A friend wrote in response to my request for theological resources about death as follows:

“Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University, has published a new book entitled This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, in which she examines how this conflict forever changed the way that Americans look at death. Dr. Faust discussed her book recently on NPR's Fresh Air. Fascinating and thoughtful interview. Here's the link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17957712”

Many thanks.

I have just returned from a wonderful weekend away marking the fiftieth anniversary of my natal moment. A small group of old friends joined Sage and me, both my brothers and their wives for a weekend on the Georgia Coast. While there was more snow in Atlanta we managed to ignore the freezing rain even on the golf course.

The 11:15 a.m. service at Christ Church, Frederica on St. Simon’s Island was Morning Prayer from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. I almost left when I saw the bulletin, but am glad I stayed even though the service is not my cup of tea. I suppose that all bases are covered in the general collects, but there was no explicit notice of anything going on in the world: MLK, war, elections, you name it.

At the end of a week where I have been re-immersing myself in Bowen systems theory it was especially good to spend time with members of my ‘family of origin’. It took me a long time to grasp the importance of such time for the purposes of what is called self differentiation in this particular systems theory. I still don’t fully understand why it works, but fully grasp that such time is important.