A wise person once asked a crowd “What is the definition of gratitude towards God?”. Someone replied “if you receive bounties from God enjoy them, if you do not be patient”. “But even the dogs in the street do this”, said the wise person. “To be truly grateful means if you receive bounties from God share them with others and if you have nothing to share then give thanks to God“.

It is hard for most of us to realize how much our life have compared to someone even 100 years ago; we live in a time of almost limitless abundance. But we lose sight of this, especially in the current global economic turmoil when most of us are seeing our savings and investments being diminished with astonishing speed.  Right now is a good time to count our blessings.

Good health, family, a sound mind, clean air and water, good food, this list…

The following prayer was part of a story from the Anglican Communion News Service sent to me by a friend. It can be found online at on the Prayers for Today section of the Church of England’s website and has been viewed more than 8000 times since it was published in September.

Lord God, we live in disturbing days:
across the world,
prices rise,
debts increase,
banks collapse,
jobs are taken away,
and fragile security is under threat.
Loving God, meet us in our fear and hear our prayer:
be a tower of strength amidst the shifting sands,
and a light in the darkness;
help us receive your gift of peace,
and fix our hearts where true joys are to be found,
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The ANS article also includes the following figures:

Web users looking for support during the current financial situation have boosted traffic to a Church of England website section focusing on debt advice by over 70 per cent, and increased…

My friend, a former St. Louisan,  owned a successful cooking store in Asheville, North Carolina. “I can always tell when homeschooled children come in the shop,” she said, “They have better manners than other children.”

Twenty years have passed since that statement was made and homeschooling in the U.S. has taken off amidst similar praise — and much criticism and fear.

I first became aware of homeschoolers 25 years ago when a few young, local devout Catholic couples decided to opt out of the Catholic school system. The religious catechesis was insipid at best, they said, and some of it actually undermined church teaching.

These couples didn’t need to convince me: I had been one of those Catholic teachers. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s the religion books I taught from were of the insipid sort, leaving the children with little in the way of knowledge or history of their religion.  And…

I was struck by this review of the new exhibition of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Jewish Museum in New York City.

There has been no greater archaeological discovery of the past hundred years or so to shed light on the Jewish and Christian Scriptures than when “the Bedouin goatherd who in 1947 tossed a stone in a cave above the Dead Sea, heard the shattering of pottery, and discovered scrolls that proved to date from the third century B.C. through the time of Jesus.”

But I find the history of what happened after their discovery to be just as intriguing as the scrolls themselves. Better than anything in schlock like The DaVinci Code.

And the reviewer’s nod to Walter Benjamin’s concept of artistic “aura” is choice.

I am a Christian. I don’t believe in reincarnation, but I have heard that “half of the world” does, and that a rising number of Christians are toying with this idea. I would like to find out what our readers think about the possibility of reincarnation.

I will give a bit of my reasoning here, but I will probably add more in the comment section.

First, I just don’t there is scientific evidence for it, but how much of an argument is this? Has science really studied this well? Most studies are pretty biased before they begin. Perhaps reincarnation could be inferred if we found a handful of people that had knowledge of past events to which there was no historical connection, events that occurred before they were born that they could describe in detail. But one could not prove where this knowledge came from. Perhaps they read about it somewhere, or…

Today and tomorrow you can listen or watch the world-wide conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Tune in central time at 11a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday. I wrote about this twice yearly conference: click here.

To listen: click here.

St. Francis, picture by John August Swanson

We don’t believe in reincarnation, but my husband and I often joke that when we die we want to come back as one of his sister’s dogs. She just treats them so well–they ride in her car, sleep on her couch, get long walks every day and tons of affection (not to mention a regular diet of yummy treats). What a life!

In return, of course, her pets provide steadfast love, unwavering loyalty, and companionship without preconditions. Oh, and a few sloppy kisses now and then.

Saturday, October 4, is the day that the Episcopal Church celebrates St. Francis of Assisi, another venerable friend of animals. It has become a tradition in many churches to celebrate his feast day by having Animal Blessings. One of the best known is in New York City, at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, famous for its…

Popular PD writer Bill McClellan offered a column this morning titled As election day nears, church and politics get a little testy.

Seems one Hugh McVey got up in church — in the middle of a sermon — and challenged the St. Louis priest, Fr. Noah Waldman. Details in the McClellan link above.

McClellan described Fr. Waldman this way:

He is 39 years old. He graduated from Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in May. He is a protege of Archbishop Raymond Burke whom he knew in Wisconsin.

Actually, there is more to Fr. Waldman than this. He was a deacon at St. Clement of Rome, our parish, before his ordination this past spring.

He has been a guest in our home.

He has an article on church architecture in the September issue of Adoremus: Beauty as Expanded Reason: The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton. He received his Master’s in Architecture from Notre Dame.

He is an…

Senator Barack Obama (AP photo)

I was on the website for Sojourners magazine when I saw this article about an effigy of Barack Obama having been found hanging from a tree at George Fox University. The story has also been covered by The Oregonian and other news outlets.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that it happened at a Christian university, since we don’t know and might never know who did it. Maybe it was students there, maybe it was outsiders trying to stir up a ruckus. (*See note below.)

But surely the choice of an avowedly Christian campus as the setting for this despicable stunt was intentional, if only to add to the shock value.

I’ve already seen some comments that suggest this is no big deal, that people really need to chill out and recognize that there’s a big difference between hanging a cardboard cutout from a tree and harming a real live human being. But…

All you have to do is drive up Big Bend Blvd. Something big’s happening at Wash U Thursday night.

And aside from her two exclusive interviews with Charles Gibson and Katie Couric, this will be the nation’s first real chance to see Governor Sarah Palin in an extended discussion of substantive issues.

It’s doubtful Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden will get into religion much. But we have gotten a glimpse into Gov. Palin’s Pentecostal faith.

Last week the Associated Press reported on the episode where a Kenyan pastor “prayed for her protection from ‘witchcraft.’” The video is on her former home congregation’s Web site.

And much has been made of the YouTube video of her at the same congregation, Wasilla Assembly of God Church. Recently, The New Yorker even weighed in.

Yet, for all the sound and fury, we still don’t know a whole lot. But I have found one of the YouTube soundbites to be very telling:

“I…