Morning Briefings

Rosh Hashanah is part of a process of spiritual growth. The Hebrew month preceding it, Elul, is a time for charity. Rosh Hashanah falls on the first and second days of the seventh month on the Hebrew calendar.

–
infoplease.com

If a working mother’s child needs to visit the emergency room, there’s a good chance the hospital is a Catholic one. If an ex-offender needs help readjusting to life outside of prison, there’s a good chance help will come from a Christian ministry. Yet instead of encouraging the different faith communities to continue their vital work for the good of all, the administration is forcing them to make a choice: serving God and their neighbors according to the dictates of their respective faiths–or bending the knee to the dictates of the state.

– Archbishop Donald Wuerl, Charles Colson and Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik, The Wall Street Journal
United We Stand for Religious Freedom

In Missoula, Mont., a man spent more than $1,200 to pay down the balances of six customers whose layaway orders were about to be returned to a Kmart store’s inventory because of late payments. Store employees reached one beneficiary on her cellphone at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where her son was being treated for an undisclosed illness. “She was yelling at the nurses, ‘We’re going to have Christmas after all!’” store manager Josine Murrin said.

– Margery A. Beck, AP
Anonymous donors pay off Kmart layaway accounts

To an unusual degree people now feel they have to protect themselves from each other. You have to put forward the rules of behavior, every day. But such vigilance is tiresome. Most of us give up and accept the thousand daily breaches and violations. In a service economy in the age of no manners, everyone gets on everyone’s nerves.

– Peggy Noonan
We Pay Them to Be Rude to Us from The Wall Street Journal

See-saw power: We’ve already written about the use of playground equipment as a means of pumping fresh water for African villages, and now a British student at Coventry University has come up with a way to use see-saws to generate power.

– As reported on
Guy Kawasaki’s blog

Almsgiving is the giving of material goods or financial assistance to a needy person. This is to be done discreetly and with the spirit of love.

– Online definition of blog
Catholic FAQ

Dacor’s Company Value: To honor God in all that we do by respecting others, by doing good work, by helping others, by forgiving others, by giving thanks and by celebrating our lives.

– 
Dacor website

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.

– Mother Teresa