From the London Times, a story of an award for a scientist working the math regarding creation.

The Lenten Fasting rules from Fr. Joseph at Orthodixie…

Among the simple gifts of life is a good sleep. The best kind is one reasonably undisturbed in a safe, warm, place, long enough to provide rest but not so long as to promote sluggishness. When you have two jobs such a sleep is near sacramental in its effect and the morning after is almost irrelevant because a rested body can easily face nearly any kind of day.

1 in 4 American teenage girls has an STD according to this study. But wasn’t all this supposed to go away when we had all those classes and gave everyone who wanted one a free condom and stopped making those inhibiting moral judgements?

Apparently not, and therein lies a lesson. Some time ago I heard a Christians speaker named Tony Campolo and among his comments was his belief the Christian life would be worth living even if there was no heaven.The story above is a case in point. The ancient wisdom of those Christian traditions and texts stressing faithfulness, chastity, and marriage, far from being some less enlightened notion, are proving to be the way of health and wholeness as disease responds to our lack of inhibition. Nothing but the Christian life will ever stop the ills of our indulgent and godless culture and even if we don’t see ourselves as “religious” thier truths are still inevitable.

That all being said it’s been one of the discoveries of my life as I grow older, how the Christian path just makes sense, how it flows with the rythms of nature and how its call to live in the world and with others is the way not just to eternal bliss, but to true contentment even in this broken world. How realistic Christian faith is, how practical, how life enhancing, how deep a well it is full of life giving water! My life is most at rest when it flows within this Faith and most troubled when it flows away because these truths were built into the very design of things by the Creator. And so it is, or at least should be, for the world as well.

An article from First Things on stem cells.

Among the things that amaze me about God is His ability to both see clearly and love truly. Those who love me, even those who love me best, only love a shadow, an image, a bit of the substance with enough smoke and mirrors to hide the darkest things. God sees me in a total exposure, a way I don’t even see myself, something beyond what ever cloaks of skin or soul or intellect I can produce. With God I am totally exposed, there is no hiding, no little white lies to keep others from seeing my illnesses. Yet I am totally loved even when those things, those deep pockets in my soul which repel me and would destroy the illusion others have grown to love, are open to the blinding sun. Unfathomable.

Spring is starting to break out and as my car carried me over the miles in western Wisconsin I saw the signs of its coming feast.

Throughout the winter as the deer and the animals cross the roads they can fall prey to passing cars and trucks. Thrown violently into pieces they die and freeze and often get covered with snow. In the woods beyond others follow their natural course and pass away. The God who sees sparrows falling remembers but we care little and soon forget; until spring. As the snow retreats all the places where these animals were entombed are revealed again, deer with lifeless eyes peering from shrinking snowbanks, raccoons resting places uncovered by the growing sun.

And it is at this point, when winter has come to the end of its course and those animals who have endured are gaunt with it’s scarcity that the feast is revealed. In the course of things fresh meals emerge with the lengthening daylight and between the harshness of winter and the renewal of spring there is enough to make the final push through to the thaw. Coyotes and crows, eagles and weasels and anything from bear to bug are fed by an invisible hand as death gives life in its timeless way.

Such is the way of things along the bluffs and in a hundred hidden coulees where the roads and the land and the river intersect. Such is the way of things, death giving life, in a more profound and heavenly understanding, as Lent blankets the world.

This is post 500 in the Traveling Priest Chronicles, a landmark of sorts I suppose.

I started this blog not knowing for sure what I was attempting to do and only certain there were things I’d like to say and perhaps it would be of some value to record life on the road and whatever thoughts came to me along the journey. I wondered if it were perhaps a bit pompous to think that what I had to say even mattered.

Along the way the blog has been kind of a diary that I share with whoever drops in, the book I intended to write but never quite got around to doing, and a log of the miles and people and miscellanea encountered on the road from St. Paul, Minnesota to LaCrosse, Wisconsin. It’s rapidly approaching three years now of travels to St. Elias Church, three years of seven day weeks, three years of motels and its been an adventure. When I get older people make think I’m making it all up, some kind of “Fr John story” they can politely dismiss as an old man’s fancy.

I’ve wondered, sometimes, what I will do if and when I ever actually live in the same vicinity of the parish I serve. What will I call the blog when there are no more travels? But right now its Monday night, I’m a bit road weary and getting ready for the First Sunday in Lent. Home seems like a long way off and I might have to make the run for who knows how long until I finally find it.

Until then I’ll just keep traveling and writing and hoping that it blesses whoever comes along to read.

A story on the continued inability of the FBI to properly protect citizen’s privacy in its investigations and another on the creation of a nationwide computer data system linking investigative organizations. Both beg the question, “Who’s watching the watchers?”

Privacy matters, the ability to know that your life is free from undue scrutiny is a bedrock of a free society. Quite frankly this current administration has, in my opinion, significantly eroded the protections that ordinary citizens have from government and corporate interests having access to all kinds of details of our lives whether there is just cause or not. The current strategy of protecting against “terrorism” by leaving borders undefended and large parts of our commercial infrastructure uninspected while increasingly invading the privacy of people just trying to go about their lives seems to have left sense behind.

Someone once said that those who choose to give up their freedoms for security will end up with neither and government, with corporate cooperation, is in the process of making that nightmare come true. Sadly very few in the political class seem to care about this and the issue still hasn’t made it above the horizon in the current campaigns. Too many people are focused on the details while the foundations are slowly being hacked away. What ‘s actually more important, that people have some help with a mortgage or have the freedom to live their lives without some government hack taking a cruise through your private life whenever they feel like it? Do the math.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, the air was clear, the sun was bright and Fr. Peter really just wanted to skip Liturgy and go golfing. So he hatched a plan.

He called the Council President and in his best hacking, sneezing, sick, voice told him that he was sorry but he was just so ill and although he really wished he could be there he just needed to rest and so he couldn’t serve that day. When the call was over he got into his clothes, slung the bag over his shoulder, and headed to the golf course.

Meanwhile in heaven the angels were watching the whole thing and reported the matter to God questioning Him as to what he was going to do about Fr. Peter. God calmly replied, “Don’t worry, it’s handled.”

Arriving at the golf course Fr. Peter stepped to the first tee, placed his ball, and swung. The ball exploded off the tee, straight and true over the entire length of the fairway, took three hops and plopped into the cup, the shot of a lifetime. At this point the angels were deeply puzzled. Didn’t God see what had happened and had He forgotten about what Fr. Peter had done? Sputtering and incoherent they asked God why he allowed a hole in one as a reward for such deeds.

God replied “So who’s he going to tell?”