Friday, December 29, 2006
The final hours...
In our Liturgy we pray for captives and their salvation, first for those imprisoned for their faith in Christ, second for those wrongfully imprisoned, and third for those justly imprisoned in the hope they would come to repentance and salvation. Saddam Hussein is such a case yet in these final hours as he faces justice for his crimes against humanity I still wish that somehow, some way, he would come to see the light of Christ, repent, and be made a new creation.
God's grace is that deep and wide and although few in this world will miss him in his death and many may rejoice the thought of even this soul being lost should give us pause and perhaps we should pray that even to the point when he takes his final walk to the gallows some part of his heart would leap from its captivity towards the only one who can save him, not from his execution, but from an eternity broken from God.
Lord have mercy on Saddam Hussein and we sinners too in the hours and days and years to come.
New Year's Eve Sermon...
Sunday, December 31, 2006
In just a few hours the frivolities will be beginning as we mark the passage of this year to the next. And it’s probably at this point we should engage in a little calendar trivia.
The Romans originally celebrated March 1st as New Year’s Day. With the arrival of the newer, more accurate Julian calendar the date was officially moved to January 1st, the beginning of the Roman Civil Year.
In the 6th century AD the practice of celebrating the New Year on January 1st was abolished in the West as being Pagan and various dates, including Easter, were celebrated as the first day of the year. By the middle of the 16th century the Gregorian calendar began to be established with January 1st as the beginning of the year and gradually became adopted throughout Europe. The last holdout was England, which, along with her territories, did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1752 and continued until then to celebrate March 1st as New Year’s Day.
Now for Orthodox the actual new year starts on September 1st, the beginning of the Liturgical year. And January 1st for us is the Feast of St. Basil with today being not New Year’s Eve but rather the Sunday after the Nativity of Christ and commemorating St. Joseph the Betrothed, David the Prophet and King, and James the Brother of our Lord. Those of you who were here last year remember we celebrated Sunday, January 1st, as the Feast of St. Basil with the magnificent Liturgy of St. Basil.
All that is for your own insight, because we are creatures of our culture and today is the eve of the civil New Year and many of us will celebrate in some form to mark the passing of the old year and the arrival of the new with many of us having tomorrow off as a holiday.
So, first, just a reminder. When I was a health care Chaplain I served the residents of a nursing home populated largely by chronic alcoholics and they liked to call New Year’s Eve “Amateur Night” because people who normally didn’t drink to excess did and didn’t know how to handle themselves.
It seems every year in LaCrosse some sad person gets drunk and gets to meet God face down in the mighty Mississippi. Our faith allows us, at various times, to consume alcoholic beverages in moderation and by moderation we mean if you have any doubts about your ability to control your drinking you should not even start and if you choose to you do not have the moral right to endanger others. I don’t want to have to do your funeral knowing you were embalmed long before you were dead, so don’t be a statistic.
Second its part of the tradition surrounding this time of year to make resolutions. The truth is we Orthodox should always be resolved to be the best person, by the grace of God, we can and to always strive for that which is right, good, true, and faithful. In fact we have any number of fasting times during the year to help us lay aside ourselves, draw close to God, and in doing so become a better human being, but we’re creatures of our culture and resolutions will be made.
So consider making this year a year of growth in faith and Christ.
Believe me there’s nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight, get the finances in order, find that new job, or spend more time fishing. There are many good things that can be accomplished with the fresh start a new year brings.
But sometimes those worthy things overshadow the truly important things and there is nothing more important than having your life right with God, to be in relationship with Him, to enjoy His presence, and to worship. Jesus tells us it profits nothing to gain the whole world and lose our soul and again he says to us that when seek first the Kingdom of God all the other areas of our life will find their true meaning, their true value, and their true purpose.
Studies have even been undertaken and they show time and again that a deep and abiding faith helps people, on average, life longer, cope with stress and change better, be less prone to depression, recover from injury faster, and be far less likely to take our own lives in despair. Devout people even do better if they smoke, so if you can’t quit right now at least pray, read your Bible, and show up for Liturgy.
And while those results may surprise researchers we in the Orthodox Church have known this from day one. We understand that people were created by God to be in communion with Him and when we’re not we’re cut off from the very source of our life. We wander because we’ve lost our true home. We become disoriented because Truth is distant. We stumble in the dark because we cannot see the Light. The truth is we need God more than the air we breathe because long after breath has left our body God will still be the true life, light, hope, and salvation of the world.
Imagine something if you will.
Experts say it takes 21 days to establish a pattern of behavior as a habit. Now imagine what would happen if starting tomorrow as you clean up after the events and start getting things together you made the decision that for the next 21 days you will pray for at least 21 minutes per day and not miss a Liturgy.
Imagine how your life would be different. How would you grow? How would you be challenged? Where would you have peace? What joy would you have? What struggle could you better endure? What new life would stir? What old fear would die away?
You could use the forms in your Orthodox Study Bible. You could take home one of the service books. You could simply sit quietly in front of an icon of Christ or his Mother and pour out your heart. Eloquence is not what matters, commitment does, a heart that desires God is the sacrifice that God accepts.
And by the end of those 21 days would this seeking God for even a short time every day become a practice, a holy habit, an essential part of the day like taking a shower or brushing your teeth, or having breakfast? Would a day without it seem unnatural? It very well may be, because a heart that truly touches the face of God will soon desire nothing less and rejoice in every moment when God is near.
There’s nothing wrong with losing weight, exercising more, or stopping smoking. They, with any number of others, are very good things to do and worthy of increased effort in a new year. But don’t forget the things of the spirit as you look towards the New Year. In an instant any good thing we strive for on earth can be changed, even undone, but those who keep their treasure and their heart in heaven have the good which can never be taken away even if the diet doesn’t last until next week’s slice of cheesecake.
God bless us everyone...
I've never been much of a New Year's Eve person. I don't know why for sure, maybe its because when I was growing up we usually spent at least part of the evening in church. Perhaps it's just an act of self preservation. The chronic alcoholics I used to work with as a Chaplain often called New Year's Eve "Amateur Night" and I'm not sure I want to be out and about with folks who have no idea how to really drink. It's one of those things I've noticed that really old drunks know how to handle themselves in ways that Joe Accountant on his one big night has no clue. Of course being an old drunk requires a certain savvy for survival just to get "old" in the first place. Alcohol has this way of thinning out the herd.
And home and bed seems to be the best place for me to be this New Year's Eve. There's a part of me that wishes this year was a bad dream and if I could just wake up and everything would be okay. Too much loss, too many sharp edges, too many gray areas, too much staring at the sky and asking unanswerable questions. It's been a year when I've often felt like I was at the wrong end of a bowling alley so why celebrate it's passing. Just to sleep, and perchance to dream, and then buoyed by an artificially constructed date left to us by our Roman overlords by magic the past goes away.
I'm a creature of my culture so I have resolutions. Lose weight, exercise more, lose anger, pray more, be healthier, hope we all stay as intact as possible, world peace, the usual. I'll write about this time next year and tell you how it all came out. I hope your resolutions work out as well. I've learned, though, not to hold my breath. Slow and steady usually wins the race.
Perhaps the most important thing I've learned in this past year is how precious life is, and how we musn't dawdle when it comes to the important things because things change, sometimes literally in a heartbeat.
Little by little time, life, and the grace of God are burning away the unimportant, the chaff, the temporary. I'm probably more prepared to die now then I've ever been because there is less to cling to but I'm also more preapred to live because the important stuff has become more precious. I'm older now and so I get to see the doctor more often but that is an inconvenience. When my soul isn't right is when I really start to hurt and in whatever time is left I'll care for the physical stuff for maintenance but the spiritual stuff for the long haul, actually the longest haul.
In that light there seems to be just one piece of priestly advice for the new year that comes to mind. Pray for the peace of the world. We see all the darkness of the world and it's overwhelming sometimes but it also calls us to lift this tired old world up to God in prayer. We're not perfect, the world's a far ways away from perfect, but beyond the fear, paralysis, and frustration lies prayer and we always and everywhere need to lift up holy, and not so holy, hands for the sake of this world. It matters.
That all being said I wish you the deepest presence of Christ in this year, all the years to come, and as we Orthodox like to say "unto ages of ages". Amen.
Happy New Year.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Priests and cars...
So some Priests have some pretty nice cars. But there's a secret you should know. A lot of clergy need nice cars for work but can't afford them fresh off the lot. The secret? Buy a nice car a few years old and still get value without all that depreciation.
I knew a Lutheran pastor who really liked Volvos but could only afford them when they got in the neighborhood of 100,000 miles. Fortunately Volvo's routinely leave 100K in the rear view mirror and the people who own them aren't prone to taking them out boondocking. Same goes for Lincoln Town Cars, which a close Priest friend of mine enjoys (they're literally a traveling living room) but never buys new. Recently I met the former Priest of St. Elias Church and his wife while he was visiting family in the Twin Cities. They were in thier Audi station wagon purchased the same way. All it takes to turn an out of reach Mercedes into an affordable pastormobile is a few years.
So if you see your Priest, Pastor, or Minister scooting by in, say, a Cadillac it isn't because your paying them too much or they're on the take. Just like you learn in seminary to stretch noodles for a few meals it doesn't take long in parish life to figure out how to get a good car cheap and make it last.
You might even want to try it yourself sometime.
I hate this stuff...
First there's some of the folks who sell cars and seem to be inspired by a primal masochism. I believe there are people who would choose a simultaneous root canal and prostate exam without benefit of anesthesia or glove over the process of stepping in to a car dealer.
Second, there is my own baggage in all of this. I despise debt and have a tendency to second, third, and fourth guess myself which, added to the original pain of just doing this whole thing, makes for a mad, mad tilt a whirl of the weeks surrounding this process. And believe me it takes weeks for me to do the painful and minute research to feed my obsessive approach to all of this. That my wife has stayed married to me through the purchase of roughly a half a dozen cars is a testament to true love.
But facts are facts and my venerable Suzuki, she of good speed, pleasant seat height, and satisfactory mileage, was beginning to show her age and my own body began to ask, in various aches and pains, for more comfort and a few extra conveniences.
Of course there was nothing that was perfect. Perfect would be a car that gets above 30 mpg on the highway, has the performance of a sports car, the reliability of the sunrise, and enough space to haul a lot of suitcases. There are cars with great gas mileage but they force one into yogic poses. There are sports cars that have two doors and an open top but I need four and convertibles and kayak transport don't mix. There are cars that are big on storage but drink gasoline by the bucket.
I ended up with a 2004 Saturn VUE, red, with a five speed manual transmission and 2.2 liter four cylinder motor. It won't win any races but the seats are comfortable, the amenities good (cruise control and ABS), the carrying space large enough and some, and the highway mileage is close at 29. Gently used at less than 30 thousand miles it's a little of most, none of all, and did I say it was red?
Being a Saturn dealer there wasn't the feeding frenzy about buying that usually accompanies these rites. It was actually quite serene and if anything I was getting tired of them taking up time trying to make sure I understood everything and had every question answered. Washed up and ready I took her home with that funny fake new car smell stuck in my sinuses.
Now the fun part comes. After every car purchase I've ever made comes the sleepless night. Did I do the right thing? What happens if it breaks down? How about a crisis in the Middle East and here I am stuck without a Prius? What if I lose my job? Didn't I hear that an asteroid could hit earth? Lots of late night television.
And this morning thoughts of taking it back, running away, selling off a few guitars to pay for the car, blah, blah blah. This too shall pass, they say, but this stuff always passes like a baseball size kidney stone. Two months from now when I'm driving through the snow to LaCrosse and I can see down the road because of the good driver's seat height, am able to stretch my legs and actually immediately walk away from a car after getting out, and feeling safe with ABS and traction control none of this will matter. Right now it's just a tired unfocused hell.
You'd think that a person in the faith business would be better at this. I'm not, and I'd better snap out of it quickly. If this continues for too much longer my wife will kill me and there won't be a jury anywhere that would convict her.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
And the race is on...
Service bulletins are done. Travel plans are in. Schedules are set. Events are locked and loaded. All has been spooled onto a bobbin and awaits only the precise unwinding. As if! But that's part of the texture of this time as well.
Tomorrow will be on to western Minnesota and time with my wife's family. Then Saturday evening is return home, Sunday morning travel to LaCrosse, then return home for time with my family, then Monday morning travel to LaCrosse, then return home and then some sort of rest on the 25th and 26th. We've even stashed enough food in the house so once we finally get home we don't have to actually leave the premises.
For clergy this is a working weekend, one where you must shine and still find a way to get snippets of time in with your family. To be married to a Priest means you'll never have a normal Christmas again so forget about anything that looks like Currier and Ives because you, too, are on stage and on the road. Oh well.
The actual serene moments will be during the Liturgy, as they always are, when time and space seem to be on hold and you can rest as the great words wash over you and the smell of incense mixed with candles wraps around the altar. It's always like that but on this busy weekend the peace, the refuge will be deeper. Whatever else the coming events bring I will cherish this the most.
So before it all starts you have this last post. By God's grace I will write again sometime after the Feast of the Nativity but until then I wish you, yours, and the world all the peace, joy, love, and light that come with these holy days and above all the abiding presence of Christ.
Merry Christmas!
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Christmas Message...
Monday, December 25th, 2006
The stories of Christmas are full of miracles, angels appearing in dreams and worshipping with shepherds, magi guided from the east by a star, and above all a virgin conceiving a child in a supernatural way. And all along the story’s paths we see the hand of God bringing time, place, person, and events into order to the end that He himself would come and take his place among us.
But strangely while we focus on those events as we read the stories and sing the carols there is perhaps the greatest part of the story, the most miraculous, that remains largely untold.
Why?
Why did God choose this way?
To be God is to have infinite options, all moral and good, to achieve any desired end. We humans make our decisions based on time, money, resources, our health, any number of things but God is not limited in the slightest by any of those considerations. God can simply will and it comes to pass. And knowing that I remain at a loss in the face of it, this incarnation, this day so long ago in Bethlehem.
We speak of God coming to rescue us, as the carol says “To save us all from Satan’s power when we had gone astray.” But God could have just as easily and with perfect justice looked down on what we had become and what evils he knew we would still do in the future and simply said “Enough” and willed it all into non-existence in the hope, perhaps, of starting over.
God could have, as well, just simply left us to our own devices like an exasperated parent and said “If that’s the way you want to live have it your way” and moved on.
Perhaps our Lord could have come in blazing glory, the glory that was rightly His and once and for all set all things aright in a flash of His power. The Bible tells us that even holy men tremble in the face of angels how so more would evil rulers, sinful people, and practitioners of any darkness fall before the face of Christ in His majesty?
Only time prevents the mentioning of all the possibilities of God in relating to His creation and especially to us human beings and when our imagination runs out it does not mean they end.
Yet why this way?
Why would the Almighty come so obscurely, not even bothering to arrive in Jerusalem or Damascus or Rome?
Why would the eternal God take on something so frail and temporary as humanity?
Why would the all powerful one subject Himself to becoming a creature that is so limited, so prone to evil, and broken?
There seems to be no answer that makes sense in the way we humans define that term. There is no logic which allows our intellect to understand. Our imaginations pushed to their limit can only touch the edges of the depth that lurks below the surface of the simple stories of Jesus’ birth.
The miracle transcending all others which we call to mind in this day is a miracle of love. Love of a kind and scale that makes child’s play of our deepest thoughts and renders our loftiest ideals small and mean in comparison. Love which always threatens to overwhelm us in its strength, drown us in its depth, and pull our feeble words out of our mouths in a holy silence. Love of a kind to the end that ours is similar only as a grain of sand resembles a desert, a single stem the prairie, an eye dropper the ocean.
It is a love that has seen us in our smallness and chooses to come in the smallest most gentle way possible.
It is a love that knows how little we often understand and so comes among us with a body and words and bread and wine so that we are not overwhelmed by it all.
It is a love that remembers that we are but dust and so takes dust upon itself in the hope that it can be divinely transformed.
It is a timeless love that knows we are prisoners of time and so takes on time for itself so that we can share in eternity.
It is a love steeped in the knowledge that we are sinners and despite our limitations are defiant and prideful and so chooses to humble itself in the hope of our deliverance from our dark state.
It is love that sees the terror of death and our struggles in the face of it and wills to endure our greatest fear so that its ultimate power is broken.
There will never be a way to fathom such love, a love beyond human that nevertheless choose to become one with us. To see it as it truly is is to stand in pure holiness, unfettered goodness, and undying light. We may travel to the end of our thoughts and still only realize we are on the thin edge of the love of God. And when we do there can only be worship of the deepest kind.
Yet for reasons beyond our comprehension this love is for us. Unearned, undying, and burning with holy passion. Our greatest response is to simply receive it, embrace it, and share it, and in so doing be ourselves transformed into the likeness of the child who came to us so long ago and far away and lives in us still.
As we do that we will truly begin to understand and live the miracle of Christmas
Monday, December 18, 2006
Christmas Eve Message...
December 24th, 2006
Among my very favorite Christmas carols is “O Little Town of Bethlehem”.
Composed in 1865 by the Rev. Philip Brooks, an Episcopal Priest, following a visit to the Holy Land and first performed in 1868, it’s a five verse poem that captures a timeless sense of that long ago night we remember today. It’s prose is simple but elegant and the music simultaneously conveys a sense of reverence, joy, and longing.
“Oh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in they dark streets shineth the everlasting light.
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
And its that longing our Epistle speaks of today, the longing of those saints who lived, struggled, and sought God before the arrival of Christ motivated only by the promise of His coming. Some we know like righteous Simeon and Anna who spent their lives in holy reverence and were blessed in their old age to hold the young Christ in their arms. Others only saw the promise as something far away, something true and real but defined only as the hope that God would come to rescue His people and save the world. In types and shadows they received a foretaste of the gift to be given and carried on in faith. We read of these great men and women of faith in the Old Testament and marvel.
And their longing is ours as well.
There is still a kind of darkness to the world, a basic sort of brokenness, a senselessness to things that makes us shake our heads in a perverse kind of wonder. The Apostle Paul, writing in Romans, speaks of the creation groaning hoping for redemption, and we know in our own lives both the taste of beauty, grace, and light, that are the remnants of primeval Eden and the bitterness of existence broken by sin.
We long for hope, for something beyond ourselves, for certainty to cling to and a way back to our home. Even the most pleasant of life still has within it the seeds of exile, a kind of wandering, the realization of impermanence and the knowledge that although Eden’s gate is now closed and guarded by an angel the door of death is always open.
We differ from those saints of old not in the understanding of our human dilemma because they faced what we face. All the human eras have had a sense of yearning, a will to transcend, and a struggle with the abyss of death. We differ only in technology but not kind.
Yet while the dilemma, the need, the exile remains the same so too does the rest we seek, the salvation we crave, and the heaven for which we journey.
From the eyes of Abraham who left the security of life and home to wander the earth for the sake of God’s promise to the person sitting in an office in front of a computer, overwhelmed by work, by life, and the meaning of it all the hope is the same. From those who endured horrendous discomforts for the sake of faith to we who sit here in a kind of luxury that would have astounded even those who brought this church into being the answer to the hopes and fears of human history remains unchanged.
The man in the bar trying to drink his troubles away. The lady in her office with power and money to spare but a hollwness inside. The dreamers who write poems and the folks who travel from empty bed to empty bed in the hope of someone to love. The children who are afraid of the storms. Those who place their hope in other people only to be disappointed because we all have feet of clay sometimes. The hungry and oppressed of the world and those who starve and oppress others for the sake of their own dark hungers. The young girl looking at her face in the mirror and wondering what she sees and the old man looking at the ceiling of the hospital and gasping for that final bit of air.
All the hopes and fears of all the years are met in one moment when somewhere in the darkness of long ago Bethlehem a baby cried out in the night and angels and shepherds responded in worship and the world was destined to never be the same.
All that will be given tonight and tomorrow will fade away. That is the nature of earthly things. But if you will receive the gift that is given, this Christ who comes in such humble form, your hopes and fears and wandering and struggle will find a place of rest, if not always now then in that day to come.
How silently, how silentlyThe wondrous gift is given !
O holy Child of Bethlehem,Descend to us, we pray;
Friday, December 15, 2006
The ice thaws...
We were looking through ornaments and a wave of images passed through me, people I had lost, the passing of time, the state of things, and a quiet melancholy that sometimes comes with the season. But heaven was close too and so were the kind of cleansing tears we Orthodox like to think of as a second baptism.
Somewhere beneath the layers of work, a few hard months, and the cold evening wind there is still a heart and a soft spot that can be reached. I was beginning to worry, you know, that I was much too tired or perhaps was doomed to pass through this time of year with robotic efficiency. Yet the quiet place inside that was lost has been found and if it doesn't last at least I have it now and I'll enjoy the moment.
How I wish a deep and enduring peace in Christ for myself and those I love but even more for this tired old world! And part of me thinks that maybe, just maybe, this holy season will be just that for the world. I'm probably foolish, of course, but I'm glad I can still feel that way, still hold out for something better, and believe that it's not all useless or a night without end.
Thank you Lord, for that gift given to us sinners a glimmer of light that the darkness cannot overcome.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
The ice thaws...
Yesterday was spent making fruitcake and having a good conversation with my mother. Today comes good news from the doctor regarding my cholesterol levels which have taken a dramatic decline (almost fifty points). The schedule is starting to get under control and the mandolin practice is starting to pay off as I practice carols for the folks where I work. A good sleep last night makes a difference as well.
I think everyone in our family knows this will be a hard Christmas. My brother's death will touch everything but that's not bad because it means he's missed and we're inconvenienced and lost in a certain way without his presence. It would be more frightening if all of this had happened and it meant nothing. The irony is that in some ways he will be more present to us in his absence then he was when he was with us and we sort of took things for granted. In the normal course of life we often are not truly present to each other because we never ponder that things can end. When they do we seem to value what, or who, was lost in a different way. Death and loss are a jolt that wakes us from the slumber of the everyday and teaches the value of what matters. But it does so at a horrific cost.
So Paul will be there in every gift, every thought, every moment of our time together in a way that he should have been, and each of us should have been to each other, had we not just made the assumption that everything will be as it is always has been world without end. Again that is as it should be because he mattered and still matters and will always matter. While the years may change the way we understand this the fact of it will remain.
The moral of this story? Whenever and however you and yours get together at Christmas go beyond the gifts and the food and the parties and be present with those who share your life and this moment. It goes by too fast to just put everything on autopilot and assume there will be some future time when you can put in the time and effort to bind your heart to those you love.
Now and only now is available. Always has been, always will be. World without end. Amen.
More defections from the Episcopal Church...
I spent several years recovering from life as a Baptist Pastor in a wonderful evangelical and charismatic Episcopal Church in St. Paul. Church of the Messiah was a healing place, a place that helped me understand liturgy and began the process that brought me to Orthodoxy and for which I will always be grateful.
And what has happened to ECUSA grieves me. The leaders and members of that once great body have traded thier inheritance for a bowl of pottage, or better said a thin watery soup that has no ability to nourish or sustain the soul. There are, of course, individual parishes where the lights are still on but they are like healthy tissue surviving in gangrene and every day the illness threatens to consume it.
I have acquaintances who are Priests in ECUSA and a sister who remains there and all I can do is hope for the best. God can do great things but in a church fascinated with baptizing whatever the culture sends and symptomatically celebrating anything, it appears, at variance with historic Christian faith it would seem to be an uphill thing. It is one thing to be a church that has struggled through persecution from without and another to be a body of people grossly deformed by choice.
My best hope is that this is a temporary thing and somehow something good and decent and dare we say even Christian emerges from the ashes. Some people gloat over what has happened to ECUSA and point fingers and say "See, I told you so..." In one sense they're right. Having left, for the most part, the historic faith or any pretense to it the church is in a death spiral and it may be only a few years before the numbers and the declining endowments mark the final fiery crash. But what joy could there possibly be in that? ECUSA's decline means that souls are being lost and faithful remnants stretched to the breaking. Taking a perverse pleasure in that is at least as bad as the heresies that made all of this happen.
Until then we can only pray.
Monday, December 11, 2006
Still Waiting (Part 2)
Of course that hope isn't about the world, or at least the way it is at present. This "post Christian" era has become the era where things like common sense, decency, intellectual rigor, and civilization have joined faith as a thing of the past. And we're paying for it big time. Having cut ourselves from the moorings of that worldview (Christianity) which made us civil, prosperous, educated, and less prone to say, running into battle naked and painted blue, we now are what have conned ourselves into thinking is "free", that is we are adrift on an ocean of our own thoughts, emotions, hungers, and deficiencies in a rudderless ship with no sails. I sometimes wonder why God hasn't just taken a look at all of us and decided for the sake of mercy and the good of this planet to hit the "delete" button and send humanity back to wherever failed experiments go. That is if we don't do it ourselves first.
So I don't have much hope in people, myself included. We're just at a real stupid stage right now and the best I suppose we can hope for is getting out of it without a wholesale slaughter. And anyone who claims they can solve it only indicates thier delusion.
I have to throw my hope in with God. Although from my little world the current evidence for some sort of control in all of this is not at a high point I still believe. I still think that Jesus just plain makes sense and although I'm far from a perfect example of what that means I'll still give it my best shot. And as to Christmas, well, devils in human form visit us all the time and do thier worst so why couldn't God visit and give His best?
After all it would only take once...
Friday, December 8, 2006
To be who we are...
And I think sometimes as well about what would happen if Christians stood up and administered the same kind of harsh justice and retribution that seems to be so much a part of the Islamic world these days. When the Pope is insulted by Turks just do what thier mob would do and rampage in the streets a while and burn the embassy to the ground. The truth is the Islamic fanatics are able to do what they can do because they have only felt the smallest edge of our power and truthfully have no idea what hell could be unleashed if were truly angry.
But therein lies the point, we are not called to anger, to destruction, or revenge. It is not our way and when we resort to it we degrade ourselves. Our Lord, our Prophet, our King calls us to a different way of life and it's not always an easy way because we must sift everything, even our thoughts and emotions, through His teachings. In a broken world this puts us at a short term tactical disadvantage against any agressor even as we hope for the salvation of the world and the Kingdom come. At times that Kingdom has come only through our own bodies being broken, like His, for those who hate us.
I will tell you that I do not always understand this. I know it in my brain as factual but it does not always touch my heart and certainly often misses influencing my attitudes. Can I truly, as Jesus asks, love someone like Osama Bin Laden and any number of those people in the angry mobs who really do want to hurt me and make my life a kind of slavery to thier warped vision? Can I pray for them? Will I be strong enough? And what happens when push becomes shove and they are not somewhere over there but right here and in my face?
I have no answers. I probably won't until the time comes. But faith is only true when its challenged and these are challenging times indeed.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
For what it's worth...
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Lost in the shuffle...
From the Orthodox side of the divide there are still issues of substance that need to be resolved in all of this, pesky things that can't simply be covered over by theo-speak papers and pronouncements. Ironically the very concept of what the Pope has become is one of those things. Yet pressed by secularism in the West and the rising tide of angry Islam in the East the divides are getting smaller, the inconsequential issues are losing thier power, and there may be some movement towards talking about and dealing with the major items like Creed and Papacy that won't be settled by "live and let live". We'll see.
And therein lies a related point. What crisis, what threatening horizon will finally force the various jurisdictions of Orthodox Christians in North America to return to unity? Its obvious that in peaceful times with the cash still flowing the people who can make a difference on this issue seem to be moving very slowly. Everyone agrees the current situation in North America is non-canonical, even sinful, hampers the work of the Church, and keeps us from having the resources, will, and voice to truly impact our culture but when push comes to shove there is neither.
They say these things take time and there is a truth in that but time for what? I don't believe its about the time needed to negotiate the merger of structures, the arrangements of dioceses, and the building of a cohesive national church. We could live with that. I think it's more about ethnic turf, hanging on to sentimental old world arrangements, money, and the fear of change even for the better.
The worse part about it may be that it will take some catastrophe, some threat, some real harm to provide the impetus to make unity happen. What could be done peacefully, deliberately, and with care may have to be put together at the last moment under the gun and at terms not nearly as favorable as those which presently exist.
Regardless I believe God will guide us and bring us together. It is His will that Christians be one. I just hope we are blended together by joyful obedience to His desire and not melted together in the furnace.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Still waiting...
It hasn't hit me yet. The Christmas spirit that is.
In the past few years I've just been a slow starter, a man going through the motions of preparing and doing this and that until one day it hits me. Until then it's just business, a kind of detached working through task upon task while the clock ticks away.
Now it's hard to say what will be the trigger this year. Sometimes its a song. Other times its something I see. Once in a while I will be just sitting there by myself and it arrives. Who knows? But one thing is certain. Right now there is nothing, like someone from Mars seeing everything for the first time and not having a clue as to what's happening and no particular curiousity about it at all.
The truth is right now I mostly want everything to get done and over with and the sooner the better. My day will be December 26th, the Feast of the Most Tranquil Sleep, when all that lies between me and my happiness is a pillow. That all being said it should be noted that I'm not some Scrooge with a primordial loathing of this time. I'm really a guy for whom this time is mostly about work and a kind of exhaustion based game of chicken with December 25th. The magic and holiness and grace of this time has not left but finds, over the years, more clever places to hide with a correspondingly harder task of seeking. Right now not even Nat King Cole's Christmas CD, usually a fairly effective unearther of the holiday spirit, works.
It'll come, though, maybe only when I'm driving back from LaCrosse on Christmas morning. Maybe sooner. I don't know. Until then I'll just work and wait.
Monday, December 4, 2006
A little something on the Packers...
Thursday, November 30, 2006
So this is Christmas...
At times I feel the anger as well. I even participate in it. From the thoughts that run through my mind when I see crazy things and people on the TV to the words that sometimes slip out of my mouth when the traffic runs foul I swim in this crazed sea and find myself struggling just to stay afloat. There are moments when I would relish being dictator of the world for just one day with the power to set the world in my image and secure harsh justice by the power of my word.
Some of that is natural, the world seems crazy and sane people will think insane thoughts just to have some sense of order in their world, some sense of being secure and in control of the ride. People voted Hitler into power and there are still folks who have sentimental thoughts about Stalin. Although most of me is repulsed to the core by the thought of it I can see, in that dark angry part of me, why that would make sense to a generation feeling lost and out of control and willing to take the risk of totalitarian rule to make it all go away. I suppose it could happen here as well, why should we be immune to the seductions of such ideas?
And though I sometimes come close to the edge I do not want to give in to the will to power, the angry mind, the treating of the other as an object of my will, to hate, and the rampaging emotions of our times. I am aware of these days and part of me wants to run away and hide and another part wants to engage the game by the rules that seem to be presently in play but the end of both is futility.
There is another way, a way often drowned out by the voices of a sad and broken world but still the way things must be if we are not to extinguish ourselves. It is the way of the child of Bethlehem, the One who came into this world to bring light and peace and a taste of heaven here and its fullness in the time to come. Some feeble poor number of us have to hold out for it, as tainted as we are, and risk being called naive, idealistic, or insane. Some few lights need to shine like candles in a great dark wind and take the risk of being snuffed out as the cost of knowing what light is, even for a moment.
What a task for imperfect people, for sinners, to assume yet how much more is its undertaking required when the world seem so crazy and the order of things struggles like a wounded animal. But to know this is to understand Christmas, the time of nativity, in its most basic and primal truth and the hope of the angel's song on that long ago night.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
The offensive cross...
Here is the story of a judge's order to cover a cross deemed "offensive" (Christians know that the cross has always been "offensive in its own way 1 Corinthians 1:23-24) with a video about the action below.
Jesus said "I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33 RSV)
Monday, November 27, 2006
Kill your television....
The History Channel, of course, is another story. BTW Genghis Khan died on my birthday and knowing that makes me...what? I shudder to think.
Little losses...
More than a decade ago I had family living in northern Minnesota minutes away from the border, so close, in fact that they often went to Winnipeg for shopping. In those days all you needed to do was hold up your bucket as you passed north and Canadian customs knew you were going to pick blueberries and waved you on through. You could wave "hi" on the way back as long as our customs didn't think you were smuggling in Cuban cigars.
That seems like a long time ago. Probably was.
Of all the things I miss about these times those kinds of things, a more trusting gentle way, seem to cause the most melancholy. Now we're screened in, screened through, screened out, and travel with documents and permits and the threat of search and detainment if we miss some detail. There will probably never again be a time when you can take a joy ride into Canada like I did when I was in college or be waved across any border with a berry bucket as your credentials.
I know its necessary. I know, too, that others (like the victims of 9-11) have been inconvenienced beyond my imagination and so I have little about which to complain. But the fact I can't hardly cash a check anymore, have to pre-pay for gasoline when the sun goes down, and now may need a passport just to cross into Canada, kills me not in one big fireball but rather by hundreds of little needles each taking a drop of blood. One by one they are inconsequential, together they can be fatal.
I guess if people don't have honesty in and of themselves they will make a law to enforce it. If people aren't going to allow morality, honesty, and trust be part of thier lives there will be a regulation to that effect. I've not changed but at least now I'll have the paperwork to prove it.
Hidden things...
What can I say?
Solutions, solutions...
There can be a value to that. There are things that need to be exposed and the democratization of the media represented by the blogosphere means that people who are actually expert in thier fields, and not just pretty faces, get exposure for thier thoughts in a way the larger media would never allow. But sometimes its just about complaints.
At times I fall in to that trap. Something rubs me the wrong way and I want to gripe and have the tools to do it. Even if no one in particular is paying attention I still have the emotional satisfaction. There needs, though, to be more from me and from anyone else who occasionally taps out a paragraph or two on the web. We need solutions.
Part of what I hope to do (we have such grandiose plans when we start blogs!) is to point to one solution. I remain convinced over the years that the transformation of family, culture, and world, begins with the continuing transformation of the person. I believe, as well, that Jesus Christ presents the model to which humanity should aspire and if we wish to truly evolve as a species we have that example to measure our progress.
At times I have told my parish I would be a Christian even if there was no heaven, no life to come, simply because the way of life is one that makes for human contentment. And I think sometimes we in the Church speak too much about the life to come and too little about how following Christ makes for human happiness, a balanced life, even a physically healthier life. How many people have literally killed themselves in the endless chase for whatever the latest thing the world says is important when the rest they seek, for thier soul, thier body, thier mind, could be found in the way of Christ?
It's not about immunnity from the realities and problems of the world but perspective, a clear view even in our weaknesses of what really matters. A life with Jesus life and teachings at its core brings a kind of knowledge that allows all things to find thier true setting, thier optimal environment, thier real paradigm so the person who embraces them, embraces Him, becomes fully alive and as they grow in it all more and more human in the best sense of that word.
Therein lies, I believe, the single solution to the human question and I presume I will always struggle towards it.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
A note of thanks...
It's been a priviledge to write for you all.
On the whole...
Coming to terms with the fact that much of what the world out there calls "success" will always elude us is part of the maturing process, the understanding of life in panorama and not just snapshot. And there is a bitterness to that, no, more of a melancholy. Even when we know for a fact the hype is just that and those who have attained heights we can only imagine still carry the primal human emptiness we remain creations of what our culture values and the message has been force fed on us for so long and with such passionate intensity that we still believe we'll be the exception to the rule, the one person who can truly have it all with no regrets, no empty spots, and no loss.
But sooner or later the thinning hair or sagging this or that and the ravages of time bear undeniable witness and we have to choose. Do we wish to be some kind of caricature like those sad old people whose faces have been lifted to the point of distortion and whose energy is spent throwing themselves against thier own mortality like a "Jackass the Movie" stuntman or do we come to some knowledge greater than ourselves that allows us to place all the events of our life, including the future, in a context that understands life but is never conquered by that reality?
If only for coming to ask that question at all I am grateful for this hard year. Because the correct answer to that question is precisely the place where grace can flow in to any life and transform what in a more hopeless moment would seem to be a relentless grind towards the cemetery into a journey of hope.
I'm holding out for that, thinning hair, sagging parts, and all.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
What's with the Muslim stuff?
But let me state that there is no hate here for Muslims despite the efforts of some in that religion to portray any critique or analysis of Islam as "hate" or intolerance. I disagree with the understanding that Mohammed is a prophet of God or the Koran is the literal word of God. I believe the revelation of God found in Jesus Christ is true. True disagreement, as against unthinking bitterness, is part of the search for truth and when dissent is immediately labeled as "hate" and a topic off limits for reasonable discussion then all hope for discovering truth is killed and the world decends into night.
In that context I remain convinced people should always examine thier faith, know why they believe, understand the history of the outworking of their faith, warts and all, and come to a mature knowledge of thier religion. In the current times of turmoil such a mature understanding of religion matters more than ever and there are frankly too many people both in Islam and Christianity who have only emotional, cultural, or tribal understandings of what they believe, understandings that have become empty jars into which fanaticism can be poured. I am an Orthodox Christian not because Orthodox people, including myself, have always been shining examples of purity but rather because Orthodoxy calls me and the world to transcend brokenness and gives us an example in Jesus Christ of one who lived the fullest humanity to which we, despite our sometimes terrible deeds, aspire.
And quite frankly I believe that Muslims will find the rest they seek, the rest that has caused a number of them to resort to violence and fanaticism, in Jesus Christ. There is wisdom in Islam but it's fulfillment is in Christ who shines with such glory that even thier prophet revered Him. Christians have sometimes done terrible things to Muslims and Muslims to Christians and yet the light that is Christ, when allowed to shine freely, illumines all.
Ultimately that is what I wish. Light for me in my darkness and light for those in Islam as well.
So I speak and write and pray as a fellow traveler hoping for, as our Liturgy prays, the "union of all" in Christ.
In hiding for his life because of this...
Sex and money and happiness...
Monday, November 20, 2006
More on happiness...
Oh, and the survey says more things have little effect on happiness. But Jesus could have told you that, oh say, 20 plus centuries ago.
Global youth happiness survey...
Who are the happiest? Read the story and find out!
Thoughts after the road...
Friday, November 17, 2006
Stuff on the night before the road...
The work continues at St. Elias as the Nativity Fast begins and end of year plans (that means stewardship drives) come in to play. It's actually good to be busy because it keeps my mind off from the encroaching darkness outside. The sun sets around 5 PM now and we're getting pretty close to the time when we drive to work and back in twilight.
The truth be told I'd kind of like 2006 to be over. It's not been the happiest year personally with death being the main culprit and a kind of fatigue the other. I could use a few days in LasVegas right now which is strange because casinos bore the life out of me. But the warm dry air is a tonic. I'll put up with the general nouveau riche sleaze of Vegas baby just to get a dose of a cool summer night when the winter sets in here.
The next week will be Liturgy central with three planned on Monday night for the Presentation, Wednesday for our local pan Orthodox Thanksgiving Divine Liturgy and Sunday. This may sound strange but sometimes the Liturgy is the only place I can get some rest! It's very peaceful to be tuned into the flow of those ancient rythms.
The fast, of course, is just starting and I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm grateful for the chance to get things back in order, take care of unfinished business, and prepare myself for Christmas. What a wonderful gift to have, these special times when the Church calls for a renewed closeness to God and greater diligence in faith. The neat thing is that when hearts, including mine, turn away from the world and towards God they're actually happier and although I know its going to be a struggle I already have a sense, like other fasts, that it will be worth it. On the practical side its nice to feel like I'm truly celebrating the season and with grace may be able to avoid the gluttony hangovers that seems to have become part of this time. But the fast is young and I am a sinner so we'll see.
BTW, I have a little black book now so I can remember prayer requests and if you would like to be in it you can just write at info@stelias-lacrosse.org . I'm no great saint, not even a little one for that matter, but I'll do what I can.
The Thrill of the Chaste...
As has been mentioned before in this blog there is always a certain amount of pain in speaking to the world about the health, life, and peace that comes from practicing a Christian sexual morality, a morality with both high standards and a place for self correction when sin fails the high calling. The pain comes from knowing there will be many people, not sleazes or whores, but people looking for meaning and love and touch and togetherness who will, in thier need, buy in to a values system that will hurt them and sometimes even take thier life. There are many of us who, by grace or just dumb luck, emerged on the other side in relative safety but many more who will still only come to see the value of the Christian sexual vision by virtue of traveling through some very dark valleys.
Read the book.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
See the post below this one...
As I remember, Elton John is about to turn 60...
More signs of the times...
Of course, the first thing many critics will do is dismember the obvious illogic of this and expose Sir Elton's intellectual shortcomings. After all he's just one of a long list of entertainment celebrities who've bought into their own publicity and confused fame with depth.
But two things should be noted. First, there are more people than we know who share his thoughts despite thier obvious shallowness. Second, for Sir Elton and others to be able to believe and speak these things reveals a kind of something, or lack of it, in thier hearts which provides a rationale for irrationality. He himself may not even know what strange fire is burning inside.
But it's precisely for that dark and hidden recess in our souls, even the one that spews angry words to heaven, that Christ came and while there is life there is always hope, for you, me, and the "rocket man".
Signs of the times...
Homeless? No. Just waiting for Friday so he can be the first in line to get one of this store's allotment of 8 PlayStation 3's.
Don't know whether to laugh, or cry, or shake my head in disbelief. Maybe God wants him to be the first person I pray for in Nativity Lent.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Church marketing sucks...
The numbers game...
Now people aren't looking for nuance in this, thoughts about faithfulness, the stage of life a parish is in, or the historical development of things. They want a number and the higher the better. Everything hangs on the number.
If the number is low it must be about the Priest not measuring up or the parish being dysfunctional or some other dark secret that keeps it from being higher. When Priests talk to Priests the issue is the same and even when we offer the nuances and they are listened to with the appropriate and well practiced techniques the one speaking and those listening know that only the number matters. The rest is small talk.
And there is a certain truth in numbers. Numerical growth is normal in the church and when it is not happening there really does need to be an analysis of the situation. Sometimes the answer is simple and there are conflicts or attitudes that have driven people away or closed the doors to people coming in. Language still is one of the largest and it remains an amazing fact that so many Orthodox parishes, even those that have been in this country for decades, still cling to languages and customs that they never use outside the walls of the Church. But there are more and sometimes its not about desire or struggles or ethnicity but about lack of support and direction for growth, the failure to plan that means the Parish has planned, sometimes without knowing it, to fail. Some parishes, too, need to die but no one has the desire to say that let alone act on it. Its never as simple, despite our wish, as the number.
Numerical success, too, has to be examined. Is it an accident of immigration where a large community of people was already present and the church simply filled? Has it been about the movement of converts from other Christian communities into the life of the Church? Is it a generational thing, a burst of fertility from years past that has now come to fruition? Success numbers are complex too and may not actually reflect a vital congregation but one that fate, rather than ministry, has favored with the numbers that shape our idea of success.
A few points here, for a digression regarding the growth of Orthodoxy.
First certain areas of Orthodoxy in the United States have experienced growth but the context has to be examined. Orthodoxy, when placed against its own context of ethnic isolation in this country is experiencing a growth and flowering, but when placed in the larger Christian context of this culture is still a minor player. We speak, for example, of the growth of 200 plus new parishes in the Antiochian Archdiocese in the past few decades which is admirable given the ethos of American Orthodoxy but miniscule in comparison to say, the Assemblies of God, who will probably put up 200 new parishes this year alone. Our will to evangelize and build is still in its infancy.
Second we have to understand that we still are not doing a substantial job of reaching the unchurched. So much of our "growth" is really a reshuffling of the deck as other Christians leave thier churches for ours. While that, from our point of view (and thiers) is a movement from something less to something more it hardly marks an actual growth in the Kingdom. We're just swapping folks around and frankly there are Orthodox who have left the Church for other Christian communities as well. There are few, to my knowledge, models where hard core unchurched are being brought in from the streets into the communicant life of the Church.
And although we have taken great strides, for us, in relearning and remphasizing evangelism and growth in our parishes and clergy we are still a long ways from recovering the Orthodox vision of proclaiming the Gospel in word and deed as an integral part of what it means to be a normal Parish and parishoner. Imagine where our churches would be if half the energy spent on festivals was spent on evangelism?
Where should this lead?
Perhaps the hope should be that one day numbers will matter as they truly should, within the actual history and life of the parish and as a tool to help us direct the life and ministry of our churches. Not numbers for the raw impact and idea that a lot means things are going well, but numbers that tell us where we are strong, where we are not so strong, and where God still wants us to change and become what He desires us to be.
In the end, after all, its the "why" of the numbers, that middle place between worshipping them as indicators of success and ignoring them in the pretense of piety, that matters most of all.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Some wisdom from St. John...
Thursday, November 9, 2006
Some thoughts...
On the longest scale of things I remain, like Christianity, optimistic. The shining city of God with the beauty and purity of a bride remains within my sight and the political junkie riding the emotional roller coaster with every newscast has long ago slipped away into the night. I slept well on November 7th and last night as well.
I'm not naive or locked in some pious delusion. I read the papers and know it's a troubled world. I'm tempted sometimes, like everyone else, to seek refuge, to hide away, to go to some far away place where the world can't get at me but I know it's no use. I feel bombarded sometimes and sometimes I even envy those who are already asleep in the Lord. But that never makes what is here and now less then what it is and somehow I and we have been providentially ordered to be in this time and place.
I know, too, that the world has always been troubled. It is our lot since the first broken day of exile from Eden and only the technology, and not the human propensities, have changed. The Romans would have used tanks if they had them and the Babylonians would've have had porno movies in hotels if they could. The biggest difference, I suppose, is that in our modern media age we are force fed a bigger portion of it all and find less and less of what is good and right and pure in the cultural hog wallow.
As the larger and superficial supports in this society that have propped our vision of the world up in at least some lip service sort of way are weakening and collapsing I wonder if God is asking us a simple but profound question in all of this. "Do you believe in me?"
Sometimes all the passing things in which we have placed our hope need to be taken away, or at least threatened, before we see what matters most. And in thier departure we see ourselves as we really are and whether what we claim to believe really matters or was all just fluff.
The ascetics knew this, those holy people of long ago who left the world to pursue God. And perhaps this time, this epoch of history, is a time of asceticism for the Church, a time when God is making for us the choice the desert fathers and mothers made for themselves, and bringing us into the wilderness so we, stripped of everything else, have only God and in realizing that come to understand that we have everything we need, aways did.
Just a thought from a sinner pondering things to vast for him to understand.