posted in Spirituality/Prayer
From the Morning Scripture Readings
Praise the LORD! O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures for ever! Who can utter the mighty doings of the LORD, or show forth all his praise? Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times!
–Psalm 106:1-3
Good morning, Macon! #gawx pic.twitter.com/FoZQwgkUxI
— Courteney Jacobazzi (@Cjacobazzi_WMAZ) June 28, 2021
Posted in Spirituality/Prayer