{"id":293,"date":"2007-11-20T11:55:49","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T11:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html"},"modified":"2007-11-20T11:55:49","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T11:55:49","slug":"bearing-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html","title":{"rendered":"Bearing gifts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As you embark upon the task of Christmas shopping -whether it is a chore or a delight to you &#8211; consider these alternatives ot the mall, Amazon or gift cards:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.monasterygreetings.com\/\">Monastery Greetings is a clearinghouse for items made and distributed by religious communities. <\/a><br \/>\nFor readers in England, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.spiritsgift.org\/\">Spirit&#8217;s Gift is a similar outfit. <\/a><br \/>\nThen, of course, there are alternatives like gifts that come from individuals and groups around the world, marketed by organizations dedicated to fair trade practices:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tenthousandvillages.com\/\">Ten Thousand Villages<\/a>\u00a0(origins in Mennonite Church)<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.agreatergift.org\/\">A Greater Gift <\/a>\u00a0(origins in Church of the Brethren, partners with Catholic Relief Services and Lutheran World Relief)<br \/>\nAnd then there&#8217;s also the choice to give to help people in need in someone&#8217;s name rather than just giving them more stuff for the closet.<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.foodforthepoor.org\/site\/c.luIVLdMSJpE\/b.2560213\/k.BD2B\/Home.htm\">Food For the Poor Gift Options<\/a><br \/>\nMany, many more international and local options on that score.<br \/>\n<em>Simplify.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As you embark upon the task of Christmas shopping -whether it is a chore or a delight to you &#8211; consider these alternatives ot the mall, Amazon or gift cards: Monastery Greetings is a clearinghouse for items made and distributed by religious communities. For readers in England, Spirit&#8217;s Gift is a similar outfit. Then, of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bearing gifts - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bearing gifts - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As you embark upon the task of Christmas shopping -whether it is a chore or a delight to you &#8211; consider these alternatives ot the mall, Amazon or gift cards: Monastery Greetings is a clearinghouse for items made and distributed by religious communities. For readers in England, Spirit&#8217;s Gift is a similar outfit. Then, of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-11-20T11:55:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bearing gifts - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bearing gifts - Via Media","og_description":"As you embark upon the task of Christmas shopping -whether it is a chore or a delight to you &#8211; consider these alternatives ot the mall, Amazon or gift cards: Monastery Greetings is a clearinghouse for items made and distributed by religious communities. For readers in England, Spirit&#8217;s Gift is a similar outfit. Then, of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-11-20T11:55:49+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html","name":"Bearing gifts - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-11-20T11:55:49+00:00","dateModified":"2007-11-20T11:55:49+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/11\/bearing-gifts.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Bearing gifts"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}