Living through this little while

At that time : Jesus said to his disciples : A little while and ye shall not see me : and again a little while, and ye shall see me ; because I go to the Father.
John 16


Our Lord delayeth not his promised coming. Yea, again a little while, and we shall se him. Yea, and when we thus shall see him, then shall we ask for nothing more ; for no desire will be unsatisfied, and no riddle unsolved.

This "little while" seemeth a very long while to us now, while as yet it is still going on, but when it is ended, we shall realize what a little while it was. Let not our joy, then, be like that of the world, whereof it is said : The world shall rejoice. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, and yet, while, as hitherto, our gladness is still coming to the birth through throes of sorrow, let us not be altogther sorrowful, but as the Apostle hath it : Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation. A woman, when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come ; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.

St. Augustine

Pacifist Viking

The Pacifist Viking is a hilarious blog on sports and sportswriting. Thanks to Esgetology for pointing me towards it.

Mother Earth or Sister Earth?

Cranach reminded me of this quote by Chesterton :

"The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our Mother...The main point of Christianity was this: nature is not our mother: nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same Father; but she has no authority over us..." -GK Chesterton

I got an award ...

.... from the Associated Church Press for an article I wrote for Touchstone last year. Read about it here.

Self promotion, yes, I know.

Those who are with us are more than those who are with them

15 When the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. And the servant said, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” 16 He said, “Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” 17 Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 2 Kings 6 ESV

I am leading a Bible study of 1 and 2 Kings in our church. I am enjoying it very much. Is not the passage above one we should bring to mind often as Christians? God is for us, who can be against us? The Holy Cross goes before, the angel hosts stream around us, we join them in worship. All of it invisible to the eye but seen by faith.

One of the pleasures of leading this study is reading Peter Leithart's commentary on Kings. Here is a bit on this passage:

Unlike premodern Christians, modern Christians are often functional empiricists, who instinctively believe that only visible things are real. At best, we are deists: of course, there is God up there somewhere, but he is a long way off. We do not think we have to press through a crowd of angels every time we move; we do not think that a small angelic deployment runs ahead of us into danger; we do not think, as the poet Francis Thompson does, that we disturb an angel every time we turn a stone; we do not think, to quote Thompson again, that Jacob's ladder is pitched between heaven and Charing Cross. But the Bible and Christian tradition are united in the insistence that angels are real and active. The Lord Jesus appears to his people in the Old Testament as the "angel of Yahweh," and the psalmist promises that God sets his angels as guardians around us, lest we dash our foot against a stone (Ps. 91:11-13). Angels are mediators of the law (Gal. 3: 19), join in our worship on a heavenly Zion and are observers of our witness (1 Cor. 11: 10), minister to Jesus after his temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4: 11), and serve as God's ministers (Ps. 103:20). Humans are made for a while lower than angels, but we are destined to judge angels (1 Cor. 6:3). Yet, they are servants of God and humans, constantly active in God's world.

We are, in short, Elisha's servants. When we face dangers and troubles, we often despair and fear because we are seeing only with the eyes of flesh. Paul says that "we walk by faith, not by sight," but we frequently do the opposite. If we hope to see the fiery chariots that surround us, we need to have our sight cleansed and our sins forgiven. We must come to Jesus with the prayer of Bartimaeus: "Lord, that I may receive my sight."



1&2 Kings, Peter Leithart, p. 202

"Send" may be the most dangerous four-letter word of the 21st century

Here is an interesting review of a book on email. It is a good read if only to read of others embarassing email mistakes.

I give a hearty amen to these paragraphs:

Unconsciously, perhaps, we believe an e-mail is less permanent than a letter. We imagine it as a casual private message that vanishes into the ether. In fact, it's likely to be far more permanent than any paper communication. E-mails can be stored with ease by the recipients and by third parties, such as the corporations from which they are sent.

An e-mail has a way of making us impetuous. As S&S say, "It actually eggs us on. On e-mail, people aren't quite themselves: they are angrier, less sympathetic, less aware. ... E-mail has a tendency to encourage the lesser angels of our nature."

And this:

Perhaps Eliot Spitzer, now the governor of New York, got it right when, as state attorney general, he offered advice about political survival. "Never talk when you can nod," he said. "And never write when you can talk." One more thing: "Never put it in an e-mail."

Rolling Stone and celebrity religion

If you are curious what folks like Jann Wenner, Jack Nicholson, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Norman Mailer, Bill Moyers think of religious matters, read this.

Jesus has left the building?

Jesus left the building to make room for Lou Reed.

Another story on the decline of Christianity in Europe.

Pop Music : Fakin It

Faking It: the quest for authenticity in popular music, Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor Faber & Faber.

I think I need to read this book. Here are bits of a great review.



We slightly older boys and girls were past that kids' stuff; we listened to 1980s art-punk and traditional blues - two of the fakest musical genres ever presented to the public as revelations of the real - and it was to the forgotten pain of dead black men, Skip James and Son House and Mississippi John Hurt, that we raised our 40-ouncers.

Little did we know that these musicians had been served up to us on platters, literally, resurrected 30 years before by another generation of white college boys who had looked up and recorded the old men as stand-ins for their fantasies of the romantic savage. They had at least bothered to produce some records; all my friends and I did was listen to them and drink malt liquor, a beverage manufactured to exploit poor black people and winos of all races. For us, it was liquid authenticity.

...

But Leadbelly, Barker and Taylor reveal, was by necessity a master of "faking it", a sophisticated musician of cosmopolitan taste limited to a repertoire of "Negro" songs and told by his manager to perform in prison garb.

Love the shepherd by loving the sheep

But listen to John's words: If you do not love the brother that you can see, how can you love the God you cannot see ? It is by loving the sheep that you show your love for the shepherd, for the sheep are the members of the shepherd.

Indeed, it was to make the sheep members of his own body that the Lord became one of them himself, that he allowed himself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter, and that he allowed the Baptist to point him out and say to him: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. Surely a crushing burden for a lamb! But that lamb possessed tremendous strength.

Do you wish to know how much strength was in this lamb? Because the lamb was crucified, the lion was overcome. If he could vanquish the devil by his own death, think with what power he is able to rule the world! May nothing, then, ever be dearer to us than Christ the Lord; let us love him with all our hearts.

Augustine, Sermon 229N, 1, PLS 2, 579; Journey with the Fathers, Series C, p.53.

That he might depart from the world as a believer

From an article on the Issues Etc website. By Dennis Kastens on infant baptism.


Also from this era are headstones for children who received emergency baptism with ages ranging from 11 months to 12 years. Since the patristic sources of the third century, as those earlier, give us to understand that the children of Christian parents were baptized in infancy, we must conclude that these emergency baptisms were administered to children of non-Christians. The inscriptions themselves confirm this conclusion. In the Roman catacomb of Priscilla is reference to a private emergency baptism that was administered to the one-and-three-quarter-year-old Apronianus and enabled him to die as a believer. The inscription reads:

Dedicated to the departed.
Florentius made this inscription
for his worthy son Apronianus who
lived one year and nine months and five days.
As he was truly loved by his grandmother
and she knew that his death was imminent,
she asked the church that he might depart from the world as a believer.

Meet me in St.Louie?

The New York Times takes a swipe at St. Louis.

We know no other sacrifice

Here are a couple of goodies by Luther on the old stalwart of a doctrine: justification by faith alone. Much maligned by many, it remains the only plank of hope in crazy, sin sick world filled with crazy, sin sick people. It is our only hope as Christians as we constantly try to fool ourselves that we are really not so bad after all.


From this anyone can clearly see how a Christian is free from all things and over all things so that he needs no works to make him righteous and save him, since faith alone abundantly confers all these things. Should he grow so foolish, however, as to presume to become righteous, free, saved, and a Christian by means of some good work, he would instantly lose faith and all its benefits, a foolishness aptly illustrated in the fable of the dog who runs along a stream with a piece of meat in his mouth and, deceived by the reflection of the meat in the water, opens bis mouth to snap at it and so loses both the meat and the reflection.
Freedom of the Christian, 356. AE, vol. 31.


For God will accept no other mediation and no other mediator than his only Son, whom the Father sent into the world and whom he caused to shed his blood for the sole purpose that he might thereby obtain for us the treasure of faith. That, briefly, is the sum total of the gospel that we preach.

And if anyone seeks another way to be freed from his sins and stand before God, he blasphemes and insults God and accuses him of lying, as if he had let his Son shed his blood in vain and his death had accomplished nothing and was of no importance.

For this is what God insists on and nothing else, that no one shall stand
before him except by that innocent blood alone. And if anyone undertakes some other method, such as his works or order or station in life, he shall belong to the devil much more than anyone else. For it is a very serious matter with God and he will have no jest made of it, because for this purpose he gave his Son to die. For that reason we know and have no other sacrifice than that which he made on the cross, on which he died once for all as the, Epistle to the Hebrews [9:12, 26] says, and thereby put away the sins of all men and also made us holy for eternity.
The Abomination of the Secret Mass, 312-313, AE. vol. 36.

Thier eyes were opened

These words from Leo I point out the parallel "their eyes were opened" in the Garden and on the Emmaus road. The effect is opposite. In the first they see their nakedness and shame; in the latter, their Savior.


It was during these days, that as two of his disciples were walking together, the
Lord joined himself to them, as a third companion. And to the end that all shadow of doubt should be cleared from our mind, he rebuked the slowness of such as still feared and trembled. Their hearts, thus enlightened by faith, caught the flame ; and whereas they had afore been cold, they glowed again as the Lord opened to them the Scriptures. Thus in the Breaking of the Bread are opened the eyes of such as sit at meat with him. And O how much happier were they with their eyes opened, and gazing upon the glorification of our nature in his Person, than were the first father and mother of our race, upon whom their own transgression had brought shame!


Leo I

The Shelters, Toil and Blood, etc

While other kids fascinated with rock and roll in junior high and high school went off to their rooms and learned the guitar or drums by obsessive practice, I doodled. I scribbled song titles and names for bands. I outlined whole fake albums with names for the band and song titles for side one and two. Eventually I would even write lyrics for these imaginary songs. It was always about the words.

Not much has changed. I found myself in airports and public places by myself for large stretches of time this past weekend and my mind started playing these games. So I made a list of potential rock band names from the first verse of the Dylan song "Shelter from the Storm." Pretty weird, huh? And, of course, totally worthless.

Here is what I came up with. First the lyric from Mr. Zimmerman. Then the band names.


Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Another Lifetime,
The Lifetimes
The Toils
Toil
Toil and Blood
Blood
Blackness
The Virtues
The Roads
Mud
The Muds
Road
Full of Mud
Came in from the Wilderness
The Wilderness
Creature
The Creatures
Void
The Voids
Form
Void of Form
The Forms
Shelter from the storm
The Shelters
The Storms
Shelter
Storm

Evel Kneivel, conversion, revival and the Crystal Cathedral

This is such an American story: Evel Knievel gets Jesus at Bike week in SC, gives a testimony at the Crystal Cathedral, everybody gets weeping fits, a mass revival is sparked in the Cathedral which lately has struggled.

American to the core! Viva Las vegas!

If this is not the death of rock and roll ...

... it is pretty close. An entire issue of an academic journal dedicated to the Kinks.

I am a big fan of the Kinks. I am a big fan of writing and analysis. But this kind of dissection of rock and roll kinda kills it all for me. Once the frog smells of formaldehyde and you're looking at its innards, the frog is dead.

This smells like formaldehyde.


"This Is Where I Belong"--Identity, Social Class, and the Nostalgic Englishness of Ray Davies and the Kinks. By: Baxter-Moore, Nick. Popular Music & Society, May 2006, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p145-165.

Relations in the Kinks--Familiar but not Fully Familial. By: Weinstein, Deena. Popular Music & Society, May 2006, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p167-187.

Preserving the Old Ways, Protecting the New: Post-War British Urban Planning in the Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. By: Lupro, Michael Mooradian. Popular Music & Society, May 2006, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p189-200.

The Greatest Rock Star of the 19th Century: Ray Davies, Romanticism, and the Art of Being English. By: Kraus, Michael J.. Popular Music & Society, May 2006, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p201-212.

Za Kinkusu: Ray Davies and the Rise and Fall and Rise of Japanese Rock and Roll. By: Bourdaghs, Michael K.. Popular Music & Society, May 2006, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p213-221.

Rebellion or Transformation: Dave Davies's Spiritual Journey from the 1960s to the Present: A Contextual Analysis. By: Fleiner, Carey. Popular Music & Society, May 2006, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p223-240.

Think Visual: The Kinks vs. the Music Industry. By: Kitts, Thomas M.. Popular Music & Society, May 2006, Vol. 29 Issue 2, p241-254.

Somehow this just doesn't have the same ring to it:

Somehow this just doesn't have the same ring to it:

"Hail Persephone, full of strength and beauty. ... Blessed are you and blessed is the cycle of your life. Holy Persephone, queen of life and death, pray for your children now, and in the hour of our need. Blessed be."

Read it about it here. Neo-pagans retooling the Hail Mary. Ho, hum. Another day, another outrage.

I am Lutheran anyway so I don't go in for the whole praying to Mary thing but please can't you make your own prayers and not ruin someone else's ancient and (in its own sacrilegious way) beautiful prayer?

In case, you are wondering Persephone is not a handy cell for the lady's handbag ... she is the Greek goddess of the underworld.

Death: sneered at, hit, abused, bound hand and foot

A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is supplied by a present fact, namely this. All the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead.

Before the divine sojourn of the Savior, even the holiest of men were afraid of death, and mourned the dead as those who perish. But now that the Savior has raised His body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection.

But that devil who of old wickedly exulted in death, now that the pains of death are loosed, he alone it is who remains truly dead. There is proof of this too; for men who, before they believe in Christ, think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it so completely that they go eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses of the Savior's resurrection from it. Even children hasten thus to die, and not men only, but women train themselves by bodily discipline to meet it. So weak has death become that even women, who used to be taken in by it, mock at it now as a dead thing robbed of all its strength.

Death has become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot the passers-by sneer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of the king who has conquered him. So has death been conquered and branded for what it is by the Savior on the cross. It is bound hand and foot, all who are in Christ trample it as they pass and as witnesses to Him deride it, scoffing and saying, "O Death, where is thy victory? O Grave, where is thy sting ?"

Athanasius, De Incarnatione, Chapter 5.

The stomach will not hunger, sins will not oppress, I will no more fear death

Here is a very nice bit of a an Easter Sermon by Luther. The whole thing is online here.

Mt 28, 10 - "Fear not: go tell my brethren that they depart into Galilee, and there shall they see me."

These are the very first words they heard from Christ after his resurrection from the dead, by which he confirmed all the former utterances and loving deeds he showed them, namely, that his resurrection avails in our behalf who believe, so that he therefore anticipates and calls Christians his brethren, who believe it, and yet they do not, like the apostles, witness his resurrection.

The risen Christ waits not until we ask or call on him to become his brethren. Do we here speak of merit, by which we deserve anything? What did the apostles merit? Peter denied his Lord three times; the other disciples all fled from him; they tarried with him like a rabbit does with its young. He should have called them deserters, yea, betrayers, reprobates, anything but brethren. Therefore this word is sent to them through the women out of pure grace and mercy, as the apostles at the time keenly experienced, and we experience also, when we are mired fast in our sins, temptations and condemnation.

These are words. full of all comfort that Christ receives desperate villains as you and I are and calls us his brethren, Is Christ really our brother, then I would like to know what we can be in need of? Just as it is among natural brothers, so is it also here. Brothers according to the flesh enjoy the same possessions, have the same father, the one inheritance, otherwise they would not be brothers: so we enjoy with Christ the same possessions, and have in common with him one Father and one inheritance, which never decreases by being distributed, as other inheritances do; but it ever grows larger and larger; for it is a spiritual inheritance. But an earthly inheritance decreases when distributed among many persons. He who has a part of this spiritual inheritance, has it all.

However, what is Christ's inheritance? His heritage is life and death, sin and grace, all that is in heaven and earth, eternal truth, power, wisdom, righteousness; he governs and rules over all, over hunger and thirst, over fortune and misfortune, over everything imaginable, whether in heaven or on earth, not only spiritual but also secular affairs; and the sum total of all is, he has all things in his hand, be they eternal or temporal. Now if I believe on him, I become partaker with him of all his possessions, and obtain not only a part or a piece; but, like him, I obtain all, eternal righteousness, eternal wisdom, eternal strength, and become a lord and reign over all. The stomach will not hunger, sins will not oppress, I will no more fear death, nor be terror-stricken by Satan, and I will never be in want, but will be like Christ the Lord himself.

Some things I am learning

As I get older,

(not that I am really old.... every time I mention my sense of advancing age, some of my friends accuse me of melancholy... I'm not hung up on it, just aware of my increasing store of experience upon which to draw)

I am more and more sure of a few things :


1. The church (of all ages) is way smarter than I will ever be.

2. I am not in control of my life or its outcomes. Most of what I experience is either the random effects of billions of choices made by others and myself or the guiding hand of a loving God. By faith, I opt for the latter.

3. Childbirth is painful and exhilarating. Watching your children grow up and leave for college and what not is also painful but exhilarating. For the father who was but a very interested bystander in the intense physical struggle that accompanied the first ordeal, the second is felt more immediately.

4. Relief pitching is very important. My Houston Astros had a lead in last night's opener in the bottom of the ninth. Lidge gave up a homer to tie, then, in the tenth Qualls gave up another to lose. Ouch.

Ground of being, we respect you

From Mere Comments and the Midwest Conservative Journal comes this newest version of the Lord's prayer. It comes from something called the "Non-Theistic Liturgy Resources Working Group" .



My Creator (soul's Source, spirit's Destination, Ground of Our Being, etc.)

in whom/which is heaven, or within which we can find heaven (as co-creators)

we revere/respect you

We will work to see your divine intent become a reality where we live.

We will work to see that everyone has the food they need to live and have health and energy to contribute to the welfare of Earth and its life systems.

We sense that we are forgiven for our admitted shortcomings to the extent that we art able to forgive others their failures.

We recognize the presence of evil in our world and strive to avoid being a part of it as well as pointing it out whenever we are aware of it.

We work for these changes in our lives and in the lives of others in the spirit of Jesus who cared for all those who were unjustly treated or oppressed.

May we make these things so.

Palm Sunday is a wonderful day

Palm Sunday is a wonderful day. Just following, simply and without much adornment, the basic rubrics in LSB or LW or LBW for this day yields a rich liturgy full of profundity and movement and beauty.

The movement from the happy rejoicing outside in the weather with the people (especially wide eyed children!) clutching palms, with the procession inside, onward through the themes of advent and kingship and Jerusalem and Zion and the heavenly gates only to land at the reading of the Passion and a sober Passion hymn as the service ends and we are squarely facing the gruesome victorious cross ... It is good.

It is something only the church through centuries of praying and devotion and practice could have given. No pastor or worship committee or publising house could ever have produced such a thing. Only the lived experience of countless pilgrims and pastors singing, chanting, praying, preaching can bequeath a gift like this.

I am, if you cannot tell, exhausted but satisfied.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Shorpys

Microsoft, it isn't. This image is of Treasury Department workers in the first decades of the last century figuring bonuses for veterans.

It is available on a site called Shorpys A friend of mine, Dr. Lawrence Rast, pointed it out to me and it is a remarkable site, full of tons of old photographs ranging from old "negro houses" in New Orleans in the 1930's to railroad workers in Clinton Iowa in 1943.

If you are like me when your wife takes you to an antique store, you head to the books and the old postcards and boxes full of photos and memorabilia. This is an online version only more significant than most of what you find in an antique store.