This Sunday's sermon in advance...

October 19, 2008

As I grow older I have come to realize that I don’t belong in this world and probably never will.

It’s a feeling like knowing the girl you’re dating, as pleasant as she may be, is not the one and sooner or later you’ll have to move on. I find myself looking at the world as if I’m present but not attached, observing everything and even taking part but knowing I was designed for something else, somewhere else.

I watch the world and its troubles and I care, and I try to do what I can to make things better, but I know this is just a place in the timeline and eternity is what ultimately matters. There is something else and as I move closer to the horizon I realize that something else is what this part of the journey is all about.

That’s the gift of traumatic times, they provide that most precious commodity, focus, the ability to see clearly unencumbered by the distortions of comfort and success. They strip away pretense and level all false gods at the knees. Those who understand this rise above and those who can’t or won’t are condemned to the panic of the herd.

The pundits ask what these times are all about, the confusion, the strength of the rich and powerful being flexed against the weak, the shallow moral waters, and the sense of foreboding that permeates throughout. They wonder what it means but those of us who follow Christ already understand.

Nothing of this world lasts forever. Every house, save one, is made of sand and every dream is twisted by mortality before it closes its eyes in death. Everyone seems to be shouting all at once but the discerning, the illumined, will understand.

It is not for us to make this world, its life, its values, and its impermanence, our final destination. We are here, for sure, called to live in and among and do our best to be light and salt and yeast for the sake of love but we belong, as the Scriptures says, to a city whose foundation is built by God, a new Jerusalem where the tree of life, uprooted in Eden, again yields its leaves for the healing of the nations. Wherever we may find ourselves here we belong to a place where God dwells with us and every human tear is wiped from our faces.

Knowing that we can live in the present and for whatever future may come and live fully, truly, and with purpose. Those things a passing world values may elude us but we never ultimately belonged here in the first place. We can have a true sense of things because while we care for this place and this moment we realize there is more and we live with that more present in our hearts.

That is what I wish for you today, a spark of something that reminds you not be troubled. Our Lord has gone before us, to, as the Scriptures say, prepare a place for us and every day we’re closer to home. The world has many troubles, Jesus told his followers, but he wanted them to understand that he had overcome them so they would not lose hope.

Open your eyes and see. Open your heart and receive. It’s glorious and when you do, nothing, not even this world, will ever be the same.

I will follow him...

A Smith College newspaper editors says "Obama is my Jesus..." and describes her conversion.

I've officially been saved, and soon, whether they like it or not, the rest of the country will be too. I will follow him, all the way to the White House, and I'll be standing there in our nation's capital in January 2009, when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States of America. In the name of Obama, Amen.

And Jesus saw the multitudes and had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shpherd...

Thoughts of beauty and grace...

Sobering thoughts,,,

But worth reading...

It is long past time to get back to basics — to faith, to church, to principles, to relationships, to integrity. We are, I believe, about to be tested in a most difficult and frightening way — a darkness the likes of which we have not seen before, and may never see again. The provocation may be known, or unknown, be it nuclear terrorism, or some yet-unseen financial collapse; a cataclysmic natural disaster; or a butterfly in some unknown location flapping its wings and setting off a chain reaction which ignites the world in conflagration.

I have shared, with more or less intensity some of the sentiments of the author of this post, the sense we're on the edge of a very dark and hard era. And as a child of my culture I sometimes fear the things I may have to face, the loss of my comforts, the pain of losing my soul's flabbiness, the uncertainty of whether I will have what it takes to endure.

Yet at the same time I feel very free and this is one thing I wish the author would have addressed. These hard times are distilling the extraneous from me. I'm far from where I need to be but at the same time I sense a clarity about who I am and should be and more important "whose" I am. Despair leads to questions which lead to searching and then to discovery and rest. I hate the thought of what these times may be like but I feel closer to all the things that matter in ways that I never have in fatter times.

On the debates...

I watched the debates tonight, at least chunks of the whole thing, and my first impression is that Sen. Obama looked like a man who senses victory and Sen. McCain is beginning to look spent. That's the drawback of these things, impression is everything, content is secondary.

Going beyond the art of looking good on television (anybody but me seem to notice that Sen. Obama seems to be going "grayer" in the hair over the past months?) were the words themselves and for those of us who value, as the Roman Church has called it, the "culture of life" those words are foreboding. Sen. Obama is basically and profoundly "pro-choice" and it was clear in the debate that position would the policy of his presidency. Certainly it will influence the laws he signs and the judges he appoints. Combined with the possibility of a Democrat "super-majority" in Congress the pro-life cause will take a beating in the next four to eight years if Sen. Obama is elected. No amount of calm TV presence can obscure this central truth. Despite the Senator's non partisan rhetoric pro-lifers will have no place at the table or even in the room of an Obama administration.

And in one sense this will be an enormous setback. The small and reasonable restrictions on abortion, the product of years of hard political work, will be swept away, the freedom of protest will be curtailed, and more millions will pour into agencies and groups that support abortion. This is what we face. Yet at the same time we who believe in the sanctity of life will need to do what we should have been doing all along, focusing not just on the larger picture of laws and public policy but on each individual person who has a crisis pregnancy, each person who struggles with their sexuality, and each family that needs help. We need no laws to do this and there are no laws that can effectively forbid it.

This also underscores a central challenge for our call to be salt and light in this culture. For too long we have focused on the larger world of politics and structures to support our vision of what society should be and in doing so we have ignored a central truth of our Faith, that the world is changed as each individual is changed by the reality of Jesus Christ. For too long we have asked the government, the structures of our culture, to do what we should have been doing all along. Now faced with the possibility of a government hostile to much of what traditional Christian faith would espouse in the area of life, the failure of that policy has also been exposed. Yet even that exposure, that vulnerability, has the potential to turn, again, our hearts, our efforts, and our lives to both the message and the method of the Gospel. How ironic would it be if we, stripped of our temporal power, discover again the fullness of the Gospel and the Senator's claims of hope and change find themselves realized not in the government, but in the Church.

When that happens the real revolution will begin.

Good news for spinal cord inuries...

Some new research that may provide hope for victims of spinal cord injuries.

As a former chaplain in health care I've had the chance to see the enormous devastation caused by spinal cord injuries. In my particular circumstances, working in a number of inner city nursing homes, the injuries were often related to gun shot wounds. When you see young men in wheelchairs in the inner city the chances of their being there due to diving accidents is generally pretty slim.

And the devastation these injuries cause is profound and expensive, regardless of the cause. People with spinal cord injuries can require permanent attendants, expensive mobility and medical devices, and constant medical care. With spinal cord injuries there is only a matter of degrees, even those who have the smallest amount of injury will still have their life permanently changed. Being a 20 year old man facing a lifetime in a wheelchair is a prison all by itself.

Through the years living with and serving the ill and struggling I've had a dream for this country, a dream that somehow we could use our tremendous wealth for the alleviation of disease and human suffering. As I've watched over the years I've seen my country spend billions in aid for countries that repress their citizens and never support our ideals. I've seen even more billions spent on ever more expensive tools of war. I've paid attention as money has been thrown in piles at utopian social engineering schemes, ineffective wars on poverty, and thousands of useless pet projects. And I imagine what could be different, what could be better, if that money, or even a portion of it, would have been used for the elimination of illness and disease. Why is it that a country that can put human beings on the moon with computers less powerful than my laptop seems unable to find a cure for cancer, eliminate malaria, or do the research needed to treat spinal cord injuries.

I'm still asking those questions, probably always will. Hey, a guy can dream can't he?

And when you vote...

Remember

150 AD Didache
"The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child" (Didache 2:1)

250 AD Diognetus
(a likely reference to both exposure of infants to die and abortion): "(Christians) marry, like everyone else, and they beget children, but they do not cast out their offspring." (Letter of Diognetus (late 2nd or 3rd century; ch.5, vs.6)

314 AD Council of Ancyra
"Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfill ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees" (canon 21).

374 AD Basil the Great
"He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife and kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who throws a stone at a dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a rod, or scourge, in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own defense, when he only designed to hurt him. But the man, or woman, is a murderer that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it die upon it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on the highway, and rapparees" ((First Canonical Letter, canon 8).

374 AD Basil the Great
"Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years' penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not" (First Canonical Letter, canon 2).

391 AD John Chrysostom
"Wherefore I beseech you, flee fornication . . . Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit?--where there are many efforts at abortion?--where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot you do not let continue a mere harlot, but make her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to prostitution, prostitution to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then do thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine" (Homilies on Romans 24).

400 AD The Apostolic Constitutions
"Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; for He says, 'You shall not suffer a witch to live' [Ex. 22:18]. Thou shall not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten; for "everything that is shaped, and has received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed." (Apostolic Constitutions 7:3).

A proud moment...

Let me tell you something. It's hard to help an old church renew itself, harder then you can imagine.

Most of the older small churches in Orthodoxy are that way for a reason. Perhaps they had a small immigrant base upon which to build and demographics took their toll. Sometimes these churches were planted in places without the population to truly grow a sustainable church. There may also have been a good chance of pathology in their past, hurts, pains, struggles, and conflict that drove people away and diverted vital energy. Often, too, there was a simple lack of planning and proactive management in the development of churches, skills lost in the state church / persecuted church heritage of the Orthodox who came to this land.

Regardless there are any number of parishes out there, too small to be sustainable, too large or too stubborn to die, and a handful of folks trying to make a go of it. St. Elias is one of those churches and we're fighting to save it. We have to deal with the reality of where we are, the work we must do, and the fact that there will be no help for us coming from anywhere. The money for missions is, sadly, pitiful, and big churches largely have no interest in helping the stragglers. The diocese sends a Priest and hopes something might happen. The bottom line is that we're all alone.

Yet we're slowly crawling out from under. Visitors are coming, a trickle now, but still some. The core is largely holding steady. We're building and repairing, taking care of those things that couldn't be done when there was a full time Priest with a salary. The kitchen is next to be fixed and my hope is that a winning attitude will come with the renewal of the building. Yes, we've got a ways to go. We need to relearn our faith, and learn how to evangelize. We still need to see ourselves as a people with a call from God on our lives and a vital mission in LaCrosse. The task list is long.

But the garage will be done by the end of the month and the kitchen hopefully by the end of the year and its a proud moment as we claw our way out into the sun. Pray for us.

Construction at St. Elias...

We've been doing some construction around St. Elias building a garage for storage and work space and reconditioning the front steps with a special grit enhanced paint to prevent slips. Winter is coming and the clock is ticking!

Some wisdom from Mike Adams...

The man who used to be my most outspoken atheist colleague (he is now retired) provides a good example of what I’m talking about. His decision to adopt atheism had nothing to do with honest intellectual reflection. He simply had a horrible relationship with his father and he took it out on God. The consequence of this was a level of emotional insecurity that made him simply impossibly to deal with. He was constantly plagued by indecisiveness and anxiety.

Read more here...

This article reflects what I've experienced in over two decades of ministry. At the heart of, much (but not all), atheism are painful experiences or painful emotions. One of the men I remember most was a gentleman who billed himself as the "resident atheist" at a nursing facility where I served as Chaplain. What most distinguished him was not the depth of his arguments or his winsome demeanor but the deep anger and pain that radiated from him. He disbelieved in God not on the facts but on a hurt that I could not reach even though we had a cordial relationship.

This speaks to us as Christians as well because this culture has many people who've been mistreated, even devastated, by people and structures in their church. I'm not talking about the faux outrage of the kind where people are angry the church won't affirm their personal sexual proclivities. I'm talking about people who really have been hurt by others who are rude, arrogant, and just plain mean all within the walls of the church. There's a lot of those folks around and their actions plant the seeds of future "atheists".

Dissecting 'Religulous"

By way of analogy, I don’t believe in unicorns, because there is no evidence for them, but I haven’t written any books called “The Unicorn Delusion” or “Unicorns are Not Great” or made any documentaries denouncing unicorns. Maher’s agnosticism is clearly a pose. Like Christopher Hitchens, he is an “anti-theist” who hates the Christian God. And the main reason seems to be, as Maher himself says at one point, that this God has rules that interfere with Maher’s sex life.

Read the rest of the article here.

One light shines...

There is a gift in the crazy sad sickness of the world in these days.

Contrasted against the background of a culture gone crazy through its self inflicted illnesses the light of Christ shines brighter still. If we, you, me, I, are going to make it through we're going to need to see that light and head for it as best we can through the night.

Farrakhan says - Obama is "Messiah"

We in the Orthodox Church have our work cut out for us. Perhaps after a century or so of dithering around now would be a good time to get our act, and our jurisdictions, together so we can try to help a world where a former night club singer turned religious leader can call a guy from Chicago the "Messiah" and have people actually believe it?

Or am I just engaged in wishful thinking?

This financial mess...

I received my statement from Ameriprise yesterday. It looks like the one account I have with them lost over $4000 so far this year. It's what happens when you're still a younger worker and have a higher risk portfolio based on extra time to recoup losses and although I know this in my brain I still have a hard time looking at that piece of paper.

I had a hard time watching the debate yesterday as well. It seemed like it was about two millionaires talking about how much they cared for me in the hope that I'd give them the vote they need to have me pay for their food, utilities, medical care, and an airplane for the next four years. I wasn't impressed.

Both candidates spoke about spending more money and neither really addressed the entitlement mentality that has gripped this country. Whether its folks on Wall Street playing games with the market to use ours to get theirs or folks on Main Street looking for the Feds to do something like that for them the mentality is the same. I want mine but I don't want to work for it, save for it, be honest for it, or think about others in my plans to get it.

Here's something I would have liked to have heard from either of the candidates but i won't hold my breath. "My fellow Americans. Times are tough and the first thing I plan to do after taking office is refuse my salary as President. I'm already wealthy and can afford to live with my room and board at the White House. In addition I plan to ask Congress to take a pay cut and cut staff and privileges until this crisis is over..." Then I'd like to hear something about the Federal government getting out of the mortgage business, the earmark business, the arts business, anything that's not specifically assigned to it in the Constitution. Finally I'd like to hear about how the financial services industries will be monitored to ensure that the hard lessons we learned from the Depression of the 30's and crashes of recent decades won't be repeated.

Last of all I would like to hear this from either candidate. "I have come to understand that at the core of our financial problems is a matter of attitude. We've lived as Americans with the idea that we are entitled to ever increasing levels of wealth and financial success, that we can expect prosperity without thrift, pay without work, and reward at the expense of others. Tonight this ends. Nothing we do as a government will matter if you and I do not fundamentally change our attitude about what we consider to be our birthright, the entitlement to ever increasing wealth. We learning some hard lessons in these days about the costs of living as if tomorrow and our neighbors don't matter and nothing will change until we personally change."

I'm not holding my breath...

Are religion and peace compatible?

You may be surprised at the answer...

Why you should read "Salvo" magazine...

Find more here...

Perhaps the most compelling explanation for the rising divorce rates, however, comes from religious quarters. According to this viewpoint, it is the increasing secularization of American society that accounts for so many divorces. The quest for personal satisfaction and gratification is no longer considered egocentric, and self-sacrifice is increasingly seen as an anachronism, along with the religious beliefs that once informed it. Countless studies show that religious practice strengthens marital stability, while others indicate that a loss of religious belief can weaken marriage beyond repair. Moreover, a team of sociologists at Nassau Community College found that children are more likely to lose their faith following a divorce than they were before, which means that divorce itself can be the cause of the unbelief that leads to further divorce.

Botox...

In a prior post I talked about Sen. Biden's eyes looking "spooky" and I, apparently, wasn't the only one.

I can't tell you if the Senator had botox or some sort of lift and for the most part I don't really care. I just find it very puzzling that in this culture we have people who seem to be willing to basically disfigure themselves for the illusion of looking "younger". I envision one day we'll be able to know who's old not by the wrinkles but rather by the artificially tightened look of their faces.



I guess, at least, it'll save the undertaker some work. Sigh!

Some Cal Thomas wisdom...

A sample below the rest of it here...

No matter how hard they try to protect the gospel from corruption, ministers who focus on politics and politicians as a means of redemption must minimize their ultimate calling and message. The road to redemption does not run through Washington, D.C. Politicians can't redeem themselves from the temptations of Washington. What makes anyone think they can redeem the rest of us?

Yesterday, my homily focused on how the surest way to change the sickness of our society lies not in electing a man who couldn't change his own city or one who has been in the center of governing for years but rather for us to simply be Christians. If you're tired of all this, be as Jesus says "Light, salt, and yeast", in this dark culture. If you're looking for meaning follow Him. If you're overworked and stressed out by it all, take on His yoke, an easy and light thing compared to the weight of a sinful world.

Read this article...

Words of wisdom from a Bulgarian banker turned Orthodox monk.

Find it here and pass it on.



Hat tip to Paradosis

Thoughts on the debate...

I was planning on going to bed early tonight to start making up for all sleep I somehow can't get but I decided to stay up and watch the vice presidential debates. I chose Fox but also switched to CNN for the post debate wrap ups.

Right away you need to know that I'm not crazy about these "debates". I'm not convinced they're debates at all but rather question and answer sessions where, more often than not, the emphasis is on answers and not questions. "Senator Smith what do you think about energy policy?" "Well, thank you for asking, as I've said before we need to provide health care for every American..." And I think, as well, that most people watch them like they watch car races, that is they put up with the going around in circles in the hope they may witness a crash.

But I did notice a couple of things. Sen. Biden has spooky eyes. I don't know who did his makeup but when he looked at the camera he often looked like the grumpy old man who used to live down the street and yell at kids when they came on his lawn. I know he didn't intend that but it was the first thing I picked up on. And Gov. Palin came awful close, at times, to sounding like "church lady" from the old Saturday Night Live. Again, I don't think she was trying but it did come out that way.

I thought Sen. Biden was at his best when he spoke of the loss of his wife in the automobile accident. It was a very human moment and for me I wish we would get to see more of the person behind the persona in these debates so we can make a better choice. I thought Gov. Palin showed that she was up to the job. She didn't obviously have the broad depth of detail in her responses that comes with being in the Senate for decades but she did evoke confidence and the sense that she could quickly fill in the gaps. For a person who has been mercilessly hatcheted by the mainstream press in a way that would and never have happened for Sens. Obama and Biden it was a positive opportunity to present herself unedited and without National Enquirer type filters.

The problem for me in surveying these debates is that I don't fit in a single category. I'm sure those on the Left will say Sen. Biden won and those on the Right will give the nod to Gov. Palin. But in rough terms I'm a social conservative and a fiscal liberal. I believe in traditional faith, traditional values, and traditional culture and as part of that I see the need for the power of the state to be used, at times, to assist the poor, protect the environment, and use its wealth for the common good. I believe in neither the hyper or the laisze faire state. I believe that personal morality and decency is what keeps us from tyranny or anarchy. I'm pro life but i know it means more then just being against the injustice of abortion. I sometimes think the Democrat party has abandoned me on the fronts of faith and morality and the Republican party on the questions of the larger social contract.

In the past I've used the issue of abortion as a kind of litmus test in the belief that a person who supports the fundamental right to life can, at least, be drawn to better things based on that understanding but a person who believes that the State and not God is the source of human rights (and this is a core of the abortion argument) has the potential to do great harm. I've also looked at how they would appoint judges because I believe in the current political climate the freedom to practice my faith can be changed in an instant depending on who sits on any given court. So I sit back and digest it all knowing that one person will never fit all my criteria and they and I will be making imperfect choices.

Having said all that I will go to bed. I know which of the two human beings I will be voting for and the debate didn't reverse that choice. But I'm glad for the fact that we still have the right to debate and make the choice.

I pray I make a good one.

A little lesson...

If anything about these past weeks and months, the political stuff, the financial issues, makes sense it would be found in the still, small, voice of God behind the fury of the storm.

"Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest..." When you and I are done placing all our hopes and labors into politicians, the market, our careers, our dreams, or whatever else is taking up our time there is God, still waiting and watching for his prodigal children to discover again that true rest is found not in the transitory things of the world but in the quiet peace of the Father's house.

When Christians, who have for so long bought into the empty promises of the world they are basically indistinguishable from it, rediscover this the real revolution will begin.

Simply put...

The more I see of human politics the more I want the Kingdom of God.

Doomsday...

The voices of financial doomsday are waiting for Monday.

As we begin to fall asleep here the Asian markets are waking up and looking at their world. What they see, that mixture of fact, figures, psychology, and gut, will start the day and by morning here the alchemy will be running its course. Speculation abounds. And if the herd panics, what then?

There's a helplessness in it all, the idea that a handful of people on phones halfway around the world or halfway around the country can destroy, in a moment, the savings of a lifetime, the thin line between enough and want when work is no longer possible. Where is the trust? Where is the responsibility? Where is the sense? And what will happen when those words become like litter on the floor the morning after a party?

One thing is certain. We're all about to wake up from the American dream. Whether the morning finds all the fine strings of the financial world still together or if it all comes unraveled the idea that the horizon is limitless, that wealth is unending, and acquisition is the content of life is doomed. In fact it was from the start but we, as Americans, have been able to borrow our way from the reality of the world for longer than most. Bills are coming due and the checkbook is empty.

What remains is the shape of the world which emerges from these days. Will the apprehensions of these days call us to ponder that which is greater and enduring or shape a culture where people turn on each other for whatever remains? Will we see the futility of the life we believed was right, a life divorced from transcendence, centered on materialism, and lived without the sense of a future? Can hardship and uncertainty burn away our conceits or will we become hard and bitter? How will the end of our illusions find us?

And how will it find the Church? It is for these moments, these times when the dreams are over and all the bills are due that her Truth becomes more stark against the background and more alive as well. When the facades of a culture dancing in illusion's ballroom fall there will be a hunger that only Christ can truly fill. Will we be ready? Will I?

I don't know, but as Sunday gives way to Monday we may all find out.

Superstitions...

This is not a new finding. In his 1983 book "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener," skeptic and science writer Martin Gardner cited the decline of traditional religious belief among the better educated as one of the causes for an increase in pseudoscience, cults and superstition. He referenced a 1980 study published in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer that showed irreligious college students to be by far the most likely to embrace paranormal beliefs, while born-again Christian college students were the least likely.

Read more here.

Hat tip to Paradosis

I had to do something...

I had to do something today that I never wanted to do, cancel services.

I'm on vacation now, and whether it was a matter of mixed up communications or people just not stepping up to the plate there was nobody available to serve Typica this Sunday. I spoke with our Dean about it and he advised me to cancel if no one stepped forward but I have mixed emotions about it all.

I hate the thought of our little church being empty and alone on Sunday. I hate the idea that some person may be searching for something and find our doors locked and the lights out. A part of me wants to make the trip myself, even if only a few people come, and serve what I can. It all seems like a failure to me. But I also can't make people do what they don't wish to do and I can't make people care for a parish if they can't, or won't. And I need to rest if I'm going to keep on traveling. I'm no good to anyone if my nerves are burnt and there's nothing left to give.

Tomorrow I will be at St. George Church here in the Twin Cities because even on vacation I want to be at church on Sunday. Yet my heart will be far away in LaCrosse in the empty quiet of St. Elias.

Rats...

Ahhhhhh vacation...

Vacation starts today, a week off at home with a few projects and a Twins game thrown in. Suffice it to say I'm tired to the bone, road weary, and in need of a week or so of nothing in particular and I plan to take it, a sabbath for all the sabbaths missed.

Why you should consider "Salvo"

From Salvo magazine...

Christianity is antithetical to the culture. Our devotion to it makes us offensive from the get-go. In other words, you know something is wrong when your values no longer offend; it most likely means that you are becoming a part of-and not merely engaging-secular society. And as I said earlier, we have a moral obligation to help keep others from caving in to the culture's value system, because it will likewise prevent them from making choices that have the propensity to deteriorate their mental, physical, and spiritual health.

All along the highway...

Sunday morning, 6:30 AM, south on highway 61.

The light is beginning to break through the fog on the valley floor and the tops of bluffs are catching the first sun as it reaches over the Mississippi. It's a good time to travel. Most everyone is asleep, the tourists will show up after lunch and only people with a purpose are out this time in the morning, farmers, truckers, and folks on the day shift.

The trees are here and there just starting to turn. Fall colors in this part of the world are like paint poured over the land flowing north to south. In two weeks the fiery colors will have rolled down from Lake Superior but right now there's only a drop or two, a spill from the world a few hours north.

September can be the best month of all, cooler temperatures, clear nights, a respite from the hot craziness of summer. Things feel more like routine and even though the sun goes down earlier the daylight seems more precious and more alive. People like to get married in September because of it and go to football games too.

But I'm driving south, listening to something on XM and thinking about the day ahead. There are things to do, things under deadline. September is about the reminder of tasks that need completion before the cold sets in and changes everything. A swirl of colors settles over the world in September but so does a swirl of tasks and when I park the car in front of St. Elias I know there will be much to do.

But not now. The car is fine. The sun is breaking through the valley fog and the tops of the bluffs are coming into view at sunrise. I have the road mostly to myself and my phone is on but everyone who could call is asleep. Minnieska slips by in the quiet and that's good enough.

Please read this article...

On the "Orthodoxy of Tomorrow..."

I wish there was an Orthodox version...

Why we need hell...

An interesting article from Frederica Matthewes-Green...

Is God judging America?

The front pages are clogged with stories of economic failure. Politics is partisan, nasty, and ineffective. The culture appears to be growing more coarse and immature with each new season on TV. The America I knew as a child seems like a dream and the one I live in now a nightmare without the relief of morning.

Is God judging America?

In the time following the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell suggested something to that affect and was roundly critiqued for expressing his opinion that the hand of God could have been behind those events. The critiques, though, were often more about the unfashionable nature of the idea that God would judge America, or judge anyone or anything, and less about the actual content of Rev. Falwell's theory.

But could God be judging America?

The answer is "Its possible." As Christians we understand that God is active in history and can use the ebb and flow of events to hold both people and nations to account. There is no asterisk in that understanding for the United States. Only a distorted sense of our exceptionalism would have us believe we're immune from the possibility of God calling us to task and using the events of history as tools of His sovereignty. Why would there be one standard for say, the Philistines, and another for us? Why should there be?

The problem, given that understanding, is not about whether its possible that God is using the events of these times as a kind of judgment but whether we can state that with certainty. There have been times, as our Faith tells us, that certain people have been given a gift from God to proclaim with specificity that events were being directed to chastise and call a culture to repentance, and in the perspective of hindsight we can affirm that gift. But in throes of immediacy and without such a charism it would be good to proceed with caution. History is full of date setters and "prophets" who have only one thing in common, they were wrong. Are the events of these times the beginning of the end or the birth pains of a coming revival? God knows, we don't. What is heaven's take on 9/11? God knows, we don't.

But we do know something with certainty. We do know ithat ideas, constructs, and behavior have consequences. We have fallen prey, for a variety of reasons, in this country to a kind of life that is at once technically advanced but spiritually, emotionally, and socially selfish, materialistic, and bankrupt. Our institutions, as reflections of ourselves, have become poisoned as well with the results being fodder for the headlines. To what extent God's hand is in all of this remains unknown but perhaps we're bearing the consequences of our own actions, the pain of our abandonment of sense and the emptiness of a life detached from authentic moral order. One does not need a prophet to suggest this, one simply needs to read the Book or, for that matter, the newspaper.

So is the craziness of these times an example of God's judgement, the consequences of our own choices, or some mixture of both? I haven't the gift to say with certainty. I only know that the sickness of my culture begins to end when the I address the illness of my own soul. The rest, as one politician of note has said is "Above my pay grade..."

Got to laugh...

A must read article...

"We are not led to undo the work of creation or to rectify the Fall. The duty of the Christian is not to leave the world a better place. His duty is to leave this world a better man."

Read the rest here.



Hat tip to Five Feet of Fury

My sister's wedding part two...

It's said that if it rains on their wedding day the couple will be wealthy so the future looks bright for my sister and her new husband. Suffice it to say among the readings there was the passage from the Song of Solomon recalling how "many waters cannot quench love..." and such was the case.

But the roof of St. Clement's didn't leak and everything inside was warm and very properly Episcopalian in its aesthetic. A small choir of men accompanied by organ led the music and the rector was dressed in cassock and surplice. The people of the church had taken great care in remodeling the facility not to destroy its classic charm, the rood screen, chancel choir, wooden arched ceilings, and high (but unused) east altar. The building was stone, the doors were red, the bride was radiant, the groom steady and tall, the mother nervous. All in all fairly typical.

The liturgy itself was orderly and tight. This is the Episcopal Church after all, the place where they painstakingly keep all the architectural details but can celebrate the Liturgy as a kind of avant garde jazz. The taste of St. Clement's, though, is country parish high church, small but well done and such was the case here. Of course, being the Episcopal Church the rector had to add the word "partnered" throughout the service like shards of broken bottle on a village green but otherwise she wisely kept to the book. When Western liturgies refuse to succumb to the temptations of "relevance" they are marvelous, elevating, things.

In the hours that followed we danced and talked and renewed old acquaintances in the way that always seems to happen at such events. As the night wore on we, one by one, began to take our leave, at once tired by the events and refreshed by their renewing effect. I was among the early departures as I needed to be up and ready at 4 the next morning for the journey along the river road now in its fourth year.

And so their journey, my sister and her tall, shy, Italian scholar, begins.

My sister's wedding...

This coming Saturday my sister will be married in a tidy and well appointed Episcopal Church here in St. Paul. For our family it will be, as they say, "The event of the season..." and a time of joy. I will read an epistle, everyone has some job to make it all fit together, and my sister will, in my humble and unbiased opinion, be stunning as she walks down the aisle on my uncle's arm.

There will be tears, of course, but they will be tears of memory for those who are not with us mingled with tears of joy for this day. It's been a long time coming, this wedding, a journey of more then a few struggles and heartbreaks mixed in with the craziness of bureaucracy and flavored throughout with the kind of love that only comes when a man and a woman stand before God and look each other in the eyes. I wish them the best and godspeed always.

I have a wistfulness about it, though. I wish it could have been a crowning but alas it was not to be. There is much in Orthodoxy about how people are coming to the Faith but this one, my sister, is one we let get away. Chrismated, faithful, a member of the choir, my sister was an asset to her Orthodox church but events, personalities, and the feeling of never quite belonging took their toll and she left for the Episcopal Church. It goes to show that we can possess truth but if we do not also possess love the truth loses its value.

How I would have loved to have led her around the table just once as Isaiah's song was sung. What joy to say those words "The handmaid of God is crowned to the servant of God..." Yet what is done is done and these thoughts will never throttle my happiness on her behalf or the joy of this day. Everyone grows up, everyone makes decisions, and little sisters magically become women and lead, as they should, their own lives. It's the way of things, we leave our families and make new ones, we say goodbye to something but even in that parting life is renewed.

And it begins tonight in a tidy and well kept church in St. Paul

Most-holy Master, accept the prayer of Your servants and as You were present at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, be present among us now, granting all of us Your unseen protection. Bless this marriage and grant unto these Your servants a peaceful life, length of days, chastity, love for one another in a bond of peace, long-lived children, the joy of grateful children, and a crown of glory that will never fade away. Make them worthy to live to see their children's children. Keep their marriage bond undefiled. Give them of the dew from the heavens above and the richness of the earth. Fill their home with bountiful food, and with every good thing, that they may have enough to share with those who are poor and in need. Grant to all those who are present here this day, all of their prayers that are for salvation.

For You, O Christ, are a God of mercy, compassion and love, and to You do we offer up glory: together with Your eternal Father and Your all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now and forever, and to the ages of ages.

Genuinely befuddled...

One of the things that has emerged from the coverage of candidate's religious beliefs in this current election cycle has been the extraordinarily clumsy handling of religion and religious ideas by large swaths of the mainstream media. The focus of this comedy of errors is on Gov. Palin at the present but no candidate has been handled well. Misquotes and half truths abound, and context is often non-existent.

So many journalists seem genuinely startled at the idea that a candidate even has a religious belief they take seriously. I suppose this is what happens when your life is lived in horribly provincial places like New York and Washington D.C. and you travel in small circles of both friends and ideas. But a person doesn't know whether to laugh or cry when you see grown up people, people who've supposedly traveled the world and possess a wide range of interest, stumble over themselves and stammer away at the thought that a politician prays and actually means it.

Where we these people born? Where did they go to school? Don't they have family? Maybe as part of their journalism training they should be required to live in say, Kansas or Alaska, for a year so they get a little bit of grounding about life beyond the studio. Perhaps they should go to a real church or synagogue every so often to be reminded about how people in the "fly over country" really live. "You mean you really believe in God and that's part of your life?" "How curious!" "How interesting!" "I can't wait to get back to my people and tell them about this strange and different America I discovered."

Well you get the point and the point is that the vast majority of the news you get about religion, especially the interplay of religion and politics will be flawed, folded, spindled, and mutilated by people who have lots of cameras but no clue. So be careful out there and take everything with a very large grain of salt. Ask the questions the journalists themselves are too ignorant of incompetent to ask and always remember "reader beware."

This Sunday's sermon in advance...

September 14, 2008

The impetus of the Christian life is gratitude, the response of love to Love, of receiver to Giver, the gratitude of the lost who has been found, the wounded who has been healed, and the broken who has been made whole. But many, even those who spent their lives in the Church, have missed this, living for years under a shadow of untruth which robbed them of the vital joy, the dynamic, and the sheer awesomeness of this life to which we are called.

In his song “Only the Good Die Young…” Billy Joel states “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners have much more fun…” and the reason we understand those lyrics is because too often we’ve lived under an illusion, the idea that our Faith is about rituals, rules, regulations, and tasks all under the watchful and harsh eye of a god who uses fear to achieve his ends. In our world the free person, the person who is most alive, is portrayed as the one who has thrown off the chains of gods and rules and lives each moment to their own pleasure while the devout struggle in ignorance and slavery, doing what they do from some primal disturbance inside. And too often we believe it ourselves.

Now we won’t say it out loud but it comes out in our actions; the marginalizing of godly things in our lives, the sense that we’re doing what we do like a child who’s mom told him to finish his peas before he gets dessert. It’s amazing how we can travel for hours to make a game or concert and find a few minute’s drive to church tiresome. How is it that we can watch television for hours but not pray or read the Bible for even a few minutes? We spend thousands on toys and give God the lint from the inside of our wallet. So much of this is rooted in the fact that we see God like we see the worst boss we ever had and hope to do just enough to keep from getting fired, or in God’s case thrown into fire. So we keep the “rules” like the person who set his cruise control just enough above the speed limit to avoid getting a ticket and our faith withers because of it.

But that’s not our God and that is not our Faith. Our whole life as Christians is supposed to be about love returned to the One who loves us; a life lived in response to life given, the created responding to the Creator with the harmony of Eden’s first light. As we cherish those close to us on earth and give our lives to them so it should be with our life in God. The rules and the regulations, as it were, are not the ends but the means to assist us in what should be a life transforming love relationship with God. Yet this is too often a rare thing, the province of saints and ascetics even though this was not meant to be.

We need, as Orthodox Christians to rediscover the depth of the love of God for us, the unspeakable grace which flows to us from the very heart of His being, and if we truly catch this vision gratitude will rise from us in waves. We rattle off John 3:16 without pausing to think about it means to say that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…” but the implications of this are profound. The God of the universe burns with a holy love for us, as fallible and minute as we are, and in the distress of our brokenness has come to us to teach us how to live, to willingly bear all of our darkness, and even break the power of our greatest enemy, death.

If we get this for even a moment, if we see the cross which we celebrate today and realize what’s been given to us, then the way we see God will change and our life of faith will stop seeming like an endless series of rituals and rules but rather that which would naturally arise from a profound gratitude. We’ll flee from sin not because we’re afraid of God but because it sullies the love we share. We’ll worship not because we feel such a thing will appease God but because our hearts cannot help but give praise to One who has given everything to us. We’ll give of ourselves not as some kind of bribe under eternal duress but rather as an expression of love with joy. When we realize who God truly is, come to terms with even a fraction of the depth of his love for us, and have our heart stirred by the reality of it all it will become impossible to remain stingy of soul, to live the minimal life of faith, to settle. Even the fasts will be filled with joy and our hearts will find rest. Gratitude is what makes this Christian life an easy yoke and in the shadow of the holy cross may such gratitude be stirred in our hearts today.

A pause today...

I pause in the business of this day to call to mind my brother, Paul.

Two years ago on this day a sudden heart attack took him from us at the age of 44 so this day is quiet, reflective, and probably always will be. At times I used to forget his birthday, was it the 26th or 27th of October, but this day is locked in, seared, and in a headline print too obvious to ignore.

Now I would like to tell you that faith has triumphed over death and loss as we bask in the power of the resurrection but for me, at least, it is not so and may never be. Only the eyes of eternity see the why's and wherefore's of that day. I have no clue. None of it makes sense and I still have not seen the good of it. I rarely cry, am basically never angry. I'm just numb and the every time I would like to speak there is only silence.

On the far edges of my faith there is a place of rest in all of this and I see it as I plod along but that's just about the pace of things. I have no fear for my brother but I am silenced by the helplessness of it all. I don't question God but we haven't really spoken much about it either. The whole of it is like a bone stuck in my throat, not enough to strangle but easily enough to leave me with a perpetual cough.

I pray for his wife, for his children, for my mother who had to bury a child, and I hope for the best. Tonight I'll visit his grave and light a candle. I'll cry there and then spend the night awake in thought one step closer to home, one step closer to home.

Old friends...

I had the opportunity to speak with two old friends yesterday. One of them had a mother in the hospital on life support and the other was just someone with whom I had lost touch. Our friendships were formed in the crucible of high school, that place where people who don't fit in find each other and hang on for the ride. Over the years we've been together, moved around the country, kept in touch and then drifted away. An email brought us together this time after a two year silence.

We've changed over the years. My tumultuous late teen life has long ago drifted away and I hardly remember the person I was when these friendships were born. I still love music, we're all musicians, and still have a restless streak, but age is perspective. One of us left for the south and never came back. His mother is in the hospital and as we talked I was impressed with the depth of soul that had emerged in his life. Time and struggle has shaped him and the fire has burned away dross. The other was as I had left him some years ago, a core of personality and life that seemed locked in a coating of anger. Whatever else had happened along his path this had not changed, or at least my perception of it had not. I miss the happy fellow he was and even as we talked I realized that I still care for him even as I keep a cautious distance. The thread, at times, may be thin but it will stay intact.

One thing is certain. As time and distance have taken us apart and circumstances bring us together over the years there will always be something inside of us that holds us together. We pick up off right where we left, whether that place was good or bad, and we can still talk for an hour without coming up for air. Whether or not we can be together, or even want to be together at any one time, we are still connected, if by nothing else, by the past we have shared. A million miles away there will always be a place in my heart for these two guys.

Time always takes people away but I'm always amazed by the ability of friendship to span the gulf. it is one of the great wonders of being human.

Oh my...

I received a call this morning from a family member about one of their in laws who, some years ago, drove past a church and told everyone "This is the place where I rejected Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior..."

She died early this morning.

A letter to Democrats on abortion...

Here's the link.

If as a Party you pursue with Senator Obama and Speaker Pelosi some clarity about the status of the human embryo (a question they both consider important), you will eventually have to make a decision. You will either decide pre-born babies have rights because modern embryologists say they, too, are unique human individuals, or you will be forced to take the very hard line of saying some human individuals just don’t deserve human rights, for whatever sordid reason.

The feelings expressed by this, I presume, Roman Catholic Priest are many of my own.

What say you?

She's a witch, okay maybe not...

Another reason why the mainstream media doesn't get religion, especially Christianity, and more especially people, like Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, who actually practice their faith.

Expect it, because mainstream media often work in their own echo chamber doing what they do for people almost exactly like themselves and, despite their advocacy of tolerance and diversity, rarely able to grasp folks they don't meet at cocktail parties.

This, by the way, is another good reason why you should get your religious news from Get Religion where the coverage is critiqued in a fair way and rumors, like Governor Palin naming her kids after witches, go to die.

The politics of blood...

An article from First Things on political rhetoric and violence.

I do worry that the rhetoric coming from the political fringes has the potential to one day move into the mainstream and then provoke violence. Violent words always seem to be the precursor to violence itself. One must dehumanize the enemy to allow the conscience the freedom to kill and it appears this has already begun.

In times past we've had difficult political campaigns with harsh words but there was always an ethic in place that confined the struggle to words. That ethic, that Judaeo-Christian framework, is largely disappearing and without it politics has become all there is and for many the stakes have become a matter of life and death.

One day the trigger may be pulled. Lord have mercy.