Apparently he waved a gun and began cursing at a woman he claims cut him off on the way to church.

I don’t approve, but I do understand, especially when my route takes me down Highway 61 and the autumn “leaf watchers” are out in force driving 30 in a 55 mph zone staring out the window without thinking that someone else in the world may actually need to get somewhere.

Lord, have mercy.

Well its been a couple of weeks now since the new folks moved in next door and life is beginning to settle down. Its comforting, in a way, to have the noises of a family and children next door, the music of life’s routines.

I’m relearning some of life’s lessons along the way as well.

I think that sometimes when we, as white people in this country, interact at close quarters with people of different races we feel there is some “special’ way we must act. The casualness and comfort that marks the way we deal with others like us disappears and is replaced by an internal editor who watches over our speech, our actions, our emotions, and makes us more cautious then we need to be, more unlike ourselves.

I remember a scene from the old Archie Bunker television show where Lionel Jefferson, an African American, is with Mike, Archie’s son in law, and they’re playing one of those table games where you have to tell the truth. Lionel draws a card and tells Mike he wishes he wouldn’t always talk to him about “black issues”. When Mike challenges him about this and asks him what he’d rather talk about, Lionel responds, “How about the weather, you know black people have weather too…” And therein lies the point.

Among the worst things that have happened in this country is that people like the character Mike in that long ago TV show have grown up and taken control of the way we speak and interact with each other. The effect has been not to increase dialogue and friendship but rather to create barriers out of words and the constant potential for offense that actually drives people apart. People of different races have stopped learning how to speak with each other because the negotiations for what it acceptable language are ongoing and the cost of a mistake is high. Being politically correct has taken the natural interactions between us and turned them into potential flashpots.

Yes its wrong to be derogatory and mean but we’ve become so sensitive that we’ve retreated into silence rather than risk even the remotest possibility of harm. The result has been that we’re stilted and careful when we interact with others and the normal bonds that would help us grow together are replaced by increasingly longer periods of social negotiation before we can grow comfortable with each other and become simply neighbors and friends.

The answer, I think, is just to be yourself. Don’t be a bigot but don’t also presume that you have to be the same. After all you’re not identical to people of your own race so why should you expect to be the same as anyone else? Two people comfortable in their own skin will be able to bridge the gaps between them in a way almost all of the artificial “diversity” programs will never accomplish. Talk about the weather, sports, cars, or nothing at all and tell that silly editor in your head, that product of the Mike’s weird utopian vision, to take a hike. After all black people have weather too and when they live next door its the same as yours.

Rod Dreher reflects on a lecture by Terry Mattigly on the topics of converts to the Orthodox Church.

If you’re a convert to Orthodoxy what do you want? For me I had hoped that coming into Orthodoxy I would find a community whose life carried the same depth, passion, and vigor of its theology. But having been in a number of faith communities I knew, somewhere, that much was probably going to be the same, some people passionate about their faith, some lukewarm, and some just along for the ride. Theologically Orthodoxy is a shining city on a hill but practically we’re often just a little house with a flickering light at the bottom of a valley.

Was I disappointed? Not too much because I’ve been a Pastor before and I’m well aware of the gap between what should be and what actually is, even in myself. I would rather work to return a sense of passion and purpose in Orthodoxy, and myself, then be in the biggest “purpose driven church” in the world. Events, people, movements, they all ebb and flow but you can’t replace truth and Orthodoxy has truth in spades.

Now it should be noted that a sense of passion, purpose, and mission is part of the “truth” of Orthodoxy, at least it should be and there are many Priests who would probably wish the people they serve were as “up” for proclaiming and living their faith as they are for a good discussion about falafel. But context is everything and many of the places where people are “up” have issues where they are sometimes in direct conflict with revealed truth and its much easier to restore passion from a basis of truth then to get passionate people steered towards orthodoxy. I’ve been in more then a few churches where people have been totally hyped but in that frenzy have come up with some pretty strange ideas and I’d much rather try to put some air on the coals of a tired Orthodox church then try to handle that kind of raging fire.

This, I presume, is what it means to have a mature faith. Certainly I would have liked to see Orthodoxy be more of a “movement” and less of a collection of parishes, but at the same time you love something as it is and hope that you, by your presence, can help bring out its best. Whether Orthodoxy will be better for me so is still up in the air but I’ll give it my best.

Ironically, you can read about it here.

I wonder if I’m spending more time on the www or just replacing the time I would normally spend reading newspapers and watching TV news with the web. My guess, though, is I’m probably on line way too much. Blame it on curiosity or laziness or whatever but I know that if I don’t get away from the screens every once in a while I could turn into Jabba the Hutt.

Apparently frankincense, a major component in many liturgical incenses, helps you relax and feel calm. I personally enjoy the “pine” incense we use at St. Elias and also like encountering what other churches use when I travel. If I go to a church where incense is not used it smells, for lack of a better word “bare” and something seems missing. I also feel at peace with the sight of it coming from the censer and ascending.

What do you like about incense? What scent? What aesthetic?

Hat tip to westernorthodox

A story from Canada about a banner with “Jesus S#@*$” being flown over the city of Toronto as a “joke”. Sometimes a person really wishes Jesus just once would say “Hey, forget that turn the cheek stuff and give them a good hard slap.” But Jesus has endured worse from better and that’s not what we’re about. Pray for the poor, empty, soul who thought this was funny.

An interesting article addressing possible relationship between television viewing and autism in children. Anecdotally I can tell you that television has ruined the art of the in depth sermon by creating a whole generation of people who’s brains have been rewired by TV and can’t endure more then ten minutes of the same person in front of them.

Oh and you might want to visit here as well and report back.

Some weeks ago I launched a blog entitled “Orthodox Revolution” but as of today I closed it. I’m spending way too much time in front of screens and I need to get out, breathe some fresh air, and get a life. So it’s just back to my old friends at the Chronicles. Ah well….

We have a new family next to us and they’re African American. So what?

After all, by our own choice we live in a racially mixed neighborhood, I’ve had black friends, even a date or two, but I was raised in the whitest of white worlds as a child in a small Wisconsin town and as a teen in the suburbs. From those safe distances it was easy to pretend that there wasn’t a prejudiced bone in my body. But somehow, some odd way, next door is another thing altogether.

I’m feeling exposed. It’s not about hate or that dreary and unintelligent KKK kind of stuff but I am being stretched by the new, the unexpected, the challenge of putting theory into practice, ideals into action. I’m embarrassed by a part of me that, despite all the facts, despite all my education, despite my daily interactions with people very different from myself, despite it all, is struggling, at times, with the arrival of the new neighbors next door, a nice couple with three kids and a dog.

Now if I was smart I would just shut up about all of this and pretend it wasn’t there. But I want this out in the air and sunshine because I want it gone. To be who I was meant to be means that I have to find a way, like Christ does, to see the humanity in every person regardless of how they present themselves and love that person as myself. It appears the new neighbors have reminded me I have a ways to go on this, more things to sort out, and new ways to grow.

Thank you, Lord, for new neighbors.

He’s skinny now, a fragment of his old self with watery eyes and a weak voice. You can almost put one hand around his whole body and he looks tired. It’s like all the air has left him and only the heart is left. But he still has the eyes that look at you with a kind of gentle trust and he still gets up slowly to come to you for a gentle touch and the odd meow that’s his alone.

Something happens to old cats, happens too quickly. One day they seem sleek and alive and then suddenly without warning all the age catches up with them. No growing old in stages just everything all at once, or at least so it seems. It can be hard to look at, the sight of the ghost of a cat marking time. And yet something even more wistful looms.

In the wild, far from our eyes, nature herself would bring about both the beginning and the end. Her terrible laws would be enforced and something, some accident, some predator, some illness, some fate would return a cat to its cycle of life and death. But when they live in our world they endure our captivity but enjoy our bounties, the freedom from cold and fear and all those happenstances that normally make life a vapor by our standards. And so something happens to them that rarely happens outside our walls, they grow old, very old, and we must decide when there is too many years and too little life.

It’s not the techniques for this that are difficult. The sad duty, the thing we euphemistically call “putting to sleep” is quick and without pain, a matter of seconds. Many of us wish our own death could be so. The question is always the when. When is it right? When is it good? When is enough, enough? There is no numbing medicine for that, no anesthetic to ease the pain. In some ways this is good because it means we naturally shrink back from taking life, a trait we humans should always develop, but for us it brings to bear all the fears that come with being finite and still having power over life and death.

And they don’t make it easy for the most part. Even when an animal is desperately ill and deeply in pain they retain some of the spirit, the dignity, and the earlier form that attracted us to them. An old broken cat still purrs, still holds on to that something that makes them so unique, and we see that, and we remember in their faces all the times that have passed so quickly by and it makes it hard to let go. We want to hold on to every minute we can because we know that even if it is just an animal it still is, in its own way, a unique soul of a sort, an irreplaceable life.

Then at some point a kind of love takes over, a love stronger then our sense of loss and we realize that such a creature as this must not be allowed to endure another moment of a fragility which they cannot comprehend and deterioration they cannot transcend by faith or hope or meaning as we know it, and our fingers find their way to the phone.

It’s time, now, for Buddy to go. Buddy the beautiful old cat turned skinny and frail with time, true friend of an old lady till the day she died and companion for a whole floor of people who slowly but surely are losing their memories. Blind in one eye he had to turn in circles to look over his shoulder and walk with his whiskers to the wall for direction but every hand that reached out was rewarded with his gentle response. His life was a token of what will one day be, the time when the ancient fears dividing animals and man will disappear into Light. How different the world would be if each of us made as many people happy as that old cat with the funny meow and the beautiful, soulful, eyes. And if there is a life of some sort beyond this for him I wish him a well deserved rest.