ANDEE AND KIRSTIN NEED HELP

From Barefoot and Laughing:

Written by Andee, posted by Kirstin

We have just reached the point where Kirstin can no longer stay alone while I am at work. (This is Andee - the infamous "A," her roommate, writing.)
For those of you who may not be up-to-date with the latest--the pain from the "strained ligament" in her left knee turned out in fact to be from another melanoma metastasis in her left tibia. The various pain meds she has been given, while not helping much with the pain, have made her loopy, nauseous or both. She had been able to hobble from the bed to the bathroom with the aid of a walker, but Friday night, the pain meds made her lose her balance. She caught herself before falling, but simply putting weight on that leg fractured the front of that bone.

I haven't had an uninterrupted night's sleep in weeks, and am exhausted. Although I have some vacation time remaining, I'm trying to save that for the times I need to accompany Kirstin to doctor's appointments. Family leave laws don't apply when you are the primary caregiver to a roommate instead of a close relative.

To all of you who have wondered how you can help: HELP!!!!

Read the rest at Kirstin's blog, and please help if you can.

MEMORIAL DAY 2011

Arlington National Cemetery

Memorial Day in the United States is a day of remembrance of those in all our wars who gave everything in the service of their country. We honor them for their courage and dedication to duty. We extend our sympathy to their families and friends, whether the loss is recent or from long times past. We stand with you. We mourn with you.

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between many peoples,
and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more;
but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees,
and no one shall make them afraid;
for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. Micah 4:1-4

Lord God, Almighty and Everlasting Father, we pray for all those who have died in wars. We pray the they may rest in peace in the perpetual light of your love. We pray for your blessing upon the families and friends of all those who have died in service to their country. Console them for their aching loss. Bring them healing of body, mind, and spirit. Give them strength and courage to go forward, and Lord God, above all else, give them your peace that passes understanding to keep their minds and hearts.

Below is the faded bumper sticker that I put on my car in 2003 after the start of the war in Iraq. Originally, the top letters were bright yellow, and the bottom letters were bright blue and red.

The war in Afghanistan began in 2001.


Image at the top from Wikipedia.

UPDATE: Rmj at Adventus posted a lovely prayer service, with pictures and poetry, in honor of the day.

Counterlight posted a thoughtful reflection on the day, along with a video of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards' lovely version of the hymn, "Abide With Me".

BECAUSE I LOVE AN OXYMORON

A rough outline of sequence of events that led the late Colin Slee, former Dean of Southwark Cathedral, to write the Slee Memo, which was recently leaked to the Guardian:

The position of Bishop of the Diocese of Southwark in south London becomes vacant.

Dr Jeffery John, Dean of St Alban's Cathedral, who is gay and in a civil partnership, but celibate, is one of the nominees for the position.

Jeffrey John's name is leaked to the media, despite the vow of confidentiality taken by the members of the Crown Nominations Commission.

According to Dean Colin Slee's account in the Slee Memo, the Archbishop of Canterbury himself may have been the leaker when he inquired of church lawyers if there was any reason to decline the nomination of Jeffrey John as bishop of the Diocese of Southwark. In his memo, Slee alleges that the Archbishop had no right to break the vow of confidentiality taken by all members of the commission in order to consult the lawyers.

The news of Jeffrey John's nomination spreads through the media.

After vehement objections to Jeffrey John and another nominee by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Crown Nominations Commission submits the name of Christopher Chessun to the crown, and he is appointed to the position of Bishop of Southwark.

An inquiry into the leak (the Fitchie Enquiry) begins. The findings of the inquiry are to be secret, says the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Concerning a phrase included in Terms of Reference of (the Fritchie Enquiry) Colin Slee says in an email to Chris Smith of the Anglican Communion Office:

Finally, I hope you are aware of the marvellous oxymoron in the terms of reference, (your italics) '...and to make any recommendations necessary to improve the confidentiality in the work of the Commission as it seeks to open up its processes.' (My emphasis)

Colin Slee writes in the memo about the conduct of the Crown Nominations Commission meeting to choose the bishop of Southwark:

The oxymoron within the Terms of Reference will be a delight to me for years to come; it exhibits the chaotic unreality that prevailed from the very beginning.

The purpose of this post is to call attention to the "marvellous oxymoron" and to the "chaotic unreality" of the process of choosing bishops in the Church of England and also as a memory aid for me of the sequence of events if I choose to write about the Slee Memo yet again.

Thanks to Pluralist for the reminder of the oxymoron in his post titled "More on the Smell".

SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

Borrowed from Vic the Vicar.

Thanks to Lapin.

GUESS WHAT IT IS

Its measure is 1 foot long.

BOUDREAUX MAKES A DEAL

Boudreaux and Aucoin are walking down the street in Beaumont, right over the Louisiana line in Texas, and they see a sign on a store which reads:

Suits $5.00 each!
Shirts $2.00 each! Pants $2.50 each!

Boudreaux says to his pal, "Look here, Auc, we could buy a whole gob of these, take 'em back to Weswego, sell 'em to our friends and them other coonasses down in the bayou, and make a fortune. Just let me do the talkin' 'cause if they hear your accent, they might think we're ignorant Cajuns, and won't wanna sell that stuff to us. Jes watch, I'll talk real sophisticated so's they think we is from Lufkin or somewhares over here in Texas."

They go in and Boudreaux says with his best fake sophisticated Texas accent, "I'll take 50 of them suits at $5.00 each, 100 of them there shirts at $2.00 each, 50 pairs of them there pants at $2.50 each. I'll back up my pickup and..."

The owner of the shop interrupts. "Ya'll Cajuns are from over by Jeanerette, New Iberia or somewheres, aren't you?"

"Well...yeah," says a surprised Boudreaux. "How come you knowed that?"

"Because this is a dry cleaners."

A joke about my own people. I should be ashamed. I blame Doug.

The truth is that I had a good laugh before the punch line of the joke at "best fake sophisticated Texas accent".

HELP FOR THE FOLKS IN JOPLIN, MISSOURI

Click for the larger view.,

To access the links to donate, volunteer, or see the list of needs, go to the website of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri.


Nicholas Knisely at The Lead posted quotes and a link to the moving story of the chaplains of Joplin who have taken responsibility for informing the families of the victims who died as a result of the tornadoes.



Bob Heath pictured above.

"Mr. Heath, who is not paid for his work as one of the four Joplin Police Department chaplains, says he prefers that the families get angry with him rather than at someone from somewhere else, someone who cannot possibly grasp all that has happened.

“I’ll take it,” Mr. Heath said, describing a family that screamed at him on Thursday when he told them their relative’s body had been identified. “I’d rather it be me than anyone else in the world. And if that keeps them from yelling at their wife or their husband or whoever, yell at me all you want. Start yelling.”

I read the story from the New York Times in my paper this morning and was quite touched by the work of the chaplains. As I said at The Lead:

Bob Heath and the other chaplins are the face of Jesus to the people in Joplin. God bless them for what they do. God bless and give comfort to the people in Joplin.

ADOPT, ACCEDE, ENDORSE, OR SUBSCRIBE TO THE ANGLICAN COVENANT?

The letter below is from Jonathan Clatworthy, General Secretary to Modern Church in England. The missive was sent to the Church Times but was not published in the newspaper. I thought the letter deserved wider readership, and, when I asked, Jonathan gave me permission to publish the letter here at Wounded Bird. My wee blog is not the Church Times, but the letter follows, unedited:

So neither Ireland nor South-East Asia decided to adopt the proposed Anglican Covenant – but neither felt able to just say no. Ireland voted to ‘subscribe’ to it, South-East Asia to ‘accede’ to it. As both provinces know, these are meaningless expressions; the Covenant will only come into force if the provinces sign on the dotted line to adopt it. Why are they pussyfooting about?

There is a good reason. Provincial leaders are under immense pressure to sign the Covenant, but few of them like it. It was originally conceived as a way of threatening the USA with expulsion over gay bishops. The present text makes two changes to that aim. Firstly, instead of directly threatening to expel, it sets up an international system which could respond to complaints by expelling but could decide not to; we wouldn’t know the result until after it had been set up. So GAFCON have decided this is not discipline enough and have gone their own way, leaving the rest of us wondering who still wants it.

The second change is that the Covenant makes no mention of same-sex partnerships. It would be possible for one province to object to any initiative by another and demand a judgement from the newly empowered central authorities. Anglicanism would become a confessional sect where we were told what to believe.

So what do provinces do? If they refuse to sign, they may find themselves effectively expelled. If they do sign, they will no longer be able to run their own affairs without constantly checking whether someone in another part of the world objects. So they opt for a third alternative. There isn’t one, but they act as though there is. Whether ‘subscribe’ and ‘accede’ end up counting as ‘adopt’ will no doubt depend on which side has the cleverer political manipulators.


Jonathan Clatworthy
General Secretary
Modern Church
Liverpool, UK


gensec@modernchurch.org.uk

www.modernchurch.org.uk

www.clatworthy.org

Provinces who adopt the covenant could still be expelled, so whether to adopt or not puts a province in somewhat of a double bind situation. Jonathan makes an important point about any province being able to report any initiative by another province. What a tangle of tasks the new bureaucracy could be faced with in having to judge the complaints. I can't help but imagine the future operations of the standing committee, or whatever group will judge whether the complaints are worthy of consideration or action, as similar to a teacher having to deal with a stream of tattling children and finally saying, "Enough!"

My guess is that the Anglican Communion Office, or whichever body has decision-making power, will conclude that if the term used by a province remotely suggests adoption, the province will be considered to have adopted the Anglican Covenant.

IF YOU'RE WONDERING...

A tug boat pushes a barge up the Mississippi River near New Orleans Tuesday May 24, 2011.

From NOLA.com:

Based on a drop in the level of the swollen Mississippi River, the National Weather Service on Friday canceled its weeks-long flood warning for New Orleans and points downriver.

Despite this development for south Louisiana, the weather service’s flood warning remains in effect for points upriver, including Baton Rouge, where levee seepage has led the state Office of Transportation and Development to close River Road’s southbound lane from North Third Street to State Capitol Drive.
....

Although the threat to south Louisiana may seem to be abating, the Corps of Engineers declared the Bonnet Carre Spillway closed to recreation, including boating, until June 26.
....

Going into that area is dangerous because of the swift current — water is flowing toward Lake Pontchartrain at 293,000 cubic feet per second — and the debris that can get carried along in the torrent.

The damage that this combination can inflict was seen on the railroad bridge in the Bonnet Carre Spillway, where a supporting pier was dislodged. As a result, the legendary City of New Orleans train could get no closer than Hammond to its namesake city, with buses carrying passengers between that city and New Orleans.

The bridge has been repaired.

Water from the Mississippi River washes out part of the railroad bridge that crosses the Bonnet CarrÈ Spillway Tuesday, May 24, 2011.

The folks in New Orleans can breathe a sigh of relief, if not relax completely, about levee failure and flooding from the Mississippi River. The seepage in the levee upriver is worrying. As we saw the other day when we walked along the river in New Orleans, the Mississippi is a mighty river, and she wants to go her own way. Whether man-made controls will work, always involves a degree of uncertainty.

At the link to the Times-Picayune is a fine series of aerial photographs of the Mississippi, the control structures, and other areas near the river.

BRING THEM HOME

From the Los Angeles Times:

An explosion in southern Afghanistan on Thursday killed eight U.S. troops, officials said, an unusually large toll for a single incident.

Earlier in the day, NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, announced the death of a service member in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan's east. The cause of the crash was under investigation, the coalition said.

A Pentagon official confirmed that the eight killed in the south were U.S. soldiers. Most of the troops in the south and the east are Americans. U.S. troops make up about two-thirds of the overall NATO force.

Coalition fatalities stand at 2482. We are not going to win the war in Afghanistan. What is the coalition accomplishing now? Are they even holding the line? Our departure will be a negotiated departure. With whom will we negotiate? The greater number of insurgents are Taliban. Unfortunately, that is the reality, and it is likely that we will negotiate with the Taliban. Whomever it is that we will negotiate with, why not now, rather than later before more troops are killed or wounded, before more Afghan civilians are killed or wounded? Why not now before we spend more billions which could be put to far better use than making war?

It's time to bring the troops home.

Shown above is the faded bumper sticker which I placed on my car at the beginning of the Iraq War. I no longer have the car, so the bumper sticker is gone, too. Originally, the colors were bright yellow, red, and blue. The photo of my old bumper sticker still serves to make my point.

May the troops who died rest in peace and rise in glory.

May God give comfort, consolation, and the peace that surpasses understanding to all who love the fallen.

May the God of peace fill our hearts with such a longing for peace that we do all in our power to settle differences with choices other than war.