Some folks in the Church of England are developing a backbone…

The Aptera 230 mpg, $30,000, available only, for now, in California but production starts in fall of 2008. The folks who designed this are going to be very wealthy. Buy your stock now.

I’ve had a number of postings about Sen. Barack Obama over the months and the presumption probably is that I’m a Republican of some sort.

Actually I’m not. I’ve voted for Republican candidates in the past but largely as a “This one will hurt me less…” vote then “Wow, I’m inspired” vote. Whatever else President Bush is he has appointed judges who are less likely to meddle with my life then others and that, for example, is a plus. Of the two major party candidates running neither sends chills up my spine.

Among the books I’ve been reading lately is “The Revolution: A Manifesto” by Rep. Ron Paul. The mainstream media have widely dismissed him as a crank but I appreciate his, unfortunately radical in these times, idea that we should govern the country by sticking as closely to the actual constitution as possible. That for those ideas he has been publicly marginalized, although he’s a huge “underground” success, says something about the state of things these days. Not many Americans have read the Constitution and I suspect if they did they’d look at it and the current state of things and say “Something’s wrong here.” I suppose that makes me, in general, a “constitutionalist” because I think as a matter of politics the American experiment has abandoned its origins to its own detriment.

My interest in Sen. Obama, though, is largely as a cultural phenomena. His politics of change is hardly that and by the way neither is Sen. McCain’s. Sen. Obama’s programs represent nothing new, just a different packaging of decades old leftist ideas but the kind of ‘rock star” quality around him intrigues me. Some of this is the media, many of whom see him as the “next big thing” and instead of doing their jobs want to get in on the action. Some of it is his personal style. Sen. Obama has mastered the art of African American preaching and even if don’t agree with or understand what he is saying his oratorical skills are lightyears above Sen. McCain’s, a man who always appears in speeches with the look of someone at the dentist. Some of it is our American desire for something new in politics and even if his ideas are leftovers his face is not and I suspect some of his support is a way for some Americans to “pay back” for the horror of slavery and segregation.

Yet its a long way to November and we’ll see what happens. The greatest political act of all is your own conversion because as it progresses it touches the whole world with truth and light. In four years there will be another set of folks on the television pitching ideas but that truth will remain.

Elect Sen. Obama and the planet will heal? What job is he exactly running for?

I think it’s already been taken.

A survey of Greek Orthodox and Orthodox Church in America Priests.

An interview with the Senator on faith.

The bridge over the Mississippi River at Hastings, Minnesota, has been under repair for some weeks now, the result of inspections begun when another bridge up river in Minneapolis collapsed last year. Being the only bridge for miles the delay can sometimes be up to half an hour as people crowd the one lane to alternatively go north and south. Having another route is a necessity.

Savvy travelers know you can go north of Hastings to Prescott, Wisconsin, cross the river there and then return to Minnesota at the quaint river town of Red Wing and head south along the river road. Or you can take Highway 52, crossing the river at St. Paul and any number of eastward roads back to the river through the farms and bluffs. And this was our plan, Highway 52 south almost to Rochester and east on 60 through Zumbrota Falls to Wabasha on the river.

As a child I always felt a kind of pity for the kids in Zumbrota and Zumbrota Falls. I have no idea why they gave such an odd name to the towns. Perhaps it was a Native name or about whoever settled the place but it started with a “Z” and that meant whenever the radio stations announced the school closings due to snow and weather the kids in places like Andover learned their fate early while those in Zumbrota had to wait. If you’re 8 years old and you really want a “snow day” off from school its a special kind of torture. That being said I’ve never been to either place and so we turned left on Highway 60 and headed towards the river to find see what we were missing.

The normal course of roads heading towards the river through southeastern Minnesota is a path over rolling farm land with a steep descent to the river through a cut in the bluffs, what people on the Wisconsin side call a “coulee”. Like the Ozarks the bluffs along the Mississippi River in this part of the world are not mountains, or even hills, rather they are, as they say down south, “hollows” places where the river has worn down the land on the edge of the prairie. In the bottom of the valley they stand up like mountains but from the sky they look like a giant cut in the land.

This was what I was expecting as I traveled east, miles of nice farms with the first green hints of corn in the fields and then a sharp scenic descent. But for some reason the coulees extended miles back from the river along Highway 60, amazing valleys cut deep into the heart of Minnesota following the path of the Zumbrota river to the Mississippi. Several times I thought, “We’re getting close to Wabasha…” as the road traveled down and then we would go for miles via twisted scenic roads with valley walls on either side.

Nestled in between it all was the little town of Zumbrota Falls. One gas station, a few bars, and a church on the main drag with houses on any place of land level enough to hold them steady. The whole thing was hidden like a secret in the river valley, a secret most probably didn’t notice as they drove by but one which probably revealed itself to anyone who wanted to stay a while. In my imagination it was a town that felt like those forts we would make out of pillows when we were kids, a tiny safe space protecting us from the world, even if for a moment.

I’d like to think there still are places like that in the world. I’m probably wrong. I’m sure they have dish and computers and all the gadgets required to bring the world into their quiet valley. But hey, it’s my dream and I can think what I want! Right? Regardless I plan on coming back, certainly in the fall when the leaves have turned and the air will be cool while the trees are aflame with their colors. I may even may the place my imaginary home town and drop in now and then to watch the river flow. Who knows?

And for some reason I think this all is just the start of the story of Highway 60.

Hat tip to Get Religion for this link to the story about the number 666 and a recent piece of legislation in Britain attempting disestablish the Church of England.

Oh, by the way. If you remember all that stuff about scholars and the discovery of the “Gospel of Judas” which apparently challenged the established Scripture’s version of the events of the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ? The media usually trots out these stories every Easter to poke the Church’s eye at their holiest time (Amazing though, they don’t do it at Ramadan) and this story, like the others, turns out to be, again, a hoax. This time it was poor translation and reporters who apparently were more interested in the splashy headline then examining the context. Sounds familiar.

June 1, 2008

In days gone by it was often the custom for Orthodox to plant a new church simply by gathering a group of the appropriate immigrant ethnicity, sending them a Priest, and then let time and birth rate do its work. If there were enough of the appropriate group and they were reasonably pious and fertile the Parish would take root, and if not it would struggle, wither and die. Looking back it probably seems like a haphazard way of doing things, little planning, little support, limited strategic thinking, a recipe for failure. But if often worked and many of the larger and “successful” parishes in any number of Orthodox jurisdictions were built in just this way.

And how could they have known better? For the most part the Orthodox who came to this country came from two contexts. Either their church was the state church or it was a minority church living in varying levels of persecution or struggle. Either way these contexts often meant Orthodoxy was the faith of the tribe, the clan, the nation and planning, intentionality, and evangelism were either culturally unknown or considered unnecessary or impossible. The American context free of both a state church and persecution, a context where churches had to stand on their own effort and grow by conversion was unlike anything most Orthodox had ever experienced and the adjustment was, and still is, difficult. The great exception to this was Alaska where Orthodox missionaries worked hard to develop parishes drawn from the native population with indigenous leadership and liturgies in the native languages. But the lessons from that experience were largely lost on the rest of Orthodoxy in this country where, even to this day, many parishes are considered to be cultural outposts with leadership still drawn from the old country and liturgies in languages only a few can understand.

And it appears that in a general way this was the context in which St. Elias was brought into being, a gathering of an immigrant population sent a Priest in the hope that a shared culture, piety, and fertility would do their work. It was an old country model in a new world and in St. Elias’ case it didn’t succeed. There simply were’nt enough of all the things those who founded the church counted on and the parish lapsed into a netherworld of needing leadership and direction to grow but being too small to support the leadership it needed. Precious time and its potential were lost and a generation drifted away. Only the services of traveling Priests and the faith of a remnant kept St. Elias from disappearing from history until the parish was reborn. And now here I am, and you too, in this moment just a short while away from a Parish meeting to discern God’s will for the future.

The stated topic is about whether there’s enough to provide for Jane and I in full time service. Can the Parish not wishfully, not crossing their fingers and hoping the Festival turns out okay, support a Priest, any Priest, in a legitimate full time ministry? But I believe larger things are being called to mind.

Among these is one of the simplest lessons from our history, one that because it has become part of the background of our Parish is often neglected. There must be a reason why we’re here. For whatever else St. Elias is it’s a church that’s tough to kill, a church which should have been a footnote in some dusty book but has somehow managed to endure through the years. There is no rational reason why we should be here today because this Parish violates all the basic rules of how to plant, grow, and sustain a church, yet here we are. Some parishes are graced with a miraculous weeping icon as a sign of God’s favor but our every day miracle is that this Sunday the doors were open. And this quiet miracle calls us to consider that we are still, despite our circumstances, under divine favor. God still has a plan for us, some reason why we should be here, some call on our lives as a Parish. The book is on St. Elias is not yet closed, in fact we may not have truly even opened it yet.

The Scriptures tell us that without a vision the people perish. And far more then the nuts and bolts of how we can afford a Priest there is the question of our vision. It makes no sense to just send Priest after Priest into a parish without a plan, without a direction, without a sense of the call of God on their lives. The Church is a living movement, the vital transforming Kingdom of God placed in the world for the sake of the world’s salvation. The Church does have an institutional dimension, we need to pay the bills and keep the lights on, but that institution is a servant of the larger vision and not its substance. If we come to understand that God wants us here the first question we have to ask is not “How can we afford a Priest?” but “Why has God placed us here and allowed us to remain?” We are part of something infinitely larger then ourselves that wishes to show itself here.
Discover that and the rest will follow.

And from that vision comes intention and intention is key.

We as Orthodox in this country too often live without intention. We came from countries where our Faith and its life were either universal or persecuted and we became used to floating in either of those tides. We are decades past the time when we can count on our nation, our clan, our language, or our culture to sustain us. We speak in this country of cradles and converts but in truth in this country and in every country where we find ourselves whether as an established church or in persecution and struggle we must all be converts, people of intention for whom our Faith and our Parish is a central fact of our lives shaping and molding how we live in a world often deeply alienated from God.

In our personal lives this means that we have to live as actual Orthodox Christians not as Americans with an Orthodox veneer. We struggle with our ethnicity at times but truly the most dangerous ethnicity to Orthodoxy is our general acceptance of the materialistic and secular values of this country. A few words here and there in Greek or Arabic or Bulgarian are not nearly as great a threat to us as our wholesale adaptation to the values of our times. One makes some of us puzzled at times, the other kills our souls. It’s important to ask “How can we support a Priest?” but its more important to say “How do I grow in my faith, how can I let it’s life shine through me, how can I be truly Orthodox?” Answer that question and the other will be easy.

In our Parish it means we have to rediscover who we are. The dullness of so many in Orthodoxy, truthfully, often lies with those who wear these vestments. We have not taught you what the Church is and what it means and so too many have been going through the motions, feeling a sense of obligation but none of the lively substance of who we are. It becomes easy, then, when the choice is between the temporary thrill of a football game or a pleasant morning’s sleep to let the Church slide. Often when we do take part in the life of the Parish it’s out of guilt or even the sense that we have to do something so we can stand before God with our pile of good things and use it to pry open heaven’s door, but our heart is far away.

Yet the Church was never meant to be this way. The Church is a movement established by God to radically tr
ansform the world into blessedness. People have a religious fervor for politics because they’ve come to believe that politics matters because it has the power to change things. And when faced with a sleeping, passive, Church who could blame them? Too often when we see the Church we see buildings and programs, none of which are bad in themselves, but when our Lord speaks of the Church he uses words like “salt”, “light”, “yeast”, “kingdom”, words that call to mind images of life and vigor and transforming change. People who see this see the Church as powerful, dynamic, and life giving and when they do they see themselves not as passive spectators watching a show but active and intentional members of the most revolutionary group of people ever. It’s good to ask “How can we pay the bills?” but if you ask first “How can I rediscover the reality of the Church and my place in it?” the other question will be answered.

And all of this leads us to our desperate need of the Holy Spirit. We are literally lifeless without Him in our lives. Our life as Orthodox Christians, the saints tell us, is about the acquisition of the Holy Spirit and more than anything else in these days we need to open up the windows of our lives and our parishes and let a fresh wind of the Spirit blow in and through us, cleaning out the dust, scrubbing away our defilements, and calling us to heavenly things. Our friends in the Pentecostal churches can sometimes take this to emotional excess but at its core they are right when they see that in our own strength this Christian life, as individuals and parishes, is impossible but by the power of the Holy Spirit everything is possible.

In our baptism and chrismation the Holy Spirit came to us and lives in us even still but I must confess there is much in my life that has choked His life out. I am consumed by cares and sins and the sheer weight of my own mortality and I presume that my state is not unique. The truth is that before we gather and work out a way for any Priest to come to this parish and serve we first need to ask the Holy Spirit to come to us, warm us, cleanse us, and give breath again to our dry bones. As we are filled again all our other questions and needs will find their answer in God’s good time.

So, in truth I, in some ways, don’t care at all if a plan is developed today to allow Jane and I to come and live in LaCrosse. I can travel if I need to and God, in time, will provide. I would much rather have you use this time to make a more important decision. I would much rather have you unchain yourselves from the struggles of the past, open your hearts and lives to the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, and resolve today that you and this parish will never be the same again. And from this day forward if you would decide to change your lives and our lives, as God gives us strength, and become fervent in prayer, lively in faith, and full of good works the one who said “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness and all these things will be added unto you…” will answer all our questions and care for us all the way home.