This is the link to the Popular Mechanics article that debunks all of the current conspiracy theories surrounding 9-11. It can be a hysterical world out there folks and sometimes the nut cases have hold of the world’s microphone and don’t want to let go.

But the old hymn says:

We have an anchor, that keeps the soul
Steadfast and firm while the billows roll
Fastened to the Rock which cannot move
Grounded sure and deep in the Savior’s love.

As I’ve stated before there seems to be only two ways to live. Follow Christ or descend in to some kind of madness. As crazy as I am sometimes I’m still sane enough to choose the former to avoid the latter.

Occasionally I will read the stories of saints and ascetics who kept all sorts of vigils and often went for long periods of time without sleep. I understand the sense of wanting to keep watchful and always in prayer but the reality of it is so very abstract from my life.

It seems to me that for most Orthodox who live outside of monasteries it may not be about watchfulness at all but about sleep. The world is busy and growing busier. The pace keeps quickening. The amount of time for any one thing grows shorter even as the list of things to do grows longer. We may soon approach the point where our souls and body simply cannot bear the accumulated weight of the time and events of our life.

We need to sleep.

Now some of these thoughts can be attribued to the fact this is Bright Week and the hangover from Pascha is still upon me. But studies also show that we Americans, anyways, are chronically sleep deprived. We have a million things to do and just a few hours to make it all happen and the one thing that gets set aside is rest. How much caffeine is in the average American’s blood at any one time? That would be an interesting question.

And that fatigue that’s part and parcel of what we now know as “normal” life is the devil’s playground. Tired people, overworked people, stressed out people are ripe for the picking, prone to making bad judgements, too busy to mull things over and separate the good from the bad, unable to reflect on the meaning of things by being perpetually in the heat of the moment and vulnerable to temptations in the weakness created by restless doing. The world has become a whining selfish child and even the best of us may say yes to something we know isn’t good just to shut the little brat up.

Without the constant noise of the world the monastic or hermit may truly be able to keep watch through the night. But those of us who live outside that solitude may more often then not just need to get to bed and be rested for the challenges of the next day.

Apparently several of the scholars hyped for thier support of the documentary claiming the discovery of Jesus’ family tomb are now backtracking on thier statements. I suppose it will be a while before that part of the story hits the front pages.

We’re still experiencing the effects of “pascha fatigue” up here as Bright Week continues with a good dose of April snow and gray skies. It’s a quiet kind of tiredness that reaches out and grabs you when you least expect it. Your memory just isn’t as sharp, the world seems different, you still want to sleep even when you’re at work.

Pascha is always a busy time but at a small parish it can be thoroughly hectic. A small group of people really have to put themselves out to make it all work and a liturgical cycle rooted in a time when time itself was marked in a different rhythm often stands in sharp contrast to the present. Our little church, of course, was full with old friends, those who are Orthodox for this week only, and family. We live the reality of St. John’s Paschal Homily that some will come even at the 11th hour, but all are welcome at the feast and will continue to be welcome. Such is the mercy of God and those who wish to complain would do well to be reminded that this mercy is for them as well. We never know if we ourselves will wander and one day need that 11th hour mercy so we dare not begrudge it to others.

I had pictures taken of it all and I hope to post some here and some on our parish web site. We made the local paper as well, the colorful nature of Orthodox faith always makes for a great front page photo. We’ve by and large resisted the urge to turn our churches into large and faceless corporate style “worship centers” and so there is still something to look at besides a jumbo-tron when you visit. The picture was actually of me lighting candles at the bier on Great and Holy Friday but lest I get too proud the story directly underneath the caption was about the need for more child porn enforcement, so there you have it.

One of the things Pascha always brings out is the closet Orthodox in the LaCrosse area. There appear to be little pockets of Orthodox hidden all around the area and if all of them showed up on a regular basis we’d have quite a parish. I encountered a Serbian man who walked in our door and stated he lived in Sparta which is just about a half hour away but normally traveled all the way to Milwaukee for services, a trip of nearly four hours! We also have Bulgarian and Russian immigrants in the area that come out for Pascha alone but never seem to make it back for anything else. I sometimes ask myself, “What haven’t we done, or what could we do to give these people a home for more than a few hours on one night of the year?” This good man, tall and sturdy like many Serbs, was genuinely unaware there were Christians of Arabic descent or that we long ago have become, despite our name, a very muti-ethnic Orthodox home, in fact most of the major Orthodox bodies have been that way for years as well. Alas our work at just being Orthodox without hyphens attached still has a ways to go.

And of course there were glitches in the service. That always happens. For some reason we’ve scheduled perhaps the most complex service of a liturgically complex faith at that hour of the night and morning when we are most tired. I don’t remember the details but I know I missed my lines, as it were’ a few times and once inadvertently bounced the censer off the altar. But what can we do? Can anyone go through a three to four hour service with utter perfection? The humanity of the time is just part of it all.

But beyond the fatigue I hope the people there were reminded of a great truth. We believe Christ’s resurrection wasn’t a metaphor, a vision, a dream, or a myth that somehow describes the rebirth of the Apostle’s hope. We believe a very live being, a unique hybrid of God and human, actually died, was actually buried, and actually returned to life again of his own power. We know the early Christian movement preached this and could have been stopped in its tracks but just producing a rotting corpse or one soldier on site that night who could identify the people who overwhelmed them and took the remains. They could not, and because of it all of reality has to rearrange itself around this event. If Christ died and then came back to life again nothing can be the same, ever, and everything about our lives must be different no matter how difficult that may be to accomplish. And the hope that would emerge from that would change the universe. No matter how beautiful the service if people miss that they might as well have just stayed at home. But I hope they got it because it means everything, it really does.

Here’s another article regarding cures of type 1 diabetes using adult stem cells. Although the author, for some reason, injects a paragraph about opposition to embryonic stem cell research into his writing the article itself is about diabetics from thier teens to early 30’s being released from insulin dependency by using their own, mature, stem cells.

The truth is that to date there have been many major break throughs using adult stem cells and basically none using embryonic cells. This is a case, like the clear linkage between a Judaeo-Christian sexual morality and health, where the science is being ignored by partisans who have political and social agendas.

But facts are stubborn things and in this case are on the side of the most innocent of us, the unborn.

I’m back and arrived safely home on about fours of sleep in the last 36 plus.

Time for this traveling Priest to hit the hay!

Christ is risen!

There is much to attend to this week and so I will retire from blogging for a bit and resume on Bright Monday, April 9th. To all the readers of this blog around the world I wish a most reverent and blessed Holy Week and a joyous Pascha filled with grace, wonder, love, hope, and salvation.

A Christian and a Pagan exchange thoughts. Well worth the read.