freedom glory project

chaplains in hospitals?

After a week in which having Christian symbols in an Australian hospital chapel have been banned it was interesting to read the following story from the UK

The first part of Channel 4's TV fly-on-the-wall series.... looked into the modern world of emergency medicine. This wasn't ER or Scrubs, this was ugly reality - wave upon wave of young people, drunk, regardless, violent and rude, brought in with various terrible injuries as a result of intoxication.

It was some of the most powerful documentary television I've seen: the young people were both victims and propagators of alcoholic mayhem; the doctors were dead-eyed, high-pay-grade streetsweepers.

We would be sensible to regard it as a modern morality play, especially in a week when the National Secular Society called for the NHS to stop funding hospital chaplains. The society estimates that £40 million a year is spent on giving religious groups a presence in hospitals. In many areas secularism has much to recommend it. In this instance they are wrong and mean-spirited. There has never been a greater need for a spiritual presence in hospitals.

For the full story check out Timesonline

Good Friday Quote

"Many men do not believe. Many men hate the Cross because it means a salvation not of their own choosing or making, but rather of God's grace and his mercy. Men hate the cross because it means a salvation which is unearned, undeserved, unmerited. Men would much prefer God to punish them than to forgive them because that would mean that God is dependent upon men and needed their obedience to be their God. Then God would be in fact no different from an idol of race, nation, family, or whatever, and a man would feel justified either by his obedience to the idol or by the punishment of his disobedience."

William Stringfellow.   "The Scandal of Palm Sunday," Free in Obedience [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2006], p. 33(via)

Metaphors

I've been completing my ICA Life Coaching Course starting my six weeks of supervised coaching. This week, I've been struck by the importance of metaphors to paint a picture. So, I'm on a long term search... here's a start.. check out the following...

I was flying down a big hill on my bike the other day when I had a thought. I know, I should be 100% focused on the hill and I usually am. Trust me. I’m afraid of hills. The downside part anyway. I don’t go nearly fast enough to fear the uphill side.

But my buddy rocketpants had blogged about a bike clinic she’d done the day before and her words were coming back to me. Here, rather than re-state things I’ll let her share with you in her own words:

“I did pick up a handy tip on cornering though…LOOK where you want to go eventually. Look through the corner and your bike will go where you intend it to. I thought I was doing it, but at one point one instructor sorta yelled ‘Look ahead’ while it was my turn and I realized I wasn’t doing it and once I did look ahead the cornering got SO much easier.”

So I’m flying down this hill and thinking, “hey, I’m gonna try that look ahead thing.” And you know what? It worked! So well in fact that I then started musing on how looking ahead in life helps me go forward too.

You know, visualize what you want and it will happen. It’s pretty powerful stuff folks…give it a shot.

Anywho, back to my metaphor. I’ll share a few of my other thoughts too. Remember, I may have been slightly oxygen deprived due to my having just *climbed* the front side of the big hill.

*When you’re going fast be careful, but not too careful or you’ll never get anywhere.

*You may have to work on the climb up but the view is beautiful.

*When you’ve pushed yourself to the edge it’s a joy to find that something extra that you didn’t know you had in you.

*Even if you don’t know what’s around the corner keep going and have faith.

I’m going to go bike some more and see if I can figure out the meaning of life

(via)

some sayings

1. The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated in an algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

6. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

7. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other, 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

8. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger.. Then it hit me.

9. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

10. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

11. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

12. In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

13. Don't join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!

Thanks again phil baker

An old story but still poignant....

Women should say yes, yes, yes more

Forty years after liberated women felt able to say “no” to their partners’ demands for sex, they have been urged to say “yes” more often to keep their men happy.

Sex therapist and psychologist Bettina Arndt said different libidos were creating a generation of men who were “miserable, angry and really disappointed” that their need for sex was “being totally disregarded in their relationship”.

Read on at the SMH (via)

Top 10 confessions of a bad mummy

I don't believe a word of it!!!

1. Contrary to what we preach - we don't actually spend as much quality time with the kids as we let on.  Instead of doing the museums on a rainy day, we're more likely to use the inclement weather to embark on feverishly bidding on eBay while the kids watch the telly.

2. Because there are so many rainy days in England, in truth our children watch at least three times more TV than we admit to, and it's rarely educational, unless you count watching Rupert Penry-Jones on Jackanory Junior - which we find very stimulating.

3. We can sometimes only make it to 5pm before we need an alcoholic drink. Or we tell ourselves we'll be good 'till hubby gets home from work or when the kids go to bed, whichever is earlier.

4. We sometimes multi-task while having sex. So while the father of our children is focused on exquisite love-making, we can't stop ourselves from compiling mental lists. These include: meals you can make out of cauliflower before it goes bad; holiday destinations we can't afford, and TV cops we'd sleep with if our lives depended on it. DCI Gene Hunt - you know who you are.

5. If we could go on holiday by ourselves we would, but half the time we're not the only one who is paying for it, so we feel obligated to take the wage-earner (and offspring) along.

6. While we're with the four-year-old watching Dr Who, we're secretly fantasising about being his assistant.

7. We say we're working or catching up on emails when we're really on Facebook messaging old boyfriends and updating our status with a pithy aside. This is to ensure that old amours never discover our day off is sometimes spent slumped in front of Dickinson's Real Deals while the kids are at school.

8. Sometimes if it weren't for the kids, the dual incomes and the fact that there is someone else to take out the bin from time to time, we'd be sorely tempted to book a month's worth of babysitting and start dating again.

9. Hair. We've got lot more than we let on and not in a good way. In fact, much of our "leisure" time is spent bleaching/plucking/shaving and removing it by any means possible.

10. When we say that we really must go take kids to the theatre more often, it's usually because we've heard that David Tennant is doing Hamlet. Ditto if we choose to go (without them) to see a film with overly lofty aspirations. Let's face it; would you really want to see Revolutionary Road if it didn't star Leo and Kate?

(via)

Vatican says evolution compatible with the Bible

'Celebrating' 200 years of Darwinism....

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's culture minister, was speaking at the announcement of a Rome conference of scientists, theologians and philosophers to be held next March marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species.

Christian churches were long hostile to Darwin because his theory conflicted with the literal biblical account of creation.

Earlier this week a leading Anglican churchman, Reverend Malcolm Brown, said the Church of England owed Darwin an apology for the way his ideas were received by Anglicans in Britain.

Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans in 1950 and Pope John Paul reiterated that in 1996. But Ravasi said the Vatican had no intention of apologising for earlier negative views.

"Maybe we should abandon the idea of issuing apologies as if history was a court eternally in session," he said, adding that Darwin's theories were "never condemned by the Catholic Church nor was his book ever banned".

Creationism is the belief that God created the world in six days as described in the Bible. The Catholic Church does not read the Genesis account of creation literally, saying it is an allegory for the way God created the world.

Some other Christians, mostly conservative Protestants in the United States, read Genesis literally and object to evolution being taught in biology class in public high schools.

Read on at the SMH

Hey, I'm proud to fall into a 'mostly conservative protestant' description. Guys, evolution is taught, as a given, in most schools. It is rampant in illustrating most school textbooks. Very few, give creationism a moments thought. 

Do teachers make a difference?

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