Brett Favre became a Viking, and on my birthday yet.

I miss the era of heroes even if it was all a myth. Thank goodness there is still Nitschke.

that a handful of seminarians from the Antiochian Archdiocese have been moved from the OCA related seminaries they were about to attend and transferred, through the Archdiocesan offices, to Holy Cross Seminary in Boston. The presumption is that this is a protest against the OCA not silencing the blogger responsible for ocanews.org which has printed articles and information regarding the Archdiocese and our recent struggles.

My sadness is simply this. The very first experience of “ministry” these men, and their families, will have is this event. Yes, serving the Church sometimes means long hours and sacrifice, but there are also many beautiful and wonderful things about it that make it worthwhile and good. Men and families come to seminary with a certain kind of idealism and yes, future events will temper that but the desire to serve, that love of God will also be the fuel that keeps them going when the days are long and the troubles many.

Presuming that the accounts are true this action says to these men and their families “You are a cog in the machine, a piece in the larger game that can be moved for other’s reasons.” There is a certain truth in that, we do serve our Church but we also serve its Bishops, yet I hope these events will not dampen the fire that brought these men, their wives, and families to this place. I hope they can see beyond the moment and realize the value of what they are called to do and be even if those who are charged with their pastoral care sometimes forget.

Axios and may God grant each of them and their families many years,

or at least it should if the normal maturing processes are in place and running. The sadness of age is the physical changes but its glory is perspective. Having just been around and living life has its own way of burning off the impurities, buffing the rough edges, and rubbing off the burrs. Youth is whiskey, straight from the still, age is bourbon charred with the ashes inside its barrel, the price of mellowing.

High school football captains grow gray, teenage beauty queens sag because gravity will not be denied. Whiz kids cannot escape time despite their calculations, and strong and weak change with the ebbs and flows of fate. Such is the nature of life and the only way to understand this is to live it with your eyes, heart, and soul wide open.

And its the way I wish things to be. No pining for a mythical yesterday. No pondering a still to be discovered future. Just alive and awake in this moment.

Of course I wouldn’t mind my hair coming back but, oh well…

when my classmates will gather for our 30th high school reunion. I’ll not be there.

There’s a lady at my parish who’s ill and needs to be visited, and people, perhaps, to see on the way down to LaCrosse. There are services to tend to and apparently a neighbor who’s put their fence too far on to church property. The stuff of life. Real life.

High school is like a dream, a far away three years that occasionally reaches out to touch you but for the most part is lost in the mists. In the old days, perhaps, the people you went to high school with were also the people you grew up with, childhood friends from a hometown you remember but now in these mobile days this seems to be more rare. High school is a stop on the way, and the relationships that matter are more often to be found outside its doors in whatever life lies ahead.

The truth is that I live less than a half hour from my high school but its a world of time, places, and experiences away. I care for those people who were with me in those days, but I don’t long for them or that time. I wish them well, and pray for them often, but my life is now and any nostalgia is only about what could have been and not what was. My best days are now, always have been.

So, if somehow a member of the Mahtomedi High School class of 79 stumbles onto this blog, know that I wish you all the best and my prayers and hope are that life has been good and kind to you. Be well. Be blessed. May you find every happiness and more than that may you always know God. But tonight I’ll be at Vespers with whoever comes through the door. I need to be there for more reasons than you can possibly imagine but I won’t forget you either.

Rip em up, tear em up, give em hell Zephyrs…

or are there others out there who are as sick and tired of TV commercials for “enhancement” products for men as I am?

Can’t I watch a move in peace without someone telling me about their new found prowess? I don’t care, really, take my word for it and I feel sorry for parents have to try to explain to their five year old about the grandpa on the screen with the funny smile.

And, by the way, as a musician I wouldn’t be caught dead sitting around with a bunch of geezers singing “Viva Viagra”. Here’s your check, thanks for singing, we’ll give you back your pride when we’re done with it…”

End of rant.

There is a glorious rain falling in eastern Minnesota this morning. Slow, steady, lasting, somewhere between the rain that passes just quickly enough to ruin your car wash and the torrents that rip the siding from a house.

It’s been a dry summer here along the Mississippi River, they say we’re about seven inches under normal, and the skies have been the beautiful, unforgiving, blue of a drought. The old trees can make it because their roots are deep but the lawns, wide and shallow, have become brown and the beauty of flowers has been stunted.

I have many things planned for today. Places to go, people to see, tasks to be accomplished. But it’s raining in eastern Minnesota today and the weather trumps everything in this part of the world. Frankly, I don’t mind a bit.

After years of hearing it you can recognize the voice on the phone, regardless of who it is, and you know what’s coming next.

There will be no magic words. There will be no quote from the Fathers that provides illumination. The sacraments will help but they will not take away the coming gauntlet. There’s a cry for help and if you answer it you’ll not escape a piece of the trauma because to help means that you, too, must go with and through.

While you never seem to quite get used to it over time you come to accept it, the terrible intimacy of holding the hand of someone walking through dark places. You get used to the helplessness, the reality that all of your skills matter little and you, your presence and your ear on the phone in the small hours of the morning, matter most. When words fail, and they often do in the face of mortality, all that’s left is a whisper “I’m here”.

So it’s okay, you’re not a bother, call me when you need to and I’ll do my best. Don’t, though, expect a miracle or lights shining down from heaven or an instant answer. If that happens glory be to God but if not just know that I’m here.

I have memories of dill smells
and the living room’s piano
where a mouse made a nest
and I learned my passion.

There were stairs to an attic
with young boy hidden corners
and a basement, dark and cool
relief in the summer.

Our room was a shared one
two beds and one window
at night we would listen
and hear the floor’s creaking.

It was brick, on a corner
as strong as Gibraltar
and it carried us through
the storms and the quiets.

Still time took us away
we left in the winter
houses change in an instant
drifting thoughts, though, they stay.

I’m nearly fifty now
the house close to a hundred
a lifetime away from me
and still I remember.