Maggi Dawn writes for Ekklesia about Recovering ‘Refreshment Sunday’. The article is also on her blog under the title Mothers Day (AKA Refreshment Sunday).
Brett McCracken in Relevant asks Is Church Worth It? “Many of us have been hurt by church. But what if sticking with it actually matters?”
Giles Fraser in the Church Times explains Why I did not march on Saturday.
Becky Garrison writes in The Guardian that Trans clergy are finally gaining greater acceptance. “As we approach Transgender Faith Action Week, progress can be seen in attitudes to trans people within the church.”
Christopher Howse has two Sacred mysteries columns in The Telegraph this week: Why did the king sack El Greco? and Mary’s feet on the dusty ground.
I hadn’t realized that this coming Sunday had become “Mother’s Day” across the pond. Here in the States, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are wholly owned subsidiaries of the greeting card and florist industries.
The day is noted by some churches, even some Episcopal ones, but it’s nowhere an “official” part of TEC’s worship.
““Ephesians 5:23 doesn’t say the husband is the head of the house; it says the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church, His body. We’ve morphed ‘head’ into a definition that means ‘authority over,’ but it’s not a definition. It’s a picture. The husband is the head and the wife is the body, and the head plus the body equals one flesh.” Brett McCracken
What a repulsive image from a feeble insiders’ article.
The pub might be the best place to be, or sat at home watching the march on the telly, but writing to your MP is also self-righteous. If you don’t show the politicians what you think, how will they know? Capitalism isn’t working, but with it, to try and maintain some growth helps pay the bills: to ram the economy into the wall will make paying the debt more difficult, to cut more and more to pay. The great failure now is that, at this level of the economic cycle, tax cuts or income redistributions are not needed (and we… Read more »
An interesting proposal has emerged in Inspires Online – the online publication from the Scottish Episcopal Church regarding the reordering of the Scottish Dioceses and alternative oversight to be offered to disaffected CofE parishes in the north of England if the CofE General Synod subscribes to the Anglican Covenant in June.
See http://inspires.org.uk/2011/04/01/april-2011-news/
“This proposal would appear to have a limited shelf life” says a local correspondent H.T. Gowk.
Oh, Kennedy!
Read the dateline. April Fool!
Well, in memory of _my_ mother (who insisted it be called Mothering Sunday and not Mother’s Day) and as we all know it well behoves to do as his Mother tells him, today in the UK is Mothering Sunday. Nowadays it is increasingly referred to by the godless heathen (joke; /i/ irony on /i/) as Mother’s Day as the card sellers try to muscle in. But Mothering Sunday predates Mother’s Day so it is not a recent ‘had become’… =:-)
Oh Cryptogram!
Read the attribution. Hunt the Gowk[1]
[1] Scots for April Fool.
See http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_the_gowk
or
http://www.rampantscotland.com/features/festivals.htm
for the hard of Scots.
Many thanks for the articles by Christopher Howse. They are thoughtful and encouraging.