With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best—poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

The hand of the Creator reveals His love to me

The sunshine and showers refreshing earth and sea

Display in power this Holy hour Creations memory

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In an effort to broaden the scope of it’s online outreach, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has launched a new issues-driven video series broadcast on YouTube.

The video series is intended to stimulate conversation and offer a distinctly Adventist take on issues such as freedom, faith versus science, the environment and integrity.

“These videos have the potential to reach an audience that is typically ‘tuned out’ to the church’s more traditional methods of ministry,” said Rajmund Dabrowski, world church Communication director and executive producer of the series.

The opening paragraphs describe a scene that is probably similar to that seen in many Christian households during worship:

I want our evening prayer time to be fun. But I also want my kids to stick around for the fun. They do have fun during prayer time; it’s just fun completely unrelated to the prayer process. They laugh, play, box, squirm, bounce, wrestle, bite, kiss, tickle and wiggle, and that is fun.

The author goes on to describe the difficulty in maintaining a reverential spirit during worship with children while not drowning out their individuality and genuine love for the process.  His description of his daughter Melia’s “Tourette’s-like” prayer style (no doubt adopted by listening to her parents is priceless and sobering.

Melía, for example, has learned to pray the way we have modeled, even when there is no competing noise. “Dear Jesus–I’M PRAYING! Thank You for this wonderful–I’M PRAYING! Thank You for Mommy and Daddy and–I’M PRAYING! Thank You for Brielle and Ashlyn–MOMMY, I’M PRAYING!”

He then goes on to list the various ways in which parent’s can deal with this issue.  His suggestions (while comical) are thougtful and perhaps the kind of thing that many parents have considered.  The comments posted at the bottom of the blogpost are also worthy of consideration.

Mr. Bennie summarizes his thoughts by indicating that one of the issues that we as parents must face is that of  being desperate to have our children “get this prayer thing now” because of our fear that we have never really gotten it ourselves.

A poignant thought.