Sometimes it seems, at least on cursory review that some of the church fathers and early writers saw marriage as, at best, a kind of condescension to human weakness, a way to at least regulate a base and primal urge.
I suppose some of it may be that large numbers of those who could write in those days were, if not monastic in their orientation, monastics themselves and being monastic would see the path they had chosen as a better one, like St. Paul. Some also saw the promiscuity in the larger culture (yes the baby boomers didn't invent "gettin it on") and in themselves and reacted with over statement.
Yet the Scripture and and the Tradition are very clear, marriage is honorable, full of grace, and a holy path for those men and women who prayerfully choose it. And I sense that every day because I have an extraordinary khouria (Arabic for priest's wife) and on the occasion of this day, her birthday, I'm reminded again of how much I have received despite my unworthiness.
It's not easy to be the wife of a priest. The expectations, rightly or wrongly, can be high. The schedules sometimes get messed up. And their are times, like today, of absence, when the duties of the calling separate a priest and his family and one must make do as best as possible. Some parishes even still expect a "twofer" that is they get two people full time serving the church for one salary. Oh, by the way, the job description keeps changing too, sometimes every week.
As we've traveled from place to place and followed the path that God has set for us my wife has been the single person who has been support, strength,helpful critic, and the foundation of our life together. Nothing that I have done or will do could happen without her and if there are rewards for something I've done that somehow escapes the refiners fire it will be at least half hers and maybe all.
Far from a condescension to weakness we are strong together in a way that we could not be alone and together we have endured much and yet have also known a kind of joy that comes only when it can be shared. This fall will mark 22 years of marriage, and if, by God's grace there are 22 more I would not complain.
I'm only sad for St. Augustine because if he had known what I have known the world may have been very different.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
A quote worth remembering...
"The liturgy has always been a way to elevate even the lowliest of believers, sometimes the only way available to them, so that a de-emphasis of beauty in music, buildings, and language, in the name of ease to understand or comprehend faith, has the unfortunate result of eliminating the main channel by which people can escape from a deadening common culture whose principles are the opposite of this elevation to beauty."
From this article.
From this article.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Lexington, Kentucky...
It's around 9:30 PM and I've just gotten up from an evening's nap. You never how tired you are until you lay down on a really nice hotel bed for a few minutes and wake up four hours later.
Lexington, Kentucky is about 13 hours south and east by car from St. Paul, Minnesota and another Priest and I took the trip on Tuesday. The road was mostly fine with the usual gouging for tolls around Chicago and a few blinding rainstorms through central Indiana. We were up before 5 AM and then with travel and a few other things we needed to do were asleep sometime around 11 at night and then up again at 6 AM for Matins at St, Michael's Church in Louisville on Wednesday. Now you know why I drifted off before supper tonight and still may head right back to bed after this is done.
Kentucky was once the frontier in America, the edge of the wilderness and populated by hearty souls who put cabins on the sides of hills and cut fields out of the forest to make farms. It still has much of that wild beauty although now its thoroughly modern and punctuated with sky scapers. Only the heat, thick and beautiful in its own way as it flows through the shade trees, feels like the old south.
And yes, Orthodoxy is here in a kind of bustling athletic way at St. Michael's in Louisville with its hundreds of members and plethora of programs and in a more gentle, but no less vibrant, way here in Lexington and St. Andrew's, the host of our Diocesan Conference here at the hotel. Orthodoxy shows up in all kinds of places and is actually growing in the south far from the ethnic bastions of the American northeast. Quite under the larger culture's radar Orthodoxy is establishing itself across the United States, quietly doing its work, and subtlely planting its seeds.
We're subversives, you know, we Orthodox. Right in the middle of a crazy consumer culture where the ground seems to shake with every twitch of shallowness we're digging deep and building for the long haul, for forever for that matter. We're the real counter culture, the alternative to a world that sometimes seem to have gone blind stinkin' drunk on its own home brew. People are finding us, often despite our complete lack of inviting them, for the sake of sanity and for that something inside which drives thirsty people to water. Awed by what we have received through absolutely no worth of ourselves there are many of us who feel that if God will have mercy on us, and believe me we need it in buckets, the next great wave of the church in this land will not come from churches in auditoriums with television shows but in these little seeds of Orthodox life and faith being planted in places that only God knows why and the hearts of seekers of truth, beauty, and the God of the universe.
Watch for it.
Lexington, Kentucky is about 13 hours south and east by car from St. Paul, Minnesota and another Priest and I took the trip on Tuesday. The road was mostly fine with the usual gouging for tolls around Chicago and a few blinding rainstorms through central Indiana. We were up before 5 AM and then with travel and a few other things we needed to do were asleep sometime around 11 at night and then up again at 6 AM for Matins at St, Michael's Church in Louisville on Wednesday. Now you know why I drifted off before supper tonight and still may head right back to bed after this is done.
Kentucky was once the frontier in America, the edge of the wilderness and populated by hearty souls who put cabins on the sides of hills and cut fields out of the forest to make farms. It still has much of that wild beauty although now its thoroughly modern and punctuated with sky scapers. Only the heat, thick and beautiful in its own way as it flows through the shade trees, feels like the old south.
And yes, Orthodoxy is here in a kind of bustling athletic way at St. Michael's in Louisville with its hundreds of members and plethora of programs and in a more gentle, but no less vibrant, way here in Lexington and St. Andrew's, the host of our Diocesan Conference here at the hotel. Orthodoxy shows up in all kinds of places and is actually growing in the south far from the ethnic bastions of the American northeast. Quite under the larger culture's radar Orthodoxy is establishing itself across the United States, quietly doing its work, and subtlely planting its seeds.
We're subversives, you know, we Orthodox. Right in the middle of a crazy consumer culture where the ground seems to shake with every twitch of shallowness we're digging deep and building for the long haul, for forever for that matter. We're the real counter culture, the alternative to a world that sometimes seem to have gone blind stinkin' drunk on its own home brew. People are finding us, often despite our complete lack of inviting them, for the sake of sanity and for that something inside which drives thirsty people to water. Awed by what we have received through absolutely no worth of ourselves there are many of us who feel that if God will have mercy on us, and believe me we need it in buckets, the next great wave of the church in this land will not come from churches in auditoriums with television shows but in these little seeds of Orthodox life and faith being planted in places that only God knows why and the hearts of seekers of truth, beauty, and the God of the universe.
Watch for it.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Why you should read Mark Steyn...
Agree or disagree the man has a razor edge wit and can write with the best of them.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
I Couldn't Resist Part 2...
A Sunday School teacher was explaining the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal. She told her class how the Prophet put the wood on the altar, cut the animal in pieces, and then ordered water to be poured again and again on the sacrifice. Then she asked her class, "Why do you think Elijah wanted the water poured over the animal on the altar?" A little girl in the back of the glass started waving her hand and said, "To make the gravy."
__________
A Sunday School teacher was telling her class the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and how Lot's wife looked back at the cities while they were running away and turned into a pillar of salt. A little boy interrupted "My mommy looked back once when we were driving and turned into a telephone pole."
__________
A Sunday School teacher was telling her class the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and how Lot's wife looked back at the cities while they were running away and turned into a pillar of salt. A little boy interrupted "My mommy looked back once when we were driving and turned into a telephone pole."
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
An odd thought...
A little investigation would seem to show a large number (perhaps a majority?) of the Muslims in places like Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan are actually descendants of Christians who apostacized when the armies of Islam came pouring out of Arabia. It would be interesting to speculate how the region, the world, and even the lives of thier children would have been different had they not abandoned the Faith.
What do you think?
What do you think?
Friday, June 15, 2007
Father's Day...
I've heard it said that a boy never really becomes a man until his father dies. There is some truth to that but it seems a high price to pay.
It has been over 13 years since my father died while on a business trip in Chicago. He had had at least one heart attack he had simply walked through, another that put him in the hospital, and the third one that took his life. My mom was at our house, which they had helped us buy, just a day after we closed on it and was starting to paint and get things ready. That meant that I was the one who had to give her the news.
On the way I remember being upset with God about his death. It wasn't so much that it wasn't expected. For years I had thought that one day I would get that late night call with the news of his passing. It just seemed like the wrong time, too soon, very much to soon.
My father seemed to have spent much of his adult life angry at how the world was, or maybe how it treated him, or how things never quite lived up to expectations. We always had food, and clothing, and more than enough (something he didn't have as a child) but the cost was living on pins and needles and wondering what kind of person was coming home from work that night. I suspect it was hard on him as well.
And when you're a child you don't understand. All you see is the person as they are in front of you at that moment and you haven't yet developed the skills to see through time and view the picture from a distance. Context is everything when you relate to people and I had no context other than the fear that something I would do or say or maybe even never had done would get me hit. It can be a harsh way to live.
But it was, in retrospect, not all dark. There were those wonderful nights when dad would come home from work and take us, one at a time, to my uncle's cabin near Tomahawk, Wisconsin to fish with a stop at the Dairy Queen on the way home. There was the day I remember him running next to me and then letting go as I rode my bike without training wheels for the very first time. There were Saturday nights at the YMCA with popcorn and a whole 16 ounce bottle of pop all for myself. I remember Sunday afternoon drives following church and driving out in the country after dark looking for deer. Dad cried sometimes on Sunday mornings when a song or hymn touched him and I'm sure that he probably wanted to be in heaven long before he actually died because Earth was sometimes pretty hard on him.
That's all the stuff I found out later, how he didn't really have a father himself, and times were tough, and the only way to get to college was by being a Marine. Although I never met her his mother seemed harsh and yet he still sent a good chunk of his enlisted man's salary home so she could live. I suspect that all haunted him and we lived with those ghosts as well. Dad saved money by riding a bike to work and then found a way to go back to college while working full time and caring for a family. Looking back I don't wonder at all why he sometimes came home, had supper, and almost immediately fell asleep on the couch.
There comes a time when you stop seeing your parents with the heroic eyes of a child or the scoffing vision of a teenager. It's a time when you see them warts and all as people who tried hard and made mistakes sometimes and were often shaped by forces beyond their control, things that you had no idea existed in the shelter of youth. By the time I reached my early thirties most of the pain had already died away. I was who I was and so was he.
And yet in those same years I saw a change in my father. I saw the goodness that had been inside of him, that something that made my mother fall in love with him and broke through as the sun set on the lake while we paddled silently for shore. I saw it emerge in a way that somehow had eluded him as the years passed. Call it grace, call it age, call it a man who had defined himself by duty now finally realizing the value of who we was and not just what he could do. I don't know what it all was but I do know it was good.
I wanted more, but time and health and work and this weary old world had done their damage and more was not to be had. So on Father's Day I'm grateful for every moment in the sun, for what glimpses I was given, for the grace that lead my father safely home. And I mourn what could have been, those gracious years when sons and fathers leave the tumultuous growing pains behind and sit next to each other in a boat fishing without words.
It has been over 13 years since my father died while on a business trip in Chicago. He had had at least one heart attack he had simply walked through, another that put him in the hospital, and the third one that took his life. My mom was at our house, which they had helped us buy, just a day after we closed on it and was starting to paint and get things ready. That meant that I was the one who had to give her the news.
On the way I remember being upset with God about his death. It wasn't so much that it wasn't expected. For years I had thought that one day I would get that late night call with the news of his passing. It just seemed like the wrong time, too soon, very much to soon.
My father seemed to have spent much of his adult life angry at how the world was, or maybe how it treated him, or how things never quite lived up to expectations. We always had food, and clothing, and more than enough (something he didn't have as a child) but the cost was living on pins and needles and wondering what kind of person was coming home from work that night. I suspect it was hard on him as well.
And when you're a child you don't understand. All you see is the person as they are in front of you at that moment and you haven't yet developed the skills to see through time and view the picture from a distance. Context is everything when you relate to people and I had no context other than the fear that something I would do or say or maybe even never had done would get me hit. It can be a harsh way to live.
But it was, in retrospect, not all dark. There were those wonderful nights when dad would come home from work and take us, one at a time, to my uncle's cabin near Tomahawk, Wisconsin to fish with a stop at the Dairy Queen on the way home. There was the day I remember him running next to me and then letting go as I rode my bike without training wheels for the very first time. There were Saturday nights at the YMCA with popcorn and a whole 16 ounce bottle of pop all for myself. I remember Sunday afternoon drives following church and driving out in the country after dark looking for deer. Dad cried sometimes on Sunday mornings when a song or hymn touched him and I'm sure that he probably wanted to be in heaven long before he actually died because Earth was sometimes pretty hard on him.
That's all the stuff I found out later, how he didn't really have a father himself, and times were tough, and the only way to get to college was by being a Marine. Although I never met her his mother seemed harsh and yet he still sent a good chunk of his enlisted man's salary home so she could live. I suspect that all haunted him and we lived with those ghosts as well. Dad saved money by riding a bike to work and then found a way to go back to college while working full time and caring for a family. Looking back I don't wonder at all why he sometimes came home, had supper, and almost immediately fell asleep on the couch.
There comes a time when you stop seeing your parents with the heroic eyes of a child or the scoffing vision of a teenager. It's a time when you see them warts and all as people who tried hard and made mistakes sometimes and were often shaped by forces beyond their control, things that you had no idea existed in the shelter of youth. By the time I reached my early thirties most of the pain had already died away. I was who I was and so was he.
And yet in those same years I saw a change in my father. I saw the goodness that had been inside of him, that something that made my mother fall in love with him and broke through as the sun set on the lake while we paddled silently for shore. I saw it emerge in a way that somehow had eluded him as the years passed. Call it grace, call it age, call it a man who had defined himself by duty now finally realizing the value of who we was and not just what he could do. I don't know what it all was but I do know it was good.
I wanted more, but time and health and work and this weary old world had done their damage and more was not to be had. So on Father's Day I'm grateful for every moment in the sun, for what glimpses I was given, for the grace that lead my father safely home. And I mourn what could have been, those gracious years when sons and fathers leave the tumultuous growing pains behind and sit next to each other in a boat fishing without words.
Random stuff...
Its been in the 90's (farenheit) for about a week now and as I write this its just starting to rain. One of the great pleasures of living in this part of the world is the cool air that comes when the rain follows a tropical (for us) day.
___________
Yesterday I indulged my fondness of baseball and my wife and I went to a Twin's game. For those of you who read this outside North America the Minnesota Twins are a Major League Baseball team. With the Twins behind 2-0 in bottom of the 8th inning we decided to leave and beat the traffic home only to discover that the team had rallied in the bottom of the 9th inning to win the game. We tried to rationalize our loss of faith by saying that our leaving was good luck for the Twins. But I sure would have liked to have stayed for that. Late game rallies are part of the magic of baseball.
___________
Besides three cats we also have two of what must be the hardiest tropical fish ever to have taken residence in an aquarium. I must confess that I am a neglectful fish owner and yet these two Platys just keep on going. However, lest you get too worried I have changed the filter, added water, and cleaned up the place a bit. Oh, and I really do feed them every day.
___________
When the weather cools down I'm going to get my Roller Blades out of storage and start back on the exercise trail. Look for injury updates.
___________
___________
Yesterday I indulged my fondness of baseball and my wife and I went to a Twin's game. For those of you who read this outside North America the Minnesota Twins are a Major League Baseball team. With the Twins behind 2-0 in bottom of the 8th inning we decided to leave and beat the traffic home only to discover that the team had rallied in the bottom of the 9th inning to win the game. We tried to rationalize our loss of faith by saying that our leaving was good luck for the Twins. But I sure would have liked to have stayed for that. Late game rallies are part of the magic of baseball.
___________
Besides three cats we also have two of what must be the hardiest tropical fish ever to have taken residence in an aquarium. I must confess that I am a neglectful fish owner and yet these two Platys just keep on going. However, lest you get too worried I have changed the filter, added water, and cleaned up the place a bit. Oh, and I really do feed them every day.
___________
When the weather cools down I'm going to get my Roller Blades out of storage and start back on the exercise trail. Look for injury updates.
___________
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