Various & Sundry: Can't Touch This

It's been a while since I've had a chance to do the random round-up. Let's see what I've got here...

In tea news, you'll be glad to hear that the London-based loose-leaf brew bar, "Bringing better cups of tea to the streets of London: loose leaf, custom-brewed and served from a 1974 Citroen H van," has already been oversubscribed on Kickstarter. I definitely plan to get a cuppa if and when I get to London.

I saw the movie Argo a couple of weeks ago, and really appreciated Lance Mannion's take on it. It's less a review and more a meditation on the lessons it may have to teach us in this day and age.

There are times when there really isn’t anything we can do. There are problems that can’t be solved. There are situations where even someone as powerful as the President of the United States has no control. Under those circumstances, when success isn’t an option, despair and surrender are temptations that must still be resisted. The best thing we can do is do our jobs, to exercise what little control we have in the little sphere in which we still have it, and instead of holing up by ourselves, reach out to those nearest whom we can help. We have to take care of each other.

One person who exercised what control he had in his sphere was James R. Dumpson, who died this week at the age of 103. The headline for his obituary was "defender of the poor," and what a wonderful accolade! He was the NYC Commissioner of Welfare in the early '60's, and had a message that still needs to be heard today: that "the only test for public assistance was a citizen’s need, not morals."

I almost always find something to love in David Lose's daily blog posts, but this one, entitled Theology as Conversation, I found particularly compelling. Probably because it's exactly what we're trying to do with Confirm not Conform. "True belief," he says, "grows only in the space created by the freedom to question." Amen to that.

Meanwhile, in a less...reverent part of the blogosphere, Lent Madness mastermind Tim Schenck prepared a wonderful Litany for Diocesan Conventions.

From those compelled to speak from any available microphone even with nothing to say,
Good Lord, deliver us.

From liturgies that include the clapping of hands and hymns no one knows,
Good Lord, deliver us.

Amen again.

Oh, there was an election this week, wasn't there? In President Obama's acceptance speech I appreciated his comment that "We are not as divided as our politics suggest." One scientific study, at least, tends to back him up on this sentiment.

It was a wonderful speech. I appreciated what he had to say about democracy, about debate, about patriotism.

Then there's this. I admit I like this too.