God

Gerald Hodges' football career has been about adapting, persevering, and producing. And now it will be about adjusting - to the NFL. The Penn State linebacker and former all-South Jersey performer from Paulsboro was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in the fourth round, the 120th player chosen. "It's a blessing when my name was called, and now I get a chance to put a franchise on my helmet," Hodges said by phone. The 6-foot-1, 243-pounder began his college career as a safety but moved to linebacker.

Let me commend you for reporting that "the Eastern PA Organizing Project, a faith-based and community group... " rebuked the School District of Philadelphia. Faith groups can and should rebuke secular organizations, for faith groups are better at changing lives than secular organizations. We are accountable to the God who made us, whereas secular organizations leave out God all together. The only hope for improving the educational system in America is impacting the Word of God upon it. Thomas Muldoon, Philadelphia

9 tonight CHANNEL 12 Religion played a key role during the Civil War, as both Northern abolitionists and Southern slaveholders turned to the Bible to justify their stance. The second hour looks at challenges to traditional faith in the 19th century.

I JUST RETURNED from Crawford, Texas, where I was invited by Cindy Sheehan to participate in an interfaith service. As I was driving toward the large tent that has become the heart of the antiwar movement in this country, just a few feet from the entrance to George Bush's ranch retreat to lead prayers for peace and the souls of those of our children who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, I passed a group of pro-Bush, pro-war demonstrators....

REGARDING Jack Phillippe's Dec. 19 letter mistakenly insinuating that God is mentioned in the Constitution: The phrase, " . . . that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator . . . " is contained in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. But how does Jack feel seeing that the Declaration of Independence trumps his Bible in the values department in that slavery is acceptable? Or maybe I read that in another work of fiction. Bill Paci, Philadelphia Dollar Education Re: Willard Elementary school stories.

PATRICK Cubbage got fired for doing God's work. He's the military honor guardsman who worked at New Jersey's largest veterans cemetery and had a practice of saying "God bless you and this family, and God bless the United States of America" as he handed over our nation's flag to the families of deceased veterans. That's what got him canned. No wonder the firing quickly became a national embarrassment. To make matters worse, his superiors initially quibbled with his public explanation of his discharge.

On the day that the news pages and broadcast airwaves were filled with the story of Jessica Dubroff, the 7-year-old pilot who died in a plane crash in Wyoming during a cross-country trip, another little girl, Christina Hunter-Shaw, 8, was being eulogized here. She had been killed in an auto accident earlier that week near her West Philadelphia home - a story that got much less media attention. But to those who knew her - her family, her neighbors and her teachers and classmates at Daroff Elementary School - Christina was more than just a faceless name in the news.

RE THE letter from Kevin Flanagan titled "Abortion: Maybe It's God's Will": I can most assuredly tell you from reading the Bible that it is not God's will that people who call themselves doctors kill innocent human beings. God has no penchant for destruction. If anyone deserves destruction it is not innocent unborn human beings - it is Americans who have allowed abortion to continue in this nation for more than 30 years. We have innocent blood on our hands. Maybe it's the U.S. who is next to be disciplined.

Is God deaf, or what? One would think so, what with President Reagan, some of his cabinet and most of the fundamentalist leaders of this country crying for a law to permit organized vocal prayer in the public schools. What ever became of the notion that God knows what's going on inside our heads even before we do? Is there a religion with a god so far away that voices must be raised in unison to get her attention? I thought only drill instructors were thay way. John R. Spengler Ambler.

Remember when you first heard the heartbeat of your first child? I do. It was a painfully faint sound emanating from my wife's tummy, indistinguishable for a long time from other raucous gurgles with which it was competing. It presented as a sort of slurp-crunch, seemingly random, until, at length, I detected its regularity. Maida and I gazed into each other's eyes and smiled simultaneously. We knew our love was monumental, but this, this slurp-crunch, was miraculous beyond all telling.

The First Century Gospel Church begins each service with notes of praise for God's healing. Church members e-mail or text small prayers of thanks to Pastor Nelson Clark, who reads them aloud inside a rented hall in Juniata Park, between playing hymns on a keyboard. We thank and praise this man's toothache . . . We thank and praise God for the passing of seasonal afflictions . . . As church leader, Clark ministers to Herbert and Catherine Schaible, the Northeast Philadelphia husband and wife who have chosen prayer instead of medicine for two dying children.

Meditation of a Modern Believer By Christian Wiman Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $24. Reviewed by John Timpane Christian Wiman is a believer from a class of people who, in the minds of some, aren't supposed to believe. He's a poet - editor of Poetry magazine, a job he'll be leaving in June - a leading intellect, an artist. He's also facing cancer. He believes in God and, in My Bright Abyss , seeks to portray what that's like as of 2013 if you want to be an intelligent, aware, non-self-deluding, tough-minded, free-speaking person here and now. My Bright Abyss is a dark, mountainous work, part poet's notebook, part meditation, part illness journal.

A BOMBING in Boston on Patriots' Day. We don't know who did it yet, but does it really matter? The whole world seems to be about hate. I hate you because you don't look like me, or maybe you're a different color, or I don't like your sexual choices. Maybe I don't believe what you believe . Yes, it is a shame because religion does have a lot to do with the hate. I don't think that was what God intended. I just watched the series named "Bible. " It was the greatest series I have ever seen.

ATLANTIC CITY - Within hours of announcing he would run for a third term as Atlantic City's mayor, Lorenzo Langford on Wednesday was again embroiled in a long-distance altercation with Gov. Christie, who said the resort's leader has "no idea what he's doing" and runs the "most God-awful, wasteful" municipal government in the nation. Langford, 57, a Democrat who four years ago vowed that he had made his last run for mayor, fired back via e-mail that Christie's record as governor is "one of hypocrisy.

SHE WAS CALLED "Florence Nightingale. " And Lorraine Teresa Dade-Trumpler earned the title. Like the 19th-century English nurse, whose name has become synonymous with helping the ill and needy, Lorraine dedicated much of her life to easing the pain of the sick and shut-ins in her city. As a mother of Jones Temple Church of God in Christ, in North Philadelphia, of which her late husband was pastor, Lorraine spread her concern among children and adults, using her considerable cooking and baking skills to feed the hungry and taking flowers and gifts to those who needed a touch of love.

RE: "GUN VIOLENCE Debate Continues" (Stu Bykofsky column, Jan. 14). I am 78 years old and was raised during World War II. The column brought back vivid memories of my childhood. My dad had a .22-caliber rifle and he made a firing range in our cellar. He taught me how to fire it, take it apart and clean it. He would do the same for all the neighborhood kids with their parents' permission. He had a glass case where he kept the rifle, but never locked the case. All of us kids never went near the case without Dad's permission.

With Thursday's unveiling of corruption charges against nine current and former Traffic Court judges, the U.S. Justice Department has again proven it is Philadelphia's most effective good-government group. In a tone-deaf political environment where fixing traffic tickets is seen as no more harmful than double-parking, these charges bring hope. Maybe the people in charge of Traffic Court will hear the music and clean up a system that allows dangerous drivers to go unpunished just because they have friends in high places.

YOUR FAVORITE Columnist continues his tradition of an annual sit-down with God. YFC: Hello, Lord. God: What? You again? YFC: But - God: I'm kidding, kid. Take a load off. It seems like ages since I've seen you. YFC: I'm here every year around now. I was here last December. God: Get out - last year? My memory's slipping. But I remember your name, Jerry. YFC: It's Stu. God: You're not Blavat, the Geator with the Heater? YFC: 'Fraid not. God: I broke the mold when I made him. YFC: I'm more interested than you could ever imagine.

THERE WAS something about Catherine Leatherbury that drew people to her. Friends and neighbors would drop by her house in Overbrook just to be with her and soak up the warmth of her loving personality. Catherine devoted much of her life to caring for others, especially children, for whom she had a special place in her heart. Catherine LeVere-Leatherbury, a retired beautician, an active churchwoman who traveled to Europe and Africa on missionary excursions, an artist, a loving mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, died Dec. 3. She was 89 and was living in Dauphin, Pa., but had lived most of her life in Philadelphia.