Shiny Happy People and Ho, ho, ho!

My family thinks this blog has become sad and depressing of late so without further ado I present to you ... Shiny Happy People and Ho, ho, ho! Happy New Year !

Article on the decline of churches in Brooklyn ... Sad

'Borough of Churches’ Is Less and Less So

By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BAY RIDGE — Although Brooklyn was once widely known as the “borough of churches,” some Brooklyn neighborhoods, such as Bay Ridge, have experienced diminished church attendance and funds during the past few decades.

The outgoing year, 2009, has been a particularly somber year here with two churches now closing and a few others downsizing.

This past Sunday, the Fort Hamilton Presbyterian Church, at 367 94th St., held its last service with its handful of remaining members and without a pastor for several years, and with a group of community supporters in attendance.

“We’re closing because our congregation dwindled down to a handful of people,” said 30-year church member Dilia Schack at a recent Community Board 10 meeting. The civic and political activist told the board that the church is donating its Memorial Fund to organizations.

They include the Guild for Exceptional Children, the Bay Ridge Ambulance Volunteer Corps (BRAVO), the Norwegian Christian Home and the Fort Hamilton Branch Public Library. “The church wants the money to stay in our community,” said Schack.

The congregation’s first building was dedicated in 1902 and rebuilt in the 1920s, with the current building dedicated in 1963. Shack, a former congregation president, mentioned that the church was home to an Alcoholic Anonymous chapter and provided meeting space for civic organizations’ meetings such as the Ragamuffin Parade Committee and Shorefront Democratic Club.

This coming Sunday, Salem Lutheran Church, at 450 67th St., will hold its last service. “The church was organized over 105 years ago and was a leading center of the Swedish community in Brooklyn,” said historian Lars Nilsen of the Norwegian Immigration Association.

The congregation, organized on April 3, 1904, has been housed in three buildings since then, with the present church dedicated on Dec. 2, 1945, several years after selling its second church at 416 46th St. “Let us not forget what has been here,” said its part-time pastor, Rev. Harriet Wieber.

Recently it revived for the last time its pre-Christmas Lucia Festival, and the Narrows Community Theater performed its last Christmas play there. The church has served as a meeting space for civic organizations such as the Telephone Pioneers of American retirees’ chapter.

Money Crunched, Churches Cut Back

Churches such as Salam Arabic Lutheran Church, on Ovington Avenue between Third and Fourth avenues, as reported here recently, are cutting back due to fiscal problems and preparing for a pastor-less church.

Our Savior Lutheran Church, on Fourth Avenue at 80th Street, is holding its own and trying to keep its mission going. This year it gave a home to the Scandinavian East Coast Museum to display and store its many historic treasures, a growing collection that marks and celebrates the huge Scandinavian influence and heritage on Brooklyn and the city.

The Bay Ridge United Methodist Church, which sold its property at Fourth and Ovington avenues and had its “green church” and other buildings demolished in 2008, is holding services temporarily in Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, occasionally holding joint services. It awaits a new smaller church for its diminished but dedicated congregation on its former grounds next to a new public school, P.S. 680, to be constructed there.

And yet some churches, such as the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church at 68th Street, have experienced a rise in membership, and several Roman Catholic churches are continuing at a fairly healthy level. Their grammar schools survive, with Our Lady of Angels School becoming an independent Holy Angels Academy this year; and St. Anselm School, at 83rd Street and Fourth Avenue, and St. Patrick School, on Fourth Avenue at 97th Street, thriving.

The Bay Ridge Jewish Center, on Fourth Avenue at 81st Street, decided to keep its 1920s building rather than sell the property to a developer and maintains an active education program for children of all faiths.

Resilience, Not Misery, in Coping With Death

An interesting review of a book that attempts to scientifically study grief.

A few bits:

Orthodox psychology has long emphasized the grim slog in store for those who must live without the people they cannot live without. Freud called it “grief work,” a process of painfully severing the emotional ties to the deceased. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross mapped out five morose stages of effective grieving.

But if you actually talk to the bereaved, says George A. Bonanno, you find these classic perspectives are pure — well, Dr. Bonanno doesn’t actually say baloney, but so he implies in his fascinating and readable overview of what he calls “the science of bereavement.”

Just as meticulous observation and experiment transformed astronomy from a compendium of mythology and wishful thinking into a coherent science, the same tools are changing the psychology of loss.

A professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University, Dr. Bonanno has now interviewed hundreds of bereaved people, following some for years before and after the fact, looking for patterns.

His conclusion: the bereaved are far more resilient than anyone — including Freud, and the bereaved themselves — would ever have imagined.


...


One of those tools may well be the ability to smile through the worst of it. Humans are inherently drawn to comfort sad people, but can seldom tolerate more than a few minutes in the presence of the seriously depressed. The fact that the bereaved can shake it off periodically means that people will willingly stay with them, protecting them from a spiral of self-involved solitude.

Other tools are less convoluted. Almost everyone idealizes the deceased and spends long solitary sessions remembering good qualities, overlooking bad ones. Some talk to the deceased regularly. Some indulge in what Dr. Bonanno calls “ugly coping” — anger at the damn doctors, the damn hospital or the stupid minister’s stupid eulogy can make the bereaved feel better about the loss.

The bleak midweek

A late arrival to my Christmas season is always that sense of time slipping so quickly by. This companion to the holiday blizzard of services and family and activities makes a stronger and stronger appearance the deeper I drive into my forties and well into middle age.

One spends a good amount of time anticipating the goodness of being with family, kids home from college, the rejoicing, the singing, the Jesus in the manger and the good will that envelopes one from the congregation and friends. But it comes so quickly and once it is here it rushes past so that one is left with a longing for it to remain. But the calendar pays no mind to your melancholy and soon drops you in the bleak midweek between Christmas and New Years and that slightly panicky feeling comes that says "it is almost over" and there is sadness that it all went so quickly and soon the kids will go back to college and school and the old routines will return.

This is all common enough, I am sure, but significant nonetheless. Our Nativity joy is fleeting, it is a liturgical foretaste, a sacrament of the world to come. The family gatherings and the smiles and the gifts all point forward to that stable where the Holy Family will be us, in all eternity. That is what we long for. The sadness is a part of being here. There are 12 days of Christmas coming that will never end. We are not on that calendar yet but we will be.

But still I wish it didn't have to end. I wish the presents were still under the tree. I wish I were just now welcoming our kids at the front door and I wish we hadn't yet sung "Joy to the World".

Why did Jesus abandon all those little babies that died because of His birth?

Yesterday was the observance of the slaughter of the innocents (Matthew 2:13-18). Here is a quetion I had never really considered: Why did Jesus abandon all those little babies that died because of His birth? I hadn't considered it until reading Peter Chrysologus' sermon on that very question.

Here is his answer:


Why did He desert those whom He knew were being searched
for because of Himself, and whom He knew would be
killed for His sake? Born as a King, yes, as the King of
heaven, why did He neglect those little soldiers of His
innocence? Why did He contemn that army of infants
of His own age? Why did He abandon these guards deputed
to keep watch at their cradles, in such a way that
the foe who was to seek only the King advanced against
His every soldier?

Brethren, Christ did not contemn His soldiers; He promoted
them. He enabled them to triumph before living.
He caused them to gain a victory before fighting. He gave
them their crowns before their members.3 He willed that
they should overcome vices by their virtues, possess heaven
sooner than earth, and not become enmeshed in human affairs
before possessing the divine benefits. Therefore,
Christ sent His little soldiers ahead; He did not lose them.
He did not abandon his front line troops, but took them to
Himself.

Blessed are they! They were born for martyrdom, not for
the world, as we have seen. Fortunate are they ! They have
changed their labors into rest, their sufferings into refreshment,
their sorrows into joy. They live, they are alive.
They are the ones who truly live, they who merit to be
slain for Christ. Blessed are the wombs which bore such
babes, blessed are the breasts which nourished them, blessed
are the tears which were shed for them, and conferred
on the weeping ones the grace of baptism, For, by one gift,
but in different ways, the mothers were baptized in their
tears and the infants in their blood. The mothers suffered
in the martyrdom of their children. The sword which transpierced
the members of children penetrated to the hearts
of the mothers. Moreover, those who were companions of
the suffering must be sharers of the reward.

Sermon 152, p. 257-258.

Ecclesiastes says, "Diversify thy stocks"

Here is an article on using the Bible as a financial planning guide. Much of this sounds like commone sense advice in search of a Bible passage. And the interpretations they put on some of these verses are bizarre:

Blue sees advice to diversify stock portfolios in a verse about a man's "bread" from Ecclesiastes: "Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land."

Here is the first part, read the rest here.

A Hummer, a 1957 hot rod, a comfortable house in a gated community , if Bob Vigliotti wanted something, he bought it. Cash or credit didn't matter. As a successful commercial real estate developer from Naples, Fla., he could afford it. Until he couldn't.

In 2007, the budding economic downturn claimed one of his major projects. For two years, Vigliotti, 58, battled depression as he bled $1 million cash. But Vigliotti said just when he thought there were no answers, he found them in the Bible: debt reduction, simpler living and, most of all, faith that God would provide what he needed. Vigliotti won't buy on credit now, is selling his pricey vehicles and is looking to downsize to a condo.

"The angst, anxiety and the depression is gone, and that's huge," Vigliotti said. "(The Bible's words) are alive today, and not just history book words."

Depending on your view, the Bible is divinely inspired or a collection of tall tales. But many see it as a source of financial wisdom that transcends individual faith and the centuries between when it was written and today's tough times.

"All sound professional advice, I found, ... has its roots someplace in Scripture," said Ron Blue, author of "Surviving Financial Meltdown" and founder of the Kingdom Advisors, which trains Christian financial professionals. Blue uses the Bible for guidance on everything from budgeting to long-term investing and handling an inheritance.

But Robert Manning, author of "Credit Card Nation," said biblically based financial advice isn't sophisticated enough in a world of rising health care, housing and retirement costs, where people need to learn to take advantage of complicated credit and tax laws.

"If you're going to go pre-New Deal, 1924 America, that's basically what this advice is driven by," Manning said. "It sounds so good and plausible until you actually put it into reality, and it just doesn't work."

Purveyors of biblically based financial advice count up to 2,300 verses on money management. Frequently cited verses in the Old Testament book of Proverbs urge careful spending, including "The plans of the diligent lead to profit, as surely as haste leads to poverty." Another warns debtors that "the borrower is servant to the lender."

Blue sees advice to diversify stock portfolios in a verse about a man's "bread" from Ecclesiastes: "Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land."

Death to disappear as straw from fire: Why God became man

Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation 34.

What, then, was God to do?

What was God to do in the face of this dehumanising of mankind—this universal hiding of the knowledge of Himself by the wiles of the evil spirits? Was He to keep silence before so great a wrong and let men go on being thus deceived and kept in ignorance of Himself? ...

What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Saviour Jesus Christ?

St Athanasius of Alexandria, On the incarnation of the Word, 13.

A very nice Christmas sermon from Pastor Petersen

Read it all here. Below is just a bit:


We all struggle at Christmas with longing and nostalgia, wishing our families weren't broken, hurting from divorce and plagued by bad memories. We all wish we could undo the past, be the parents we meant to be, follow our parents' advice as we should have, studied harder, wasted less, saved more, and on and on. A life without regret is a life unexamined.

What we need, or what can actually help, is not Norman Rockwell or Bing Crosby, our mother's bread pudding or Grandfather's stories. We don't even need Rudolph's lessons in tolerance and non-judging. We can even put up with the wrong kind of cranberries and a modern translation of the Lord's Prayer if we must, as long as we have God's mercy, grace, God Himself in the Flesh come to save us. That is what we need. That is what can help. That will help the cranberries go down.

So it doesn't really matter what the in-laws do right or wrong at Christmas, whether there is room for us at the table or not, whether we deserve it or are mistreated, forgotten. Because our home is not here on earth and never will be. Why should it be when Our Lord had no place to lay His head? What we long for, our home, our joy, our peace, our hope is in the Father running toward us in the Person of the Son sent from heaven to take up our Flesh and be a Sacrifice for our sin. We've been wasteful, selfish, egocentric, boastful, shallow, held grudges, been proud, and stupid. But He loves us. In that love, the Father's eager, running mercy, wherever we are, however imperfect our celebrations are, even at the in-laws, even alone, we are home.

My Essay at First Things: In defense of Santa

is running today. It is entitled "Santa Claus and the Christmas Wars" and is running on the front page.

It is a analysis and defense of the Santa story and customs from a traditional, Christian perspective. Here are a few sentences :

What ought to be a time of meditative joy and happy celebration has become a time for combat. December, say scores of the faithful, is a time for war—the Christmas wars.

...

For many, Santa smacks of Satan or even the Antichrist. The semi-mystical, religious language associated with the man in the red suit scares off many committed Christians. The songs and stories sung about him attribute to him omniscience, the judgment of children’s behavior, and the free dispensing of gifts—all sung in the language of faith.

...

Christmas has never been a holiday strictly limited to the Church. It made its way into homes and towns through folktales and cultural rituals. It contrasted the cold exposure of winter with the warm solace of the family hearth. It is not a blessing to reduce Christmas only to Jesus, to a strictly religious observance, to a “church thing.”


Read the whole thing here.

The birthday of the Head is the birthday of the body.

Here is a repeat post from a couple of years ago. Leo the Great on the Incarnation.

For the birth of Christ is the source of life for Christian folk, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday of the body.

Here is the whole thing.


On all days at all times, dearly beloved, does the birth of our Lord and Saviour from the Virgin-mother occur to the thoughts of the faithful, who meditate on divine things, that the mind may be aroused to the acknowledgment of its Maker, may employ its spiritual insight on the fact that God the Son of God, begotten of the co-eternal Father, was born by a human birth.


But this Nativity which is to be adored in heaven and on earth is suggested to us by no day more than this when, with the early light still shedding its rays on nature, there is borne in upon our senses the brightness of this wondrous mystery. For the angel Gabriel's converse with the astonished Mary and her conception by the Holy Ghost as wondrously promised as believed, seem to recur not only to the memory but to the very eyes.


For to-day the Maker of the world was born of a Virgin's womb, and He, who made all natures, became Son of her, whom He created. To-day the Word of God appeared clothed in flesh, and That which had never been visible to human eyes began to be tangible to our hands as well. To-day the shepherds learned from angels' voices that the Saviour was born in the substance of our flesh and soul; and to-day the form of the Gospel message was prearranged by the leaders of the Lord's flocks, so that we too may say with the army of the heavenly host: "Glory in the highest to God, and on earth peace to men of good will."


Although, therefore, that infancy, which the majesty of God's Son did not disdain, reached mature manhood by the growth of years and, when the triumph of His passion and resurrection was completed, all the actions of humility which were undertaken for us ceased, yet to-day's festival renews for us the holy childhood of Jesus born of the Virgin Mary; and in adoring the birth of our Saviour, we find we are celebrating the commencement of our own life. For the birth of Christ is the source of life for Christian folk, and the birthday of the Head is the birthday of the body.


Although every individual that is called has his own order, and all the sons of the Church are separated from one another by intervals of time, yet as the entire body of the faithful being born in the font of baptism is crucified with Christ in His passion, raised again in His resurrection, and placed at the Father's right hand in His ascension, so with Him are they born in this nativity.


For any believer in whatever part of the world that is re-born in Christ, quits the old paths of his original nature and passes into a new man by being re-born; and no longer is he reckoned of his earthly father's stock but among the seed of the Saviour, Who became the Son of the man in order that we might have the power to be the sons of God. For unless He came down to us in this humiliation, no one would reach His presence by any merits of his own. At the end of the ages is fulfilled that which was ordained from all eternity; and in the presence of realities, when signs and types have ceased, the Law and prophecy have become Truth; and so Abraham is found the father of all nations, and the promised blessing is given to the world in his seed. We with Abraham believe in God and "waver not through unbelief," but "know most assuredly that what the Lord promised, He is able to perform."

Its a BBQ Monday!

Here is a great soul ( Stax/Volt Memphis goodness!) record about BBQ.

I shooooore like bbq!

When my life is through / bury Me in BBQ ...

... but make sure its vinegar based ... cuz you know that slows decay ...




North Carolina bbq is of course the best. All the northerners reading, please watch until the end when you get a little goodhearted lesson about the word "bbq" and whether Florida is a southern state.

Edgar Allan Poe and the early Church Fathers

Here is an interesting blog post about Edgar Allan Poe's use of the church fathers.

Thanks to the Patristic Carnival for pointing it out.

Onward Christian Athletes

Here is an article on American evangelical domination of involvement with pro sports players.

In a related vein, I've always noticed many baseball players making the sign of the cross at the plate and have wondered how often it is a sign of piety or a simply talisman, a good luck charm. I suspect the latter but who knows?



Book explores evangelical monopoly in sports world


By JAY LINDSAY, Associated Press Writer Jay Lindsay, Associated Press Writer – Sat Dec 19, 12:28 am ET

BOSTON – A toss left, a quick break past the defense, and it was obvious Philadelphia Eagles running back Herb Lusk was headed to the end zone. The real surprise came when he arrived 70 yards later.

Lusk dropped to a knee in the NFL's first public end zone prayer.

High-profile expressions of faith by athletes have become routine in pro sports since Lusk's October 1977 run. A new book by religion writer Tom Krattenmaker explores how it happened, and asks whether it's a good thing.

"Some love it, some really resent it. The comedians have a field day with it," said Krattenmaker, author of "Onward Christian Athletes."

From the numerous Lusk copycats, to prayer circles at the 50-yard line, to jubilant players praising God in postgame interviews, an often conservative voice of the Christian faith is now commonplace in American professional sports. That reflects decades of influence by evangelical Christian groups in locker rooms and a belief among some Christian athletes that their visibility is a gift they should use to proclaim their faith.

Krattenmaker says the problem is that they're reaching a sporting public with increasingly pluralistic religious convictions, or no religion at all.

"There are many secular fans who really feel annoyed by that kind of religious expression," he said in an interview. "Even people who are religious themselves often resent this situation where athletes talk about God in this big moment of victory, sometimes seeming to imply God gave them the victory."

But Tennessee Titans All-Pro center Kevin Mawae said his Christianity is part of who he is, and he can't separate it from his life as an athlete or anywhere else.

"The fact that some people are jaded toward religion or faith shouldn't stop a player from expressing his faith in public," Mawae said.

There's no intent to alienate people, only to share Biblical truth, said Vince Nauss, president of Baseball Chapel, which provides chaplains to every major league baseball team.

"If there's an exclusivity, it's because Jesus put it out there," Nauss said. "So I don't think there's anything to apologize for, or to dance around in a politically correct environment."

The influence of Christianity in locker rooms can be traced to people such as baseball pioneer Branch Rickey, the executive who brought Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1954, Rickey agreed to help college football coach Don McClanen found the influential Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Baseball Chapel was established for players like ex-New York Yankee Bobby Richardson, who was mobbed at local churches on Sundays, Nauss said. By 1975, it had established programs for every major league team.

Another prominent group, the international sports ministry Athletes in Action, places about half of the NFL's chaplains.

Krattenmaker said evangelical ministries have a near monopoly in pro clubhouses because they seized the chance, then won the teams' trust by not exploiting their access. Other faith groups simply haven't done the work, he said.

"The conservative Christians got their upper hand in the sports world the old fashioned way," Krattenmaker said. "They earned it."

Krattenmaker isn't asking pro athletes to stop talking about religion, just to be more sensitive in their tone and timing. He also sees a credibility-bruising selectivity in the theologically and politically conservative messages evangelicals in sports trumpet.



Read the rest here.

In this most holiest of seasons ...

... my family has decided this reverent and sacred selection is their favorite ...












AND IT IS STUCK IN MY HEAD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE PLURAL OF HIPPOPOTAMUS IS HIPPOPOTAMI !!!!!!!!!!!

Consider, O man, what God became for your sake

More Christmas paradox from Augustine:

Consider, O man, what God became for your sake; understand this lesson of surpassing humility presented by a teacher who, as yet, says no word.

Once, in paradise, you were so eloquent that you named every living thing;
for your sake, however, your Creator lay speechless and did not even call His Mother by her name.

By disregarding obedience, you have lost yourself in the tractless reaches of
fruitful groves; He, in obedience, came into the very narrow confines of mortality so that by dying He might seek you
who were dead.

Though you were man, you wished to be God, to your own destruction; though He was God, He wished to be man that He might find what He had lost.

Human pride brought you to such a depth that only divine humility could raise you up again.

Sermon 188.

Hole in your soul where the wind blows through ...

This song by Peter Case has always been one of my favorites. It is called "Traveling Light" and it is on an album called ... The Man with the Blue Post Modern Fragmented Neo-Traditionalist Guitar. It is a good sounding song, moves fast, is produced well and Case sings it well.

The lyrics always seemed to me to be a nice expression of what stuffy, academic, theologian pastor types (like me) might call the "human condition": that feeling of being born empty and looking your whole life for the puzzle piece to fill what is inside.

The chorus expresses it well:

So you're a mixed up kid, come on and join the crowd
The ones that only fit where they're not allowed
Out on the streets and you're feelin' blue
travelin' light
With a hole in your soul where the wind blows through

We, indeed, have a hole in our soul where the wind blows through.

The Gospel is precisely that the puzzle piece is Jesus Christ in his incarnation and sacramental presence but being a Christian does not make that feeling evaporate. We carry it with us as a cross, a pain, a hunger to remind us we are not home yet but there is a place (being with Christ) where our longing will be stilled.

You can listen to the song here at Grooveshark.

Here are all the lyrics:

You've been standin' on the corner for a thousand nights
Its the slowest corner known to man
Watchin' strange faces passin' 'neath the lights
With a bottle wavin' in your hand

You got just enough money for some nothin' to go
It ain't exactly what you planned
So lonesome that you can't even say hello
And no one seems to understand

Chorus
So you're a mixed up kid, come on and join the crowd
Of the ones that only fit where they're not allowed
Out on the streets and you're feelin' blue
travelin' light
With a hole in your soul where the wind blows through
A hole in your soul where the wind blows through

You wandered away from your childhood home
Nobody cared to trace the tracks you laid
You traveled by night and you traveled alone
Came to rest at a penny arcade

Traveling light all your big mistakes
the trouble that you thought would be your saving grace
a prayer and a chance out of the blue
asking for a miracle to see you through

Well, the last shots over on a Saturday night
You wake up in the beam of a cop's flashlight
He asks you who you are as if you knew or you cared
He asks you where you live and you say nowhere

I don't know where I got it but, I got it the same
It's a feelin' that'll rip you apart
It follows me around like a part of my name
Like I'm born with a time bomb
instead of a heart

Health care costs

Atul Gawande is the best medical writer I have encountered. He is such because his approach strictly practicable and scientific but also accessible and human. He can make complex medical items and the practice of medicine easier to understand.

Ina recent New Yorker article, he brings those same qualities to an analysis of the cost of health care and the attempt to bring down costs.

Read this article if you want some straight talk about pissible solutions but don't read it if you are looking for political scoring points or to advance a particular ideology.

Manifestor of His Father, the Creator of His Mother

The early church fathers tend to revel in and celebrate and proclaim the contradictions and mysteries and confusing aspects of the faith. Christmas and the Incarnation of God in the flesh of Mary is a prime example. Here is Augustine:



My mouth shall speak the praise of the Lord, of that Lord by whom all things were made and who was made [flesh] amid all the works of His hands;

who is the Manifestor of His Father, the Creator of His Mother;

Son of God born of the Father without a mother, Son of Man born
of a mother without a father;

the great Day of the angels, small in the day of men;

the Word as God existing before all time, the Word as flesh existing only for an allotted time;

the Creator of the sun created under the light of the sun;

ordering all ages from the bosom of of His Father, from the womb of His Mother consecrating this day;

remaining there, yet proceeding hither;

Maker of heaven and earth brought forth on this earth overshadowed by the
heavens;

unspeakably wise, wisely speechless;

filling the whole world, lying in a manger;

guiding the stars, a nursling at the breast;

though insignificant in the form of man, so great in the form of God that His greatness was not lessened by His insignificance nor was His smallness crushed by - His might.

When He assumed human form He did not abandon His divine operations, nor did He cease to reach from end to end mightily and to order all things sweetly. When clothed in the weakness of our flesh He was received, not imprisoned, in the Virgin's womb so that without the Food of Wisdom being withdrawn from the angels we might
taste how sweet is the Lord.

Sermon 187.

Loving man He loved his nativity also

Tertullian, an early church father, here challenges Marcion, an early church heretic to prove that the Incarnation is unworthy of God. Tertullian contrasts Christ's Creator love of our flesh and fleshly existence with Marcion's Gnostic shame and hatred of physical life.

Come now, beginning from the nativity itself, declaim' against the uncleanness of the generative elements within the womb, the filthy concretion of fluid and blood, of the growth of the flesh for nine months long out of that very mire. Describe the womb as it enlarges from day to day,— heavy, troublesome, restless even in sleep, changeful in its feelings of dislike and desire.

Inveigh now likewise against the shame itself of a woman in travail, which, however, ought rather to be honoured in consideration of that peril, or to be held sacred in respect of (the mystery of) nature.

Of course you are horrified also at the infant, which is shed into life with the embarrassments which accompany it from the womb; you likewise, of course, loathe it even after it is washed, when it is dressed out in its swaddling-clothes, graced with repeated anointing, smiled on with nurse's fawns.

This reverend course of nature, you, O Marcion, (are pleased to) spit upon; and yet, in what way were you born? You detest a human being at his birth; then after what fashion do you love anybody? ...

Christ, at any rate, has loved even that man who was condensed in his mother's womb amidst all its uncleannesses, even that man who was brought into life out of the said womb, even that man who was nursed amidst the nurse's simpers. For his sake He came down (from heaven), for his sake He preached, for his sake " He humbled Himself even unto death—the death of the cross."

He loved, of course, the being whom He redeemed at so great a cost. If Christ is the Creator's Son, it was with justice that He loved His own (creature)... Well, then, loving man He loved his nativity also, and his flesh as well. Nothing can be loved apart from that through which whatever exists has its existence. Either take away nativity, and then show us your man; or else withdraw the flesh, and then present to our view the being whom God has redeemed—since it is these very conditions which constitute the man whom God has redeemed.

And are you for turning these conditions into occasions of blushing to the very creature whom He has redeemed, (censuring them), too, us unworthy of Him who certainly would not have redeemed them had He not loved them ?

Our birth He reforms from death by a second birth from heaven; our flesh He restores from every harassing malady;

when leprous, He cleanses it of the stain;
when blind, Herekindles its light;
when palsied, He renews its strength;
when possessed with devils, He exorcises it;
when dead, He reanimates it,—

then shall we blush to own it ? ...

For which is more unworthy of God, which is more likely to raise a blush of shame, that God should be born, or that He should die ?
that He should bear the flesh, or the cross ?
be circumcised, or be crucified ?
be cradled, or be coffined ?
be laid in a manger, or in a tomb ?

Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ, 4-5.

She carried Him in whom we exist

He who sustains the world lay in a manger, a wordless Child, yet the Word of God. Him whom the heavens do not contain the bosom of one woman bore. She ruled our King; she carried Him in whom we exist; she fed our Bread. O manifest weakness and marvelous
humility in which all divinity lay hid! By His power He ruled the mother to whom His infancy was subject, and He nourished with truth her whose breasts suckled Him.

May He who did not despise our lowly beginnings perfect His work in us, and may He who wished on account of us to become the Son of Man make us the sons of God.

Augustine, Sermon 184, FOTC, Vol. 38.

This looks like a great resource for the church

This looks like a great resource for the church ... not only videos but articles, sermons, mp3s. Put in a few search words and you will see the many items available. Thanks to Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne and Concordia, Saint Louis for making this available.


SEMINARIES RELEASE VIDEOS FOR CHURCH WORKERS AND LAYPEOPLE

FORT WAYNE, IN (CTS)—In a joint effort Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort
Wayne, and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, are releasing a compilation of
educational videos available via their Web sites. This collection of more than
1,100 videos covers Old and New Testament, Pastoral Theology and individual
books of the Bible which were originally part of the Distance Education Leading
To Ordination (DELTO) courses made available through the Concordia University
Education Network (CUEnet). Simply visit http://media.ctsfw.edu/ and type in a
topic in the Search box.

"It's such a joy to see these CUEnet resources released for the good of the
entire Church, "offered Rev. Bill Johnson, Theological Education Technology
Specialist at CTS. "Although they were originally created to train men for
ministry as pastors, they're wonderful material for all of God's people. By
making these available to the Church, we enable anyone, anywhere around the
world to learn from some of the most knowledgeable experts in Lutheran theology
from the comfort of their own home."

The mission of the seminaries is to serve God's people and equip them to reach
out to all with the life-saving Gospel. "The two seminaries releasing the
material jointly for the good of Christ's Church really gives a powerful example
of how we as a Synod can reach out to one other and be unified in confessional
mission for the Gospel," said Prof. Tony Cook, Director of Distance Curricula at
Concordia, St. Louis.

Rock and Roll by the Numbers

16,

17,

18,

19,

20,

21,

22

You mean he didn't play "Roxanne" ?!?!?!?!

Alternate title 2 for this post: This is why I intensely dislike Sting
Alternate title 3 for this post: The King of Pretentiousness
Alternate title 4 for this post: That is the most ridiculous outfit I have ever seen

Sting plays "important" holiday music. Very PBS, indeed.

The Office, Individualism, and the American Dream

Here is a nice take on the TV series The Office and its meaning ( HT Tip to First Things ) . This is from the blog, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

Here is a bit of the essay and you can read all of it here.

In many ways, The Office is a show about power and ambition and it is a show about trade-offs. A lot of people think it’s a show about despair, and for a while there in the third season, it was a show about despair, but that’s not what it is now. As Mark notes in the comments to Jamelle’s post:

In some ways, though, that despair captured in The Office is exactly what makes it so appealing. It’s relatable in a way that the average uplifting sitcom can never be. It may be extraordinarily depressing for someone just getting started, but for most of us, it simply reflects how we’ve learned to live – and laugh at – our daily lives. We can’t all be President, we can’t all be firefighters, we can’t even all achieve middle management, much less upper management. What we can, however, do is laugh, which is what Jim and Pam do (or at least used to do), or we can find a sort of contentment in recognizing that our jobs do not define who we are, like Stanley (my personal favorite character in the show) and maintain our personal character above all else.

This is a very important point. Many shows, and much of the message coming out of popular American culture, is that we are all destined for greatness. We are all destined to do a job we not only like, but love. We are, in spite of any statistics to the contrary, bound to fall into a perfect, passionate love. We will all be powerful and unique, especially if we go to college.

Of course, just like most of us don’t have the body types of movie-stars, most of us will also not be millionaires or celebrities. Most of us will only ever achieve moderate financial success. Most of us will only be content with our work. We will dislike many of our bosses and co-workers and will have to learn to live with them as best we can, just like we learn to live with our imperfect families. Are we all just under-achievers then?

The great thing about The Office is that it points out that wherever we strive for control in our lives we inevitably run up against the realities of compromise. Jim is able to be the slacker-in-chief at Dunder Mifflin precisely because he doesn’t care about anything. But when he starts to care, he has to make a trade. As Will notes:

In the context of the Jim-Pam relationship, “The Office” makes this trade-off pretty explicit. In the second season, Jim forgoes an opportunity to move to a better, higher-paying job in Maryland to stay in Scranton with Pam. Later, Pam gives up her shot at an art career in New York to move back in with Jim. Sure, they’re still stuck at Dunder-Mifflin, working mid-level jobs in a collapsing industry. But they’ve got each other, which ought to count for something.

And unlike your run-of-the-mill sitcom, these trade-offs lead to changes. The characters change over time. Their motivations and relationships evolve. Jim becomes the boss he once dreaded. But he does it to get the girl. I know that in the movies you’re supposed to beat the bad guy to get the girl, or do some other dramatic thing, but what Jim does is every bit as astounding as fighting or dying for Pam. He grows up. I wouldn’t say he “gives up” which seems to be the popular take on this lately. Rather, he relinquishes the power he has over his situation – his apathy – and decides instead to care. And this only intensifies when they become home-owners and prospective parents. Somehow, ironically, caring about a girl you love and a family you desire is frowned upon as underachieving. Jim ought to be caring about his career!

The Baptism, 1958

This is a haunting photograph, the dark background and the light falling on the child about to be baptized, dressed in white (from the Shorpys blog).

At Christmas, "let us not be sterile"

Augustine on the birth of Christ:

He was born so that we might be born again. Christ was born; let no one hesitate to be reborn.

He was generated with no need of regeneration, for who has experienced the need of
rebirth except the one whose birth was blameworthy? Let His compassion, then, be born in our hearts.

His Mother carried Him in her womb; let us carry Him in our hearts.

The Virgin was heavy with the incarnate Christ; may our hearts be heavily freighted with belief in Christ.

The Virgin brought forth the Saviour; may our souls bring forth salvation;
may we bring forth praise also. Let us not be sterile; let our souls be full of fruitfulness in the Lord.

Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons, FOTC, vol. 38, p. 22-23.

The Creator is found in His creature

Christ's birth was not a necessity, but a sign of might.

It was an honor, not an injury.
It was a mystery of love, not a lessening of His Deity.
It was the restoration of man's salvation, not any diminution of the divine substance.

He who made man from undefiled earth, without any process of birth, He Himself by being born fashioned His human nature from an undefiled body. The hand which with
dignity raised earth to our image also with dignity assumed flesh for our restoration. Therefore, the fact that the Creator is found in His creature, and God in flesh this is an honor to the creature, not an insult to the Creator.

Peter Chrysologus, FOTC, Vol. 17, Sermon 148, page, 248.

Small Towns

Here is an essay I wrote that ran about a year ago on the First Things website (here). I thought I might post it here. About living in a small town.



Small Towns
Nov 26, 2008
Paul Gregory Alms

Small towns have been in the news lately. The past election featured them often. Barack Obama commented on the bitterness of those who cling to guns and religion. Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign celebrated small town virtues to contrast with “big city elitism” of the Democrats.

For someone who actually lives in a small town, this is all strange and distant. I live in Catawba, North Carolina, population about 700. I have lived here for over twelve years as a Lutheran minister at Redeemer Lutheran Church on Main Street. The town bears little resemblance to the battleground fought over in this election.

Small town life has its advantages and disadvantages, but they are not the obvious ones. When the media focused on small towns, viewers got the feeling that they were visiting a distant nation not their own. They were clearly delighted to be somewhere they hadn’t been before (much like a tourist in the developing world) but were unsure how to react to something so different. The extremes of the campaigns and the coverage tended to be way off the mark. Small towns are neither Edens nor bitter enclaves of the small-minded.

In many ways, they are exactly like the rest of America. People in them watch CNN and Fox news. They have cable and satellite television and high-speed Internet connections. Kids play the same video games and wear the same fashions. But there is one distinctiveness here, and a single word captures much of it: connectedness. To live in a small town is to be connected, and not electronically or digitally. Rather it means to be connected to people in the flesh, to actual places, to land and buildings, to a common past.

One cannot help but to be connected to those around you in a small town. Many of them are related to you by blood. They are kin. Folks can rattle off relations and branches of the family tree. As an outsider, this can be quite intimidating. But there is a virtue in living in the midst of such family ties that is hard to describe. It involves living in such a way that you, as a person, are not an individual. You are not a solitary center of decision-making. Rather, you exist in a web of tangled claims. You are a point at which many lives intersect. You are at the same time a son or daughter, a granddaughter, a great-granddaughter.

Often you have ancestors, three or four or five generations, who are still living, sitting next to you at church. You are also a father, mother, aunt, uncle, niece or nephew, cousin, and on and on the web goes. In a small town you are confronted with those connections repeatedly, even daily. One sees one’s uncle at the gas station. One buys groceries from a cousin, gets the car fixed by a brother-in-law, goes into business with a brother, lives on land that once belonged to grandparents or great-grandparents.

This web also involves non-relatives, members of the community, people known to you. Being known in a small town does not mean you know a name or some casual facts about them. It means you know their family, you know where they grew up, where they went to school, stories about them. One’s last name becomes a personality trait. One can say, “Oh, he is a Bolick” and explain some behavior or attitude with no need for further words. One is situated in the web of the community. Knowing someone means you share a common history, a common place, a common way of being raised. You have a shared experience of schools and churches and institutions and events.

When Hurricane Hugo came through this part of North Carolina, it was a community disaster. Everyone lost property and power and got through it together. This happens everywhere, of course, but in small towns such an event becomes one more layer of common memory, one more story to be told, one more mutual thread fastening one to another. The remembering and the storytelling are as important as the actual event. Folks stand around and tell the story to each other over and over and reinforce the links, the cords of memory and connection.

Such connectedness often produces a reflexive attitude of caring that strikes a newcomer as strange. One does not hesitate to visit, be with, console, or give to those around you. The web of relatedness surfaces at times of loss and significance and stress. Often there are no concrete actions that express this attitude other than visiting.

Something that strikes many as strange is the visiting that occurs at a birth. Large groups of extended family gather at the hospital at the time of giving birth. They simply sit around in the waiting room for hours, talking and joking with other family members, sharing the time together, while someone in the room down the hall struggles in labor and delivery. They do not do anything specifically for the mom or dad in the birthing room. The caring is more subliminal. By being there, they ensure that the baby is not a lone human being, belonging to himself only or even just to his parents. He belongs to the community which waits for him in that room, recording his birth in the common memory, so that his story may be told.

Such connectedness is not all caring and bliss. It has its down sides. Gossips and hurtful chatter are native to small towns and thrive there. The clichés are true. Everybody does know your business. Such gossiping and nosing around are the other side of the coin to caring for your neighbors. Caring does not happen in a small town because the people there are more virtuous. It happens because people literally live very close to each other. They cross paths every day and one’s “private" life becomes common property. One lives one’s life in public, in that shared mesh of relations and friendships. One cannot hide, one cannot be anonymous. So the same person who brings you a pound cake when your mother dies will burn up the phone lines when your son wrecks your car in the front yard (presumably he was drinking). The same connections that carry consolation and comfort bring backbiting and meanness.

Small-town connections can also breed parochialism, an attitude of suspicion toward the new or the outsider. This attitude can refuse to accept or acknowledge those who are not like us or come from some other place. This suspicion can and often has slid into ugly prejudice or hatred. Some see community and family ties as absolute. You either are one of us or you're not.

But such hatred is rare in my experience. More often there is instead a deep reserve of caution. This wariness is a byproduct of living a connected life. The outsider does not know or feel the history of shared experience. To have an address is not to live in a small town. Living in a small town means being connected to the flow of its collective life. One does not jump into such a stream without a shocking jolt of cold water. It takes time to acclimate oneself to this river. One has to submerge oneself, drifting along for awhile before your system becomes adjusted. One adapts to the river’s temperature, not the other way around. The community molds the individual by including him in the story of the town.

Small-town connectivity also ties one to a place and to the past. People are often born, grow up, marry, raise a family, work, retire, and die all within the same few miles or even acres. Birth, childhood, family, place, memory, and death are all tied tightly together. These few acres or miles are a part of daily experience. You drive by the place where you grew up every day. It is the same with the place where you went to school or played baseball or where your granddaddy used to work. The past is not past in a small town. The past is experienced viscerally and concretely every day. It is a part of today as surely as the ground upon which one walks.

The locations where people grow up and marry and plant gardens and make hay and raise cattle and have families and retire and get sick and die are more than real estate. It is part of them. They are connected to it and it makes them more than individuals who just happen to live somewhere. The sometimes fierce attachment to land can actually tear apart families and the fighting is not about money. An irrationality can take hold. Bonds can be broken over disputes measuring in feet and even inches of a surveyor’s rod. They are not fighting for dollars but for a piece of themselves. Identity is wrapped up in the place where you live, where you are from. The phrase “the old home place” carries a heavier weight than a zip code and appraised value.

Land and family inevitably bring one in contact with the past. The past lives here in ways that are inconceivable elsewhere. To go to the grocery store is to potentially encounter your entire past life and even ancestry: your grandmother, your first grade teacher, your girlfriend from high school, your cousin, your boss from years ago. When one lives in the place where one was raised and when that place is small and self contained, the past is its own character in the drama of life. Memories are resurrected often and in many ways. The memories are also associated with place: a childhood accident there, your grandfather’s farm there, a marriage proposal there. All of it is just around the bend. People in small towns do not escape the past by moving to some other place. They confront it daily. They inhabit it.

They not only encounter a generic past but also the specific dead. One cannot live long in a place like Catawba and drive the same old streets and not mark the departed. That Setzer boy wrecked his motorcycle on that spot of the road and died there. Mrs. Sigmon moved in with her daughter in that house before she died. Old Mr. Smith owned that grocery. My mother is buried there just down from my place. For those who have grown up here, the streets are crowded with ghosts, with reminders of those who are gone. They stare out at you from almost every house or vacant lot. Millions of Americans go to great lengths to escape the thought or remembrance of death. They surround themselves with young people like themselves, never go near a hospital or a funeral home. They scatter their remains and, if there are graveyards holding their dead, they move far away and rarely visit. But for the small town person, death is like the air you breathe. It surrounds you. You do not need to visit a cemetery to remember the dead; they go with you down every familiar street.

It is this sort of connectedness to place and people and the past that that makes small towns different. It is not an easy set of slogans that can be trumpeted by a political party or captured in a sound bite. It is the shape of the small town itself which has embedded itself in its people. That shape takes the form of a web that connects that person to a multitude of places and people and past experience. That web becomes the stuff of that person; it is his identity.

Such a way of being a person is slowly being worn away by the storm surge of generic commercial culture. The children feel less a part of the small town than their parents, who are less connected than their parents. It is an inevitable process. Yet small towns are still here, struggling, battling tough economic realities but not extinct. Their shared past is still felt and passed on. The stories are told. The visiting still goes on. The churches and groceries and service stations and post offices still function as gathering places. The connections are still being made.

Paul Gregory Alms is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Catawba, North Carolina.

Epidemic Of Addiction Threatens Russia's Future

Here is an interesting story about heroin addiction in Siberia and Russia. The story originates from Western Siberia near Tyumen.

A NY Times Discussion on the Latin Mass

Kenneth Wolfe started the discussion with this essay chronicling the appeal of the Latin mass especially among young people.

Here is a series of printed responses to the essay.

And there is more discussion here.

Why then, man, are you so worthless in your own eyes ?

Why then, man, are you so worthless in your own eyes and yet so precious to God? Why render yourself such dishonor when you are honored by him? Why do you ask how you were created and do not seek to know why you were made? Was not this entire visible universe made for your dwelling? It was for you that the light dispelled the overshadowing gloom; for your sake was the night regulated and the day measured, and for you were the heavens embellished with the varying brilliance of the sun, the moon and the stars. The earth was adorned with flowers, groves and fruit; and the constant marvellous variety of lovely living things was created in the air, the fields, and the seas for you, lest sad solitude destroy the joy of God’s new creation. And the Creator still works to devise things that can add to your glory. He has made you in his image that you might in your person make the invisible Creator present on earth; he has made you his legate, so that the vast empire of the world might have the Lord’s representative. Then in his mercy God assumed what he made in you; he wanted now to be truly manifest in man, just as he had wished to be revealed in man as in an image. Now he would be in reality what he had submitted to be in symbol.


And so Christ is born that by his birth he might restore our nature. He became a child, was fed, and grew that he might inaugurate the one perfect age to remain for ever as he had created it. He supports man that man might no longer fall. And the creature he had formed of earth he now makes heavenly; and what he had endowed with a human soul he now vivifies to become a heavenly spirit. In this way he fully raised man to God, and left in him neither sin, nor death, nor travail, nor pain, nor anything earthly, with the grace of our Lord Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, for all the ages of eternity. Amen.

Peter Chrysologus

He grants us His birth

Christ has a pure, innocent, and holy birth. Man has an unclean, sinful, condemned birth ... Nothing can help this unholy birth except the pure birth of Christ. But Christ's birth cannot be distributed in a material sense neither would that avail any thing; it is therefore imparted spiritually, through the Word, as the angel says, it is given to all who firmly believe so that no harm will come to them because of their impure birth. This it the way and manner in which we are to be cleansed from the miserable birth we have from Adam. For this purpose Christ willed to be born, that through him we might be born again ...

We see here how Christ, as it were, takes our birth from us and absorbs it in his birth, and grants us his, that in it we might become pure and holy, as if it were our own, so that every Christian may rejoice and glory in Christ's birth as much as if he had himself been born of Mary as was Christ. Whoever does not believe this, or doubts, is no Christian.

MArtin Luther, Sermon for Christmas Day; Luke 2:1-14, Wartburg Church Postil, 1521-1522.

Church for Sale

Churches go up for sale as costs to maintain them increase

Johanna Yoho knew the North Side church she attended since childhood couldn't hang on much longer.

With membership and collections dwindling, Mt. Zion Lutheran Church merged with another congregation in 2006. Afterward, a consultant recommended conducting services in the newer and larger Brighton Heights Lutheran Church and putting Mt. Zion up for sale.

"When we hand the keys over to the (buyer), that will be bittersweet," said Yoho, 48, of Observatory Hill, who was treasurer of Mt. Zion.

About 70 churches have changed hands in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Lawrence, Mercer, Washington and Westmoreland counties since 2007, according to RealSTATs, a South Side-based real estate information company. Dozens more across Western Pennsylvania have posted "for sale" signs.

"Selling churches is not an easy thing," said Tom Conroy, a sales representative with Howard Hanna Commercial, who is handling the sale of the Mt. Zion church building to another congregation and expects the sale to close soon.

But it's a sign of the times.

The former St. Nicholas Church on Route 28 may be sold to Lamar Advertising, parish officials said last week. The parish said it reached an "agreement in principle" to sell the 108-year-old church, which closed in 2004.

Restoring buildings that were constructed 100 or 200 years ago can be costly. A roof could cost $50,000; one stained-glass window could cost $20,000, according to preservationists.

"Smaller churches have a difficult time surviving the aging process," said Danny Muzyka, president and founder of Service Realty, which handled the sale of hundreds of churches in Texas, Colorado, California, Washington, and Arizona.

Read the rest here.

Promise Keepers tries a comeback

It's a Christian Man's World: The Promise Keepers, in an attempt to stage a comeback, are reaching out to women and Messianic Jews. But why?

Some perceptive insights:

Soon, however, the organization began to make mistakes. "Their move to a voluntary donation strategy to fund conferences was both bold and ill-fated," says John Bartkowski, a professor of sociology and the author of The Promise Keepers: Servants, Soldiers and Godly Men. Rather than charge for stadium events, P.K. had begun to allow men to pay for rallies on a volunteer basis. But the organization's attempt to include men from various economic strata backfired—donations dropped precipitously, forcing the Promise Keepers to downscale. And beyond financial considerations, the Promise Keepers still faced what Bartkowski says is both the organization's best friend and worst enemy: churches.

...

But Promise Keepers also offered something different from a church: an unmediated relationship with God. The stadium rallies produce an intimate, almost frenzied relationship with God that create a high—which even an alcohol-abstaining Christian man might seek out. But for how long? The P.K. experience that might have created an ecclesiastical euphoria the first time might not bring the same high the next time. Bartkowski thinks that to continue to bring men back, to sustain the high, P.K. needs to present something new—always.

Doves

This is a very nice article on doves in Biblical and (other historical) imagery. Thanks to Mike Aquilina for pointing it out.

The pictures that are posted with the article are excellent. The site wont let me save them so you will have to go the article to view them. Here is a bit of the article.


But perhaps the most familiar dove imagery from the New Testament is recounted in all four of the Gospels (though in varying forms) at the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. After Jesus came up out of the water, the [Holy] Spirit [of God] came from heaven and descended on him “like a dove” (see Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32). The baptism story built on the pre-existing symbol of the dove as God’s spirit (and its many other meanings) and firmly entrenched it as the preferred representation of the Holy Spirit—especially in later artistic depictions of the Trinity.

In Renaissance art, a dove became a standard element in the formulaic Annunciation scene, representing the Holy Spirit about to merge with the Virgin Mary. Doves were also shown flying into the mouths of prophets in Christian art as a sign of God’s spirit and divine authority. Even contemporary pop artist Andy Warhol used a (much more commercial) image of a Dove to represent the Holy Spirit in his, The Last Supper (Dove).



Another source associates a dove with the beginning of Jesus’ life. According to the second-century Protoevangelium of James, when the Temple priests were trying to choose a husband for Mary, a dove flew out of Joseph’s rod and landed on his head, marking him as the one selected by God. In fairytales throughout the world, birds have often been used to signify the “chosen one,” the true king or even the divine.

Before the cross gained prominence in the fourth century, the second-century church father Clement of Alexandria urged early Christians to use the dove or a fish as a symbol to identify themselves and each other as followers of Jesus. Archaeologists have recovered oil lamps and Eucharistic vessels in the shape of doves from Christian churches throughout the Holy Land.

Chocolate éclair devotion

From Roger Pearse's blog:

I’ve returned to translating Firmicus Maternus. Part of the preparation for doing so was to get hold of the French editions and translations, and I ran one of these through a machine translator. Working through this, I came to the following remarkable output:

Si tu veux, libéré, suivre la lumière de l’époux, rejette tes erreurs et occupe-toi avec un zèle assidu de racheter par une religieuse dévotion les crimes de ta vie antérieure.

If you want, freely, to follow the light of the bridegroom, reject your errors and occupy yourselves with assiduous zeal to repurchase by a chocolate éclair devotion the crimes of your former life.

How “religieuse” became “chocolate eclair” I can’t imagine! But somehow, although inappropriate as a translation, isn’t the phrase “chocolate eclair devotion” rather an apt one?

The things human become those of God

Today is the feast day of John of Damascus, a very important theologian in the Eastern church who lived in the 7th and 8th centuries. He defended the use of icons in the midst of fierce opposition and based that defense on the premise that God the Word took flesh and made himself visible in and through the flesh of Christ. He was a great synthesizer and expositor of Eastern patristic thought.

Here is a bit of a sermon on the transfiguration by John of Damascus:

Today has been seen that which is invisible to human eyes, an earthly body resplendent with divine splendor, a mortal body pouring out glory and divinity. For the Word was made flesh and the flesh Word, although the latter did not leave the divine nature. Oh miracle surpassing all intelligence ! For the glory did not come towards the body from outside but from within, from the supra divine divinity of the Word of God , united to the body according to the hypostasis, in an unspeakable way ... and the things human become those of God and the divine those of man, by the mode of mutual communication, and the interpenetration without confusion of the one into the other, and of the extreme union according to the hypostasis. For he is one God. He who is eternally God, and who later became man.

From John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, p. 171.

Conservatives, athiests, two priests and Clarence Clemmons

1. Conservatives are re-writing the Bible just like the liberals

2. Atheists celebrate the "holidays" and want us to know it

3. Two Priests got into a fight in their church office and made it in the the newspaper.

4. Clarence Clemmons of the E Street band has apparently written a truly bad autobiography.

Once in Royal David's City ...

... by King's College Cambridge Choir. It is not Advent or Christmas without listening to this choir.

I'm an introvert and I'm ok ...

Two recent articles I ran across deal with introverts.

Caring for your Introvert in the Atlantic gives advice for understanding introverts. Here is a great paragraph:

Are introverts misunderstood? Wildly. That, it appears, is our lot in life. "It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert," write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. (They are also the source of the quotation in the previous paragraph.) Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.


And from the Christian Century, Can Introverts Lead?", where Adam McHugh sees the stereotypical extrvert model of leadership crumbling.

He writes:

People who think before they act and listen before they talk can be very effective leaders. The reflective, thoughtful person may be able to learn, and encourage learning, in ways that people who can't stop talking are not able to.

Even more encouraging for introverted leaders is what Chris Argyris, emeritus professor at the Harvard Business School, calls "double-loop learning." Most people define learning too narrowly as mere "problem solving," so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment. Solving problems is important. But if learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward. They need to reflect critically on their own behavior, identifying the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization's problems, and then change how they act. In particular, they must learn how the very way they go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right.

“How Long” by Sister Ola Mae Terrell

“How Long” by Sister Ola Mae Terrell. Listen here. An amazing blues/gospel song from 1948.

It comes from what looks to be a wonderful 3 cd set : Fire In My Bones: Raw, Rare & Otherworldly African-American Gospel, 1944-2007.

I really, really, really want this. Who will step up and buy it for me? Come on....


Here is a description:

Almost 4 hours of music on 3 discs - super-compelling, undiluted, stripped-down gospel!

The majority of this music has never been reissued on CD, or in any other form (most tracks were originally released on regional independent labels). Most post-WWII compilations of African-American gospel music naturally concentrate on the astounding quartet and solo vocalist sounds made during the music's Golden Age. Fire In My Bones attempts to address and collect more neglected sounds from that era (and on to the present day). Dozens of traditions are represented. Some go back hundreds of years while others seem to have been arrived at as soon as the tape began to roll. Field recordings and studio tracks are all mashed together, with solo performances next to congregational recordings, hellfire sermons next to afterlife laments. Leon Pinson, Elder & Sister Brinson & the Brinson Brothers, Grant & Ella, Straight Street Holiness Group, Theotis Taylor, Brother & Sister W B Grate -- these artists will now be just a little less obscure.

Fire In My Bones provides a small peek at the incredible diversity and power of post-war black gospel. Much of this music is raw, distorted and might sound a bit strange. But it is not presented as a novelty freak show or as "outsider music." This is gospel - which we must always remember translates as "the good news" - as it has been sung and performed in tiny churches and large programs, from rural Georgia to urban Los Angeles. It is clearly among the most vibrant, playful, beautiful and emotionally charged music in the world.

Same-sex marriage debate reveals rift in African-American community

From an article in the Washington Post:

But perhaps the fiercest opposition to the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in the District has come from some members of the generation that led the fight for civil rights nearly half a century ago, many of whom believe that comparing gay rights to the battle blacks waged for equality is misguided, even insulting.

"I reject the notion that gay rights is a civil rights question," said Rev. Anthony Evans, 50, associate minister of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Northwest and head of the National Black Church Initiative. "The great human rights question is what we're doing with the poor across the world."

When Catania introduced the bill, many of his most avid supporters turned out to be the children of those civil rights movement veterans, who see this cause as the natural continuation of their parents' and grandparents' struggle.

Read all of it here.