Well now we need to see who the VP’s will be.
BREAKING NEWS: Clinton to suspend campaign tonight
After a day full of conflicting signals, Hillary Clinton’s campaign seems to be sending clearer ones today — that she will gracefully exit the stage and won’t take her fight to the convention.
The Associated Press is reporting that she plans to acknowledge in her speech tonight that Barack Obama has the delegates for the nomination. The AP is also saying advisers have said that Clinton has made a strategic decision to suspend her campaign and not formally end it, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.
Russian Orthodox in threat to quit Anglican talks
By: George Conger
The Russian Orthodox Church has threatened to pull out of Anglican-Orthodox talks, if representatives of the breakaway Estonian Orthodox Church are seated at the dialogue table.
At a meeting last week of the Steering Committee of the International Commission for Anglican Orthodox Theological Dialogue in Istanbul, Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and all Austria of the Russian Orthodox Church warned that his church would not participate in any ecumenical dialogue where representatives of the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church were present.
In 2007 talks between the Vatican and the Orthodox churches collapsed after Russia walked out of a meeting in Ravenna, Italy due to the Estonian presence. The dispute however was not with Rome, but between Moscow and the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I — who extended the invitation to the Estonian church to attend the Vatican talks.
Prior to the Russian invasion of 1940, the Estonian Orthodox Church was an independent church. However, when Estonia was incorporated into the Soviet Union, its church was absorbed by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Estonian speaking members of the Orthodox community in 1993 petitioned the Ecumenical Patriarch for a restoration of their Church, which Bartholomew granted three years later. Moscow has refused to recognize the reconstituted Estonian Church and briefly broke relations with Bartholomew over what it sees as an invasion of its ecclesial territory.
During last week’s Istanbul meeting, Bishop Hillarion told Bartholomew’s representative to the talks, Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokletia, and the representatives of the Anglican Communion: the Rev Canon Gregory Cameron of the Anglican Consultative Council, the Rt Rev Mark Dyer of Virginia Theological Seminary, and the Rev Canon Jonathan Goodall, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Ecumenical Affairs officer, that Russian would withdraw if Estonia were seated.
Canon Cameron told The Church of England Newspaper that the Anglican Communion respects “our dialogue with the Orthodox Churches as a whole and with the Moscow Patriarchate as dialogue partners in particular,” but the question of who represents the Orthodox is “not one which Anglicans can make. It must be between the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Moscow Patriarchate, the Estonian Church and the other Orthodox Churches to settle the matter.”
However, Canon Cameron noted the meeting was “a very positive one in every other respect. There has been a good reception for the Cyprus Statement (The Church of the Triune God), which will be discussed at Lambeth Conference, and the Anglican representatives were warmly
received by the Ecumenical Patriarch and Orthodox delegates.”
Work at the Church
This week we began two projects at the church. The roof needed to be repaired and we have begun to replace the old windows. I took some snaps of the guys doing the roof work and I thought I would post them here. I am glad that, with all my other jobs here, I am not required to do the roof work as well.
Obama resigns from controversial church
ABERDEEN, South Dakota (Reuters) – Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama has resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ, his spokesman said on Saturday, further distancing himself from a source of controversy as he gears up for the general election.
Controversial sermons at Obama’s longtime church in Chicago have plagued the Illinois senator, who is close to clinching the Democratic nomination to run against Republican John McCain in the November election.
Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, gave no details, but said Obama had sent a letter resigning from the church he has attended for 16 years. Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, was expected to make some comments on his decision later in the day, Gibbs said.
Last month, Obama cut ties with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who angered many with anti-American and racially charged sermons.
Just as controversy over Wright had died down, a Roman Catholic priest mocked Obama’s rival Hillary Clinton during a guest appearance at Trinity United.
In his sermon the priest, Michael Pfleger, screamed and imitated Clinton and accused her of espousing “white entitlement.” Pfleger later apologized for his comments and was condemned by Obama and the archbishop of Chicago.
The decision to quit the church appeared to be a sign that Obama wants to put the issue behind him ahead of the November general election.
Obama has attended Trinity United since 1992 and Wright presided over Obama’s marriage and baptized his two daughters.
In an effort to quell the controversy over Wright, Obama gave a widely praised speech in March calling for racial healing and offering a nuanced view of Wright, denouncing the pastor’s remarks but declining to disown him.
But then Wright made a series of public appearances and stood by his inflammatory comments. He has blamed the U.S. government for the spread of the AIDS virus, declared “God damn America” and blasted the country’s history of racism.
Obama was reportedly furious and finally cut ties with Wright last month. He condemned the minister’s comments as “outrageous” and “appalling.”
Wright’s comments posed problems for Obama because they contradicted one of his campaign’s central messages — that he can transcend past divisions such as those involving race.
Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, has attracted strong support in some heavily white states such including Wyoming, Iowa and Wisconsin.
Political analysts questioned whether Obama’s links to Wright might hurt him in the general election.
Soldier suicide rate hits record high
WASHINGTON – Army soldiers committed suicide in 2007 at the highest rate on record, and the toll is climbing ever higher this year as long war deployments stretch on.
At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, up from 102 the previous year, the Army said yesterday.
Nearly a third of them died at the battlefront, 32 in Iraq and four in Afghanistan. But 26 percent had never been deployed to either conflict.
BOOK REVIEW: Here if You Need Me
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (August 1, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316066303
ISBN-13: 978-0316066303
Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
Available from Amazon
I started to read this book because the author was coming to the annual fire chaplains retreat/meeting. I bought it and then it sat on my to be read pile for about a month or so before I started to read it. When I began, I could not put it down. This book is wonderful and if you are in the helping professions you need to read this book.
Kate Braestrup is the chaplain for the Maine Warden Service and she takes you thorough many of the cases that she deals with on a regular basis. The hitch in the story is that she lost her husband, a Maine State Trooper, in a car accident and went to seminary after the funeral. She is a Unitarian Universilist Minister and ministers to her flock as well as her family is ways that go beyond description.
She does an amazing job weaving her story in with stories of rescue missions and search and rescue missions as well as riding along with the Wardens as they do their job on a day to day basis all while caring for her young family.
The book does not end but is in fact a continuing story that really does not have an end. As a fire chaplain I find many things in this book that I can relate too but one does not need to be a chaplain to understand where she is coming from and what she is all about. She is all about helping people regardless of their faith orientation. She is what it means to be a chaplain. The book is an easy read and would be great for beach reading this summer.
I also had the opportunity to hear her speak and tell the stories first hand and she is truly an amazing person and writer. I highly recommend her book.
Spike in PTSD Cases Among Returning Veterans
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cases among veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars rose 46.4 percent in 2007, Reuters reported May 27.
The U.S. military reported 13,891 new PTSD cases in 2007, up from 9,549 in 2006. In the past five years, more than 38,000 PTSD cases have been documented among U.S. military personnel, mostly among the Army and Marines.
Longer, multiple tours of combat duty ordered by the Bush administration received blame for the trend, although experts also said that the military is doing a better job of identifying individuals with PTSD.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently ordered a policy change that allows soldiers to seek help for PTSD without jeopardizing their military careers.
A Rand Corp. study estimated that 18.5 percent of military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan showed signs of PTSD or depression.
Nothing is Simple
Today I had to go and renew my car insurance. Usually you don’t have to do anything. The registry of Motor Vehicles sends you a little form in the mail and you send in your $41 and they send you a new little sticker for your tag. Well I needed a stamp from my insurance agent who is 2 hours away. I never changed agents when I came here, how often do you need to go to your agent for anything? So I drove to Worcester to the agent that does the church insurance and took care of that, then 1 hour at the registry. All done for 2 more years.
Facing East #21
Episode #21 of the Facing East podcast is now online.