Listening to “Relevant Radio” (a local Catholic Radio station) yesterday on the way home I rediscovered an important truth.

I don’t know what the future will bring. Are these the last days? I don’t know. If the Apostles didn’t know then you don’t know either.

But if they are there should be joy, not at the troubles of the world because they are a call to action to God’s people to reach out and serve and heal and proclaim and work, but rather on the return of the one who loves us and the world and desires that all things be made new.

When I was a child the end of time was often presented in dark and foreboding terms, a eschatalogical hurricane of sorts and our best hope was to be “raptured” out of it all before the storm hit with its full fury. The second coming of Christ was even used as a tool of evangelism, get saved so you can get out before everything hits the fan.

But the biblical images, as stark as they are about the end of time, also speak to the faithful of bridegrooms coming for the bride they love and birth pains before the arrival of life renewed, the return of heaven to earth and earth to heaven, a creation stopped from its groaning, and a great and holy feast in creation transformed.

Should there not be some joy in that?

Should we not also see that as well as the sad state of the world?

I’m trying, Lord knows I’m trying.

Some wisdom from the “Paradosis” blog and St. Isaac

I say, that those who are suffering in hell, are suffering in being scourged by love…. It is totally false to think that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is a child of the knowledge of truth, and is unquestionably given commonly to all. But love’s power acts in two ways: it torments sinners, while at the same time it delights those who have lived in accord with it.

(Homily 84 of Saint Isaac the Syrian)

Was listening to a radio show on the way to work this morning the focus of which was the current administration’s failure to put the threat of Islamic Fascism into concrete concepts that ordinary citizens would understand.

Just a thought on that btw. How about just saying that if Osama Bin Laden and the nut case in Iran win there WILL BE NO BEER!

Anyway, whatever the failings of the government in this matter there is a larger failing in the Church. We have simply not explained our faith and why it matters in such a way that people know, in real terms, what the faith is and how it contributes to our well being as a culture and by inference what could be lost if it disappears.

There are millions of people out there, especially in the “West” who are totally ignorant about Christianity and how it has changed their lives and what benefits have come from Christian culture. They have, as well, no ability to critically distinguish between faiths and observe the impact of the faith in the life of a society. That is why they are basically clueless about the potential impact of the ascendancy this dark vision of Islam is having on the cultures where it holds sway (like Saudi Arabia and Iran) and those it threatens (the epidemic of honor killings and rapes in Europe).

The number of clueless Orthodox is especially disturbing. Coming in to Orthodoxy it was revealing to see the significant biblical illiteracy and profound lack of understanding among so many who were raised in the faith. I literally had young people who had no idea where the book of Genesis was in the Bible in one class and others who had lived in Orthodoxy for decades who had no idea at all why we made the sign of the cross as we do. These people can be easy pickings for cults, secularism, and militant faiths promising peace and order at the cost of permanent discrimination.

Whatever the government does the Church itself must see the rise of Fascist Islam in the West and around the world as a clarion call to reteach those within her walls and explain to those without the nature, value, tenets, and worldview of the Faith. We should have been doing it yesterday.

Here

Now ask yourself “Who would you rather have as your Master?”

Perhaps the best thing about the resurgence of Islam is that people all over the world will get the chance to compare the life and teachings of Jesus and Mohammed and make their choices.

A link from the Barna organization (the Barna Update is something every serious Pastor should have) reinforcing what many already knew…the events of 9/11 have had no lasting affect on spiritual life in America.

Sadly we’re probably too warped by the materialist illusions of American life for something like SINGLE 9/11 to have lasting affect.

I wish that weren’t true.

The past couple of days have been slow and tired.

Although I’m normally immune to large amounts of traveling fatigue the transistion between Sunday and Monday was particularly hard this time, sort of like having the hangover without the party. I guess its all about pacing yourself and seven day work weeks stacked together require some pacing.

But we’re making headway.

This past Parish Festival was, by God’s grace, the best ever and even though I have real problems with the idea of using the community to pay our bills for the time this is a necessity and the money is being banked and we’re on our way to breaking free from an old way of doing business. The people worked hard for the love of thier small parish and our future is one giant step closer.

So if they keep on working as hard as they are and being as generous as they have been then I will be more than happy to endure a few bleary Monday mornings. Just take my advice and buy stock in the company that makes SoBe Energy drinks because I’m single handedly keeping them in business.

Oh, and make sure you tithe on the dividend check!

Here’s a link from the old days in the Western Rite. An article I wrote entitled “Some Advice to Enquirers” which found its way to a Western Rite Orthodox magazine based in St. Petroc’s Monastery in New Zealand.

Ain’t the WWW grand?

It’s around about my birthday but I don’t feel as old as I thought this would be when I was a kid. If that makes sense.

Regardless, I wish I knew what I know now with an 18 year old body but its not the nature of things. Wisdom comes with an older body. I guess its God’s way of balancing things out.

So much has changed and I don’t think the world is anything like I imagined it would be when I reached my middle 40’s. I was, frankly, hoping for something better, maybe something that looked a lot more like the Jetson’s but its not working out that way. Technology changes, people don’t, and I’m a person just like everyone else.

And some things remain. I still have music running in, around, and through me. Its been that way since I was a kid. I’m still very curious about things and perfer to know a little about a lot rather than much about just one thing. I look in the mirror and see just about the same person I’ve always seen even though I’ve noticed that my face has changed. I still like Jesus and trust that he hasn’t grown tired of me.

There’s a part of me, as well, that still thinks I haven’t quite found my purpose and calling yet, that one thing that I was destined to be. I’ve done a lot of things, some well, but that sense of being in the right place in the right time eludes me. I get frustrated by that sometimes but it could just as well mean that I’m still a work in progress with things to do or maybe just that somehwere deep inside I know I’m a traveler and part of that is never quite feeling at home until heaven.

These days I find myself caught between things. Part of me regrets how fast time has been moving, all the wonderful things that are yet to be experienced, all the good things that are, and how much I want to have them all. Another part of me counts down the days until I can rest. Right now I’m leaning towards the former but some times I see the benefit of the latter. Perhaps I’m moving towards that place where so many old folks are, a place somewhere between earth and heaven and fearing neither. That would be alright.

But tonight is a baseball night, one of my passions, and then tomorrow St. Elias calls again with a morning tour for some Lutheran ladies interested in Orthodoxy, Vespers, Matins, Divine Liturgy, Parish Council, and then home again.

On second thought, that rest is looking better all the time.

I’ve been pondering these troubled times.

And for those who’ve read other parts of this blog you already know that I think humans have a unique capacity for insanity and too often the animals are our moral superiors. I still believe that. There is a primal chaos afoot, sin, as the Scripture identifies it, and it’s got a hold on people high and low with a passion.

But equally true is the grandeur of Christ that shines in all of this.

Sometimes I think the depth of depravity, in the world and myself, is even in itself a witness by contrast to the the matchlessness, the purity, the completeness of Christ. In causal times that can be blurred by the convenience and the freedom from want but when feet are placed in the fire a kind of clarity ensues. Because in times of desperation the comparisons are well defined and stark. And this is such a time when ideologies and the people who idolize them are competing with weapons capable of ending planetary life and ruling the world, or whatever is left of it, as the prize.

Perhaps we Christians need to be threatened with militant Islam and secularism and whatever else is out there on the horizon so we can cut through the fog and come to know, again, what precious things have been given to us and how much is at stake if they are allowed to go away. It’s been too easy for us for too long and we’ve grown flabby around the waist, cold in the heart, and forgetful in the soul. Threatened with the loss of all the benefits that have come to us through Christ perhaps we need now to come to know them, and their Source, again before it is too late.

I still like to get packages in the mail, have since I was a kid.

And an expected package arrived today, a mandolin, not the fanciest, but a nice one and good for beginners with a place in my office already set up for it and a case arriving tomorrow.

But it was broken, a piece of the bridge had come loose in transit and left a half dollar size tear in the sunburst finish marring it beyond repair. The folks at the store tell me they can send one out as soon as the other comes back, by ground, to Kansas City. It looks like the middle of next week anyway. I’m disappointed.

It’s not the damage, those things happen, but the loss of time that matters. The mandolin was to be a new adventure, a portable instrument with a lonely soul that I could take on my travels. I had ideas about what we could do together and where we could go and plans to sit on the bluffs outside Taylors Falls and watch the water and play whatever I could just for the trees.

Music has been a kind of sanity for me these past months. I play it constantly on XM while I drive and more often than not I can be found upstairs late at night practicing this instrument or that, my own songs mostly, with no one to listen except the open window. When my prayers go dry the music becomes my prayer. It’s a passion with me and had it not been unthinkable when I was younger I could have seen myself trying to make a life of it.

Regardless the mandolin will have to wait. I’ll get the case Fed Ex tomorrow and perhaps I’ll leave it open and waiting, a kind of symbolic thing I suppose, for the time when the mandolin and the music arrive to fill it. And that’s okay because I’ve already been playing it in my heart.