A turquoise ring which once belonged to Jane Austen is up for auction at Sotheby's next week. But fans of the romantic novelist will need deep pockets if they are to win the rare piece of jewellery, which has a guide price of £20,000 to £30,000.Other pieces of jewelry belonging to Jane Austen are on display in Chawton Cottage, her final home until she was moved to Winchester to be nearer to her doctors preceding her death a few months thereafter.
The turquoise and gold ring came to Sotheby's from Austen's family, complete with a note sent by Jane's sister-in-law, Eleanor Austen, in November 1863, to Jane's niece, Caroline Austen. "My dear Caroline," wrote Eleanor. "The enclosed ring once belonged to your Aunt Jane. It was given to me by your Aunt Cassandra as soon as she knew that I was engaged to your uncle. I bequeath it to you. God bless you!"
In a display case in the drawing room, for example, is a delicate blue bead bracelet with a gold clasp, which belonged to Jane Austen. It somehow seems to symbolize the refinement of her turn of mind. She may have worn the bracelet to balls when she lived in the resort town of Bath - such as those Catherine Morland had the confused pleasure of attending in ''Northanger Abbey.'' In the same case is the topaz cross given to her by her brother Charles and an ivory-colored miniature similar to one that may have inspired the observation: ''The little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labor.''How romantic it would be to think that the young Irishman, Tom Lefroy, with whom she flirted shamelessly, gave her the ring, but, since the box is from a London jeweler, it is much more likely that the ring was given to Jane by her brother Henry, who was a banker in London. And would it be proper for a young man to whom she was not engaged to be married to give Jane a ring?
Exciting indeed. I'd bid on the ring if I had the money to spare, but then what would I do with it? Alas, my collections no longer interest me much any more as I draw closer to the end of life. It has dawned that you really can't take them with you, and none of my children are interested, except for furniture and my few pieces of good jewelry, which are not antique collector's items.Should one quote oneself on one's blog? Well, why not?
Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me,From StoryPeople.
but try waking up every morning &
loving the world all over again. That's
what takes a real hero.
Last week, Romney's top campaign adviser said the federal penalty for refusing to get health coverage was exactly that -- a fine, not a tax. This week, Romney said it is a tax because the Supreme Court opinion he opposes declared it a tax.Confused? So is the Romney campaign, apparently.The back-and-forth shows the tightrope Romney must walk on the health care reform issue now that he is the certain Republican presidential nominee.
| Bro John Anthony |
St Cuthbert's CottageFaith gives us the power to see life very clearly, to admit that sometimes it seems all wrong and still to know that, somehow, it is all right.
–Br. David Vryhof
Society of Saint John the Evangelist
James Madison:
There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by … corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses."There's more, much more at the link. Someone tell the Supremes!
At our recent General Synod, the Scottish Episcopal Church, decided by a clear majority not to adopt the Anglican Covenant. In 2011, Synod had discussed the Covenant in Indaba session. It was clear then that a decision to adopt was unlikely.As General Convention of the Episcopal Church begins, and the Anglican Covenant is on the agenda, I thought Bishop David's article was worth posting in its entirety. My hope is that we join the Scottish Episcopal Church, the dioceses in the Church of England, and the House of Bishops in the Anglican Church in the Philippines to vote a firm "no" to adoption of the Anglican Covenant.
We tried hard to keep the issue open. I believe that the Anglican Covenant is an honourable attempt to heal our brokenness. But some time ago, as I set out to address yet another meeting in my diocese, I confided to my blog that I was going to listen to the most committed Anglicans on the planet telling me why they didn’t like the Anglican Covenant. Put simply, they believed that the Covenant is un-Anglican.
The Scottish Episcopal Church holds tenaciously to its commitment to the Anglican Communion. I see three reasons for that.
First, it's our size - to a small church, it matters that we belong to something bigger. Then there is a reason which is proprietorial and slightly presumptuous - we invoke the memory of Samuel Seabury, consecrated in 1784 by the Scottish bishops as the first bishop of the church in the United States of America. We like to believe that we were in at the beginning. We want to be part of the bringing to birth of a new phase of Communion life. Finally and more subtly, our particular attitude to authority - rooted in the collegiality of a College of Bishops - finds an echo in the Anglican Communion' aspiration to dispersed rather than centralised authority.
We approached this decision with great care and with some apprehension. We too are a diverse church. We have congregations who see the Anglican Covenant as important and necessary for their security within our church. This decision has called on our reserves of internal trust. Those congregations needed to know that, whether or not we adopted the Covenant, we intend to take a measured and respectful approach to our diversity. But therein lies the first of the problems. The Covenant addresses what it sees primarily as inter-provincial disagreement. But its effect may actually be to heighten intra-provincial tensions.
Provinces will continue to consider the Covenant and come to their own decisions. The Anglican Communion will continue to seek unity in an astonishing diversity of culture and context across the world. It already has structures and processes through which we build communion life. There are the four Instruments of Communion. There are networks - family, environment and others. There is the Anglican Alliance. There is Continuing Indaba - for which I serve as Chair of the Reference Group. There are Diocesan Companionship Links.
But we need a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges. We also need to recognise that no single measure can address them all.
The genesis of the Anglican Covenant lay in the Windsor Report - which arose from the development of conflict around issues of human sexuality. In my experience, conflict is almost never 'single issue'. It is a complex of issues which sometimes don't quite match in a directly adversarial way. And the passion with which those conflicts are experienced tells us that other issues are in play. It's about more than the 'presenting question'. Let me suggest two other issues which are part of this.
The first is one to which we are tangentially linked through the Seabury story - it is the legacy of history. The sharp word is colonialism. People assert independence of thought and action more strongly - challenge authority more resolutely - when relationships are shaped and conditioned by the legacy of history. In the Anglican Communion, that history affects interactions between the New World and the old world and between the developed and the developing world. The challenge is to build an Anglican Communion which transcends its history - a post-colonial Communion.
At the Primates Meeting in Dublin last year, I learnt that another of the great diversities of Communion life is in our understanding of authority. A bishop in the Church of England does not exercise authority as we do in Scotland - different again in America and in Nigeria and in Hong Kong. That diversity enriches but it has led to misunderstanding and disappointment in one another.
I believe that a new understanding of the problems we face is needed. By challenging the legacy of history, new axes of relationship will be encouraged. We shall be better able to address the deeply adversarial divisions which gather around the human sexuality issues. Communion grows when we share together in mission, grow together as disciples and act with a self-discipline which is the foundation of unity in diversity.
Our Communion is a gift to the world - a global institution which aspires to exist largely without centralised authority and to celebrate its rich diversity. Such a Communion models things which are important for the world community. Such a Communion is attractive in mission because it has learned to transcend conflict. I believe that we now have a historic opportunity to reshape the Anglican Communion so that it may become an instrument of God's mission to the world in the next generation.
[Episcopal News Service] Two complaints apparently have been filed about the involvement of five active bishops and four retired bishops in property litigation in two Episcopal Church dioceses.
Word of the complaints surfaced on various blogs and e-mail lists on June 30. No information about either complaint was released by the Episcopal Church, including the name or names of the complainants.Read the entire article at ENS.
According to the reports, including an extensive one here, Bishop Clayton Mathews e-mailed two groups of bishops to tell them that he had received complaints against them and that “in the next few weeks” he would begin the disciplinary process as called for in Title IV.6.3-4 of the canons of the Episcopal Church.
It is highly unusual for the existence of a complaint to become public knowledge at this point in the process, regardless the order of the person against whom the complaint is filed.
“As cited in Title IV, disciplinary matters are confidential at this stage,” Episcopal Church Public Affairs Officer Neva Rae Fox told Episcopal News Service July 2. “We are honoring that confidentiality.” (My emphasis)
In one instance, the complaint apparently concerns the fact that seven bishops endorsed an amicus curiae or “friend of the court” brief prepared by the Anglican Communion Institute, Inc. in the pending appeal of a court ruling involving the Diocese of Fort Worth and the bishop, clergy and laity who broke away from that diocese in November 2008.
The brief objects to the trial court’s ruling that told the dissidents to return “all property, as well as control of the diocesan corporation” to the Episcopal leaders of the diocese.
....
Those named in the Fort Worth complaint are retired Diocese of Texas Bishop Maurice M. Benitez, retired Diocese of Central Florida Bishop John W. Howe, Diocese of Dallas Bishop Suffragan Paul E. Lambert, Diocese of Albany Bishop William H. Love, Diocese of Western Louisiana Bishop D. Bruce MacPherson, Diocese of Springfield Bishop Daniel H. Martins, and Diocese of Dallas Bishop James M. Stanton.
MacPherson is also named in the other complaint, along with retired Diocese of South Carolina Bishop Edward L. Salmon, Jr. and retired Diocese of Springfield Bishop Peter H. Beckwith. Matthews e-mailed them to say that a complaint has been received against them because they signed affidavits opposing to a motion for summary judgment made by representatives of the Diocese of Quincy and the Episcopal Church in the fall of 2011 to secure diocesan financial assets from a group that broke from the diocese in November 2008.
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| Walter Rauschenbusch |
Rauschenbusch, a Baptist pastor and theologian, identified “social sins” Christ bore on the Cross: greed combined with political power; militarism; and class contempt.Loving God, you call us to do justice and love kindness: we thank you for the witness of Walter Rauschenbusch, reformer of society; and we pray that, following his example of faithfulness to the Gospel, we may be ever mindful of the suffering of those who are poor and work diligently for the reform of our communities; through Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
