I don't disagree with a single thing you said, however as a father it goes beyond that, in that those same feelings of "total trust", "undying love", "Absolute awe" continue through their lives. Kelly, although 5 and very independent, still has moments where she wants nothing more than to be that little baby again, curled up in your arms being totally dependent on you. As long as you (as the adult) accept that this time decreases with age, but is still absolutely necessary (if not from her point of view, from mine) you too can have those same feelings throughout your child's life. (At least I hope it lasts that long.)

I still am in wonder every day at how she grows and changes and how she sees the world and people around her. I guess this has less to do with being a parent and more to do with just being there and seeing it happen each and every day.

Baucham explained himself further. "What you do is like what we do in a courtroom; you [ask], 'Do we have any eyewitnesses? Do the eyewitnesses tell the same story?' Yep! 'Friday, dead -- Sunday, risen!'"

Baucham is co-author of a resolution that encourages Southern Baptist churches to investigate their local public school districts to determine if any homosexual influence exists. The resolution may come up for a vote on Wednesday during the SBC business meeting.

The world's oldest monastery plans to use hi-tech cameras to shed new light on ancient Christian texts preserved for centuries within its fortress walls in the Sinai Desert.

Saint Catherine's Monastery hopes the technology will allow a fuller understanding of some of the world's earliest Christian texts, including pages from the Codex Sinaiticus -- the oldest surviving bible in the world.

The technique, known as hyperspectral imaging, will use a camera to photograph the parchments at different wavelengths of light, highlighting faded texts obscured by time and later overwritings.

It should allow scholars to understand corrections made to pages of the Greek Codex Sinaiticus, written between 330 and 350 and thought to be one of 50 copies of the scriptures commissioned by Roman Emperor Constantine.

I'm drooling, I tells ya...

The ashes of a Lutheran pastor who was a fireworks enthusiast will be shot into the sky over Marine on St. Croix during the town's July 4th celebration.

The canister that will include the ashes of the Rev. Gordon Bergin will display gold crosses, a traditional part of the town's fireworks show.

Bergin, the longtime pastor of Diamond Lake Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, died in February at age 93.

• For our fathers, who have given us life and love,
  that we may show them respect and love,
  let us pray*...

• For fathers who have lost a child through death,
  that their faith may give them hope,
  and their family and friends support and console them,
  let us pray*...

• For men, though without children of their own,
  who like fathers have nurtured and cared for us,
  let us pray*...

• For fathers, who have been unable to be a source of strength,
  who have not responded to their children,
  who have not sustained their families,
  who have actually injured their families,
  let us pray*...

  God, in your wisdom and love you made all things.
  Bless these men, that they may be strengthened.
  Let them set an example of love and decency.

  Grant that we, their sons and daughters,
  may honor them always in word and deed.

A Romanian Orthodox priest, facing charges for ordering the crucifixion of a young nun because she was "possessed by the devil," was unrepentant as he celebrated a funeral ceremony for his alleged victim.

"God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil," Father Daniel, 29, the superior of the Holy Trinity monastery in north-eastern Romania, told an AFP reporter before celebrating a short liturgy "for the soul of the deceased", in the presence of 13 nuns who showed no visible emotion.

Vitalie Danciu, the superior of a nearby monastery at Golia, called the crucifixion "inexcusable," but a spokesman for the Orthodox patriarchate in Bucharest refused to condemn it.

"I don't know what this young woman did," Bogdan Teleanu said.

The program is part of a statewide effort to ensure mentally ill people who end up behind bars receive appropriate treatment. That could entail anything from their receiving medication to making sure their mental illness is considered as a factor in prosecution.

The system is referred to as the CARE match program. CARE is the acronym the state uses for its Client Assignment & Registration System, which tracks people's involvement with the public mental health system.

CARE has been around for decades. What's new is that regional mental health centers are beginning to cross-reference the database with lists of people booked into jail. The idea is to take some of the guesswork out of identifying inmates with special needs.

A universal screening program that would identify children with behavioral disorders before age 5 is being prepared in the county as a way to head off severe mental health problems among school-aged children.

Nothing else has worked, said Kent Paxton, an official with San Bernardino County's Children's Network, an agency that helps at-risk youngsters.

Last fall, my wife and I got a phone call from the children's home where our goddaughter lives. An alumna of their program, a good friend of the goddaughter's, had died. Would we come to the memorial service?

We would have anyway, but it didn't hurt that the goddaughter was singing at the service.

And not just singing, but singing. We didn't know until the kid opened up her mouth that she was going to do an a cappella rendition of "His Eye Is On the Sparrow." Wow! It wasn't technically perfect, but she sang it loud and clear. More important, she sang it with heart. There was no mistaking the message: His eye is on the sparrow, and so is mine.

I don't know how the kid made remembering a dead friend an act of defiance, but she did. Mrs. Pastor and I were dabbing away tears by the time she was done.

Remembering that story helps me put together the disparate parts of this morning's lesson. It's a collection of sayings stitched together to make a point, which is not unusual in the gospels. The first half of the reading is reassurance of God's love and protection; the second half an assurance that disciples are going to need that love and protection.

About that second half: it isn't so much that Jesus wants to run around blowing up families (quite a message for Father's Day). Instead, as one of my commentaries explains, disciples will inevitably have to make decisions about their priorities. To follow to Jesus' radical path leads inescapably to conflict, even within one's own family.

It's important to step back for a moment and remind ourselves that these words were not written for us. They were written for a group of people committed to beliefs that walked that fine line between "radical" and "insane." It was crazy--and contentious--enough to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. But on top of that, they added the completely insane idea that that reflected God's preference for the poor and dispossessed!

Early Christians, in other words, challenged the conventional wisdom in both religion and social priority. These folks were a menace to the status quo.

We can try to live out their faith, but I doubt we'll ever be pulled into the kind of conflict they must have experienced. Still, there are people who come close.

Norman Kansfield, for one:

SCHENECTADY, N.Y., June 17 - In the first trial of a minister in 100 years, the general assembly of the Reformed Church in America found Friday night that the Rev. Dr. Norman J. Kansfield, a leading Protestant theologian, had violated church law by officiating at the marriage of his daughter, Ann, to her partner, Jennifer Aull, a year ago.

The delegates also voted to suspend Dr. Kansfield, 65, from the ministry until he changes his views to fall in line with church doctrine, and to strip him of his standing as a professor of theology in the church.

Dr. Kansfield said the decision was "going to be very hard to deal with.

"My life," he said, "has been the ministry." But he was encouraged that at least one-third of the delegates - those who did not vote against him - were willing to consider a "far more open stance on the inclusion of gay people."

You don't even have to claim that these two women face special challenges in the world, though of course they do. Any two lovers entering into matrimony face an uphill battle these days. Newlyweds are automatically qualified for sparrow status--especially, I think, when they get to their first arguments about who's going to balance the checkbook and who's going to make dinner after a long day at work.

My goddaughter would hate hearing this--she doesn't believe in same-sex marriage--but her example of fidelity, and Dr. Kansfield's, help to bolster my resolve when things get contentious. What she's too young to understand yet is how love for a friend or a family member is often a springboard for more abstract concern.

So it's her example, among others, that strengthens me when read about someone like Albert Mohler attacking the United Church of Christ again.

See, a few conservative churches in New Jersey have put up a resolution for the denomination's national gathering in July. It's a stalking horse; while on its face, there's nothing objectionable about it, if it is accepted, it will trap the denomination in the same kind of fundamentalist crap that overtook Mohler's Southern Baptist Convention twenty-five years ago. He says:

The resolution proceeds to remind the denomination that the UCC Constitution states that the body "claims as its own the faith of the historic Church expressed in the ancient creeds and reclaimed in the basic insights of the Protestant Reformers." Accordingly, the resolution "provides an opportunity for General Synod to unashamedly, unabashedly proclaim that the UCC is a Christian denomination where Jesus is Lord."

Believe it or not, the resolution has attracted significant opposition, and some observers do not expect it to pass. Consider this reaction from a New Jersey pastor: "Religiously speaking, it sounds like apple pie," commented Rev. Raymond Kostulias of the First Congregational Church of Park Ridge. Nevertheless, he's not a supporter of the statement. He described the resolution as having "a judgmental quality to it that implies very strongly that those who do not agree with us are condemned or damned or hopeless -- and that's exactly the thing that UCC is against."

Well, Rev. Kostulias, that's what the Apostles and the early chuch called the defining line between orthodoxy and heresy -- between genuine faith and a false gospel. A denomination that cannot stand together in affirming the Lordship and deity of Jesus Christ is a denomination that has set itself against Scripture and the faith of the Christian Church.

Mohler's interpretation of the resolution is misleading. He bears false witness to the United Church of Christ. Why would we actually oppose such a resolution?

The UCC respects freedom of individual conscience, and there are no "tests of faith" mandatory on our 1.4 million members, but we do honor the historic testimonies of our spiritual ancestors as they explored the Bible and applied its insights.

The resolution as worded would create a "test of faith" and in doing so would violate our church polity. In short, the resolution is an attempt (which I hope will fail) that seeks to make the UCC adopt a fundamentalist view of scripture that is common in Mohler's denomination. Click here to learn more.

...

The United Church of Christ is a denomination quite obviously committed to the Christian faith. We are not, however, a doctrinal church. Our members are not required to sign pledges that align us with one theological school or another. We trust our members to be faithful disciples and feel forcing dogma on them does nothing to further that discipleship. We put our faith in God before we put it in human tests of faith.

Second, and more important, is this: in our very "Basis of Union," the agreement that brought the UCC into being, we declared that

denominations exist not for themselves but as parts of [the greater Church], within which each denomination is to live and labor and, if need be, die

And the last time I checked, Christ's eye was definitely on the sparrow, not theologically "sound" doctrine that happened to exclude whole categories of people from the grace and love of God in Christ Jesus.

So it's the sparrows I'm willing to take up my cross for, for whom I would lose my life and would be glad to lose my denomination's. I owe it to my goddaughter, and the memory of her friend.

Screw orthodoxy.

So the notion that people are fleeing liberal churches in favor of conservative ones is simply false. Nevermind the strange contradiction that usually comes with such arguments, where "ear tickling liberalism" is supposedly appealing to the masses with the "broad way" while at the same time conservatives are congratulating themselves for their huge church growth. However, as we have seen, that church growth is actually an illusion... It's a matter of growth in the population and mobility, not a growth in membership. For mainline churches, people remain extremely loyal to them or to their denominational families, and though they may leave for a brief spell, they almost inevitably return. In urban centres, these churches are trending towards growth as well.

An estimated 4.3 percent of Americans suffer from bipolar disorder or its milder forms, far more than previous estimates which placed the number at about 1 percent, a new study finds.

"When the entire spectrum [of bipolar disorder] is taken into account, the percent affected by that syndrome is higher than was recognized," said Ronald C. Kessler, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. He presented the findings Friday at the Sixth International Conference on Bipolar Disorder, in Pittsburgh.

The new estimate finds that 4.3 percent of adults suffer from a bipolar disorder or a "sub-threshold" bipolar disorder, Kessler said. The latter group includes persons who don't fit the precise clinical criteria for bipolar disorder but who have symptoms nearly as bad that severely affect their ability to perform their daily routine.

In the coming weeks you’ll read a lot about the United Church of Christ in the media. Our General Synod begins July 1st in Atlanta and many of the issues considered will be difficult and controversial. I’ve written about several of those issues – including gay marriage and divestment from companies that profit from the occupation of Palestine. But there are other issues that will also cause a stir in the media and among critics of the UCC in the religious right.

Republican Former Senator John Danforth says no
to the Dobson/Bush/Frist Extreme Agenda:

Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be
translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but
because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. Like
conservative Christians, we attend church, read the Bible and say our prayers.

But for us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love
our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the
Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to
follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be
codified by legislators.

When, on television, we see a person in a persistent vegetative state,
one who will never recover, we believe that allowing the natural and merciful end to her ordeal is more loving than imposing government power to keep her hooked up to a feeding tube.

When we see an opportunity to save our neighbors' lives through stem cell research, we believe that it is our duty to pursue that research, and to oppose legislation that would impede us from doing so.

We think that efforts to haul references of God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith.

Following a Lord who reached out in compassion to all human beings, we oppose amending the Constitution in a way that would humiliate homosexuals.

For us, living the Love Commandment may be at odds with efforts to
encapsulate Christianity in a political agenda. We strongly support the
separation of church and state, both because that principle is essential to
holding together a diverse country, and because the policies of the state always fall short of the demands of faith. Aware that even our most passionate ventures into politics are efforts to carry the treasure of religion in the earthen vessel of government, we proceed in a spirit of humility lacking in our conservative colleagues.

Well done Sen. Danforth.

The state Mental Health Department plans to open 26 new long-term, psychiatric-care hospital beds in Columbia and Spartanburg.

The new beds are intended to relieve backlogs of mentally ill patients now being treated in hospital emergency rooms.

The department's critics say 40 to 60 long-term-care beds are needed to address shortages created by years of downsizing. Some also say the department should be focusing on opening acute-care beds for patients needing emergency — not long-term — help.

"Right now, the state mental health system has no emergency system," said Gregory B. Gattman, vice president of Palmetto Health, which operates Palmetto Health Richland and Palmetto Health Baptist hospitals in Columbia.

"They’re addressing it from the back end of the system, but any kind of beds that are opened by the state to offer more options for folks to get to the proper kind of treatment they need is an improvement."

By now, we've all heard the pejoratives leveled against the so-called religious right and its alleged role in the confirmation of what the Democrats like to call "extremist judges."

But what role has the religious left played in all of this?

According to the Institute on Religion and Democracy, the United Methodist Women's organization launched a "Save the Filibuster" campaign.

The head of The National Council of Churches sent a letter to Senator Majority leader Bill Frist trying to protect the filibuster against judges they don't like, while the bishop in charge of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America accused Frist of "political manipulation" on the issue of judges.


The United Church of Christ in D.C. lobbied in support of the filibuster.

And, the clerk of the Presbyterian Church, USA was part of a media conference call that complained about the role religious conservatives played in the opposition to the filibuster.

A draft of a constitution detailing a proposed realignment of the worldwide Anglican Communion became public this week, outlining for the first time how divisions over homosexuality may change the face of the more than 70-million-member church.

The unsourced and undated four-page document, named "The Organizing Constitution of the Anglican Global Initiative," has been circulating among some executive members of the Episcopal Church since January, after it was brought to the church's New York headquarters following a meeting of African bishops in Nairobi.

Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh, a group of clergy and lay people, made the document available on its Web site. Its existence was first reported this week by the Guardian newspaper in Great Britain.

"Religious denominations also support legal access to medical marijuana, including the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the National Council of Churches, the National Progressive Baptist Convention, the Presbyterian Church, the Union for Reform Judaism, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the United Methodist Church."

NEW YORK - Side effects have taken center stage in the $14 billion market for schizophrenia drugs.

To understand why, take the case of Tom Harrell, a renowned jazz musician and composer. Harrell, dubbed "the greatest trumpeter of his generation" by Entertainment Weekly, is also schizophrenic. For years, he has fought not only his disease, but also the crippling side effects of the drugs used to treat it.

religious participation is highest in those places where there is a high density of people sharing the same religious preferences; and second, that for those who are part of it, this 'higher market density' leads to all sorts of good things according to key economic indicators such as income, levels of education, dependence on welfare, and marriage and divorce statistics.

The positive effects of living around a lot of people who share your religion are offset if most of those people belong to the same ethnic group. In other words, Italian Catholics go to church more often and do better economically if they live in an area where there are not just Italians but other ethnic groups—Poles or Irish, say—that share the Catholic faith.

What that suggests about the ties bind us—and the ones that boost us—is provocative indeed.

Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 18:44:56 -0400
From: [removed]
To: [removed]
Subject: Re: Think Clearly

Pastor Ted,

Thank you for your response, I will tell you that I first emailed you based more on emotion than really giving thought to what I wanted to really say, for that I apologize. We have only attended New Life for 2 months and have really enjoyed your teaching. I do know that emails do not always convey what we really want to say.
If possible, perhaps we could meet some time in the near future just so we can clear the air and I can have a good understanding of your vision for New Life church. Please know that I in no way want to disrespect you as a Pastor or person.
I just want to know without any doubt that we are in the right church.
Hope to hear from you soon.

God bless

[name removed]

------

> From: [removed]
> Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 23:16:26 EDT
> Subject: Re: Think Clearly
> To: [removed]
>
[name removed],

I didn't like your note at all. New Life doesn't operate that way. My guess is that you are not in the right church. I think you need to look on.

-------

The U.S. Supreme Court, rejecting bids from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and other media businesses, refused to question federal limits on the number of broadcast stations and newspapers that companies can own.

The justices made no comment today in turning away five industry appeals that said the Federal Communications Commission isn't allowing enough consolidation in the media business. The Bush administration urged the court not to grant a hearing.

The rejection is a victory for consumer groups, which say the ownership limits help ensure diversity of local news and programming. It's a setback for News Corp., Viacom Inc., Gannett Co., Clear Channel Communications Inc. and General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal Inc. in their bid for more freedom to acquire new radio and television stations and newspapers.