Parking Lot Rage Is On The Rise

From CBS Pittsburgh-

What makes some really angry at parking lots are the rude and inconsiderate people who don’t know how to park their cars.

But the key is controlling that anger.

Appearing on the Sunday Business Page, Episcopal Bishop Dorsey McConnell says it helps to imagine the stress the offending person is under, too.

“And then when I start looking at others, then I maybe see them not as the guy who is in my way, or who just took the parking place I wanted, but rather someone who’s got their own struggles, their own stresses, and their own tough realities,” said the Bishop.

That helps — and so does realizing it’s only a parking spot.

More here-

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2014/11/28/parking-lot-rage-is-on-the-rise/

Clinging to Hope

Nice think piece on the relationship between religion (hope) and materialism. By Tony Blankley.

As we enter one of America's bleaker winters -- though not so bleak as the winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge nor the winter of 1941-42 after Pearl Harbor and then Wake Island -- please permit me to lapse for a moment from the secular and the material to an old memory.

I was out Christmas shopping with my 11-year-old daughter in empty stores last week, when the refrain of an old hymn, un-summoned, played in my head. It was a song from my youth that is not sung these days in the smart suburban churches we have attended (nor on the mall's Muzak):

"So I'll cherish the old rugged cross till my trophies at last I lay down; I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange it someday for a crown."

Perhaps those words will remind you of the homely but touching melody that George Bennard composed to support this beloved hymn, "The Old Rugged Cross," almost a hundred years ago now, in 1913.

http://townhall.com/columnists/TonyBlankley/2008/12/17/clinging_to_hope

More people to shop online on Christmas Day than go to a church service

So what will you be doing Christmas day? From the London Telegraph.

Some 5.24 million people will log on to shop for bargains over the internet on Christmas Day, according to the online retail trade group IMRG. It calculates that people will spend a total of £104 million, averaging nearly £20 per person.
This compares to an estimated 4.5 million people who attend an Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist or Pentecostal church service on Christmas Day.

The figures are the most conclusive proof yet that consumers are going to great lengths to track down bargains in the economic downturn. It is also evidence, analysts said, of the increasing power of online retailers over their high street peers.

However, the figures have alarmed senior Church figures, who said Christmas Day should be a day for people to think about their families, not about shopping.

The Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, the Church of England's Bishop for Urban Life and Faith, said: "It does seem to me very sad that at the time when people should be focusing on relationships and family life, they get caught up in the chase for a bargain as if somehow this will bring them greater happiness.

"I would have thought this is at least one day in the year when the focus should be on people, not goods."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/3851370/More-people-to-shop-online-on-Christmas-day-than-go-to-a-church-service.html