Still Waiting (Part 2)

The Christmas spirit hasn't hit yet, but at least there's a sense of hope.

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...

What I want my soul to sound like...

To be who we are...

I must confess there is a part of me that sees the Middle East and the struggles of these times with a jaundiced eye. On the way to work today I said to my wife "Maybe what we should do is realize the Iraqi's are just not intellectually, socially, and emotionally capable of civil government and put Saddam back in power." Perhaps, I think in dark moments, they need to feel the iron fist and hear the sound of the chipper shredders at work again to realize that using thier freedom to settle centuries old grudges is just plain stupid.

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.

Do we worship the same God?

An interesting article, actually a review, of a book that addresses this issue.

Betcha everyone shows up for services...

A link to this story of one Somali town's methods to encourage daily prayers...

For what it's worth...

An article with some seldom heard insight on Constantinople, Islam, and double standards with regard to holy places.

Free Constantinople items available here.

I'm a big fan...

Lost in the shuffle...

Lost in the shuffle of the press coverage of the Pope's visit to Turkey was the actual purpose of the visit, namely to meet with the Ecumenical Patriarch and continue dialogue aimed at healing the rifts between the Roman and Orthodox churches.

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.

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.

A little something on the Packers...

I came home yesterday to find the house completey redone in Christmas style with my Green Bay Packer Santa hat on the bedpost. Tis the season.

It's been a very bad past few years for the Packers. Teams that aren't doing well on the field like to call these times "rebuilding years" as if they are in the process of making something better out of what they have but the truth is these are just plain lean years for the Packers and thier fans. With a quarterback who is sure to be in the Hall of Fame but whose best years are in the rear view mirror the Packers have eked out just four wins this year, flashes of sunshine in a two year long gray day.

But they have a part of my heart. Probably always will.

I'm certainly not as fervent as some fans. They do, after all, have Packers caskets available for the person who wants to declare thier loyalty for the ages and I have no intention of using one. There are those, too, who will go in to a real depression when the team loses and truthfully need to get a life. The fact is my work schedule (Sunday is a work day for Priests) gives me little time to actually watch a football game and the best I often do is get some snipits of action on the radio as I drive home.

Still there is a part of me that's a Packer at heart even when other teams with better uniforms and records come calling for my favors. It's a combination of things really, growing up in Wisconsin in the glory days of the Packers, the 1960's, when everybody played the season just for the priviledge of being beaten by Green Bay in the championship game, the happy memories of childhood pretending we were Packers, and the idea that real heroes with names like Bart Starr and Ray Nitschke still roamed the Earth. The truth is it might best be said I'm a fan of all of those memories and not so much any particular Packer's team on the field in the present. But fan I am regardless.

There is a malicious part in all of this as well, a kind of response to the snobbery of some Minnesotans, folks convinced after a lifetime of living here and going nowhere else that this place is somehow the kingdom to which we all aspire and citizens of lesser realms are at best objects of the kind of pity reserved for the savages in missionary slide shows. The walloping of Minnesota sports teams, which happens more often than not, is a painful reminder to such folks that life exists, thrives, and even conquers outside of this place and for those of us who have come from other places gives a silent pleasure in the misery of those who remain perplexed as to why such terrible things could happen to such sanctified folks.

But this is a waiting year, a year to grab for any sliver of hope and remember the great days past when we were kids and played schoolyard football and dreamt of great days to come. They will, always do, and until then I'll take out my stuff every once in a while and show the colors. Go Pack!!!