In my sister’s case, as in many others, the school board delayed its decision about mask wearing until the very last minute. It also reversed course: After saying two weeks ago masks would be encouraged but optional, the board held a 4.5 hour public meeting this week, which ended with the announcement that they would require them.

And then, said my sister, “People flipped out.” Those opposed to masks are now promising boycotts, walkouts and protests in front of the school. Threats being made online suggest even worse. My sister looks on, feeling helpless as she thinks about her three children, two of whom have had to endure this seemingly endless combat for most of high school. “It’s just, when does it end?” she said to me.

The question is particularly acute for parents of younger children. They have spent most of the last 18 months trying to negotiate the changing needs of their children’s education and well-being while also managing their own jobs and health. And while teenagers and adults have been able to enjoy much greater freedom since getting vaccinated, there is no vaccine yet for children under 12.

I spoke to 10 parents from across the country to hear how they are doing in the midst of it all. While their situations varied greatly—sometimes to the point that it seemed like they lived in different countries—what I found were people wanting to be hopeful, trying to keep perspective and yet also in many cases anxious, frustrated and exhausted by their schools, states, fellow parents and our current reality….

Read it all.

‘When does it end?’ Parents on the most stressful back-to-school season of the pandemichttps://t.co/aN3zVqEEe7

— America Magazine (@americamag) August 31, 2021

The last conversation Keith Chapman had with his younger brother Nathan Chapman was on Christmas Day 2001. Nathan had called up his family from Afghanistan.

Although the 31-year-old, a sergeant first class with the U.S. Army’s 1st Special Forces Group, couldn’t disclose his location, his family put it together based on what time Nathan said it was where he was calling from.

“I don’t remember that we said very much,” Keith said during a StoryCorps interview in Frederick, Md., last week with their mother, Lynn Chapman.

That wasn’t so unusual. The brothers, just 2 1/2 years apart in age, had always had a complicated dynamic that was born from their two very different personalities.

A couple weeks after that phone call, Keith heard on his car radio that an American soldier had been killed in Afghanistan. He thought, “Well, yes, Nathan is there, but he’s one of who knows how many? So, I put it out of my mind.”

That is, until he got home that evening.

“My wife greets me at the door and says, ‘I have bad news,’ ” he said.

Read or listen to it all.

Nathan Chapman was killed in action near the town of Khost on Jan. 4, 2002. The 31-year-old sergeant first class with the U.S. Army's 1st Special Forces Group was the first American soldier to be killed by enemy fire in the war in Afghanistan. https://t.co/0jEG3weiVS

— NPR (@NPR) August 28, 2021

[F]or the last twelve years, I’ve been walking to work at Goldsmiths College past a plaque commemorating the 1944 V-2 attack on the New Cross Road branch of Woolworths. Of the 168 people who died, fifteen were aged eleven or under. The novel is partly written in memory of those South London children, and their lost chance to experience the rest of the twentieth century.

But what has gone is not just the children’s present existence…It’s all the futures they won’t get, too. All the would-be’s, might-be’s, could-be’s of the decades to come. How can that loss be measured, how can that loss be known, except by laying this absence, now and onwards, against some other version of the reel of time, where might-be and could-be and would-be still may be?

–quoted by yours truly in last week’s sermon

The Anglican writer Francis Spufford has made the longlist for the 2021 Booker Prize for his second novel, Light Perpetual. The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams is among the judges of this year’s prize https://t.co/g3SOGZaao9

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) July 31, 2021

As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will be filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to the need to put people and things in their “right” place. To the degree that we can embrace the truth that our identity is not rooted in our success, power, or popularity, but in God’s infinite love, to that degree can we let go of our need to judge.

–Henri Nouwen, Here and Now (New York: Crossroads, 1994), pp.70-71

#SaveTheDate: 9/25/21 for Celebrating Henri Nouwen, 25 Years Since his Passing-Moving from Hostility to #Hospitality, a program w/Robert Jonas, Ed.D. Watch for details https://t.co/itHq8qegFR @PsychToday @YaleDivSchool @HenriNouwen @HarvardDivinity @AlbertusSocial #spirituality pic.twitter.com/LVQtH2BzGl

— @MercyByTheSea (@Mercy_ByTheSea) August 23, 2021

The weekly rhythms of Catholic life have started to return at Our Lady of Lourdes in Harlem. The pews are packed on Sunday mornings, prayer groups meet after work and the collection plate is almost as full as it was before the coronavirus pandemic began.

But parishioners are starting to worry about the virus again.

“For a little while everyone felt more free, not using masks and things like that,” said the Rev. Gilberto Ángel-Neri, the pastor. “But now that we hear all the news about the Delta variant, everyone is using masks again.”

The progress made at Father Ángel-Neri’s church, and at houses of worship across New York City, may be threatened by a rise in virus cases in the past month and by an uneven patchwork of rules governing vaccination that can differ from one place to another.

New rules that have been enacted in recent weeks to curb the spread of the virus’s more contagious Delta variant require New Yorkers to show proof of vaccination to participate in many indoor activities, including sitting inside restaurants or bars, going to a gym or nightclub and visiting a museum or zoo. But they do not apply to religious services.

Read it all.

The dilemma facing houses of worship in New York City is this: A surge in virus deaths or hospitalizations could plunge them back into turmoil, but any rule requiring inoculation could keep away worshipers wary of vaccines, and their much-needed donations. https://t.co/Dl5uAW3JXR

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 25, 2021

On Monday, [the] Rev. Thomas McKenzie and his 22-year-old child Charlie were killed in a car crash. The two were en route to New Mexico where Charlie, who had recently changed their legal name, was set to start their senior year at college.

“It is with deep sadness that I write to inform you that this morning, Thomas and his 22-year-old daughter Ella died in an accident on Interstate 40 west of Nashville,” wrote Church of the Redeemer’s associate pastor Rev. Kenny Benge in an email.

“They were driving to Santa Fe, New Mexico where Ella was to continue her studies at St. John’s College. Thomas was just beginning his well-deserved sabbatical.”

Read it all.

Father Thomas McKenzie and his daughter were killed in a car crash on their way to New Mexico where she was set to start her senior year of college. https://t.co/4kVWGVqtbH

— RELEVANT (@RELEVANT) August 24, 2021

Almighty and everlasting God, by whose grace we have been admitted into the glory of the new covenant: Grant, we beseech thee, that being delivered from the death of sin and the bondage of the law, we may rejoice in the life and liberty of the Spirit, and evermore find our sufficiency in thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Swan wrapped in sunrise sky reflections pic.twitter.com/SRCZfpabzm

— Nikon Photographer (@Astrid_Tontson) August 22, 2021

The gospel is the good news that God is love. ‘In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4:8-10). The background of the gospel is God’s wrath and judgment against us sinners. The heart of the gospel is the double truth of propitiation for sin, and remission of sin – through the cross of Christ, atonement by blood, and justification by faith. ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them…. He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the ighteousness
of God in him’ (2 Cor. 5:19, 21).

The gospel of free forgiveness through Christ crucified appears as the mainspring of worship throughout the whole Prayer Book, and it is noticeable that current discontent with the Prayer Book is strongest among those whose grasp on this gospel is most suspect. A modern prophet, in an article entitled Un-Christian Liturgy, has censured the Prayer Book stress on guilt and pardon as morbid and unhealthy. Our own judgment goes rather with [Charles] Simeon [1759-1836]:

‘I seek to be, not only humbled and thankful, but humbled in thankfulness, before my God and Savior continually. This is the religion that pervades the whole Liturgy, and particularly the Communion Service; and this makes the Liturgy inexpressibly sweet to me. ‘The repeated cries for mercy to each Person of the ever-adorable Trinity for mercy, are not at all too frequent or too fervent for me; nor is the Confession in the Communion service too strong for me; nor the Te Deum, nor the ascriptions of glory after the Lord’s Supper, Glory be to God on high, etc. too exalted for me this shows what men of God the framers of our Liturgy were, and what I pant, and long, and strive to be. ‘This makes the Liturgy as superior to all modern compositions, as the work of a Philosopher on any deep subject is to that of a schoolboy who understands scarcely anything about it.’

—The Gospel in the Prayer Book (Marcham Manor Press, 1966)

Having just heard about the home going of J. I. Packer, I am filled with mixed emotions: joy for him, sadness for us. I first met him when I was about 15. I can’t calculate how much I owe to him, not only his teaching and writing but his godly example. #jipacker pic.twitter.com/lt9HG0FeVQ

— Michael Horton (@MichaelHorton_) July 18, 2020

O God, who hast brought life and immortality to light by the gospel, and hast begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead: Make us steadfast and immovable in the faith, always abounding in the work of the Lord, who died for our sins and rose again, and now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, world without end.

–The Rev. James Mountain (1844-1933)

A stunning Kentucky sunset, by @mypicworld #ScenesOfTheBluegrass pic.twitter.com/1EB1DKGfKf

— Scenes of the Bluegrass (@BluegrassScenes) August 20, 2021

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Like many of you, I have been soberly watching the situation unfolding in Afghanistan. I know it has surfaced many emotions for people across the world, especially those who have personal connections with Afghanistan and the Afghan people. Whether justified or unjustified, war is always a tragic consequence of the Fall. While in war we can witness the greatness of human courage and selflessness, we also realize the depths of human sinfulness, as poet Robert Burns wrote, “man’s inhumanity to man.”

Please join me in prayer for the people of Afghanistan, those Afghans and Americans seeking safe passage out of the country, and those on the ground continuing to help. Pray for wisdom for leaders at all levels who face very difficult decisions. Pray for the ever-growing underground Church in Afghanistan. Even more, pray that all Afghanis, especially those in power, are met by the Holy Spirit and come to personally know the risen Christ. Please join me in prayer and fasting with special prayers in our worship services this coming Sunday.

I want to send a personal message to all the military, foreign service, civil service, contractors, missionaries, and aid workers, and their families, who have given so much of their blood, sweat, and tears in service to their nations and for the welfare of the Afghan people. Know that your efforts are not in vain.

Read it all.

.@ArchbishopFoley issues a call to prayer for #Afghanistan, #Haitiearthquake2021, and all those affected by the ongoing #COVID19 pandemic.

Read more at: https://t.co/MeIbI04Nsd

and give at https://t.co/x7Ma2Q1x1O#anglican pic.twitter.com/hVSSdElbKP

— ACNA (@The_ACNA) August 18, 2021

In Psalm 121 David lifted up his eyes to the hills; but here he declares that they were not lifted up in any other sense. When the heart is right, and the eyes are right, the whole man is on the road to a healthy and happy condition. Let us take care that we do not use the language of this Psalm unless, indeed, it be true as to ourselves; for there is no worse pride than that which claims humility when it does not possess it.

–Treasury of David

Beautiful sunrise in Greer this morning. #scwx

If you snagged a picture on the sunrise this morning we would love to see it. Tag us on social media! 🙌 pic.twitter.com/P7Cdsb8abI

— NWS GSP (@NWSGSP) August 19, 2021

“The fact that God is revealed to us is then grace. Grace is the majesty, the freedom, the undeservedness, the unexpectedness, the newness, the arbitrariness, in which the relationship to God and therefore the possibility of knowing Him is opened up to man by God Himself. Grace is really the orientation in which God sets up an order which did not previously exist, to the power and benefit of which man has no claim, which he has no power to set up, which he has no competence even subsequently to justify, which in its singularity–which corresponds exactly to the singularity of the nature and being of God–he can only recognise and acknowledge as it is actually set up, as it is powerful and effective as a benefit that comes to him. Grace is God’s good-pleasure. And it is precisly in God’s good-pleasure that the reality of our being with God and of His being with us consists.”

–Karl Barth Church Dogmatics II.1 (London:T+T Clark, 1957), E.T. p. 74 (Hat tip: Matthew Lee Anderson)

Anything ending with “ism” has little or nothing to do with God. – Karl Barth pic.twitter.com/iIcEp7wLEI

— Taylor Mertins (@taylormertins) February 1, 2021

From there:

Ultimately, without that higher purpose to bind it, society would fall — as it has — into “emotivism”, relativism and ultimately disintegration. If every culture is cored around a sacred order — whether Christian, Islamic or Hindu, the veneration of ancestors or the worship of Odin — then the collapse of that order will lead inevitably to the collapse of the culture it supported. There is a throne at the heart of every culture, and whoever sits on it will be the force we take our instruction from. The modern experiment has been the act of dethroning both literal human sovereigns and the representative of the sacred order, and replacing them with purely human, and purely abstract, notions — “the people” or “liberty” or “democracy” or “progress.”

I’m all for democracy (the real thing, please, not the corporate simulacra that currently squats in its place), but the dethroning of the sovereign — Christ — who sat at the heart of the Western sacred order did not lead to universal equality and justice. It led — via a bloody shortcut through Robespierre, Stalin and Hitler — to the complete triumph of the power of money, which has splintered our culture and our souls into a million angry shards.

The vacuum created by the collapse of our old taboos was filled by the poison gas of consumer capitalism. It has now infiltrated every aspect of our lives in the way that the Christian story once did, so much so that we barely even notice as it colonises everything — from the way we eat to the values we teach our children. Cut loose in a post-modern present — with no centre, no truth and no direction — we have not become independent-minded, responsible, democratic citizens in a human republic. We have become slaves to the self and to the power of money; broken worshippers before the monstrous idol of Progress. “In the ethics of the West,” wrote Spengler, “everything is direction, claim to power, will to affect the distant.”

After Virtue ends with its author declaring that the task we face today is similar to that set for those living through the collapse of Rome: not to “shore up the imperium” but to start building anew. Macintyre famously concluded that the West was waiting for “a new — and doubtless very different — St Benedict.” That was forty years ago, and we are still waiting, but it’s not a bad way to see the challenge we face. Despite the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan, the post-Christian West is not at all short on ideas, arguments, insults, ideologies, stratagems, conflicts or world-saving machines. But it is very short on saints; and how we need their love, wisdom, discipline and stillness amidst the chaos of the times. Maybe we had better start looking at how to embody a little of these qualities ourselves.

Aaron Weinacht describes the arc of Paul Kingsnorth's trilogy of novels and considers how they respond to a fundamental human question: "How do we respond to losses we can’t do much to change?" https://t.co/tKqd518PMW pic.twitter.com/16LpG6G2rX

— Front Porch Republic (@FrontPorchRepub) April 27, 2021

Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither.

—Mere Christianity

C.S. Lewis's Augustinian reflection.

"Continue seeking Him with seriousness. Unless he wanted you, you would not be wanting Him."

⏤ C.S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis (13 June 1951)

HT: C.S. Lewis Institute Chicago#CSLewis pic.twitter.com/BHoXbGtTwP

— Kenneth R. Samples (@RTB_KSamples) August 13, 2021

“The west as a modern progressive society is committed to live as if God does not exist, etsi deus non daretur, or at any rate to live with no sense of the devil”

-—Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? (Eerdmans, 2003) p. 83

I have been at this blog since the first part of 2003, and it is time to step back. As I am constantly insisting to my friends, none of us is indispensable, and this is a way of living that out by yours truly.Some longtime blog readers may remember how I have mentioned that I am the type of person who goes to bed every night just a little sad–only a little–about how much I don’t know (and still wish to find out). So moving away from the information addiction for me will not necessarily be easy–but it is important.

Posts will be catch as catch can until I let you know–KSH.

Absolutely Gorgeous Golden Sunset Adorns Beautiful Lake Champlain in Burlington Vermont… 🌅 ⛵️ 🌲😍 pic.twitter.com/mX4O9V9UKi

— Gary (@DJGARYNH) July 26, 2021

O God, who art faithful to thy people and dost not permit them to be tempted above that they are able, but with the temptation also makest a way of escape that they may be able to bear it: We humbly entreat thee to strengthen us thy servants with thy heavenly aid and keep us with thy continual protection; that we may evermore wait on thee, and never by any temptation be drawn away from thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The is high enough to get above the cloud deck, and it's still a pretty sight! #pawx #pghwx #pittsburgh #sunrise pic.twitter.com/FbQZJSX8vW

— Brian Hutton Jr. (@BrianHuttonWTAE) August 1, 2021

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. And he found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Beth-sa′ida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathan′a-el, and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathan′a-el said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathan′a-el coming to him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” Nathan′a-el said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathan′a-el answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”

–John 1:43-51

Sunrise above the clouds at 30,000 feet on the way to JFK. pic.twitter.com/8F6GNSbboa

— Alex Hayden (@TheAlexHayden) August 1, 2021