todaySpin - Feb. 20, 2009

todaySpin includes local, national, and worldwide news and information for Episcopalians in the Diocese of Bethlehem, with some spin that may be of interest. Please send suggestions for content or style to Bill Lewellis. Find a user-friendly guide to the Spin Cycle ... including todaySpin, the newSpin e-newsletter and the newSpin blog.

todayScoop
(1) The March issue of Diocesan Life.
(2) What's in the major newspapers? Find a summary here.
(3) Find Jubilate, Lent to Trinity Sunday (B) here.
(4) An 18-year-old Wyoming County man was sentenced yesterday to 11 to 23 months in the Susquehanna County Correctional Facility after having pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the August death of 17-year-old Francisco Pease. Find the Times-Tribune story here.

todayStory
(1) Marking the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, Religion News Service initiated an extensive conversation with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on the relationship between religion and science.

(2) Do evolution and faith have to fight? A report posted on Episcopal Cafe by Andy Gerns.

todayShow
(1) Parker Palmer is scheduled to be the guest on the PBS show, Bill Moyers Journal, tonight (Friday) at 9:00 p.m. (ET)

(2) The Academy Awards ceremony is this Sunday. As usual, there are plenty of religious issues to provide a substantive backdrop to the red-carpet glam. Films have long grappled with questions of ultimate meaning, and this year’s crop is no exception. Read much more here.  BeliefNet runs its own award program for the best spiritual films of 2008. The nominees are: Slumdog Millionnaie, Wall-E, Gran Torino, Doubt and The Dark Knight. More here, including film clips. And Spirituality and Practice lists its own awards for spiritually literate films.

(3) View topical clips of a recent interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu here.

todayShare
Episcopal Relief and Development is offering an online Lenten Devotional, Peace & Compassion: To Heal a Hurting World. It features reflections adapted from the  writings of Barbara Crafton. Sign-up here to receive these daily meditations by email.

todaySpirit
(1) The cover of TIME magazine's "Mind&Body Special Issue" promos its main story as How Faith Can Heal. Find the story online here where you will also find a video. What you won't find online is the following subhead in the hard copy: "Science and religion argue all the time, but they increasingly agree on one thing: a little spirituality may be very good for your health." I may  be too easily amused as I smile about "a little spirituality," playing with whether to put the emphasis on "spirituality" or on "little." In either event, the good news is the supposedly scientific finding that two to three years of additional life is associated with regular church attendance. Is that just a matter of getting back the time one spends in church? :-)

(2) Listen to a meditation by Ruty Levy Guyer, professor of bioethics at Haverford College, on the power of water.

todaySignup
(1) Diocesan Training Day is Saturday, March 28, at St. Stephen's Wilkes-Barre. Register online here.where you will also find more info, brief descriptions of the workshops and a map. Find detailed descriptions of workshops here.

todaySting
(1) The importance of context: Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard. He's also, Jim Naughton of Episcopal Cafe tells us, a member of The Falls Church, Anglican (distinct from The Falls Church, Episcopal), a board member of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (a group that vigorously opposes gay rights within the church and believes that mainline Protestant churches "have thrown themselves into multiple, often leftist crusades -- radical forms of feminism, environmentalism, pacifism, multi-culturalism, revolutionary socialism, sexual liberation and so forth") and perpetrator of smears against Bishop Gene Robinson ... all of which may provide context for one's reading of anything by Fred Barnes.

todaySoundbite
Christian morality, New Testament morality, is considerably more than the Ten Commandments, but it is not less. We walk before we run. The function of moral teaching and self-examination is not to make us feel better than others or give us a reason to condemn. Its purpose is to check our self-honesty, our faithfulness in response to God's love.  [From "We Walk Before We Run" in Bishop Paul Marshall's book "Messages in the Mall: Looking at Life in 600 Words or Less"]

newSpin: Find the most recent issue here.
todaySpiel: The Opinionator, a guide to the wide world of newspaper, magazine and Web opinion.
todayScope: (1) epiScope links to stories from the mainstream media that reference the Episcopal Church or Episcopalians. (2) EpiscopalCafe ... (3) Episcopal Life Online ...

Bill Lewellis, Communication Minister/Editor (1986), Canon Theologian (1998)
Diocese of Bethlehem, 333 Wyandotte Street, Bethlehem, PA 18015
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Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible.
Be in Love. And, if necessary, change. [Bernard Lonergan]