In 2015, The Week highlighted the psychological impact of witnessing executions. They profiled reporter and spokesperson Michelle Lyons, who spent a decade watching 278 executions. Lyons reported a wearing down over time as she got to know the inmates.

In their survey of San Quentin State Prison employees, many reported anxiety and said they “felt estranged or detached from other people.” Data published by The American Journal of Psychiatry also showed that witnessing an execution had a strong psychological impact on journalists—and could “cause symptoms of dissociative disorder… in the weeks following.”

These journalists often had no close connection to the condemned and actively tried to remain detached throughout the process. They also had no physical contact with the individual, and yet they still showed the same signs of social detachment afterwards.

This means that without the proper care, spiritual advisers will see an impact in the very area that is most required of their ministry: connecting with people. Ironically, that sense of human connection—which causes them pain in watching their parishioner executed—is the very thing that could undermine their ability to be effective in that role in the future.

Read it all.

Pastors who walk out of the death chamber and back to the pulpit will be forever changed.

“If their right hand is on the dying, who will hold their left to support them afterwards?”https://t.co/TMxKuNdS5C

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) May 28, 2022

When they entered the school, he and the medical examiner found that the first responders had moved the bodies – separating the deceased from the wounded – in order to get to those who needed medical assistance.

“So when we got there, there were children in four rooms – the initial two rooms plus two other rooms,” Diaz said, adding that they “went room by room getting the plan together on what we were going to need to make sure that we identified everybody correctly.”

Diaz did not describe the scene in detail. Instead, he said, “It’s something you never want to see and it’s something you don’t, you cannot, prepare for. It’s a picture that’s going to stay in my head forever, and that’s where I’d like for it to stay.”

He says he has no intention of ever sharing exactly what he saw.

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Eulalio "Lalo" Diaz, Jr. had the horrible task of identifying the children shot to death at Robb Elementary.

He says nothing could've prepared him for what he saw in that school. The images will stay with him forever.https://t.co/AUQgDrw1KM

— NPR (@NPR) May 31, 2022

Despite strong levels of vaccination among older people, Covid killed them at vastly higher rates during this winter’s Omicron wave than it did last year, preying on long delays since their last shots and the variant’s ability to skirt immune defenses.

This winter’s wave of deaths in older people belied the Omicron variant’s relative mildness. Almost as many Americans 65 and older died in four months of the Omicron surge as did in six months of the Delta wave, even though the Delta variant, for any one person, tended to cause more severe illness.

While overall per capita Covid death rates have fallen, older people still account for an overwhelming share of them.

Read it all.

Omicron's lethality rate among seniors was worse than Deltahttps://t.co/DqZooPJKva
The waning of vaccinations, lack of adequate booster uptake in this high-risk age group were contributory factors

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) May 31, 2022

{the] Revd Canon Arun Arora will take up the role of Bishop for the Leeds Episcopal Area after five years as Vicar of St Nicholas Church in the heart of Durham City. The appointment is a return to Yorkshire, where he served his curacy at St Mark’s Church in Harrogate.

“It is a joy and a privilege to be called to be Bishop of Kirkstall and to join the work that God is doing in Leeds. It is a particular delight to be returning to the Diocese where I was ordained and served my curacy, where my wife and I first lived and where our daughter was born,” said Canon Arora.

Born and raised in Birmingham, Arun added: “I am a city boy at heart and am excited at the thought of serving an increasingly confident and growing church in this vibrant city. I’m looking forward to working with the churches of Leeds and civic, commercial, educational and cultural partners in a common cause to bless the city and its people.”

Read it all.

Welcome to the next Bishop of Kirkstall in the ⁦@LeedsCofE⁩ – Arun Arora. pic.twitter.com/QhDVAzSGqP

— Nick Baines (@nickbaines) May 27, 2022

There is also still more there.

John Constable's Ascension (1822), one of only 3 religious paintings by the great Suffolk artist, was painted as an altarpiece for Manningtree church but now hangs in an aisle at Dedham – relegated, like all Georgian church art it seems, to a subordinate position pic.twitter.com/E4IiIScP9V

— Dr Francis Young (@DrFrancisYoung) May 13, 2021

Father in heaven, by whose grace the virgin mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him, but still more blessed in keeping thy word: Grant us who honor the exaltation of her lowliness to follow the example of her devotion to thy will; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Visitation by William Wailes, 1857 in Ely Cathedral, and in a 19c panel at Eynesbury, Cambs, also perhaps by William Wailes.

'And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost.' https://t.co/g8CpvM5n41 pic.twitter.com/cuReQQiql9

— Simon Knott (@last_of_england) May 31, 2022

O Christ, the King of Glory, who through the everlasting gates didst ascend to thy Father’s throne, and open the Kingdom of heaven to all believers: Grant that, whilst thou dost reign in heaven, we may not be bowed down to the things of earth, but that our hearts may be lifted up whither thou, our redemption, art gone before; who with the Father and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, ever one God, world without end.

ETV Beaufort at sunrise and it's 75.0 F. pic.twitter.com/0jzM1JCYVq

— SC ETV Beaufort WeatherSTEM (@ETVBeaufortWx) May 31, 2022

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

–Ephesians 3:14-21

Sunrise @HoldenBeach NC pic.twitter.com/wh5SOvWLt7

— Phil Read (@PhilRead) May 31, 2022