Pray Without Ceasing

 "There is a river whose streams make glad...." For anyone who has been frustrated the past few years with ultra-conservatives in the political arena whose only purpose seems to be to incite and inflame, it is heartening to note that the tide of public sentiment has turned against their hate-filled invective. Compare the soaring strains of President Obama's Tucson memorial speech , the truths of which resonate more deeply with the passing of time, to the hollowness of the rhetoric advanced at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, summed up tartly in Frank Rich's NYT opinion piece this past weekend. The qualities of hope and confidence in the human spirit which reside at the heart of his presidency are embodied in his lyrical quotation from Psalm 46 which opened this speech:  "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will h

Now is the time for the Egyptian people to "Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against the enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, aginst the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 6:11-12) In this case, the two would seem to be one. Perhaps it is hyperbole to say that Hosni Mubarak is the devil, but what else would the masses seeking freedom from his oppressive rule think, when their peaceful protest was turned upside-down by armed, well-organized hired pro-Mubarak thugs who arrived en masse in Tahrir Square yesterday in buses and on camels and horseback to begin firing on the protesters and creating chaos (and then to hear that the government was accusing the protesters of creating that chaos)? All this is well documented by independent news sources . It is a dark time for thos