COFFEE BREAK 120

+ updated at 11:55am EST, January 11, 2010

+ My Facebook friend Mark Shaw offers something to ponder: 

Here's a good Thomas Merton quote that I was pondering yesterday: "Religion answers questions; spirituality questions answers." Is this true? More about Merton at www.merton.org and www.markshawbooks.net.

+ My friend Ralph Clingan offers this great contribution to our understanding of "Reformed and Always Being Reformed," the Presbyterian motto:

Dearly beloved! A few years ago I did an inventory of my library. My career as an activist pastor, professor and theologian started in 1961, so I have amassed a large collection of books. The largest single segment of my library consists of books about music, prayer and spirituality. I have a book, The Background of Passion Music (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1957) by Basil Smallman late Musicologist of Nottingham University. I may have cited this wee tome before, but in the wake of the demise of beloved feminist, out and proud Lesbian theologian Mary Daly, Smallman's words reminded me of the importance of such passionate workers among us. Jacob Spener (1635-1705), a Reformed pastor and theologian educated at Strasbourg, spent a year in Geneva. Spener found that "the Calvinist branch of the Reformed Church showed ramarkable humanism in the emphasis laid on practical Christianity, on the expression of faith by good works rather than by the strict observance of doctrinal minutiae." His Pia desidera (1675) contained six proposals to guide his students and colleagues:

i The Bible should be studied in private, small group meetings;
ii The laity should regain their position as a common priesthood and their rights to share in the spiritual governance of the church,
iii A new emphasis be placed on practical Christianity,
iv Unbelievers should be approached with greater sympathy and understanding,
v Increased value should be attached to the cultivation of spiritual life in theological education, and
vi A more direct and emotional type of preaching should be encouraged.

As we enter the last year of the first decade of 2000, I found Smallman's citations from Spener a good reminder of how enduring a legacy is ours. Aluta continua ...

+ The Sunday New York Times offers "The Other Plot to Wreck America" by Frank Rich. Summary: "The financial crash precipitated by the failure of Lehman Brothers was the banking industry's 9/11. Without reform, another massive attack on our economic security is guaranteed."  This is a very important column by a very knowledgeable and concerned columnist.  We need Wall Street reform and we need it now.  A few bankers got and are still getting millions of dollars while millions of people have lost homes and jobs and more.  It's tragic and too many politicians are ignoring this crisis or minimizing the possible consequences of no reform or little reform.

+ The last 30 years as Right Wingers Understand it: The debt tripled when Reagan was President. Clinton's fault. The debt tripled again when W was President. Obama's fault.