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<\/a><\/p>\nA collection of texts and observations by early Christian theologians on abortion<\/strong><\/a>, a site I\u2019ve never seen before.<\/p>\n C. Michael Patton <\/strong><\/a>on finding trustworthy scholars. Rachel Held Evans<\/strong><\/a> calls out the CBMW on inconsistency and exegetical gymnastics.<\/p>\n I agree: Jim Wallis, in a story by Cathleen Falsani<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cMore than 15 percent of the U.S. population now lives in poverty \u2014 the highest rate in 18 years, according to a\u00a0U.S. Census Bureau report released this morning<\/a>. Poverty has risen for the third consecutive year in a row, the new census figures show, but perhaps the most distressing figure is the child poverty number, which rose from 20.7 percent in 2009 to 22 percent in 2010. \u201cThe results aren\u2019t good,\u201d the Rev. Jim Wallis, president and CEO of Sojourners, the largest network of progressive Christians in the United States focused on the biblical call to social justice, said upon reviewing the census report today. \u201cAfter making progress in domestic and childhood poverty in the 1990\u2019s we are headed in the wrong direction and the recession made it worse,\u201d Wallis said. \u201cSo let\u2019s talk about the issue of religion and upcoming election. These new poverty numbers should be the number one religious issue for the 2012 presidential election.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIf I had a daughter,<\/strong><\/a> a little girl, probably five-years-old by now\u2026\u201d When life is a blur<\/strong><\/a> with Ted.<\/p>\n Christine Scheller on parenting<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cParenting is hard, and not just because we struggle to balance work and family. The stakes are high. We parents all raise our children, hoping they will become spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and physically healthy adults. We look for answers from pastors, pediatricians, and parenting \u201cexperts,\u201d but we should not neglect the wisdom of mental health professionals. Healthy child development reflects God\u2019s character and purposes, says Laity Leadership Senior Fellow Allan\u00a0Josephson,\u00a0M.D., and Scripture provides guidelines that children desperately need. In his 1994 paper, \u201cA Clinical Theology of the Developmental Process: A Child Psychologist\u2019s Perspective,\u201d\u00a0Josephson\u00a0outlines eight areas of child development that not only illustrate his theology, but also offer sound parenting principles. [check the link for the eight]\u201d<\/p>\n Nelson Branco at KevinMD.com<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cNo pediatrician can answer the question: \u201cWhat\u2019s the most important thing I can do to keep my child healthy?\u201d without listing three of four things.\u00a0 I\u2019m no different, but right now family dinners are at the top of my list.\u00a0 You could argue that immunizations, car seats, bike helmets, 9-1-1, sleep, or good hand washing are just as important, and I won\u2019t disagree.\u00a0 But it\u2019s hard to overlook the overwhelming research on the positive effects of family dinners on children\u2019s diet, social development, and sense of connection with their parents and siblings.\u201d<\/p>\n Chicagoland\u2019s Out of Darkness community walk<\/strong><\/a>, sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.<\/p>\n Big and fast growing churches<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanderings in the News<\/p>\n A good story about Elisa Hallerman<\/strong><\/a>, a former Hollywood talent agent now doing something completely else: \u201cAnd then the inevitable crash. My boss committed suicide, which amplified my pain. I had deep feelings of sadness, fear, and guilt. I kept trying desperately to anesthetize my pain. Yada yada yada.\u00a0 I had thought it was all so cool. I was on every list, attended premieres, the Oscars, Golden Globes, and Emmys. I operated at the highest level\u2014packaging movies, making multimillion-dollar deals, and managing those treacherous waters you have heard so much about. Ultimately, it was someone \u201cin the business\u201d who broke the news to me that my life was a mess. The vortex of Hollywood is where I lost my sanity, but it\u2019s also where I found it again. And I will never forget that. Like millions of others, I found that sobriety not only saved my life; it greatly enhanced it. I quickly realized there was more to Los Angeles than the parties I\u2019d already been to, and like many others in this town, I found that when you leave the parties, there are a whole lot of people in recovery who used to be at the same parties!\u00a0 What an irony, that Hollywood can be so drunk and yet so sober\u2026. I\u2019ll never forget the person who first looked at me and said, \u201cI love you, but you\u2019re broken, you\u2019re screwed up, you\u2019re a mess, please let me get you help.\u201d That level of honesty mixed with hope literally saved my life, and if I can give that level of clarity to others, then any move I could possibly make will be worth it. For one thing I\u2019ve learned is that life is not a movie. In real life, the blood is real, the horror is real, and the death is real. But so is the miracle that finally comes, when we surrender it all and are open to what might come next.\u201d<\/p>\n Joan Didion<\/strong><\/a>, on NYC: \u201cSeven days after September 11, 2001, I left New York to do two weeks of book promotion, under other circumstances a predictable kind of trip. You fly into one city or another, you do half an hour on local\u00a0NPR, you do a few minutes on drive-time radio, you do an \u201cevent,\u201d a talk or a reading or an onstage discussion. You sign books, you take questions from the audience. You go back to the hotel, order a club sandwich from room service, and leave a 5\u00a0AM\u00a0call with the desk, so that in the morning you can go back to the airport and fly to the next city. During the week between September 11 and the Wednesday morning when I went to Kennedy to get on the plane, none of these commonplace aspects of publishing a book seemed promising or even appropriate things to be doing. But\u2014like most of us who were in New York that week\u2014I was in a kind of protective coma, sleepwalking through a schedule made when planning had still seemed possible. In fact I was protecting myself so successfully that I had no idea how raw we all were until that first night, in San Francisco, when I was handed a book onstage and asked to read a few marked lines from an essay about New York I had written in 1967. Later I remembered thinking: 1967, no problem, no land mines there. I put on my glasses. I began to read.<\/p>\n \u201cNew York was no mere city,\u201d the marked lines began. \u201cIt was instead an infinitely romantic notion, the mysterious nexus of all love and money and power, the shining and perishable dream itself.\u201d<\/p>\n I hit the word \u201cperishable\u201d and I could not say it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Jeffrey Goldberg, on Mel Gibson\u2019s movie about Judah Maccabee<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cThe news that Mel Gibson is going to\u00a0make a biopic about Judah Maccabee<\/a>, the great hero of the Hannukah story, did not come as a surprise to me. Well, it is somewhat surprising that Warner Bros. \u2014 or any studio, for that matter \u2014 would sign up Gibson (not to mention Joe Eszterhas, who is writing the script) to do anything, after his serial meltdowns. But I\u2019ve known about Gibson\u2019s interest in the original Hebrew Hammer for several years. I\u2019m working on a biography of Judah Maccabee for\u00a0Nextbook<\/a> (don\u2019t ask me how it\u2019s going), and so it was brought to my attention that Gibson is preoccupied with the subject. (My preoccupation is simple: Judah Maccabee led the first revolt for religious freedom in recorded history, and he is without parallel as a guerrilla fighter and as a man of faith. And he also bequeathed us a pretty excellent holiday.) \u2026 UPDATE<\/strong>: I see that\u00a0various Jewish organizations<\/a> are rallying their forces against Warner Bros. and Mel Gibson over yesterday\u2019s announcement. Their goal is to get this movie stopped. But what they will do instead is give Gibson yards of free publicity. We\u2019ve seen this before, with Passion of the Christ. My opinion, FWIW: I don\u2019t care if he makes this movie or not. He\u2019s not actually important. It\u2019s better for these Jewish organizations to spend their time focused on Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran. These are things I worry about. I don\u2019t worry about Mel Gibson.\u201d<\/p>\n Amazon, its associates, local State taxes and California<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Nicholas Wade<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cAn apelike creature with human features, whose fossil bones were discovered recently in a South African cave, is being greeted by paleoanthropologists as a likely watershed in the understanding of human evolution. The discoverer of the fossils, Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, says the new species, known as Australopithecus sediba, is the most plausible known ancestor of archaic and modern humans. Several other paleoanthropologists, while disagreeing with that interpretation, say the fossils are of great importance anyway, because they elucidate the mix-and-match process by which human evolution was shaped. Dr. Berger\u2019s claim, if accepted, would radically redraw the present version of the human family tree, placing the new fossils in the center. The new species, in his view, should dislodge Homo habilis, the famous tool-making fossil found by Louis and Mary Leakey, as the most likely bridge between the australopithecenes and the human lineage. Australopithecenes were apelike creatures that walked upright, like people, but had still not forsaken the trees.\u201d<\/p>\n A courageous, even if troubled, woman.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Meanderings in Sports<\/p>\n<\/a>A site on St Patrick<\/strong><\/a>, one of my favorites (even if we are not always able to decide the historical from the mythical).(HT: AM) [To your right, the world\u2019s largest chocolate bar: 12,000 pounds.]<\/p>\n<\/a>On the economic stimulus plan and speech of Obama: Motoko Rich<\/strong><\/a>: \u201cThe dismal state of the economy is the main\u00a0reason many companies are reluctant to hire workers, and few executives are saying that\u00a0President Obama<\/a>\u2019s jobs plan \u2014 while welcome \u2014 will change their minds any time soon. That sentiment was echoed across numerous industries by executives in companies big and small on Friday, underscoring the challenge for the Obama administration as it tries to encourage hiring and perk up the moribund economy. The plan failed to generate any optimism on Wall Street as the Standard & Poor\u2019s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average each fell about 2.7 percent. As President Obama faced an uphill battle in Congress to win support even for portions of the plan, many employers dismissed the notion that any particular tax break or incentive would be persuasive. Instead, they said they tended to hire more workers or expand when the economy improved.\u201d<\/p>\n