I have to admit I couldn’t resist when I read the story about Sheryl Crow and her public advocacy of using only one or two sheets of toilet paper to help save the earth. It was too tempting a target, an idea so absurd that most people when they heard it just said “Huh?”

And after the laughter dies down the really scary stuff starts. She means it. And there are more like her, maybe many more. They really have no idea of the radical disconnect from reality required for a millionaire rock star to lecture all of us “unenlightened” about the dangers of toilet paper. They have no framework to see the irony of promoting environmental awareness and then flying home on a private Boeing 707 .

But the truth is if you cut yourself loose from a solid anchor you drift wherever wind and tide may take you and one way or another you become mad as a hatter as sense and nonsense merge. The world you inhabit is the asylum you have created where you, as the most insane of all, have free run of the place. So up can mean down and this that and a person can think using one piece of toilet paper on the trip home in a private jet will save the environment.

And we have cut ourselves loose in a big way. We have given God the metaphorical middle finger and set about creating ourselves, reality, and everything we touch in our own image. Its the oldest sin in the book and while we’re thinking we’re novel and radical and chic and adventurous the downside of it all is the consequence, death of soul and body, is still the price we pay. Along the way to that inevitable end the road is paved with confusion, intellectual drift, the gnawing pain of unsatisfied spiritual hunger, and a million blind alleys.

Modern culture, unaware of its own irony, often suggests Christian faith is the product of delusion, of fanciful myths to soothe those unable to live in reality. But as our society grows increasingly dysfunctional a question should be asked. Which is the more strange and delusional; a world where people are obsessed about toilet paper, carve themselves into mannequins in the fear of a wrinkle, drug themselves into oblivion, work themselves to death, and pursue with fascist passion the very things that are murdering them or the carpenter from Nazareth who asks those who follow him to “love thier neighbor as themselves”? Who is more together, more grounded, more in touch with the truth of life? Who do you want to call the shots?

I thought so.

In this age when everyone with a guitar thinks the world is entitled to thier opinions on everything Sheryl Crow has staked out her case for a limit on toilet paper in her efforts to promote ecological awareness.

Uhhhhh Sheryl, how about giving up that electric guitar, and all those speakers and lights, and that really big house, and the tour bus and….

And maybe someone needs to remind her that paper products come from trees which, you know, can be planted again after they have been harvested.

And for Pete’s sake lady, limiting yourself to one or two squares of paper for every time you, let’s say, have need of them. No way am I ever going to shake your hand. Ever!

That screaming by the way is the noise that common sense makes when its being killed.

A powerful article from “Spiked” that addresses the issue of dissent and speech becoming a disease.

A little wisdom from Cardinal George Pell, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Australia, on the apocalyptic claims of some in the “global warming community”.

“People without religion”, he said, “are often looking for something to fear”.

A begining of wisdom for the Church in the United States is the recognition this is a consumer culture in which there happen to be Christians. That may burst our bubble but its the first step to help us make sense of things and save our country from itself.

Some time ago I made an online “plug” for www.jihadwatch.org a site run by an often vilified but genuinely skilled American collector of stories and information about global efforts by various Islamic groups to promote thier faith by violent action. These stories are very often not covered by mainstream American journalists and when they are they’re usually full of euphemisms like “insurgents” or “militants” to soften the viciousness of individuals and groups now waging war against any culture, even Islamic ones, that refuse to submit to their understanding of Muslim faith.

But www.jihandwatch.org is a must see www site if only to get an idea of the scope of what people of all faiths are up against when it comes to the global vision of hard line Muslim groups. To know the times is to see things as they truly are and then work to overcome them by the force of good. We need to see the panorama of these groups, individuals, and acts to remove the blinders from our eyes and come to terms with some very horrible “might be’s…” if thier dark dreams become reality outside of narrow pockets of the world.

Yet panic or blind hatred would not be the order of the day. Our Lord promised us that we would have troubles in this world but to not be afraid because he had overcome it. So we need to see all things truly, not just the gruesome outworking of fanatics but also the very much more real assurance that the Kingdom of God, beset about throughout history, is still the final destiny of the universe. And we need to fight as we should, not so much in the military way (although we do have the right to defend the powerless against agressors) but in the way of Christ himself who instructed us to overcome evil with good. The most effective witness for the Christian way of life is simply and always a Christian who, God giving him strength, actually lives as a Christian.

So learn and become aware. Dismiss the haters that sometimes crop up in the comments section of www.jihadwatch.org and are usually promptly removed when discovered. Gain knowledge not for the purpose of mindless speculation or mongering in conspiracies but rather for the purpose of knowing that which we have to face in this day. Then, in the middle of this darkness, light your Light, the Light which we were recalled again this Pascha, the Light that shines in the darkness and has never been overcome by it.

Atheism is the opiate of the pseudo-intellectuals!

The US Supreme Court has upheld the federal ban on “partial birth abortions”. Perhaps this is the end to a horrible practice that can best be described as physician assisted infanticide.

In the aftermath of the horrible killings at Virginia Tech its interesting to me to note the use of ritual to come to terms with the realities of that day and even life itself. Thousands of students attended a mass gathering that ended with a unison chant and then yesterday evening they gathered for a candlelight vigil. Ordered group activities with sensual elements like music and candles were where people naturally gravitated to begin to understand the harsh truth of the past days.

People sometimes ask Orthodox about our ritual life, the vestments, the “smells and bells”, and the sometimes complex movement of people and objects that mark our worship. Its because we understand that humans are creatures of ritual and even in a bastion of intense secularism like the modern University campus that primal call to understand the world in the movement of “liturgy”, if you like, cannot be quenched.

And the goal is the same as well. The rituals at Virginia Tech are designed to begin a process of human transformation from intense pain and loss to some future time when the more regular rythms of life will once again prevail. In Orthodoxy we seek a transformation as well, one not rooted in a response to a specific moment but rather to the love of God and the continuing hope that we can always be drawn through that love into a union with Him.

Over the centuries the things we do, despite thier appearance as unnecessary complexities in a world that worships efficiency above efficacy, have been the numinous things whose effects have radically changed people and even cultures towards holiness. They are powerful and touch the deepest part of the human soul even if that soul is unaware. They call us to ancient and heavenly cycles of life, remind us of our place in life, and carry us through the moments of struggle to our true home.

Only a living thing can swim upstream…