Man Cannot Live by Sex and Shoes Alone
From today's WSJ:

THE COSMIC COSMO: It's not exactly a road-to-Damascus experience. But the British edition of Cosmopolitan--the single girl's bible for sex and shopping--has just inaugurated a new spirituality column designed to fill a void reported by many of its readers. Reuters says that the new column will deploy "Cosmo friendly language" to cover everything from Kabbala to Chinese meditation. As Hannah Borno, Cosmo's new spirituality editor, writes in the March edition: "I've come to the painful realisation that men and shoes are not enough to make me happy."

Well, duh, Hannah darlin', but I don't think "Cosmo friendly" spirituality is going to fill your void either.

On the other hand, I suppose it fits right in with a prayer a friend of mine heard at a "young adult" oriented worship. It was one of those lengthy Protestant evangelical type prayers that we of liturgical traditions always find a bit disconcerting. (Or rather let me speak for myself, I find them a bit disconcerting. I am often reminded during them of the statement of one of the great old lions of my educational career. "When I go to church, I go to talk to God." The lengthy corporate prayers of the evangelical type are often so personalized to the speaker of the prayer that I often feel that he or she speaks not for me, and it's terribly disconcerting for me to keep a critical running double commentary up with God at the time when I am supposedly to be concentrating on Him. "Yes, I'm praying for that." "Um, no, I can't really say, I'm aboard with THAT. Can You strike that bit from my petition, please?" )

Anyway, somewhere around minute number 21 of the prayer, the petitioner started addressing the innate greed of human beings, saying that we always want more than we should want. " We want more" he prayed, and then plunged into a long list of things of which we want more, but shouldn't. Around minute 24 he hit this phrase: "We want more, more sex, more shoes, more doctrine," he said, and then droned on. My friend was stunned and once she confirmed that he had put doctrine in with sex and shoes, deeply grieved.

But now we see that he could get a gig with Cosmo!