Written by Lon Newman for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

“A defender of the church,” proclaimed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline for an extensive story about the new Archbishop-designate, Jerome Listecki. The subtitle for the article was: “Archbishop designate Listecki vows collaboration, but unafraid of debate.” The subtitle was probably derived from the bishop’s description of how he planned to participate in the political process. He said: “If we don’t challenge one another’s statements, then we’re relinquishing our responsibility to the common good.

The following month, young Catholics for Choice (yCFC – a Washington D.C. based organization) and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS – an agency with family planning clinics in eight Wisconsin counties) formed a unique sectarian-secular advertising partnership, produced informational ads for broadcast, and then embarked on a two-day Wisconsin “road-trip” to draw media attention to their campaign and to build public (including the Catholic public) awareness and knowledge about emergency contraception.

An interesting commentary on the revisions to the DSM, from Psychiatric Times. I'm glad to see that some psychiatrists are opposing the medicalization of ALL psychological suffering.

Equating situational bereavement - grief - with major depression is just another way to create a market for [ineffective] antidepressant medications. NO ONE with connections to the pharmaceutical companies should sit on the DSM panels.

DSM5 Criteria Won’t “Medicalize” Grief, if Clinicians Understand Grief

By Ronald Pies, MD, and Sidney Zisook, MD

Part two of my marathon gabfest with Tim Binnall is now up on the BOA website. Mr. Binall?

Our conversation with Christopher Knowles continues as we discuss his epic and increasingly popular blog The Secret Sun. In this jam session style of conversation, we'll talk about the Vatican and Royal Society recent statements on aliens, the sense that something is looming on the horizon, mythic elements finding their way into our everyday world, the ongoing subliminal references to Sirius in the mainstream media, and tons more.

Our relationship to the Now touches the core of what it means to be alive and ultimately defines how we relate to everything in our world including ourselves. Strip away the religion from the teachings and Presence is what everyone from the Buddha to Jesus is preaching. Enlightenment, salvation, awakening … these are all just labels for being fully in touch with the present moment.

Our literate culture detached us from the present by tearing our body and mind away from the world and burying them in the printed page. Our senses were “short-circuited”(David Abraham), severing our participation with the here and now.

“The most important, the primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the Now … If your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be reflected in every relationship and every situation you encounter.” E. Tolle.

As we began to wrap the globe in an electric web of instant information, we felt a shared urgency to shift our awareness back to the present moment. Unconsciously we recognized that our lack of presence was incompatible with the “all-at-onceness” of our new electric environment.

The counter cultures of the 20th century were all experiments in realigning ourselves with this new electric Now. We found old paths to the present in music, drugs, meditation, yoga and eastern religion - all tools for retuning our awareness towards the Now.

I’m a big believer in prison work around spirituality.

I had both the fortune and misfortune of working with inmates in the Washington State prison system roughly a bit over five years ago. This was with pagan inmates at McNeil Island. The head chaplain of this organization later became slightly infamous for his less than ambivalent relationship to non-Christian groups there (he has since retired). I found it to be very challenging and difficult, emotionally, even though it wasn’t difficult work in other ways. The only reason why it was unfortunate was simply because I was strongly transitioning to my developing Buddhist practice at the time, away from my existing pagan practice and history, but I was thrust into a role as a representative of Wicca and pagandom in general in trying to support the inmates. I had initially agreed to help a friend by acting as his support and backup and he was then, on fairly little notice, deployed to Iraq, leaving me with the bag. I maintained things for a while but had to eventually quit as my heart was no longer within that spirituality and I could not fairly represent it or teach it.

As part of my practice of Zen, I have been planning to work with inmates for some time. I’ve spoken briefly with a few parties about it and have at least one outstanding discussion with someone working at San Quentin waiting to happen as I write this.

Southwest Airlines learned that you don’t mess around with someone who has 1 million Twitter followers. Kevin Smith,the director of Clerks and Chasing Amy, was booted from a flight last week for  being too fat to fly — at least too fat unless he was willing to buy 2 seats.  According to Kathy Kristoff, who writes the  “Devil in the Details column for  CBS Money Watch.com, Southwest tried to appologize and offer Smith a $100 voucher, but he wasn’t interested. Instead, he went Twitterbalistic, launching a barrage of bombastic tweets, that has lead The National Association of Fat Acceptance to  threaten a boycott of Southwest.
But being a good reporter, Kristoff points out  a. that Smith knew about the rule, because he had bought two seats for a later  flight, but wanted to bump up  to an earlier and fit in only one seat; and b. that Southwest may have been victimized in part , by its own generous policy that makes it easy to jump to another flight by not paying any penalties. Change on Jet Blue e.g. and you may pay more than the flight  itself cost.  Still, Southwest’s rule is that you have to be able to fit into a seat with both arm rests down, or you have to buy two seats:  Smith’s retort was,”  I maybe fat, but I am not that fat.”

Catholic nuns are using an Eastern healing technique known as Reiki to help people with spiritual and physical healing. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, however, have labeled Reiki as a superstition incompatible with Catholicism....

ABC Radio National's All in the Mind has an engaging interview with psychologist and author Kay Redfield Jamison who discusses her new book which is both a memoir of losing her husband and a consideration of the psychology of grief.

Towards the end of the interview she tackles the distinction between grief and depression, which has recently returned as a contentious topic after lying fallow for many years.

Since Freud's essay Mourning and Melancholia, the two have been linked in many psychological theories. Freud's idea was that both were similar types of reaction to loss although in depression it might not be clear to the conscious mind what was lost because the prior attachment might have had unconscious components.

In other words, a small event might trigger a big grief reaction event though it might not be clear why - because some of the psychological value of what you have lost might exist only in the unconscious.

Although the essay is one of the foundational texts of psychoanalysis, nowadays only the most orthodox followers of Freud would agree fully with this theory of depression and the idea that grief and depression are fundamentally the same is no longer widely subscribed to.

Nevertheless, psychiatry is once more approaching grief as a potential form of mental illness, albeit from a different angle.

Possible New Careers Emerging from Advances in Science and Technology (2010 – 2030)
Final Report | 149 pages | January 2010

Fast Future pdf

The top five roles that respondents would most like to see materialise were:
Old Age Wellness Manager / Consultant
Vertical Farmer
Nano-Medic
Climate Change Reversal Specialist
New Scientists Ethicist

"The response to the global survey suggests these roles can individually and in various combinations make a significant contribution to tackling the care challenges of an ageing society, feeding a growing population and maintaining and enhancing our health. They are also seen as essential to giving us greener mobility solutions and reducing the impact of dangerous climate change. Finally they are expected to help us survive and thrive in the cyberworld, whether through legal protection, counselling or management of our virtual data and ‘personal brand image‘."

A good reading for a long and too hot weekend. With a prosperous vision for Brazil — > could emerge as one of the world's leading scientific powers by 2025.
Controversy level 1

Via Tristan Hambling / @tristanhambling