Mig langar að lesa úr Litla Prinsinum eftir Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
- Stjörnurnar eru ekki eins fyrir alla. Fyrir suma sem ferðast eru stjörnurnar leiðarljós. Fyrir aðra eru þær ekkert nema smáljós. Fyrir aðra sem eru lærðir eru þær viðfangsefni. Fyrir kaupsýslumanninn minn voru þær gull. En allar þessar stjörnur eru þöglar. Fyrir þig verða stjörnurnar öðruvísi en fyrir alla aðra…
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From the article Confidentiality in the Church: What the Pastor Knows and Tells, by D. Elizabeth Audette.
A recent survey I conducted of 300 Congregational clergy and laity uncovered some assumptions about confidentiality. No members of the group articulated ecclesial or theological grounds for their assumptions.
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Britain is now the most irreligious country on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. Some 63 percent of us are non-believers, according to an ICM study, while 82 percent say religion is a cause of harmful division.
through orvitinn.com from The slow, whiny death of British Christianity : Johann Hari.
Many of its marquee features aren’t compatible with our two-year-old handsets anyway—no multitasking, no nifty orientation lock, not even background wallpaper. And worst of all, it hobbles our once-functional phones until they’re near-useless. Apps crash, or they’re teeth-pullingly slow to open. Download speeds are so slow we feel like we’re back on dialup.
from How To Downgrade your iPhone 3G to iOS 3.1.3 | Mac|Life via John Kalis on Facebook.
I hang in there for several reasons. First, if I want to be affiliated with any group of human beings, sooner or later I will be associated with bigotry, intolerance, violence, stupidity, and pride. In fact, even if I stand alone, distancing myself from every other group, I know that within me there are the seeds of all these things. So there’s no escaping the human condition.
Second, if I were to leave to join some new religion that claims to have – at last! – perfected the way of being pristine and genuine through and through, we all know where that’s going to lead. There’s one thing worse than a failed old religion: a naïve and arrogant new one. In that light, maybe only religions that have acknowledged and learned from their failures have much to offer.
From My Take: Why I support Anne Rice but am still a Christian – Religion – CNN.com Blogs.
Markmið félagsins er að styðja við starfsemi systur Victo sem hefur opnað faðm sinn fyrir heimilislausum börnum í Togo. Hún rekur barnaheimili í bænum Aneho í Togo, auk þess sem hún styður skólagöngu skjólstæðinga sinna og liðsinnir þeim sem eldri eru við að koma undir sig fótunum með því að styrkja menntun þeirra og styðja þau út í atvinnulífið.
sjá nánar Sóley og félagar.
The Brick Testament is a brilliant site with images of various Bible stories, created with Legos.
Out of 10.230 congregations in ELCA, 199 have already taken two votes and decided to leave ELCA due to its decision at Church Wide Assembly 2009. When this is written 136 are in the process of making the second vote to leave after having passed the first. This means that in case all of the 136 decide to leave, ELCA has decreased in number of congregations by 3.2%.
What would be an interesting statistics in comparison with this number, is the number of members that have left. My assumption is that congregations that are most likely to leave are on average larger than those that stay. This is of course only a feeling, based on only one example (UALC) and a gut feeling about the nature of congregations. Of course I might be wrong.
based on pretty good lutherans » Blog Archive » ELCA by-the-numbers and numbers from the ELCA site.
The term “triune brain” describes three levels of the brain; the reactive brain (brainstem), the feeling brain (limbic), and the thinking brain (neo-cortex). When anxiety arises the reactive brain takes over, and we become more instinctive in our action.
This understanding of the brain plays a role in Bowen’s Family Systems Theory, which focuses on being “less-anxious” presence (the correct phrase is “non-anxious presence,” but we are only non-anxious when we are dead), attempting to allow the thinking brain to function even when the anxiety in the surroundings is running high.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke offers a good overview of the brain on their website, called Brain Basics: Know Your Brain.
Part of my studies at Trinity Lutheran Seminary was a course held in Detroit, MI about Urban Ministry. One of the lectures we attended was by Regina D. Jemison, PLLC.
What was probably most shocking were the numbers she introduced to us. I looked few of them up tonight at “Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics.”
