The Sunset Juggler (formerly The Dragon's Mouth)

This is also from Episcopal Cafe:

Cynthia Black writing at Walking with Integrity reports on proposed new anti-gay laws in Uganda:

This is the daily lead from Episcopal Cafe.  It’s long, but I’m including it all here:

It may be a while before anybody can speak with any real knowledge about the impact of the development described in the story below, which contain a major error in its first paragraph. (more…)

Scattered thoughts on this mornings office … (more…)

It was our pleasure to welcome Bishop Berry Beisner to his church (St. George’s in Carmichael) yesterday.  Mel posted his sermon at St. George’s on our home page.  He talked about William Tyndale (as did I this last week) and our baptismal promises — among other things.

I read Psalm 137 this morning at Morning Prayer. It is both moving and disturbing.  The first third of the psalm, roughly, goes like this:

By the waters of Babylong we sat down and wept *
  when we remembered you, O Zion. (more…)

Dean Baker says

You know that society is moving toward the acceptance of gay relationships when Joint Force Quarterly , a prestigious journal published by the National Defense University Press for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gives the top prize in its 2009 essay contest to a systematic dissection of the U. S. Military’s policy of Don’t Ask. Don’t tell.

Col. Om Prakash of the U. S. Air Force wrote “The Efficacy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” while a student at the National War College.

You can find the final paragraph of the essay in his piece here.

 

The 7th annual World Day Against the Death Penalty will be celebrated internationally on Saturday, October 10, 2009. Every year since 2003, organizations committed to ending the death penalty have organized events around the world on this day. This year, across five continents, round tables, discussions, debates and exhibitions are planned. The list of scheduled events and information about the day is on the website of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty http://www.worldcoalition.org
 

Progress toward universal abolition continues each year. In 2008, only 25 countries carried out executions and 93% of those occurred in just five countries: China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.  In 2009, the State of New Mexico joined the nations of Burundi and Togo in abolishing the death penalty. In addition, the nations of Kenya and Morocco commuted all of their death sentences earlier this year. 

To mark World Day in California, Death Penalty Focus is working to generate 10,000 signatures on a petition to Governor Schwarzenegger to “convert all current death sentences to sentences of life without possibility of parole, protecting Californians while saving $1 billion in five years” by November 10th. 

Please sign the petition today! Sign on Facebook or here.

This is pure fiction.  I was sitting with my lectionary group yesterday when the Mall of America came up.  I don’t remember why.  Someone said they’re supposed to have everything there — did they have a chapel?  I said something about feeling sometimes that the mall was the true church of these United States.

Anyway, I don’t have to preach this Sunday.  (The bishop’s coming.)  Everyone else kept working on the lessons.  My mind went sideways.  I wrote this last night:

Visiting St. Bo’s

 So guess what!  We all went to St. Bo’s last Sunday. (more…)

Found this at “The Sarcastic Lutheran.”  I believe Nadia (Bolz-Weber) was writing about herself:

OMG, I think I’m Belker

 

You know how in police dramas like Barney Miller or Hill Street Blues all the cops are hanging around the station and they either have on police uniforms or shirts and ties?  But there is always that one undercover guy who looks like the last thing he is is a cop?  He is totally a cop, he just doesn’t look like it, which actually helps him do his job. Well, last night as I was heading out the door to go to a synod meeting with a bunch of other Lutheran pastors  I realized “I’m that guy”.

I found this (so did Dean Baker) at the Daily Episcopalian on Episcopal Cafe:

Outside looking in

By George Clifford

In downtown San Francisco, an abandoned building has furniture, including a refrigerator, sofa, chair, and lamp, hanging out of windows and otherwise attached to the exterior. The building has stood that way for years, with colorful murals decorating the sheets of plywood placed around the ground level to keep people out. I do not know the building’s story, whether the perpetrator(s) intended it as an artistic statement or something else. (more…)