Blessings...

May God grant you and all those you love his great mercy and blessings in the coming year!

Text message ripoff...

My nieces and nephew text like there is no tomorrow, they of the flying thumbs and the ability to communicate through abbreviations. I, being the dinosaur in these matters, have probably sent a total of five text messages in my life. I've slways figured that phones were for people to talk to each other (I know, I'm old school and basically fossilized on these things).

Well it appears that text messages, those little quasi-sentences like "r u ok?" cost the various service providers next to nothing but that doesn't keep them from charging you a tidy sum to thumb them along. Basically the whole thing is a fad created by the phone companies to make bundles of money. My generation had the "pet rock" and these crazy kids nowadays have text messaging. Some things never change.

New Year's Eve...

I'll be staying home for New Year's Eve, thank you, and that's alright with me.

I've never been much of a New Year's person. As a child we would go to church on New Year's Eve for a program and a prayer meeting so I never had the whole wild party thing as part of my experience. I often don't even stay up until midnight. After all the year will change whether I'm awake to see it or not.

When I served as chaplain at a care center for men with addictions and mental illness I learned the Residents, long practiced in the art of inebriation, called New Year's Eve "amateur night" the time when accountants and other assorted varieties of "straights" tried to make it as drunks. In the weird world of street drinkers there's a perverse kind of pride in knowing how to keep the buzz going, what things to avoid, and how to live through it all including the next morning, knowledge the average guy with a goofy hat and a tipsy girlfriend just doesn't possess.

Wisconsin, too, is a drinking state. Crossing the river from the scolding moral Lutheran universe one discovers a different world just east of Minnesota, a world where there are often four bars on four corners and all of them open long after decent folk should be in bed. If Minnesotans do bad things and then enjoy feeling chastised for it people in Wisconsin have no such issues. Folks are more honest about it on the LaCrosse side of the river but that doesn't make it more safe. I'd rather not have to drive south in the wee small hours of the New Year to take care of a parishioner who has, shall we say, suffered the affects or worse yet was seriously injured by an amateur with too much booze and too little sense.

So it'll be my wife and I, my mother, and the cats, watching movies eating pizza and doing our best to keep off the streets. Time will do its work and while the party animals sleep and dream feverish spinning dreams we'll be up and free of headache.

Snow...

Up to half a foot of snow expected today. Okay.

Up here in flyover country we just get kind of stoic about it all. Nature is in charge and there's a few things we can do (like furnaces and indoor plumbing) and a whole lot we can't. There's nothing like six inches of snow followed by below zero temperatures to get a person into the proper perspective about things.

Anyway, up here in Minnesota we always say, "Well we could use the moisture..." and beyond the fact that we'd be stuck with the snow even if we were as wet as a tea bag, the truth is we really do need the moisture. Rivers, lakes, and fields will all get a needed dose when this melts off in spring and this matters because if the folks out in the country have a dry year the rest of us don't eat so well.

So the shovel is out, the snowblower is ready, and we're getting psyched for the long commute this morning. Just no ice please and we'll bear up as best we can.

Bass amp hell...

I've got no one to blame for it except myself.

For the past week and change I've been looking for the perfect amplifier for my electric bass. I had saved some money and wanted to "step up" but invited myself, as well, to a nightmare of my own making. Time on the internet, purchasing and returning, starting out with one moving to two others and then returning to the first. What I thought was going to be like a kid going to a candy store was more about obsession, disappointment, and the hangover that always seems to come the morning after the great consumer party is finished. I actually like my bass and the whole idea of it less.

The whole thing has reminded me, again, how there is not "perfect" thing, ever, and that everything one can buy is about shades of better or worse. I'm reminded, as well, that if I had pursued holiness, virtue, faith, or any number of good things with the effort squandered in the pursuit of a few notes of sound I would be happier then I am now, and certainly not feeling like I'd been ridden hard and put away wet.

And hopefully they won't ban me for life from Guitar Center for being so neurotic.

I was 3 when this song hit...

This Sunday's sermon in advance...

Sunday After Nativity

There are times when the pairings of the readings for any given Sunday seem peculiar and a reasonable person looking at them from the outside may wonder “Why are this Epistle and Gospel together?” “What’s the point?” And those questions themselves speak to something important about our Orthodox Faith. In Orthodox Christianity questions are not a sign of a lack of faith but rather an invitation to look deeper, into ourselves, our world, and that which we believe.

Our Faith has existed for over 2000 years and during that time its been scrutinized, analyzed, probed, challenged, and examined by its adherents and opponents, the curious and controversialists. We’ve done okay. We’re still here. And in all that time its probable the questions you may be struggling with have already been addressed.

Its important to know, as well, that the existence of questions shows you’re engaged with your Faith, that what you believe is valuable enough to you to ponder. Questions indicate a lively faith. You should be reading the texts, learning about your religion, examining the evidence, and seeking to work through questions to new insights. Every Orthodox should have a healthy curiosity about their Faith, their Church, and how what they believe impacts their lives. Someone once said “If you don’t ask you’ll never know” and this is especially true when it comes to your Faith.

Even the hard questions, those birthed within us in a time of tragedy and suffering, demonstrate faith. If one reads the stories of the Saints we see people who are often engaged in profound struggle with themselves, with God, and the world around them. In fact these struggles were often the arena where their holiness was formed, the precursor to the glory they experienced. Questions are part of theosis.

In that light what do these texts have in common? What theme may unite them and why did the Church link these over the centuries?

If you notice you’ll see a theme of exile in both. St. Paul receives the revelation of God and then finds himself in exile in Arabia safely awaiting the moment when the main act of his ministry is to begin. In the Gospel St. Joseph receives a call from God to take the child Jesus to exile in Egypt, a time of waiting and safety in anticipation of what this child would bring in the future.

This is a common theme of the Scriptures, the idea that before we engage in the work we are called to do God takes us to a place of exile, rest, and safety where we can learn, grow, and prepare. Moses, before he stood in the presence of Pharaoh, had his time in the wilderness as a shepherd. Elizabeth waited in years of barrenness before the birth of her son, John the Forerunner. The disciples of Christ walked with Him for three years before they were released to the world.

God has a call on each of our lives, a call on our church, things we must do, a purpose to fulfill. But often before the full flowering of that time there is a time of exile, a time when the purpose becomes clear, vision becomes focused, and everything extraneous is sloughed away. The time of exile, far from being a time of passivity and weakness, is actually a time when God is transforming us in preparation for what will be.

Now ponder this in the context of your own life and the life of this parish and you’ll begin to understand.

Let it snow...

Looks like another 3-5 inches of snow for LaCrosse tonight and Sunday.

Oh well!

Thoughts from Richard John Neuhaus...

While the pro-life cause welcomes, and has been greatly bolstered by, the support of many distinguished intellectuals, the same is not true of the pro-choice movement. On the contrary, intellectuals who share their policy preferences are always raising inconvenient questions about the intellectual coherence of arguments advanced in favor of the unlimited abortion license...

Read it all here.

Needed information...

It has been said that information is power and in that light I would like to recommend the www site of Dr. Robert Gagnon, a Professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. The site itself is not particularly well designed, (lots of ads and kind of hard to look at), but the information presented on the Bible and sexuality is worth the visit and the site should be bookmarked by Christians seeking to understand these issues.

In recent years there have been many attempts, sadly, by Christian clerics and even hierarchs to distort the teachings of Scripture regarding sexuality and argue for an ethic of permissiveness by dramatically misinterpreting the texts to support their arguments. Unfortunately people of traditional and historic faith are often overwhelmed by these arguments because the person conveys the authority of their office and appears to be intelligent. Dr. Gagnon is a scholar, familiar with the original languages and cultures, whose special area of focus has been the Scriptures and sexuality. His material is generally easy to read and thoroughly supports the historic understandings of Christian texts in the area of sexuality.

A special feature is the availability of many of his works in PDF format which you may save and copy for your own use and to help you not be overwhelmed when the nice man in the collar and a business card full of initials wants to convince you that it doesn't say what it really says. Although Dr. Gagnon is not Orthodox he is certainly "orthodox" in his understanding of Scripture and sexuality and I recommend his work as a valuable aid not only to help Orthodox Christians get into the Scriptures, which they should always be doing, but also to provide valuable information on these hot topic issues from a historic/traditional perspective.

A blessed Nativity...

I wish all of you a very blessed Nativity!

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Things that make you go hmmmm...

In this most recent storm the good folks in Seattle's government have decided not to use salt and other chemicals on the road because they don't want to have some of it end up in Puget Sound. The result has been impassible streets and police vehicles unable to navigate in certain areas.

My only suggestion is that sometimes the people on the coasts might want to check in with us folks in "fly over country" about how we deal with snow because unlike Seattle, we get a lot of it and know how to handle it. In our neck of the woods, a blue as can be state with a long history of environmentalism and lots of fresh water lakes, we use salt and sand and plow down to the pavement whenever we can. We figured out a long time ago that this was safer and more effective then waiting for the stuff to melt, which in our case means waiting for April, or using snow tires and chains which can, by constant use, beat up the roads. Quality of life is irrelevant if you're stuck in your house for a week or the ambulance crew can't get to you because the city is afraid some salt might get into the salt water.

We may be rubes out here in the middle of the country but at least I could, despite about a foot of snow in the last week or so, drive over to Caribou and get a coffee.

Nativity Homily...

Winter has just barely begun and I’m already feeling washed out and snowed under. My clothes smell like snowblower and the cold has settled into my bones. When I was a child this all was part of the fun, the snow, the season, the anticipation, and the ambience of it all. All I can say is that I’m not a child anymore.

The world and I have aged and grown cynical together, buried in the details, counting the cost, worried about the future. It’s the great sorrow of growing older; you can stay up as late as you want and buy a car with your signature but you learn too much as well: Too much about life, too much about the reality of the human condition, too much about how things really are, too much about yourself.

Early on we learn to pretend, talking about life, where we are, who we are, and everything else with the practiced happiness that comes when we get a really bad sweater for Christmas. We do our part to keep up appearances and take one for the team all the while hoping that somewhere along the line we get a taste of the real thing, a moment or two when we are who were supposed to be, when the joy is real, and our hearts are alive.

Such is life in the frosty white broken world of these times. The sad truth is that its been that way since the first swallow of Eden’s fruit. We who were born to shine like the sun have few moments when we live as we were intended; the joyful creation of the maker of the universe. More often we pass through life as a mixture of thoughts, actions, hopes, dreams, struggle, and the nagging sense there is more just beyond our grasp.

And I want it back, that kind of primal innocence, the sense of meaning in the world, the joy of life. I want to possess what has always seemed to elude me. I desire to be somewhere in time before trees and snakes and walk with my Maker in the cool of a summer night. I’m weary of my brokenness. I tire of my frailty. I am exhausted by the restlessness of my spirit.

I must travel, not in the wanderings of life carried by the winds of fate, but directly, with intention, with perseverance, undistracted. No matter how the world as it is shouts at me, discourages me, or attempts to turn me to this side or that I must follow that star and travel straight on until morning. I must see Bethlehem in my heart and when I get there I will stand with the shepherds and see this great thing, this birth, this Christ that has come into a cold dark world so that nothing, and no one, will ever be the same again.

Then I will rest for as long as it takes, forever even, and my soul will be quiet, my innocence returned, and my heart released to live where no winter, of body or soul, can ever settle and the child I was meant to be fills even the oldest frame.

A passing thought...

Our culture is, at the present, comprised of a very large majority of spectator consumers watching, judging, appraising, and observing a handful of people who actually do something. But no positive change will come until people, especially Christians, reverse this.

A must read article...

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Read the rest of the article here...

Among the best days of the year...

Strangely enough tomorrow is among the best days of the year.

December 21 marks the swing from dark to light, that is the daylight gets longer, incrementally of course, surely and steadily through June. Whatever cold lies ahead will, one day, have to give way because the sun cannot be denied. A local radio host likes to talk about the 21st as the first day of spring and calls people who appreciate this day "21sters". Regardless its kind of a coping mechanism up here and perhaps in the order of things is God's way of allowing the coldest part of the year to at least have the blessing of increasing light.

This Sunday's sermon in advance...

December 21, 2008

Sunday of the Genealogy

There’s an old joke that goes something like this: A young man is on the streets of New York and stops to ask a police officer, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The officer responds, “Practice, lots of practice.”

For many years performing at Carnegie Hall in New York was the sign of accomplishment as a musician. A concert at Carnegie meant you had made it into the highest level of your craft and showcased your skill at one of the most prestigious venues in America. Musicians and performers would sometimes just stand on the stage at Carnegie and take it all in because they knew they had arrived. Whatever else happened to them in life they had played Carnegie Hall.

It’s always been this way in every human endeavor. Excellence comes from the continual growth that emerges from constant and effective practice. The constant repetition of solid fundamentals forms the foundation for the development of an increasing level of skill. A great musician is made not when the spotlight is shining on the stage but in the hours of reading music and practicing scales. A great quarterback is built when they get up every day and throw footballs, again and again, until they can do it when someone is tackling them. Every carpenter of note was created by thousands of hours of being with wood.

And it is the same way with faith. Faith grows by practice, the repetition of the fundamentals, prayer, worship, study, praxis (which means the application of ideas to real life) and from that repetition the building of a foundation for increasing skill and technique. There are no shortcuts. If you wish to excel at your job or vocation you must practice. If you wish to develop a faith that matters you must practice it as well.

Now there are communities of faith that offer shortcuts. Some give in to whatever is prevailing in the culture and avoid the difficulty of practice and discipline by saying “Do whatever you want and be whatever you want to be.” But it’s the spiritual equivalent of saying “Eat anything you want and you’ll be healthy.” Others will point to a kind of experience, an emotional happening, and say “If you have this moment everything will be fine.” But that’s being a “one hit wonder”, great when your band is on top of the charts but not such a big deal ten years down the line.

For whatever else Orthodoxy is, it is honest. It tells us, ahead of time and always that the key to a living, growing, faith, to spiritual fulfillment, lies in the transformation of ourselves into the image of Christ and this requires a conscious and deliberate effort on our part, a willingness, empowered by grace and energized by love, to put in the time and effort it takes to be Christian. There are no shortcuts, no half measures, and no quick fixes. We must practice our faith, not just the glorious and wonderful things, but the everyday things, the repetition of the fundamentals that separates the adequate from the excellent.

Yet the irony of it is that when these things are practiced, these basics, prayer, worship, study, and praxis, the process of doing these things releases the joy and power of our faith just as the practice of any skill moves the task from drudgery into art. It’s one thing to go to church service and get your heartstrings pulled for an hour or two but imagine having a deep joy unrattled by the world around you. Practice your faith and in time it will come. It’s good to be here in worship, even if you don’t feel like it all the time, but as you grow in your faith by practice you’ll start to discover why you should be here, why these hours on Saturday night and Sunday morning are the fuel for your life. Practice your faith now and when times of trouble come, and they come to us all, you won’t have to learn important lessons in the fire of adversity because you’ll already have a reserve of strength and purpose to see your way through difficult days. If you wish to have a faith like the kind we’re presented with in our Epistle reading for this Sunday of Genealogy, a faith that can endure, empower, and even transcend death then start with the everyday practice of the basics.

Of course this is not always easy, being excellent in anything is rarely easy. But ask the musician who hears the applause from Carnegie Hall if it was worth all those hours of playing scales and reading music. Question the quarterback in the afterglow of victory whether it was important to get up every morning, watch film and throw passes. Think about the times in your life when people have extolled your skills and then ponder whether it was worth developing them. Then ask yourself, for the sake of strength for each day and in anticipation of heaven’s audience, if the practice of your faith will matter.

I think you know the answer.

A long weekend...

Snow tonight. Snow tomorrow. Snow Saturday and Sunday. A trip to western Minnesota on Saturday and LaCrosse, Wisconsin, on Sunday. Oh, and winter doesn't start until Sunday!

Drive slow. Carry a survival kit. Nature is in charge, no matter what you think.

Out of my hands...

When I was a Baptist Pastor I remember the annual meeting where, when the topic of salary came up, my wife and I were ushered out of the room to wait, somewhere, until the discussion was over and the votes taken. What do you talk about while you're sitting alone in a room knowing that folks are talking about you, perhaps in unkind ways (this was a Baptist church after all) and deciding whether or not to give you a raise that maybe kept your head above water.

It is a recurring theme, that so much of what you do as a servant of the church is out of your hands. You can do a marvelous job, and I can't always say that I have, and still see the same people staring back at you with the same glassy eyes. You can paint a picture for them of what they could be, where they could go, and what God could do through them, and the next Sunday you will see them, physically and spiritually, sitting in the same pew as last week.

All you can do is pray, hope, and do the best you can, and serve with whatever strength is left. Your average parishioner is a good person, sometimes a great one, who struggles with trying to be a faithful person in a decidedly unfaithful world. The spark that lights them never comes from you, it would be preposterous to think so, but only from the Holy Spirit who touches them as they allow and always works with them, as with you, by taking them from where they are to where they should be.

It just out of your hands, and in better ones for sure, but that doesn't always make it easy.

Tell me again...

High today of 2 degrees below zero. Temperature down to around -20 tonight. Two hours worth of snow removal this morning and more snow on the way tomorrow. I believe there's a need for the Antiochian Archdiocese to expand its ministry to the US Virgin Islands and I think I'll volunteer. : o )

Why...

It's 19 degrees outside and the rode is covered with ice as a light rain / sleet is falling from the sky. Would somebody please remind me why I live here?

A funeral homily...

December 13, 2008

When we Orthodox come to a funeral we understand two things at once.

First we see in vivid detail the fleeting nature of life and the sin with its mortality that touches us all. Even the best of us, the most sainted, must die and every work of our hands is slated to pass away. We all, as our funeral prayers say, will be one day “bereft of form, disfigured…lying in a tomb.” We discover again in moments like these that truly “All things are but feeble shadows; all things are most deluding dreams; yet in one moment only, and Death shall supplant them all.”

For the Orthodox Christian death is not a natural thing, it was not something we were designed to experience but rather something we chose when we rejected the life God had for us. Death is the separation of the soul from the body and comes to us in trauma or sickness, by stealth or after long struggle but none of us would prefer it if we had the choice and always within us, no matter how hard we rationalize it, is the nagging sense that this mortality in our bodies, this aging, sickness, struggle and the end of our life is not how we were meant to be and none of the formidable skills of our morticians can change it. An Orthodox monk once said that all of us should keep a jar of dirt with us in our home or office so we remember what we will one day be.

And so we mourn for the passing of life, for the loss we feel, for the presence of one we loved that is taken from us. Our hearts are broken for the good things lost, and the emptiness of a future absent from the ones who shared this short journey we call life. Our love reaches out to the object of our affection and because it is gone our heart feels empty and our feelings become tears. This has been the lot of every human from the mists of time and in this moment we experience it again.

Yet it is not, for we who are Orthodox, the completion of the story. Death is real and we feel its sting but even as the pain flows through us so do the still small voices of hope. We have no life in ourselves but we understand that the God who gave us life came to us in our Lord Jesus Christ and took on every bit of pain and darkness there is in the world, including the greatest of them all, death, and in doing so broke their ultimate power.

This, for Orthodox Christians, is also real, and even more real because at a day of God’s choosing it will have the last word. We do not put those we love to rest in the ground merely for sentiment and a place to visit in the days to come but rather we commit them to their grave with an intense and real hope. We believe, always have, in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. We believe that when God is ready our graves will be emptied, our mortal remains transformed into immortality, and the fullness of who we are, body and soul, will enjoy the presence of God forever. We believe that the faithful enjoy a taste of this glorious reality already. We believe this not out of wishful thinking or our own fears but rather because we have the fact of Our Lord’s own resurrection as the pledge of ours and the validity of all that He is as the proof of his promise.

So truly we see death here but the discerning eye, the eye of faith, will also see something greater. For now we cry but the tears will not have the best of us. For now we will mourn but we will not be forever in despair. On this day we will place the mortal remains of the one we love in the earth not as a permanent fact but rather as a place of rest until the angels call out “Arise!”

Comfort each other with the pleasant memories. Call to mind the good deeds she did while she was with us in this life and better yet emulate them. Be together as family and friends and keep the bonds strong. Knowing that life, even the longest one, is short in the greater flow of history resolve not to live in fear but to live well, cherishing and doing those things that truly matter. Remember her and each other in your prayers.

But more than that direct your hearts, your mind, your souls, and your lives to God in this time and always. Seek refuge in Him. Find rest in His presence. The world is often uncertain, but God remains sure and steady. All things and every one of us will pass away, but God remains. A life lived in God endures beyond time, a hope in God reaches out and grasps eternity, and those who truly journey with God, will always find their way home.

Catholic answers...

From time to time as I commute to work I listen to the local radio station, they call themselves "Relevant Radio", broadcasting Roman Catholic programming. More often then not I want to hear something at least reasonably uplifting, something somewhere between the intelligence insulting hijinks of morning FM radio and the cheery pop music gospel of the local evangelical station. The folks at South Park were dead on right when they lampooned Christian contemporary music by having the characters form a Christian band that wrote songs by simply replacing the word "baby" from current pop songs with the word "Jesus".

Anyways, I enjoy the alternative Relevant Radio provides, although I, of course, have disagreements about some of the theological underpinnings. What I enjoy about it is the practicality. People can call up on the phone and get answers for real questions rooted in the Roman Catholic tradition. Again, I don't always agree with the answers but I do agree with the idea that the faith should speak to not just some theoretical world but rather the world, for better or worse, that most people inhabit.

Now we're getting better at this in Orthodoxy, largely, I think because we've had such an influx of people from outside of Orthodoxy who take the idea that faith should matter for everyday life as normal. But we have a long way to go. We have to face the fact that our people, about ninety nine percent of them, are never going to be monastics and that the information, the truth, the help they need is not so much going to be about how to live in the desert for decades but rather how to survive in their ethically challenged cubicle farm today.

That would seem simple enough, take people where you find them and help them become what God would want them to be. But it seems to elude us because we want not just to have answers but to also control the kinds of questions we face as well. The result is that too often we talk right past people and use high sounding words that manage to completely avoid dealing with what really matters to those in our embrace. Out of politeness, or habit, or loyalty they will travel with us for a while but on that one occasion someone pays attention they'll be out the door.

The truth is that we don't necessarily need more dissections of the Fathers, more papers on so and so and their relationship to the post modern dynamic. Those things are not bad in themselves but we should always ask "To what end?" What our Orthodox people need are answers to questions like "How do I talk to my kids about sex?" and "How can my faith help me in my job as a plumber?" Now we as Orthodox have, in my opinion, the best resources around to draw on for answers to such questions. But they need to be in language people can understand, milk first then meat.

The folks at Relevant Radio are at least making an attempt to do this. Now it's our turn.

Beyond gay marriage...

Some insights from Stanley Kurtz.

Sometimes its okay...

The truth is I sometimes feel overwhelmed by all the technology out there and lately I just turn it off so I can be in a more natural mode, but its not all bad. Yesterday I went to the dollar store and purchased an audio CD of the entire New Testament which I just now put on my iPod for future use.

And when I was a kid I thought owning a transistor radio was a big deal!

Printer problems...?

Speaking the word...

This past Sunday one of the ladies at St. Elias told me she had a conversation with a few people who had been to my presentation to an ecumenical gathering in LaCrosse related to the Year of St. Paul. Apparently they, whoever that mysterious "they are, thought I was attempting to draw people to Orthodoxy.

Well, duh! Smile.

Now the presentation wasn't specifically evangelistic in content, I merely presented the history of St. Elias and a broad strokes painting of Orthodox Faith to people who I presumed knew little about it. Then I followed with a number of points about St. Paul. You can read it if you scroll down or head to the archives. There was no altar call, no debate, just information. But I suppose its "feel" was unusual. Imagine that, an Orthodox Priest presenting Orthodoxy to others as if he actually believes it! I guess its the spirit of this age, calculated (and self promoting) doubt as a sign of enlightenment.

If that's the case it won't be the only time I fail to live up to expectations.

Our Christmas Letter...

Dear Friends,

The days are filled with snow and cold as fall turns into winter and the season moves towards Christmas. We spend more time in our living room after work, providing rotating laps for our cats, and hibernating in that way that only those who’ve lived up here know.

This year has been marked by routine. We still make the trips to LaCrosse on the weekend to take care of St. Elias and Jane and I often commute together to work at Parkshore Senior Campus. Our days are filled with work and rest, church and home. The normal patterns of life prevail but there’s a blessing in that kind of ordinariness, especially in these interesting times.

We have jobs. We have a warm house. We have friends and family. We have, outside of the normal colds and such, good health. I still engage myself with music, writing (travelingpriest.blogspot.com), and study, and Jane has her books, computer games, and trips to the health club. As I write this I have a cat keeping watch over me and grooming my arm. Of course it would be great, I suppose, to tell you that we had won the lottery or that our careers were on the fast track to that corner office but these simple things are treasures in their own right and for this moment they’re all we need.

Our hope is that you experience all the enduring riches of life in these days and always. There will always be change in this life but some things endure over time. May you discover and cherish them in this holy season and always.

Always, John, Jane, Kahless, and Kira, Chagnon

Alive or dead...

Here's the website keeping track of Abe Vigoda.

Fair is fair...

Orthodox in Russia have written an open letter to the King of Saudi Arabia suggesting that if he and his government build a mosque in Moscow, Orthodox should be allowed to build a church in Saudi Arabia!

We'll await his majesty's reply but I wouldn't suggest holding your breath.

More snow...

Snow to come tonight and more this week. Up to four inches here in the Twin Cities and possibly 6 and change in LaCrosse before morning. The moisture comes north and the cold winds come south. They meet in Minnesota and Iowa and the southern part of Minnesota has become a snow belt while the temperatures dip low in the north.

My car with its traction control has been getting quite a work out and so has my snowblower. We Minnesotans have a stoic way of talking about all of this. We say "Well, we need the moisture..." but the truth is, well, we actually do need the moisture and so, I guess, let it snow!

A little wisdom...

Patriarch Alexy II of Russia...

Patriarch Alexy II of Russia fell asleep in the Lord this morning...

May his memory be eternal!

Stillness...

An article worth reading from Rod Dreher, columnist and Orthodox Christian, on stillness in a media saturated world.

The address...

December 2^nd, 2008

An Orthodox Understanding of St. Paul

The Year of St. Paul Ecumenical Gathering

Fr John Chagnon

St. Elias Orthodox Church, LaCrosse, Wisconsin

My first words as I stand before you are words of thanks for Fr. Augustine and the people of Christ Church for hosting this event. I appreciate your willingness to lend your beautiful parish home to St. Elias on this evening. Your generosity reflects the many years in which the people of St. Elias would experience the hospitality of Christ Church for weddings and other events too large for our temple. To this day, as well, we are linked by family ties going back and forth between our two parishes.

My next words are about my parish, St. Elias, which has existed in this community since 1912 and has been a spiritual home first for the Orthodox immigrants from the Middle East who settled in LaCrosse and now for an English speaking multi-ethnic community of people who come from as far away as Kazakhstan and as close as a few blocks up the street.

St. Elias, named after the Old Testament prophet Elijah (Orthodox venerate the holy memories of those who both came before and after Christ) was founded by Bishop RAPHAEL Hawaweeny, the first Orthodox Bishop consecrated in the United States, and who, as the Bishop of the Syrian department of the Russian Orthodox Church, traveled throughout this country gathering scattered groups of Middle Eastern immigrants, called collectively “Syrians”, into Orthodox parishes. Among our treasured records are copies of old newspaper articles describing his visits to LaCrosse and even his personal handwriting on some of our older documents. These are treasures to us as I will explain later.

In the years following the founding of St. Elias, and Bishop RAPHAEL’s death in 1917, events would tear at the unity of the various Orthodox parishes in this country. It is the normal practice of Orthodox to have one church, one jurisdiction, in a single country and as the Russian Church was first to arrive in this land they were given the canonical oversight of all Orthodox communities in this country. The communist revolution in Russia, however, both compromised and crippled the Church to the end that it was no longer able to exercise that role here and so the individual ethnic communities appealed to their mother churches for support. It was during this time that what had been, in rough terms, the larger part of the Syrian Department of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the parish of St. Elias, returned to the care of the Patriarch of Antioch. Since that time it has remained a community of what is now known as the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. Several years ago the Antiochian Archdiocese received its autonomy, which means it now largely governs its own affairs in the United States and Canada while maintaining a fraternal and canonical connection to the historic Patriarchate of Antioch, one of the five original patriarchates of the undivided Church, the others being Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome.

Bishop RAPHAEL, whose missionary endeavors were crucial to the birth and sustenance of our Archdiocese, was canonized, or as Orthodox say “glorified” as a Saint of the Church in the year 2000, and his incorrupt relics were transferred from Brooklyn, New York to the Antiochian Village in Ligonier, Pennsylvania where his memory and grave are venerated by the faithful. When one passes by the simple white structure of St. Elias Church looks can be deceiving. As humble as our building is it may be, and I’m not an adept historian of LaCrosse, the only parish in this community founded and visited by a Saint of the Church. To we who worship there now his presence among us is more significant than the plaque on our foundation designating our building as a historic place. After all, an old building is not hard to find, but a Saint is an irreplaceable treasure.

From its earliest years the community of St. Elias was small and for many years was without resident clergy and yet a core of people continued to keep the flame of Orthodox faith alive helped along by traveling Priests from both the Greek and Antiochian communities. In the 1970’s St. Elias was restarted with a resident Priest and since that time inquirers and converts have added their names to the familiar Arabic and Greek pioneers creating a parish remarkable for a vibrant cultural diversity knit together by an universal and unchanging Orthodox Faith. And although we’re part of the fabric of LaCrosse’s North Side, the historic home of the Syrian immigrant population, our members and friends regularly come from as far away as Black River Falls to Minnieska, Minnesota, south to the Iowa border, and all points in between.

It is to this parish that I came in August of 2005, a kid from Wausau, baptized in the Methodist Church, raised in the Plymouth Brethren, and a Baptist preacher who took the long winding road to my home in Orthodoxy. Together we’ve been busy over on our little plot of land by the Loggers’ stadium, painting, fixing, building, cleaning up and straightening out because we believe we have a future here and that the time has come for us reach out and serve this community in the spirit of Orthodox Faith. I could not be prouder of the effort the good people of St. Elias have put into this work and we look forward to one day having all of you in our building when everything’s done!

Now we Orthodox come to ecumenical gatherings like this one celebrating St. Paul from an interesting perspective. We’re catholic, but not Roman. We’re unashamedly a patriarchal church but we venerate women as equal to the Apostles. We live and succeed in the modern world but our Faith is rooted in the very beginning of Christianity. We have electric lights, computers, and widescreen TV’s, but we still like to pray with candles. People looking at us from the outside often see us as mystical, exotic even, but for the most part we’re just ordinary people given, despite our sins, an extraordinary and ancient Church. We’re all over the world, the second largest community of Christians and yet we don’t usually seek out or make headlines. We have families that have been Orthodox for a thousand years and yet in the past decades we’ve seen a tremendous surge of inquirers and converts. At present over 70 percent of the clergy in our Archdiocese became Orthodox as adults. We are a family, a communion of churches with a deep, shared, and unaltered Faith and yet we have no central bureaucracy, no one place to call home except the hearts of the faithful. In some places we are a state church but for much of our history we’ve lived under oppression. People think of us as ethnic, and in some places we are, but we’re also the faith that embraced the language of the people, transformed it into Liturgy, and Christianized cultures. You may know us for our baklava but we understand ourselves to belong to a global body of faith, diverse in nation but united in worship.

Orthodoxy is a sensual Faith because it understands that the whole person, body, mind, and soul worships. Orthodoxy is a dogmatic faith in that we have unchanging principles and yet we see these principles not so much as sterile theological ideas but rather as a call to live in union with God. Orthodoxy is a liturgical faith where a hymn 300 years old is still considered new and timeless rhythms are celebrated at 10:00 AM sharp. Orthodoxy is a Eucharistic faith where the bread of heaven feeds us now in anticipation of a day to come. If you wish to see us in our natural habitat come see us in worship, that unchanging moment when time stands still, eternity and the present merge, and the kingdom of God is among us even if we sometimes sing off key.

Orthodoxy is ancient. That church in Antioch mentioned in the book of Acts is literally us, not metaphorically, not in spirit, or in the abstract, but literally who we are and our patriarchal properties are still on the border of the street called Straight in Damascus. We value Tradition, which for us means the experience of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church through time. We practice what G.K. Chesterton called the “democracy of the dead” in that while much of America seems to be rushing toward whatever is next and new, even in theology, we choose to listen to the voices of those who were close to Christ and see our task not as one of invention but of replicating the ancient Faith of the Church in each generation and in every place where we find ourselves. Because of this we are never alone; we always walk in the presence of, as the New Testament states, “a great cloud of witnesses…” whose faith and life call us over the centuries to run the race in our own fragment of history.

And the purpose of all that we do we call “theosis” the transformation of who we are, and all of what we are, by the grace of God and the life of the Holy Spirit within us, into the image and likeness of Christ. While we live in this world and engage it with our lives we understand we belong to something larger, the Kingdom of God, and this Kingdom, present with and in us, is the final destination of all creation. We seek, as individuals and communities, to be the reality of God’s future in the present, and in the process become ourselves what God created us to be, the purest example of which is our Lord Jesus Christ. This is why Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas, what we call Nativity, but treasure Epiphany, what we call Theophany. The first celebrates the arrival of Christ which is surely noteworthy, but the other calls to mind for us the reason He came, namely that the whole world, including ourselves, would be transfigured by the glory of God.

This, of course, is hardly an exhaustive portrayal of Orthodox Christianity. It’s rather an attempt to paint a masterpiece with splotches in consideration of time. But from these splotches there are several things that would be worth mentioning in this forum regarding the Orthodox understanding of St. Paul.

First we as Orthodox have some difficulty with a kind of theological autopsy on the Apostle Paul that often passes as reflection. It seems the custom in some places to encounter the remains of St. Paul, post mortem, and then engage in a surgical process of organ removal and examination to see in the parts what made the whole alive. This is a process fraught with peril because all of us are more than the sum of our parts and certainly St. Paul’s words using the image of the human body and its necessary wholeness as a metaphor for the church would also provoke some caution in this regard. Christians, even Orthodox ones, have a tendency to take a certain part of our historical figures and use that part to explain the whole as if we could disregard the rest of a body for the sake of a finger.

This is especially dangerous in this time in our culture because we are saturated in a stew of our own arrogance. We assume, in our post modern world, that we have the right and the skills to shape our own realities, our own truths, and our own theologies entirely in the context of ourselves with no need of recourse to anything beyond us. So we feel free to examine a part of something, shape its meaning to our own ends, and then project this out as truth. In this St. Paul becomes a dead figure whose parts can be manipulated for the needs of the one studying. So we have debates and symposia about both whether St. Paul was a feminist or a misogynist, a moralist or a closeted homosexual, with the net result being the modern equivalent of the men of Athens who, as the book of Acts recalls, spent their days in the agora looking only to talk about some new thing.

To this spirit Orthodoxy would respond that there is no sufficient way to explain and understand the life and teaching of St. Paul by reduction. To know St. Paul requires an ability to take the whole of his teaching and life as an entity and resist the temptation to stake a claim on any part as indicative of the whole. This demands the skill to live with a kind of dynamic, a tension, and not miss the forest for the trees. The Saint who asked wives to submit to their husbands also asked husbands to give up their life for their wives. The man who preferred celibacy also approved of the union of a man and woman in marriage. The Apostle who spoke of God’s judgment against the debaucheries of his age was also willing to endure storm and prison and deprivation to speak words of mercy and hope to those whose actions he critiqued. The Pharisee steeped in the value of his own traditions was willing to become a Jew to Jews, a Roman to Romans, and a Greek to Greeks for the sake of their salvation. St. Paul is complex, we all are, and this complexity, this mystery, if you will, is perfectly acceptable to Orthodox who are not plagued with the Western obsession with minute detail. Just as we would find it a kind of disrespect to have someone in some future time examine a fragment of our lives or our words and declare from that portion the reality of the whole so we must, when approaching St. Paul, give him the same consideration and see a moment of struggle with an aspect of his life and ministry not as a defeat of our intellectual prowess but rather as an opportunity to grow by virtue of contemplation.

In addition we as Orthodox have a very lively sense of the communion of saints. For us the Church is not simply whoever happens to be gathering at a particular moment in time but includes, as living members, those who have gone before. So St. Paul is not a piece of archaeology for us, but part of us as much as he was, and perhaps more, then when he set out from Antioch, the church, our church, where he was a charter member, on his missionary endeavor. In Orthodoxy no one is allowed to remain in the past, we are all together alive in Christ, and the mere inconvenience of death changes this not a bit. There are many who will argue about the relevance of St. Paul in these times but for we who are Orthodox this argument presupposes something we do not share, namely that he is absent from us, a bit of a bygone era that can be examined as something distinct from us.

Next, and this is a sensitive part at an ecumenical gathering, we Orthodox would posit that any examination of the life, ministry, and meaning, of St. Paul must have, as an integral component, the community in which his ministry began and it’s Tradition. In our age it’s considered novel and trendy to see the past and the historic Faith of the Church as an anachronism, something out of time and place in this age of computers and global knowledge. Dogma is for some bygone age. Truth is subjective. The Church and its teachings are not rooted in transcendent truth but rather exist to meet my needs and whatever I find uncomfortable I can discard. Yet I would suggest to you that the farther away one steps from the historic faith of the Church the more difficult it is to understand St. Paul and indeed to understand Christ. The idea of the Church as the ground of faith by virtue of its being the body of Christ, the community in and through which meaning and correct understanding are gained, has had a rough time in our consumer culture. We’re all popes now, all doctors of the church, all saints, and each of us is infallible in our own eyes as we speak from our private cathedras. But Orthodoxy would proclaim that to know the Faith, to know those in the Faith like St. Paul, to even truly know ourselves, requires us to have the Faith and mind and heart of the Church and its Lord as ours. When one travels to a foreign land it is good to know the language to appreciate and understand the culture in which you are journeying. In the Orthodox vision, the language of the historic Faith of the undivided Church is the language of Christianity, the grounds upon which it, and those within it, can best be understood. Without this “language” the fullness of the life of St. Paul, and indeed the fullness of the Christian faith, will remain elusive.

This is a hard word to say because the goal in an ecumenical gathering is to focus on what can be shared and not that which makes us different. But as a part of the diverse spectrum of Christian faith and practice this is what Orthodoxy believes; the proper understanding of the Faith, the notables of the Faith like St. Paul, and even our selves is rooted within the context of the Church and its undivided Faith.The farther we drift from that Faith, St. Paul’s faith, the more difficult it comes to understand St. Paul, or even Christ, and what we are often left with is projections of ourselves as a substitute for authentic truth.

And yet within the Orthodox context the Faith and mind of the Church is not so much dogma and propositions to be studied and debated, although these are very much part of who we are, but rather a life to be lived. We as Orthodox would suggest that true theology is undivided thought and action. We claim, as Orthodox, that a theologian is one who prays and one who prays is a theologian. Action and contemplation are inseparably linked as faith without works is dead. People ask Orthodox “What do you believe?” and we respond, “Come to worship with us, come and see.” Even the humblest among us who lives the life of faith is more significant than the greatest scholar who can parse the original languages to the participle but remain unchanged.

Because of this we Orthodox would say if you wish to know St. Paul submit your life to Christ as he did. If you want to understand his words come to understand the Eucharist as he did the body and blood of Christ, and participate in this mystery with his awe and reverence. If you desire to know St. Paul’s heart ask God for a heart that would burn for the salvation of your neighbors and the world like St. Paul who was willing to trade his own damnation for the salvation of his fellow Jews. Become a person who would pray even for the political authorities seeking to kill you and you’ll come to understand St. Paul’s faith. Have no other ultimate hope than in Christ and you will know his mind. Strive to be pure in a world where depravity is in abundance and you will comprehend every word he wrote in way that has eluded you before. Endure suffering with hope and St. Paul will be relevant to you in a way that no lecture will ever afford. Seek to nurture faith, hope, and love in their truest forms in your own life and the meaning of who he is will become clear.

In the end this is what really matters, not that we celebrate or study or analyze the life and work of St. Paul, even though this can be a good thing, but rather that we hearken to his call “imitate me as I imitate Christ…” in a culture that is so much like his own in both its power and decadence that it can your breath away. We truly do not need more students of St. Paul, surely the market has been saturated with words beyond number and papers beyond comprehension. What this poor, tired, broken world needs, are more St. Pauls, people to speak and live the unchanging Gospel, people of holiness and strength, people who have found in Jesus the source of their life and hope and choose to live radically grace filled lives for the sake of their own, and the world’s, salvation. If nothing else comes from this moment we are sharing, understand this, and as you begin to grasp its implications you’ll both begin to understand the Orthodox vision of St. Paul and, perhaps, be changed yourself, forever.

Thank you for your time and your willingness to listen. If you have questions I will try to answer them as I can

December 2nd...

It's another cold morning and winter hasn't arrived yet. In a usual year I have to get to January to really begin hating the cold but my whole clock has been set back one month. Call it winter hating savings time.

I remember as a child there was a certain thrill about snow and winter days. We'd often come into the house after school noses red, wet with snow, and oblivious to the cold. Snow was what we played in. Snow was our art form. Snow was the medium in which we expressed our childhood.

But I'm getting older and the charm has gone away. Snow is something in my way. Cold is what traps me inside. The early descent of night is rarely ever charming or romantic but mostly just dark. Every fragment of sun in these days is precious as gold even as I know this is how it will be until nearly April.

Someday, I promise myself, I'll move to a place where there is reasonable warmth all year around. I don't need to be in the tropics, just somewhere where I can take a walk outside in January with, say, just a sweater on. That doesn't seem to much to ask but for now I'm tied down here and left with this cold December 2nd and a hundred days or more like it to come.

Sigh.

Pictures from home...

Just a picture of me standing next to the Plymouth Brethren church in Wausau, Wisconsin that was such a large part of our lives.

There were good people there, and a few cranks too, but it helped me learn to love the Bible and grow in my appreciation for the Eucharist (we celebrated communion each Sunday) all of which would prepare me for my later life.

Like any close knit family I could probably drop in and have about 30 people know me right away even though its been decades since I last went there.

Ahhh life in a small town!

An ecumenical gathering...

I'm scheduled to return to LaCrosse on Tuesday to present a short lecture/homily on the life of St. Paul from the Orthodox Christian perspective. I'll be writing and polishing for most of today, a process I actually enjoy, and hope the weather is good for the trip tomorrow.

My basic thesis will be simple. If you want to know who the Apostle Paul imitate him as he imitated Christ. I've tried to avoid lots of theological jargon and I realize this may be one time when I get to present a large number of people, mostly not Orthodox, with a little sample of our Faith.

Pray for me! Thank you.