Thank you for sharing David, I hope you don’t mind that I changed the format and wording around a bit to fit better with out Prayers of the People.

A Litany for mother’s day, adapted from Pastor David Hansen by Fr. Jody Howard.

This Mother’s Day, give thanks for loving women, who have given their children so many invaluable gifts.

For new mothers, welcoming new life into the world.

For those who choose their children; adoptive and foster parents, who model the adoptive love of God.

For too often overlooked stepmothers.

For aunts and godmothers and neighbors, and for those who, without biological children, share maternal love with the world.

Pray for those who have borne the unimaginable burden of burying a child, and those who have endured the silent grief of stillbirth or miscarriage.

Pray for those struggling with infertility, whose desire for children is met with frustration.

Pray for the mothers of children with special needs and chronic illness, who are too well acquainted with anxiety and exhaustion.

Pray for those given abuse and heartbreak where they should have received love and support.

Pray for mothers who have faced the difficult decision to offer their child for adoption.

We thank you Lord, and pray this mother’s day, for the ministry of mothers and all women who offer maternal love and care.

Amen

Read it all: St. Joseph of Arimathea

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Amen to Mr. Douthat’s sarcasm. A so called conservative may have won in South Carolina, but Conservatism, the state of South Carolina, and the nation lost. Slap an L on our collective moral forehead.

“Because of course when Jesus told his disciples to forgive sinners seven times seven times, what he really meant was that they should affirm people in whatever they’ve done and want to do and then return them to high office as swiftly as possible. And when he raised Lazarus from the dead, it was likewise a sign that no political ambition need ever be set aside or abandoned, no matter how the politician in question has failed the public trust.”

Why returning Sanford to political office sent a theological message.

Read it all: Mark Sanford’s God

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This is very sad. It is easy to blame a backward desire for Rhino horns for Chinese folk remedies and aphrodisiacs, but the reality is that it was not all that long ago that europeans were taking capsules of ground up mummy as “medicine.” No, the real culprit here is a lack of will on the part of others to protect these animals and make the consequences of poaching, and participating in the market, more fearsome than the perceived monetary benefits.

Africa’s western black rhino is now officially extinct according the latest review of animals and plants by the world’s largest conservation network.

Read it all: Western black rhino declared extinct

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A partial summary: When people find a faith that only aids and abets their preconceived notions, then they are participating in a form of syncretism; a form which usually leads to decline, since people eventually realize there’s no real difference between what they hear on Sunday and what they get through cultural osmosis while sleeping in.

This goes for people of all political and cultural persuasions. What should really give us pause, given this reality, is the increasing number of people whose secular politics determines their religious affiliation.

An excerpt:

“These developments not only call into question the explanation for the decline of liberal churches offered by Kelley, Douthat and Eberstadt; it also implies that the challenges confronting both liberal and conservative churches in Europe and the United States may be more alike than is often assumed. Douthat’s article opens up a crack of acknowledgement in this direction, when he notes that the most successful churches in the United States are “theologically shallow, preaching a gospel of health and wealth rather than the full New Testament message.” Similarly, Stanley Hauerwas – no friend of liberal Christianity-has accused conservative American Protestants of being unable to distinguish between their faith in God and loyalty to their country. Intriguingly, his criticism of conservative evangelicals sounds remarkably similar to Douthat’s accusation against liberal Christianity: “the churches to which they go do little to challenge the secular presumptions that form their lives.”

There are good reasons to doubt the explanation usually given for the decline of liberal Christianity. The challenges facing both liberal and conservative churches may be more alike than is often assumed.

Read it all: Plague on both their houses: The real story of growth and decline in liberal and conservative church

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I’ve encountered this unfamiliarity in my ministry. It’s noticeable in the way some families approach the imminent death of a loved one (or avoid the reality), but it is perhaps most frustratingly apparent in the difficulty one finds in trying to perform a funeral and burial in a traditional manner. I’ve written about this before; it’s most easily seen in regards to the way one has to ask some funeral homes to make sure there is dirt available to cast upon the coffin, since they often do everything in their power to cover all of it with outdoor carpeting–something much more aesthetically hideous in my own opinion.

“Culled from Stephen King’s novella The Body (1982), the plot in the 1980s coming-of-age film Stand by Me (1986) revolves around a quest by four adolescents to find a dead body. Set in 1959, the narrator reflects back on the events from the present, highlighting the novelty of the encounter in the film’s opening line: “I was twelve going on thirteen the first time I saw a dead human being.” By the mid-twentieth century, close encounters with death had become exceptional for American adolescents.

By contrast, in his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain incorporates a dead body into the plot as a banal element of the antebellum tale. Although the reader does not expect Huck to hide a bag of money in the coffin containing “the remainders of Peter,” Twain portrays the presence of a coffined body in the downstairs parlor of the Wilks home while the family sleeps upstairs as mundane occurrence. By the twentieth century, such a scene could only fit comfortably as a prelude to some horrific preternatural episode in one of King’s other works.

These disparate works of fiction punctuate the manner in which American attitudes towards death and dying have been transformed from an uncomfortable familiarity to a comfortable unfamiliarity”

Once an intimate family affair, death and dying are now outsourced in America… These disparate works of fiction punctuate the manner in which American attitudes towards death and dying have been transformed from an uncomfortable familiarity to a comfortable unfamiliarity

Read it all: Outsourcing Death

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I know this is something parents struggle with. No one wants to create a situation that pushes someone–especially their own children–away from the church. That said, there’s also an important element of saying “This is important. If I expect you to maintain your commitment to [sport] or [school activity] then the faith is going to be a greater priority, and church attendance, as perhaps the most widely shared embodiment of it and element of formation, is going to demonstrate that.

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“By this point in the sermon, I felt tears welling up in my eyes and spilling down my cheeks. I looked across the church and saw other adults wiping tears from their faces. I made Maya come to church because I want her to know that she can question and feel vulnerable and cry – and she doesn’t always have to do that all alone.”

In this age when the “spiritual but not religious” seem to have more relevance than churchgoers, it’s easy to wonder why church attendance matters at all. But I believe that we need common spaces,…

Read it all: Why I Made My Teenager Go to Church

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Given the fact that unemployment for veterans from 18-35 is greater than 9% and more will be trying to reenter the civilian work force, perhaps we have even more incentive to learn from the past:


By the war’s end, the U.S. government’s public debt exceeded 120 percent of GDP, almost twice today’s ratio. America worked off that debt not by tightening its belt but by liberating the economy’s potential. In 1945, there was no panel like President Obama’s Bowles-Simpson commission targeting the debt ratio a decade into the future and commending 10 years of budget cuts. Rather, the greater worry was that absent the stimulus of war and with 12 million newly jobless GIs returning home, the civilian economy would revert to depression. So America doubled down on its public investments with programs like the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan. For three decades, the economy grew faster than the debt, and the debt dwindled to less than 30 percent of GDP. Finance was well regulated so that there was no speculation in the public debt. The Department of the Treasury pegged the rate that the government would pay for its bonds at an affordable 2.5 percent. The Federal Reserve Board provided liquidity as necessary.

The 1 percent and the financial class caused the Great Recession. So why do we keep allowing them to shape policy?

Read it all: Austerity never works: Deficit hawks are amoral — and wrong

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“[Getting five kids into bed] is like dealing with terrorists. You have to cajole them, and you have to negotiate … it’s really the opposite of a hostage situation — instead of trying to get people out of there, you’re trying to keep them in there: I’ll give you whatever you want! What do you want, a helicopter to Cuba? Anything, just stay in there and don’t hurt anyone.”

Gaffigan says having children has made him a better comedian — and living in the city has helped him raise better kids.

Read it all: ‘Fat’ Dad Jim Gaffigan On Kids, Comedy And Apartment Living

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