WHAT REALLY HAPPENS AT BISHOPS' MEETINGS

From Dave Walker at Cartoon Church.

THE WISE HUSBAND

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood.

The next morning while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside. "That laundry is not very clean", she said. "She doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap."

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband:

"Look, she has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this."

The husband said, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows."

And so it is with life. What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look.

Thanks to Doug.

STORY OF THE DAY - SIGHTSEEING

You're not going to see people like this
again for a long time, he said & I said I
always saw people like this & he looked
at me for a moment & said, You're not
from around here, are you?

From StoryPeople.

CORN MAZE FOR BLONDES

It's been a long, long time since I posted a dumb blond joke. Still...don't blame me. Blame Ann.

THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS ONLINE

From The Official Google Blog:

It’s taken 24 centuries, the work of archaeologists, scholars and historians, and the advent of the Internet to make the Dead Sea Scrolls accessible to anyone in the world. Today, as the new year approaches on the Hebrew calendar, we’re celebrating the launch of the Dead Sea Scrolls online; a project of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem powered by Google technology.

Here's the link to the website for the Digital Dead Sea Scrolls. Have a look at The Great Isaiah Scroll, which you can follow by chapter and verse. How exciting for biblical scholars and how wonderful for the rest of us just to be able to look.

Many thanks to AnnV for the link.

THE ELEPHANT AND THE TURTLE

An elephant was drinking out of a river one day, when he spotted a turtle asleep on a log. He ambled on over and kicked it clear across the river.

"What on earth did you do that for?" asked a passing giraffe.

"Because I recognized it as the same accursed turtle that took a nip out of my trunk 53 years ago."

"Wow, what a memory you have!" commented the giraffe.

"Why, yes -" replied the elephant, "turtle recall".


Cheers,

Paul (A.)

Yes, I've asked Paul (A.) to leave the stage.

SCOPES FOR BISHOPS

In her very good post titled What Are Bishops For?, Lay Anglicana discusses in a mostly serious way the role of bishops in Anglicanism today. The post is well worth a read, along with several interesting comments.

Lay Anglicana lists a number of scopes which might prove useful for bishops in their service to members of their dioceses.

Amphiscope: Looking at both sides of a question
Cryptoscope: Solving life’s little (and big) mysteries
Diascope: Making a window into men’s souls
Endoscope: Looking remorselessly within every file in the cupboard
Extrascope: Looking at the bits the Archdeacon isn’t telling you
Gyroscope: Measuring people’s orientation (actually, this is one of the existing job descriptions which could be dropped?)
Interscope: Reading between the lines
Megascope: Ensuring the Church does not ignore the obvious
Metascope: Keeping an eye on the life beyond
Microscope: Remembering the detail
Neoscope: Knowing how to introduce the new
Oscilloscope: Working out which way the wind is blowing
Paleoscope: Valuing the old
Periscope: Communicating with the above in order to transmit to those below
Polyscope: Wearing many hats (and not just mitres)
Prososcope: Looking onwards, pointing the way
Stethoscope: Listening out for rumblings in the Body of Christ
Telescope: Keeping a watch on the horizon
Ultrascope: Linking congregations throughout the diocese, and their diocese with others

What do you think? What are the essential attributes of a bishop which are missing from this list? (Or have I included some which have no place in the list of episcopal talents?)

Two scopes came to mind as additions to the list, one of which is a bit naughty, but both I'd consider as quite useful.

Colonoscope: Detecting bullshit
Kaleidoscope: Enjoying the great diversity of God's creatures

I did not besmirch LA's comments with my suggestions, but I present then here, along with her list of useful scopes.

What I did say in the comments to the post:

Bishops are, first and foremost, to be servants, which role seems to have been been mostly swept aside in the discussions of their lesser roles.
....

Jesus said, ‘The greatest among you will be your servant.’ Of course, the words are not just for bishops; they’re for all of us.

Pictured above is the giant kaleidoscope at San Diego harbor from Wikipedia.

US - BEST HEALTH CARE IN THE WORLD?

From an editorial in the New York Times:

A widespread shortage of prescription drugs is hampering the treatment of patients who have cancer, severe infections and other serious illnesses. While some Republican politicians have railed against the imaginary threat of rationing under health care reform, Congress has done nothing to alleviate the all-too-real rationing of lifesaving drugs caused by this crisis.

The Food and Drug Administration says that some 180 medically important drugs have been in short supply, many of which are older, cheaper generic drugs administered by injection that have to be kept sterile from contamination.

A survey of 820 hospitals in June by the American Hospital Association found that almost all of them had experienced a shortage of at least one drug in the previous six months and that nearly half had experienced shortages of 21 or more drugs. As a result, more than 80 percent of the hospitals delayed needed treatments, almost 70 percent gave patients a less effective drug, and almost 80 percent rationed or restricted access to drugs.

And if the plans by the president, the Congress, and the FDA to remedy the shortage of vital drugs are not favored by the pharmaceutical companies, the government officials will face intense opposition from the drug company lobbyists, who are amongst the most powerful in the country.

From the article in the New York Times linked above:

“These shortages are just killing us,” said Dr. Michael Link, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the nation’s largest alliance of cancer doctors. “These drugs save lives, and it’s unconscionable that medicines that cost a couple of bucks a vial are unavailable.”
....

A group of leading oncologists has started a not-for-profit drug company that it hopes will soon be able to import supplies of some of the missing medicines. The company will eventually manufacture the drugs itself, according to Dr. George Tidmarsh, a pediatric oncologist and biotechnology entrepreneur who will lead it.

“We have a meeting with the F.D.A. next week,” Dr. Tidmarsh said. “This unfolding tragedy must stop, and right now.”

So it goes when the free market runs free. The profit margin on cheap generic drugs is small, so the incentive to produce the drugs hurts the bottom line of the drug companies. Of course, Republicans will counter that the situation is the result of too much government regulation. You decide.

UPDATE: Please read IT's post on why we need the FDA. IT is a working scientist, and she knows whereof she speaks. One word should be enough to get your attention: Thalidomide. I'm old enough to remember the tragic results of inadequate testing of a new drug.

SECRET HEART

The secret is not in your hand or your
eye or your voice, my aunt told me once.
The secret is in your heart. Of course,
she said, knowing that doesn't make it
any easier.

From StoryPeople.

NOT FAIRIES, BUT FANTASTIC

From a long article on an interview by Michael Powell with Richard Dawkins in the New York Times:

Does this man, arguably the world’s most influential evolutionary biologist, spend most of his time here or in the field? Prof. Richard Dawkins smiles faintly. He did not find fame spending dusty days picking at shale in search of ancient trilobites. Nor has he traipsed the African bush charting the sex life of wildebeests.

He gets little charge from such exertions.

“My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side,” he says, listing the essential questions that drive him. “Why do we exist, why are we here, what is it all about?”

All right, Dawkins ain't out there digging. He's a philosopher of science or a scientific philosopher. (I'm not sure I have the terms correct.) Anyway, he's a thinker.

Dawkins is reluctant to lecture in places like San Francisco or New York, because those cities are already bastions of godlessness. He prefers the Bible belt, where he's not preaching his brand of atheism to the converted.

The popular theory amongst certain scientists that altruism and cooperation within the group plays a part in the survival of certain species is not convincing to Dawkins.

Genes, he says, try to maximize their chance of survival. The successful ones crawl down through the generations. The losers, and their hosts, die off. A gene for helping the group could not persist if it endangered the survival of the individual.

Such insights were in the intellectual air by the mid-1960s. But Professor Dawkins grasped the power of metaphor — that selfish gene — and so made the idea come alive.

Dawkins on the progression of evolution:

Professor Dawkins’s great intellectual conviction is that evolution is progressive, and tends to lead to more and more complexity. Species, in his view, often arrive at similar solutions to evolutionary puzzles — the need for ears, eyes, arms or an octopus’s tentacle. And, often although not invariably, bigger brains.
....

So it would be no great surprise if the interior lives of animals turned out to be rather complex. Do dogs, for example, experience consciousness? Are they aware of themselves as autonomous animals in their surroundings?

“Consciousness has to be there, hasn’t it?” Professor Dawkins replies. “It’s an evolved, emergent quality of brains. It’s very likely that most mammals have consciousness, and probably birds, too.”

Praise be! I agree with Dawkins about consciousness in animals.

Critics grow impatient with Professor Dawkins’s atheism. They accuse him of avoiding the great theological debates that enrich religion and philosophy, and so simplifying the complex. He concocts “vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince,” wrote Terry Eagleton, regarded as one of Britain’s foremost literary critics. “What, one wonders, are Dawkins’s views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus?”

Put that charge to Professor Dawkins and he more or less pleads guilty. To suggest he study theology seems akin to suggesting he study fairies. Nor is he convinced that the ecumenical Anglican, the moderate imam, the Catholic priest with the well-developed sense of irony, is religion’s truest representative.

“I’ve had perfectly wonderful conversations with Anglican bishops, and I rather suspect if you asked in a candid moment, they’d say they don’t believe in the virgin birth,” he says. “But for every one of them, four others would tell a child she’ll rot in hell for doubting.” (My emphases)

I expect that Dawkins is correct to say that there are Anglican bishops who would, in a candid moment, say they do not believe in the virgin birth, but, in fact, the lack of belief in a literal virgin birth would not necessarily undermine the whole basis for their faith.

And I wonder where Dawkins gets his numbers for the 4 to 1 ratio of Christians who would tell children they will rot in hell. From a study? From a poll? Could it be that the rot-in-hell types simply make more noise?

After two hours of conversation, Professor Dawkins walks far afield. He talks of the possibility that we might co-evolve with computers, a silicon destiny. And he’s intrigued by the playful, even soul-stirring writings of Freeman Dyson, the theoretical physicist.

In one essay, Professor Dyson casts millions of speculative years into the future. Our galaxy is dying and humans have evolved into something like bolts of superpowerful intelligent and moral energy.

Doesn’t that description sound an awful lot like God?

“Certainly,” Professor Dawkins replies. “It’s highly plausible that in the universe there are God-like creatures.”

He raises his hand, just in case a reader thinks he’s gone around a religious bend. “It’s very important to understand that these Gods came into being by an explicable scientific progression of incremental evolution.”

Could they be immortal? The professor shrugs.

“Probably not.” He smiles and adds, “But I wouldn’t want to be too dogmatic about that.”

Since I'm one of the impatient critics, help me here. To suggest that he learn a bit about theology before he denigrates it would be, for Richard Dawkins, like asking him why he doesn't study fairies. But wait! Dawkins ponders the distant future populated by creatures co-evolved with computers and possessing God-like qualities. These creatures are, for the present, only speculative possibilities, but, if they come into being, it will be by an evolutionary process which will be entirely explainable, presumably by the creatures themselves.

Perhaps I don't know enough about science, but the creatures described by Dawkins sound to me as scientifically fantastical as fairies or God.

Dawkins seems an affable fellow in person. Powell, the interviewer, calls him 'gracious'. Although the article is long, it is worth reading in its entirety. Don't forget the NYT limitation to 20 free visits per month to their online version. I feared I would run over my limit in the process of writing this post, which I probably shouldn't be writing anyway, because of my limited knowledge of science. But hey! I use a lot of quotes. Dawkins' description of future creatures caught my attention and was decisive in my determination, for better or for worse, to write the post.
Picture of Dawkins from Wikipedia.

UPDATE: Nicked from MadPriest.