The Seven Worst Ways to Give to Charities during the Holidays

Vanessa L. Small, The Washington, Post, November 24, 2013

As we approach the holiday season you might find yourself feeling more grateful, compassionate and charitable than at any other time of year. Now is the time when people eagerly donate that load of clothes taking up space in the basement, or employers begin hosting food drives. But is it possible for such a generous act of goodwill to create more harm than good? When it comes to holiday giving, charities sometimes find themselves overwhelmed by volunteer requests and donations. So before you are overtaken by the giving spirit, there are a few things charities and nonprofits are dying for you to know.


No Dirty Clothes?
Tired of looking at those burgundy corduroy pants you haven’t worn since high school? You may be thinking that now is the time to finally give them away to your local charity. Or perhaps you want to donate the broken toy that your kid outgrew. Think again. Charities say that undesirable items are the most frustrating donations to receive. While charities are grateful for the act of kindness, it can put the organization in an awkward position.

“People think they’re doing you a huge favor by giving you dirty furniture or a beat up car,” said Eric Salmi, spokesperson for Catholic Charities. “But the quality of stuff is really important because we’re passing things off to people who we want to feel dignified.”

In some cases, says the Salvation Army, the gift is not only undesirable but not resalable. Jennifer Dean, manager of volunteer engagement at Miriam’s Kitchen, remembers a rather unpleasant experience. She received a donation of clothes so soiled that the case managers were “tied up for an hour picking through them, with masks and gloves on, ultimately having to discard everything.”

Chef John Murphy, also of Miriam’s Kitchen, says it’s common for him to receive half-eaten loaves of bread and jars of peanut butter from college students eager to clear out their minifridges before heading home for holiday break. Staff at Sasha Bruce Youthwork, a shelter for homeless teenagers, say that they tend to receive unfashionable clothes that many young people would not want to wear for fear of getting picked on at school.

People tend to give away items that they don’t want, but charities say it’s best to give a gift that you would use or wear again. Before you think to give away your worst possessions, think about giving your best.

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Why the Filibuster Vote Did Not "Humiliate" Anyone

From The Atlantic blog, Conor  Fredersdorf, November 22, 2013

Senate Democrats ended the filibuster for most presidential nominees this week in a move that's been dubbed "the nuclear option," despite the fact that, even metaphorically, it shares virtually no characteristics with the detonation of a nuclear bomb.*

"President Obama will get a short-term lift for his nominees, judicial and otherwise," the New York Times states, "but over the immediate horizon, the strong-arm move by Senate Democrats on Thursday to limit filibusters could usher in an era of rank partisan warfare beyond even what Americans have seen in the past five years." That article goes on to state that "for the foreseeable future, Republicans, wounded and eager to show they have not been stripped of all power, are far more likely to unify against the Democrats who humiliated them in such dramatic fashion."

Now hold on just a minute. 

Perhaps there are Republican Senators who feel humiliated by this move. If so, there isn't anything wrong with the newspaper reporting that (preferably with evidence). But if this really is regarded as a "humiliation," then there's a more important story that needs telling. To humiliate someone is to make them feel "ashamed and foolish" by "injuring their dignity and self-respect." It would be totally irrational for Senate Republicans to feel humiliated by this loss of leverage on nominees. Dignity and self-respect are not implicated in party-line votes on Senate rules. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a muddleheaded narcissist with entitlement problems whom political journalists ought to expose: 

Senator X acknowledged today that when the majority party stripped him of the ability to block majoritarian votes on judicial nominees last week, he regarded it as a personal affront to his dignity that also diminished his self-respect. Asked why Senate colleagues pursuing rule changes would have the capacity to humiliate him, despite the fact that their actions have nothing to do with him personally, he explained that he's spent too long in an insular world that irrationally personalizes all manner of things to the determinant of the country, and that the political press uncritically adopts that frame in its reporting.

Informed that most people would find it far more humiliating to constantly call people on the phone and ask them for money, pander to the lowest common denominator of the public at large, and cater to moneyed interests rather than the public good, he smiled with whitened teeth offset by artificially tanned skin and shrugged. 

Now that would be an awesome article.

_____

*What are they going to call it if the filibuster is ever done away with entirely, the global-nuclear-holocaust option? Asteroid apocalypse? Efilibusterbola?

Christ the King Sunday, November 24, 2013

Originally published as "They Say There's Another King, One Called Jesus," by Dan Clendenin, The Journey with Jesus blog, November 18, 2013

    For Roman Catholics and churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary, this last Sunday of the liturgical year honors "Christ the King." It's a relative newcomer to the Christian calendar. Pope Pius XI introduced the feast on December 11, 1925 with his encyclical "Qua Primas" (In the first). That papal letter summarizes the Bible's teachings about the kingship of Christ.

           According to Pius, Christ the King rules not only over the church, but over all the whole world — if not now, then at the end of time.

Jesus's Triumphal Entry, Medieval Syriac manuscript.

           Doesn't this feel like a setup for liturgical failure? For the worst sort of triumphalism? If so, blame Paul and not Pius.

           Today the language of kingship is outmoded and offensive. There are good reasons for this. We don't live under kings, so the metaphor feels irrelevant. And we're rightly repulsed at how the reigns of kings meant a reign of terror for most subjects — massive wealth and power attained by cruelty and exploitation, which was then passed on by birthright to people who did nothing to deserve it. 

           Nonetheless, the language of kingship is embedded in the Christian story. The earliest followers of Jesus, and especially his detractors, used the language of kingship to describe who he was, what he said, and what he did.

           Unless you want to follow Thomas Jefferson, and snip and clip the parts of the Bible that you don't like — creating a Bible in your own image, we're left with the language of kingship.

           As in the game of golf, we're better off to play the Scriptures where they lie. The question then becomes what kingship means.

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Speed-dating was the idea of a rabbi

When we came to write our first volume of facts – 1,227 Quite Interesting Facts to Blow Your Socks Off – last year, we set ourselves the goal of producing 1,000 nuggets of information that seemed to us unforgettable. We pooled 10 years of extraordinary comparisons (there are 1,000 times as many bacteria in your gut as there are stars in the Milky Way); astonishing statistics (a single male human produces enough sperm in two weeks to impregnate every fertile woman on the planet); unexpected truths (the Bible is the most shoplifted book in the United States) and memorable absurdities (Richard Gere’s middle name is Tiffany), and then counted up what we had. It turned out we had a file of 1,227 facts, which seemed both more interesting and more appropriate than the 1,000 we’d originally targeted.

In the course of editing and arranging that material we discovered something surprising: the facts seemed to have a mind of their own. Far from being inert bits of trivia, they behaved much more like molecules, bristling with energy and a desire to form strong attractions with other facts to make longer and more meaningful sentences. All we had to do was keep trying the best combinations.

As well as being deeply satisfying, this process of fact-matching also meant we needed to create a much deeper pool of truth in which to dip our editorial spoon. And, before we’d finished, we realised that this new pile of strange and wonderful facts we hadn’t been able to sequence was already forming the core of a new book: 1,339 QI Facts To Make Your Jaw Drop, published this week.

Once you are in the Fact Zone, everywhere you look, astonishing new facts seem to demand inclusion. And, to adapt a line of Groucho Marx: if you don’t like them, we’ve got others....

The offspring of a polar bear and a grizzly bear is called a pizzly bear. Or sometimes a grolar bear.

• 
  

The first private detective agency was started by a criminal.

A baby pterosaur is called a flapling.

All the mountains on Saturn’s moon Titan are named after peaks in The Lord of the Rings.

Women look their oldest at 3.30pm on Wednesdays.

Agatha Christie was a keen surfer.

The Express, the Telegraph, the Economist, the Times, the Star and the Independent were all London-based stagecoaches in the 1830s.

There is enough carbon in your body to make 9,000 pencils.

On an average day, Britons spend 14 hours and 39 minutes sitting down.

Americans eat 10 billion doughnuts every year.

Speed dating was the brainchild of a rabbi.

Lord Kitchener had four spaniels called Shot, Bang, Miss and Damn.

Stephen Stills, Glen Campbell and Charles Manson (right) all failed auditions for The Monkees.

The Moon is shaped like an egg: it only looks round because the big end points towards Earth.

In Britain, spiders outnumber people by more than 500,000 to 1.

The vampire spider is attracted to the smell of human feet.

If a dead whale is found on a British beach, the head belongs to the king and the tail to the queen.

According to English folklore, if a woman feeds her husband roast owl, he will become subservient to her every wish.

At any one time, 45 million people in the world are drunk.

North Americans account for less than a sixteenth of the world’s people, but more than a third of their weight.

A garden snail would take three years and two months to make its way from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

Buckingham Palace is built on the site of a brothel.

The Beatles classic Yesterday was originally entitled “Scrambled Eggs”.

Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the judges at the world’s first-ever bodybuilding contest.

There are six villages in France called Silly, 12 called Billy and two called Prat.

Dublin, Glasgow, London, Petroleum, Coal, Wax, Goforth, Stay and Jump are all towns in the state of Kentucky in the United States.

Since 1990, more people have been killed by sandcastles than by sharks.

Wordsworth had no sense of smell.

A group of kittens is called “a kindle”.

Sixty per cent of Premier League footballers go bankrupt within five years of retirement.

The Arabic word for hamster translates as “Mr Saddlebags”.

Rodents prefer peanut butter to cheese.

Eton College was founded to provide free schooling for poor boys.

David Cameron is a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of King William IV.

Samantha Cameron is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles II’s mistress, Nell Gwyn.

In Denmark, Laurel and Hardy are known as Gog and Cokke; in Germany, they’re Dick and Doof.

Earthworms have five hearts.

Your eyebrows renew themselves every 64 days.

If Jane Austen hadn’t broken off her engagement, she would have been known as Mrs Harris Bigg-Wither.

40 million people in China live in caves.

Sgiomlaireachd (pronounced “scum-leerie”) is a Scots Gaelic word meaning “the kind of friend who only drops in at mealtimes”.

Albert Einstein claimed that his second best idea was to boil his eggs in his soup, thereby saving on washing up.

We dot our I’s, but Shakespeare “tittled” his.

”Son-of-a-bitch” stew was a cowboy dish made from the internal organs of a whole cow and an onion.

There is one Kalashnikov assault rifle in circulation for every 70 people on Earth.

There is only one sneeze in the Bible.

In Norway, stripping counts as an art form for tax purposes.

In Armenia, chess is a compulsory school subject.

A person who illegally exports sheep is called an “owler”.

More reverse-charge telephone calls are made on Father’s Day than any other day.

In the movie Titanic, the location for the ship’s engine room was a pumping station in Cricklewood.

Piranhas enjoy beans and other vegetables.

In Canada, Santa has his own postcode: HOH OHO.

The small pocket in the front of a pair of jeans was intended for a pocket watch.

The largest millipede in Tanzania is called the wandering leg sausage.

One in ten women cares more for a fictitious male character than her actual partner.

Tarzan’s ululating cry is a registered trademark in the US.

Science students who wear white lab coats perform better in tests.

All the houses in Glasgow are worth less than all the houses in Elmbridge, Surrey.

Galileo’s middle finger is on display in the Museo Galileo, Florence.

In the Polish version of Scrabble, Z is only worth one point.

The guillotine was last used in France in 1977.

The French word for “hashtag”, coined this year, is Motdièse (“sharpword”).

The only member of ZZ Top who doesn’t have a beard is drummer Frank Beard.

The Russian team arrived 12 days late for the 1908 London Olympics because they were still using the Julian calendar.

Air trapped inside hedgehogs can make them blow up like a balloon. They should be carefully deflated with a syringe before they burst.

Costa Rica is home to the world’s only sloth orphanage.

Twice as many forks as knives are sold in the UK.

Sliced bread was originally marketed as “the greatest forward step since bread was wrapped”.

The electromagnet driving the particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland weighs more than the Eiffel Tower.

The average woman spends 16 months of her life crying.

The horsefly Scaptia beyonceae is so named for its “bootylicious” abdomen.

The first country to ban foie gras on the grounds of cruelty was Nazi Germany.

80 per cent of men born in the Soviet Union in 1923 were dead by 1945.

“Flak” is an acronymic abbreviation of Fliegerabwehrkanone, “flyer-defence-cannon”.

Silent letters in words such as “knife” and “psychic” are called aphthongs.

The dinosaur noises in Jurassic Park were made from recordings of tortoises having sex.

Abraham Lincoln was inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Babies are born with no bacteria in their bodies.

The Marianas Trench in the Pacific is so deep that a coin dropped into it would take more than an hour to reach the bottom.

The most-read publication in the UK is Tesco magazine.

Splenda was an insecticide that became a sweetener when a lab assistant misheard an instruction to “test it” as “taste it”.

Chewing gum costs 3p a stick to buy, but 10p a blob to remove from the pavement.

Half of British adults don’t believe in evolution.

The remains of birds hit by aeroplanes are known as “snarge”.

90 per cent of guns in Mexico are smuggled in from the USA.

Danny DeVito is a qualified hairdresser.

Plants grow more quickly if you talk to them in a Geordie accent.

The Norwegian word på˚legg means “anything that could conceivably be put in a sandwich”.

Only one shot was fired in the “Kettle War” of 1784, between the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire. It hit a kettle.

Two-thirds of British children aged 5-13 can operate a DVD player, but fewer than half can tie their shoelaces.

The Arabic word for “nipple” is buzz.

Anglerfish have black-lined stomachs to stop them giving themselves away if they eat something luminous.

Only one dog has ever been to both North and South Poles.

Johnny Cash became addicted to painkillers after being attacked by an ostrich.

Shark Bay in Australia is now called “Safety Beach”.

In London today, twice as many women over 40 as teenagers are giving birth.

Hewlett Packard printer ink is 20 times more expensive than 2003 Dom Perignon.

A Vintage Movie on Glass and Jazz

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What Would Jesus Do?

Based on Dissident Discipleship, David Augsburger
Brazos Press, 2006

Disciples in a believing community follow Jesus in different ways. Our experiences have been diverse. We are loyal to different traditions, or different interpretations of the same tradition. We ask different questions.

In its simplest form, discipleship is expressed by asking, "What would Jesus do?" The question is inspired by Charles M. Sheldon's 1896 novel, In His Steps. It fosters an imitation of Christ in personal life according to whatever image of Jesus the follower may have. Ethical and relational decisions are linked to particular teachings or actions of Jesus. If the disciple becomes stuck, she may reflect on a more basic question.

"What did Jesus do?" This question pushes us back to the Gospels to re-explore the actual behavior of Jesus. His story is affirmed as the revelation of ultimate goodness which judges all human values by enduring values. The disciple may then have the tools to explore the subsequent question.

"What would Jesus have me do?" This is the question of theology, or faith seeking understanding. It introduces new dimensions into the simple desire to imitate Jesus. What Jesus embodied in the ancient Near East is reformulated into the language of contemporary culture. In the process, Jesus inevitably gets translated, usually adjusted, often adapted, and sometimes co-opted to face the "hard realities" and bless what we consider necessary and inescapable. Sometimes the disciple is moved to look for the presence of Jesus in the present moment and ask the next question.

"What is Jesus doing here and now among us?" Now the disciple seeks Jesus as a contemporary presence in a believing community. He looks to the liturgy, to mystical experience, to ethical discernment, and to outreach to the least, the last and the lost. Every encounter with human need is re-visualized into an opportunity to serve Christ himself. In those moments we may discover a deeper question.

"What do I do with Jesus?" a question which offers the privilege of reaching out and touching Jesus in those we encounter in daily life, not just the needy. Instead of seeing those encounters as irritations in our important schedules, we see them as divine interruptions. Instead of being preoccupied with ourselves as followers, we shift our focus to concern for the other. Then we ask the question of Paul when he realized he was in the presence of Christ.

"Jesus, what do you want me to do?" We become the ones doing the listening, not the questioning. We let go of control of the conversation. All of the previous questions have been helpful, of course, but we cannot walk away until Jesus has a chance to speak for himself, to our circumstances, according to our spiritual maturity and our ability to truly listen.  

Schlesinger's letter to Jackie on night JFK was assassinated

Schlesinger was sipping cocktails before luncheon with Katharine Graham, John Kenneth Galbraith, and the editors of Newsweek at their Manhattan office when a man entered in his shirtsleeves and said, a little tentatively, “I think that you should know that the President has been shot in the back of the head in Texas.” Schlesinger thought momentarily this was some sort of ghastly office joke. Then he knew it could not be. Soon, he was on a plane bound for Washington. It was the saddest journey of his life.

November 22, 1963
Washington, D.C.
Friday evening

Dearest Jackie:

Nothing I can say can mitigate the shame and horror of this day. Your husband was the most brilliant, able and inspiring member of my generation. He was the one man to whom this country could confide its destiny with confidence and hope. He animated everything—he led with passion and gaiety and wit. To have known him and worked with and for him is the most fulfilling experience I have ever had or could imagine.

Dearest Jackie, the love and grief of a nation may do something to suggest the feeling of terrible vacancy and despair we all feel. Marian and my weeping children join me in sending you our profoundest love and sympathy. I know that you will let me know when I can do anything to help.

With abiding love,

Arthur

from a collection of Schlesinger's letters to political leaders, published this week by Random House. Quotation from The Atlantic blog, October 30, 2013 

Why Go to Church?

There are people who say that religion is a crutch, and I have never taken offence at that description. There have been times when I've gone to church feeling the need for personal forgiveness or comfort or strength or whatever. But the older I get – I'm not very old of course, but I'm not quite as young as I used to be either – the more I feel that my faith is not primarily a personal thing but a way of sharing the common lot with everybody else.

I go to church sometimes not needing comfort for my own private griefs but seeking consolation for the slow unfolding trainwreck that is called human history. I go to church sometimes hoping to find forgiveness not for myself but for my ancestors, my parents, my children and their children who will one day be born and will have to live (who knows how?) in whatever diminished world that I bequeath to them. I go to church sometimes not to be reconciled to anybody in particular, but because for fifty thousand years the land beneath my feet was home to other peoples, and I am hoping by some miracle to be reconciled to them. I go to church sometimes not seeking peace within my own soul but hoping to find relief from the raging violence that has boiled in the blood of all my brothers since the time of Cain.

I go to church and take bread and wine not necessarily because I feel hungry but because the common human condition is, at bottom, hunger and thirst and nothing more. It is the hunger of my mothers and fathers that I am feeding when I take the consecrated bread. When I take the cup it is the burning thirst of Adam that I slake. It is for the whole huge accumulated mass of human arrogance and stupidity and meanness that I hang my head in shame and say (embarrassed to be asking yet again), Lord have mercy.

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Ken Meyer, Faith and Theology blog, October 20, 2013

Contemplative Possibilities for Corporate Worship

Tilden Edwards, Shalem Institute newsletter

Here are a few suggestions that can help open the way for people’s first-hand presence in the Presence during a Sunday or other time of corporate worship. These include selected (sometimes modified) excerpts from the section on Liturgy in chapter four of my new book, Embracing the Call to Spiritual Depth (Paulist Press 2010), followed by a detailed form of a contemplative Eucharist/Holy Communion that is not in the book. Those of you who may be in non-Christian traditions may find some things I say adaptable to your worship forms.

Above all, give room for SILENCE. John of the Cross said that silence is God’s first language. Mother Teresa (who required two hours of silent daily prayer for her Sisters) said that silence is God speaking to us. Isaac of Nineveh advocated loving silence above all things, because it brings you near the fruit which the tongue is too weak to interpret. Meister Eckhart said that there is nothing so like God as silence. 

Silence then isn’t just a means. In its fullness silence itself is participation in God’s being, which is the depth of our own being. Such intimate participation is available to everyone, across every linguistic and cultural divide, since silence is a language that everyone knows.

Silence thus is living, pregnant, sacred space, open presence before sounds emerge, and from which sounds (including thoughts) emerge. Silence is boundary-less, inclusive of everything, full of possibilities. It is spaciousness that can draw us deeper into reality as it is, deeper into the delicate gracious Presence that inhabits the silence and the words and songs that rise from it. We are left more available to the Holy One’s healing, transforming, enlightening grace, individually and communally. 

If the value of such silence is being taught in spiritual formation groups in the life of the church, with help in ways of practicing such receptive prayer during the day, then what’s done in the Sunday liturgy will be that much more natural for people. Such receptive openness can become the seedbed of fuller forms of open awareness in people’s lives.     

Valuing silence in the historic Christian Eucharist/Holy Communion Service is doubly needed and appreciated in the context of the flood of noise and often trivial and commercially oriented voices in our culture that can drown out people’s sense of a larger Presence and Voice. People’s deep souls are starved for meaningful space that allows them room to see and feel life from the openness of their spiritual hearts rather than the drivenness of their over-stuffed minds, an openness where they can touch their own and life’s wholeness in God.

In a few churches today we find a more fully contemplatively oriented Eucharist taking place at some time other than Sunday mornings, for people who find the Presence more palpable in a Service with fewer words and more pregnant silences. For many years I have led a particular form of ecumenical contemplative Eucharist during Shalem programs and retreats that I will share with you here. 

A Form of Contemplative Eucharist / Communion

Introduction

I have varied the words of this form from time to time, so there is nothing sacred about the particular phrases chosen here. I find it important to pause for about 10 seconds or so between every set of words used. The form includes all the essential acts of the historic scripturally grounded Eucharist, surrounded with the fewest possible words to draw us toward the fullness of life in this sacred meal with Christ in the Spirit of the living God. 

The very dualistic language of most standard liturgies, where I find God often portrayed as overly separate from us, is muted in the language used here. The words seek to open a more intimate sense of non-dual presence: God in and among as well as beyond us; God not defined away from us but sensed immediately present, deeper than the words; God as the living, pregnant, personal Silence who mysteriously whispers tough and soft love songs among us, and weaves us into Love’s Body, through water, bread, wine, cross and our lived experience of grace. For the cultivation of such awareness, the words are addressed more to the spiritual heart’s intuition than to the mind’s linear thinking.

This form would not be right for every Eucharistic/Communion occasion. Some churches could not normally use it for regular Sunday worship due to the liturgical requirements of their denomination. Even where it is permissible, it would be best to give a normal Sunday gathering of people the experience of a few elements of a contemplative Eucharist before offering this much fuller version. Written and spoken help for people to understand the value of these elements would be important, given the lack of conditioning of many people for appreciation of listening silence in worship. Suggesting ways of being present in the silence could be valuable for people who are new to it. This could include some way of actually guiding people through a period of silence step by step early on, for example, inviting them to be in touch with their desire for God, and then to gently let go the surface busyness of their minds to a deeper openness to God’s loving presence in them, and in the congregation.  

The particular contemplative form of Eucharist spelled out here would likely be most readily received in relatively small, informal gatherings of people, especially people who are drawn to a fuller presence in the moment for God, through a less wordy format than most standard Eucharistic/Communion services allow. Besides at special times during the week for such a Eucharist, it can be offered as part of a Quiet Day or retreat. 

You will note that this liturgy includes the occasional sounding of a bell. I believe a sonorous bell has a special way of stilling our minds and opening our hearts. Bells have a long history in Christian worship and they can be used in more ways than we usually do. The liturgy also includes optional places for singing. My own preference is to choose songs that complement the simplicity of this Eucharist’s words and its special intent to open people to the immediate Presence. This has meant that I have usually chosen simple repetitive chants or song lines, such as certain Taize chants, that directly address God and draw us to the Presence, with little or no need for dependence on either written copies or screened versions of the music.

Other than the three optional places for singing and a version of the Lord’s Prayer, the congregation is silent throughout. Their silent “responses” to the few words said are whatever is given them in the silences between the words. The congregation also participates through the body: standing at least from the exchange of peace until after receiving Communion (the congregation can sit otherwise for simplicity’s sake, or stand and kneel as the presider instructs). It participates through the body also through open hands during the intercessory and thanksgiving prayers, bowing to the neighbor and clasping their hands for the offering of Christ’s peace, receiving and offering communion, and raising hands in the blessing of one another and of God (which might be more appropriate in some denominations than in others). Such bodily gestures are a powerful sacred language without words.

A Contemplative Eucharist/Communion Service

Everything in quotes is read by the presider.

Ring bell, followed by a moment of silence. 

Optional song/chant.

• “We bless your loving presence, Ever-Gracious One.”
• “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit.”
• “Have mercy on us.”
• Optional brief collect (prayer) related to the particular occasion or the liturgical calendar (e.g., for Epiphany, it could be simply “Shine through us.”).
• “Speak to us a living Word.” Here lectionary based or other selected scriptural lessons can be read. Sometimes I have asked readers ahead of time to select just one or two verses from each lesson. Sometimes I have added something written by someone in another tradition, e.g., Thich Nhat Hanh’s brief, passionate view of the contemplative power of the Christian Eucharist.20  Silence for several minutes between each lesson.
• Optional homily. I often trust the Spirit to sufficiently speak to people in the silence after each lesson, so that no separate spoken homily is given. Sometimes I open the time to a corporate homily, where anyone can share what they are moved to share, in a brief sentence or two. Once in awhile I will give a brief homily myself, choosing words that hopefully continue to draw people to the living Presence.
• Ring bell.
• “Now let’s open our hands and ask God to pray through us silently (pausing for a moment or two between each of the four areas of prayer, followed each time by the ringing of the bell):

1. “First, let’s listen to God’s prayer in you for the world.”  
2. “Now listen to God’s prayer in you for the church” (optional: and for all forms of spiritual community).  
3. “Now listen to God’s prayer for those people you know….for those who have died….and for ourselves.” 
4. “Now listen to God’s prayer in you for repentance” (optional: “strike your heart with your closed right hand as a sacred gesture while you do the following”): “silently name and let go whatever ways you have disregarded God’s inviting presence (optional addition: “and harmed the community”) in the situations of your life” (pause). (optional addition: “Embrace the desire in you to see the world day by day through God’s eyes and respond as you are called.”)

• “The ever-reconciling One through the living Christ promises us forgiveness and new life. Our sins are forgiven.” (optional: “Our union in Love is empowered once again.”)
• Exchange of Peace. “Please stand.” (Ideally the people will be in a circle, but this is not necessary). “God’s (or Christ’s) peace that passes understanding abounds among us. Let’s affirm that peace for one another silently now. I will begin by enclosing the hands of my neighbor and bow to God’s Spirit in them. That person in turn will silently bow and offer God’s peace in Christ to the person next to them, and so on around the room.” (If the group is large, an option is to have each person offer and receive the peace from the person on each side of them, as representatives of the whole congregation.)
• Offertory: The gifts of bread and wine (and grape juice, if that is a choice), along with any other gifts, if others are collected in this service, are brought to the Communion table/altar.
•  “Let’s lift our hands and hearts in silent thanksgiving and praise.”  
• “We join our voices with the whole company of heaven, proclaiming your glory, Holy One, filling heaven and earth. Now let’s praise God’s wholeness among us with a continuous chant of ‘holy’ together. By ‘continuous’ is meant that your voices do not have to remain together as they are chanting, so that you can begin and end the chanting of “holy” at any time. Then, between everyone, there is a continuous sound coming forth. It can be monotoned, or melodic, as Spirit may move you.” The experience of such a collective sung “Sanctus” often is felt as both ecstatic and calm at the same time, an expressive way of opening the heart, both the individual heart and the shared heart of the community.
• “Blessed is the one who comes in your Name. Hosanna in the highest.”
• Words of Institution: “In the holy meal that we continue to share, Jesus said: “This is my Body given for you” (bread lifted to congregation). “This is my blood shed for you” (cup lifted to congregation).
• Epiclesis (hands over bread and wine): “Awaken your wondrous Spirit among us through these holy gifts.”
• The Great Amen: Silently raise the bread and wine (optional: followed by a bow).
• Lord’s Prayer. I normally read the following version written by Jim Cotter and found in the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer and elsewhere, asking people to line it out after me:
  “Eternal Spirit, Life-Giver, Pain-Bearer, Love Maker, Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven:
  The Hallowing of your Name echo through the universe! The Way of your Justice be followed by the peoples of the world! Your Heavenly Will be done by all created beings! Your Commonwealth of Peace and Freedom sustain our hope and come on earth!
  With the bread we need for today, feed us. In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us. In times of temptation and test, strengthen us. From trials too great to endure, spare us. From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
  For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever. Amen.”
• Fraction: Raising and breaking the bread in silence.
• Communion: “Receive the Bread of Life and the Cup of Salvation (or Cup of Wholeness), and wordlessly offer it to your neighbor, in silent reverence.” (optional: silent distribution of communion by the presider and appointed others, especially if the assembly is large.)
• Optional singing during Communion.
• Thanksgiving: “Let’s sit (option: stand, kneel) with open hands in silent appreciation of the radiant Love living within and among us.” (Several minutes of silence.)
• Ring bell.
• Blessing. “Raise your hands with me for God’s blessing to flow through us for everyone here, slowly sweeping our hands around the circle (room)….Now let’s raise our hands to God, blessing the Beloved’s ever liberating presence shown us in Christ and flowing through all creation.”
• Dismissal: “Let’s go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.” 

Conclusion

I have included this sketch of a tested liturgical form as a way of stimulating your own Spirit-led imagination regarding possibilities for Eucharistic (and other worship) forms that might more fully invite our present, open awareness in the moment. The common denominator I think includes fewer words, and words (including song/chant lyrics) that seek to open us to immediate presence in the larger gracious Presence, punctuated by a listening silence that allows the words to be more deeply heard and inwardly digested.  As I earlier inferred, such qualities seem especially important as compensation and restitution for people coming from the context of a constantly pressured, over-wordy, over-stimulated culture. 

My deepest hope in prayer and life is to share more of the immediate Spirit-consciousness from which Jesus lived and from which he invited us to live, something of the “mind of Christ.” A contemplative Eucharist, or contemplative worship service of any kind, strives to assist such an intimate divine-human mutual presence. 

The 50 Top Innovations Since the Wheel

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James Fallows, November, 2013

The List

The Atlantic asked a dozen scientists, historians, and technologists to rank the top innovations since the wheel. Here are the results.

1. The printing press, 1430s

The printing press was nominated by 10 of our 12 panelists, five of whom ranked it in their top three. Dyson described its invention as the turning point at which “knowledge began freely replicating and quickly assumed a life of its own.”

2. Electricity, late 19th century

And then there was light—and Nos. 4, 9, 16, 24, 28, 44, 45, and most of the rest of modern life.

3. Penicillin, 1928

Accidentally discovered in 1928, though antibiotics were not widely distributed until after World War II, when they became the silver bullet for any number of formerly deadly diseases

4. Semiconductor electronics, mid-20th century

The physical foundation of the virtual world

5. Optical lenses, 13th century

Refracting light through glass is one of those simple ideas that took a mysteriously long time to catch on. “The Romans had a glass industry, and there’s even a passage in Seneca about the optical effects of a glass bowl of water,” says Mokyr. But it was centuries before the invention of eyeglasses dramatically raised the collective human IQ, and eventually led to the creation of the microscope and the telescope.

6. Paper, second century

“The idea of stamping images is natural if you have paper, but until then, it’s economically unaffordable.” — Charles C. Mann

7. The internal combustion engine, late 19th century

Turned air and fuel into power, eventually replacing the steam engine (No. 10)

8. Vaccination, 1796

The British doctor Edward Jenner used the cowpox virus to protect against smallpox in 1796, but it wasn’t until Louis Pasteur developed a rabies vaccine in 1885 that medicine—and government—began to accept the idea that making someone sick could prevent further sickness.

9. The Internet, 1960s

The infrastructure of the digital age

10. The steam engine, 1712

Powered the factories, trains, and ships that drove the Industrial Revolution

11. Nitrogen fixation, 1918

The German chemist Fritz Haber, also the father of chemical weapons, won a Nobel Prize for his development of the ammonia-synthesis process, which was used to create a new class of fertilizers central to the green revolution (No. 22).

12. Sanitation systems, mid-19th century

A major reason we live 40 years longer than we did in 1880 (see “Die Another Day”)

13. Refrigeration, 1850s

“Discovering how to make cold would change the way we eat—and live—almost as profoundly as discovering how to cook.” —George Dyson

14. Gunpowder, 10th century

Outsourced killing to a machine

15. The airplane, 1903

Transformed travel, warfare, and our view of the world (see No. 40)

16. The personal computer, 1970s

Like the lever (No. 48) and the abacus (No. 43), it augmented human capabilities.

17. The compass, 12th century

Oriented us, even at sea

18. The automobile, late 19th century

Transformed daily life, our culture, and our landscape

19. Industrial steelmaking, 1850s

Mass-produced steel, made possible by a method known as the Bessemer process, became the basis of modern industry.

20. The pill, 1960

Launched a social revolution

21. Nuclear fission, 1939

Gave humans new power for destruction, and creation

22. The green revolution, mid-20th century

Combining technologies like synthetic fertilizers (No. 11) and scientific plant breeding (No. 38) hugely increased the world’s food output. Norman Borlaug, the agricultural economist who devised this approach, has been credited with saving more than 1 billion people from starvation.

23. The sextant, 1757

It made maps out of stars.

24. The telephone, 1876

Allowed our voices to travel

25. Alphabetization, first millennium b.c.

Made knowledge accessible and searchable—and may have contributed to the rise of societies that used phonetic letters over those that used ideographic ones

26. The telegraph, 1837

Before it, Joel Mokyr says, “information could move no faster than a man on horseback.”

27. The mechanized clock, 15th century

It quantified time.

28. Radio, 1906

The first demonstration of electronic mass media’s power to spread ideas and homogenize culture

29. Photography, early 19th century

Changed journalism, art, culture, and how we see ourselves

30. The moldboard plow, 18th century

The first plow that not only dug soil up but turned it over, allowing for the cultivation of harder ground. Without it, agriculture as we know it would not exist in northern Europe or the American Midwest.

31. Archimedes’ screw, third century b.c.

The Greek scientist is believed to have designed one of the first water pumps, a rotating corkscrew that pushed water up a tube. It transformed irrigation and remains in use today at many sewage-treatment plants.

32. The cotton gin, 1793

Institutionalized the cotton industry—and slavery—in the American South

33. Pasteurization, 1863

One of the first practical applications of Louis Pasteur’s germ theory, this method for using heat to sterilize wine, beer, and milk is widely considered to be one of history’s most effective public-health interventions.

34. The Gregorian calendar, 1582

Debugged the Julian calendar, jumping ahead 10 days to synchronize the world with the seasons

35. Oil refining, mid-19th century

Without it, oil drilling (No. 39) would be pointless.

36. The steam turbine, 1884

A less heralded cousin of steam engines (No. 10), turbines are the backbone of today’s energy infrastructure: they generate 80 percent of the world’s power.

37. Cement, first millennium b.c.

The foundation of civilization. Literally.

38. Scientific plant breeding, 1920s

Humans have been manipulating plant species for nearly as long as we’ve grown them, but it wasn’t until early-20th-century scientists discovered a forgotten 1866 paper by the Austrian botanist Gregor Mendel that we figured out how plant breeding—and, later on, human genetics—worked.

39. Oil drilling, 1859

Fueled the modern economy, established its geopolitics, and changed the climate

40. The sailboat, fourth millennium b.c.

Transformed travel, warfare, and our view of the world (see No. 15)

41. Rocketry, 1926

“Our only way off the planet—so far.” — George Dyson

42. Paper money, 11th century

The abstraction at the core of the modern economy

43. The abacus, third millennium b.c.

One of the first devices to augment human intelligence

44. Air-conditioning, 1902

Would you start a business in Houston or Bangalore without it?

45. Television, early 20th century

Brought the world into people’s homes

46. Anesthesia, 1846

In response to the first public demonstration of ether, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote: “The fierce extremity of suffering has been steeped in the waters of forgetfulness, and the deepest furrow in the knotted brow of agony has been smoothed for ever.”
47. The nail, second millennium b.c.“Extended lives by enabling people to have shelter.” — Leslie Berlin

48. The lever, third millennium b.c.

The Egyptians had not yet discovered the wheel when they built their pyramids; they are thought to have relied heavily on levers.

49. The assembly line, 1913

Turned a craft-based economy into a mass-market one

50. The combine harvester, 1930s

Mechanized the farm, freeing people to do new types of work