The Ethics of a Syrian Military Intervention: The Experts Respond

Here is a thoughtful piece that discusses the moral and ethical aspects of a response by the U.S. military to intervention in Syria as a result of the use of chemical weapons by their government. It is written by a variety of different religious leaders.
Click here to read it.

The Holy Spirit must have chuckled last week.

One of the joys of this ministry-which-is-the-store is that you just can never tell who might enter the life of the store today or any day.

 

It started with a phone call. “Susan” (not her real name) is the producer for a TV reality show. She had a portion of an episode that needed to be filmed in a Christian bookstore. 

The episode included a “devout Christian” who was to be shopping for materials in a religious bookstore. First we needed to clarify that an individual who labels himself a “devout Christian” more than likely is aligned with the more conservative evangelical branch of Christianity and that our store most likely has little that would interest him. (The analogy of a store that sells fishing tackle and gear comes to mind. A store with fly fishing equipment caters to fishers who have different goals than a store that sells equipment to deep sea fishers. Both stores are concerned with fishing. Both kinds of fishers can be very devoted to their fishing, but the equipment that they use is different for each type of fishing. Although enjoying the cooked fish at a meal with friends could be very similar for the different fishers.)

In Seattle there are very few choices for bookstores that cater to Christians, whether conservative or liberal. During the first phone call Susan viewed a video tour of the inside of our store from the Google Maps website.

 From what she saw there she said that it would be “perfect.” A couple of phone calls later, when we agreed to continue to investigate the possibility of the filming of part of a TV episode in our store, Susan said that she would visit our store in person, that afternoon.

Within the next few hours we had vetted the production company, Susan had visited us, and she had vetted us. We signed the release form and scheduled the “only 30-minutes” visit by the cast of two and crew of four (two cameramen and two producers) within the following day or two.

They showed up the next day. It was three cast members (reality show “actors”), two cameramen, one man with the microphone, two producers, one “suit” (he wore a dress shirt and tie), and two guys who just hunkered down in a corner and apparently did nothing (maybe they were required for moving props, but there were no props). The visit to our store lasted not 30 minutes by an hour and three-quarters.

During their visit as they filmed we helped customers, answered the phones, and tried to carry on normal store activities. Yes, a few customers, but curiously not all of them, asked “What’s going on with them?”

We do not yet know when or on which TV network the episode will be aired. I trust that we will learn that later. We are curious to see just how much of the filming in our store is actually shown during the episode.

I think that through this little unexpected event that the Holy Spirit must have enjoyed a few chuckles.

A glimpse of life by a faithful member of the Armed Services on a naval ship

This message arrived today. I’ve edited part of it for possible security reasons.

To; John (and crew)
From: Mark (aboard the U.S,S, ship name - deployed)

I wrote to you awhile ago before leaving on a 6+ month deployment for the US Navy. ..to thank you and staff for a wonderful addition to my sea bag, a combination prayer book / bible.  I told you at the time that space being limited it was surely to be a treasure aboard.  While originally ordered from you, for personal use, it (the book) had turned into much more than that!.  You see ..on board services are non-denominational, but out of a crew of over 5,000 it had become the principle book of worship for a few of us 'hard-core' Episcopals.  Maybe 4-6 folks on any given Sunday use it for worship services on our own.  Operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week we are lucky to have an hour or so each week to pray together!  Life aboard is challenging so stealing away this time for worship is important - quiet time (if you can call it that!) is VERY hard to come by.  We use the prayer book solely as it seems no one else thought to bring one along!  I even share it with my fellow crewmates so they can say their personal prayers throughout the week!  While her pages are quickly becoming frayed it makes it much more valuable to me personally!

Again, thank you for a wonderful addition to the Navy 'arsenel'  (lol)  and be sure to share this email with your staff.  The work you do is much more important at times than you can imagine!

I wish you, your staff, family and the world we live in Peace in Christ!,

A different view of us.

Have you viewed the image of Earth from the other side of Saturn taken by the NASA Cassini spacecraft this week?
You can view it here .

We are the dot shown above the arrow.

To think that the civilizations on that small speck in space can’t get along and are fighting and killing each other, from this view in space, is ridiculous. Come on, everyone, look around. We are all in this together. We are a small speck in the solar system. We just have to get along.

Spam. It can get us going and coming

Our monthly E-mail newsletter is ready to send, with just one little hitch. One of the new books that is featured is titled, Encouraging Conversation: Resources for Talking about Same-Sex Blessings, edited by Frederica Harris Thompsett. It is a book to assist the conversations within congregations about this important topic.
The Internet application which we use to publish our monthly newsletters through iContact.com prides itself on protecting those who receive newsletters from unwanted messages and from spam and it is one reason that we work with them.
No doubt you can see it coming, the book’s subtitle contains the word “sex.” Spam filters are often set to treat as spam messages that contain words such as that. Before we could complete the newsletter, before we could send a test version to ourselves to verify that all was well with it, the newsletter had to first be studied by a live person at iContact.
I’m glad that iContact verifies for the recipients that messages from them are free from spam. I’m not quite so glad that our newsletter, even a draft of it sent to ourselves for verification, with a subtitle about same-sex blessings requires the delay so that a real human at iContact can view it and then allow it.

Who does the checking?

We received the first order of a popular calendar used by congregations yesterday. The calendars were right on schedule arriving just about the same time that they did last year.
We were preparing to ship about a dozen of them to various customers when Cara on our staff noticed something strange inside. The month of May contains all of the liturgical feasts and fast days and other information. That’s good. But, why does the month look strange? Oh, there it is. The numbers for each day of the month are missing!
May 5th, my sister's birthday, is which day? There is no way to tell on the calendar. This is not helpful.
Immediately I contacted the publisher. They replied today, in part, “Thanks so much for bringing this to our attention. This is a manufacturing error and we’ll have it redone as soon as possible.”
It was a topic of repeat conversation amongst our small staff yesterday. So who does the checking of a calendar before it is shipped to retailers? Anybody? It seems that it would be a prudent activity.
Every package that we ship to a customer is checked by someone other than the person who filled and sold the order. And still, some errors slip through.
I wonder how large was the print run for that calendar? I wonder how long it will take the publisher to “have it redone.”

Life is full of adjustments and compromises, so is the life of a store.

Fifteen years ago, when we moved into this current building, we set up the Shipping and Receiving area. It was a handy arrangement. We could receive deliveries and ship to customers while also being available to help visitors in our bricks and mortar store as well as those on the phone.
In these past fifteen years the numbers of products and sales has increased, as it should have. We now process several times more items in the same space and the same configuration of counters and computers that we did when we moved in here.
It is past time to increase the size of the shipping and receiving area. It is also time to rearrange the store to handle the increased traffic. More space required in Shipping and Receiving, in a building of finite size, requires a reduction of space for other things. We will use the space where the children’s books have been for this enlargement. That means a chain reaction. Children’s books will be moved further back in the store. This means that Fiction, Biographies, Poetry, Cookbooks, and others have to move to make room for Children’s. It’s like the classic slider puzzle game where you need to move other tiles so that you can move the one that you want to move.
These named book categories are in the back of the store. We have begun the process in the front of the store by consolidating the displays of books and gifts to make room for the books that need to be moved so that there will be room for Children’s books to move over a few feet so that the Shipping and Receiving areas can expand.
Life is full of adjustments and compromises, so is the life of a store. Hopefully this adjustment will improve the lives of our customers and of our staff, at least concerning the shopping of books and gifts. We are not decreasing the number of books in the store. We are simply reorganizing them, hopefully for the better.