“The View from Inside an Ambulance,” originally published in Esquire, is a powerful essay by paramedic Chris Jones on his experiences dealing with death on a daily basis. His work both confronts him with, and numbs him to, human fragility. His closing story about reviving a man presumed dead, in front of the man’s son, [...]

TC-er Lisa wrote us with this idea for a Quick Thought topic.  She thinks it’s good food for thought and we agree.
“Why do we say ‘God bless America’ and not ‘God bless all the nations of the world?’  I know God didn’t only create the United States.  Maybe other countries could use God’s blessings, too.’”
What [...]

In a holiday speech, a leader proclaimed . . .
“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers.
“If Christ was on Earth today undoubtedly he would hoist the banner of justice and love for humanity to oppose warmongers, occupiers, terrorists and bullies the [...]

The Pope kicked off a weeklong reading of the Bible yesterday:
RAI state TV began its program called “The Bible Day and Night,” with Benedict reciting the first chapter of the book of Genesis—the holy text’s opening verses about the creation of the world.
The marathon will feature more than 1,200 people reading the Old and New [...]

I had not heard of this letter before today, but in light of recent happenings with the United States Wall Street it seems extra interesting.
Here’s the first part of the letter:
Read the whole letter and make sure to scroll to the bottom to see the list of signatories.
As the Church of the Lord in what [...]

There have been several posts of interest recently about the Lord’s Prayer. In addition to the bloggers, many of the commenters are chiming in with excellent ideas:

Kevin Sam: The Lord’s Prayer is in perpetual error
Rich Rhodes: What does the Lord’s Prayer mean?
Doug Chaplin: Kerfuffles over the Lord’s Prayer
Damian Caruana: The Lord’s Prayer: Prayer or framework [...]

Love conquers hate

At a previous job I worked on a few digitization projects. They are painstaking. There’s so many variables to balance, and standards to enforce, not to mention the repetitive work they usually entail. And what I was doing didn’t even touch the importance of this project.
The New York Times reports:
half a dozen specialists embarked [...]

Kouya Chronicle came up with this bemusing Bible translation name generator. His astute point is that English has hundreds of translations, yet there are almost 2000 languages still without a full Bible.
From his post:
Given the proliferation of translations and versions of the Bible in English it is getting harder and harder to find new titles [...]

What will $5 get you around the world? There’s an interesting new photo project that collects images of things you can get for $5 around the world. As far as I can see, there’s no deep moral purpose behind the project, but there’s certainly fodder there for some good discussions about relative wealth in different [...]