This Sunday is the Sunday of the Adoration of the Holy Cross and I still am in wonder.

When I was a small child I read and re-read the classic “Pilgrim’s Progess” and remember quite vivdly the place where Christian, guided by Evangelist, comes to the cross, falls on his knees and the burden he carries falls of his back and into an empty tomb never to be seen again. I grew up knowing that somehow, some way, Jesus was able to bear the pain and sin of the world, mine included, and years and many sins later I still have a special sweet sadness when I think of what has been done for the world, and for me.

Yet the older I grow the less I understand the “why” of it all. I have no idea why God would bother to come to us and endure so much for so little in return. How could my feeble, twisted, and intermittent love, if its love at all, be worth all of that? It isn’t in any way I can figure. But I guess the figuring isn’t up to me.

Some time ago I wrote that either God is absolutely insane for bleeding even one drop for humanity or loves us in some way that renders our words useless. I still believe this is true and as I stand before the cross the wonder remains and only silence can speak of it all.

A great dust up has occurred about Ann Coulter’s use of the word “faggot” when talking about a Democratic presidential candidate. I’m glad.

It has nothing to do with embracing my inner gay (I have none) but rather with a growing weariness of potty mouthed adolescents on all sides of issues who offer increasingly vulgar rhetoric in place of actual problem solving. It’s just time the adults among us finally, peacefully, and completely pull the plug on these types by boycotting their words wherever we find them and regardless of whether they’re on our side or not.

Its simply time for civilization to return to culture.

I have been, in my life, the recipient of grace more times that I can count but events of yesterday brought two such instances to my mind.

The first happened many years ago. My wife and I were newly married and very broke. It was Christmas and we still gave gifts to all the members of her family but were unable to provide for all and so we, as they say today “regifted” a few of our wedding gifts for Christmas. Among them was a set of glasses which we gave to our sister in law, who, as I recall, had actually asked for kitchen items. Unfortunately we had forgotten to take off a label under the box which identified who had given it to us for a gift, a label which was immediately uncovered when the box was opened. I remember my sister in law looking at my wife and I, who were profoundly embarassed, smiling and nothing more of it was ever said. She understood what it was like to be newly married, in seminary, having little money and a desire to give something, anything, for Christmas.

The second happened just yesterday evening. My brother and I were moving appliances in my mother’s home, looking through old photos, and browsing through my dad’s collection of tie tacks. In that collection was a pocket watch, not particulary fancy, but one that had surely belonged to my father and perhaps my grandfather as well. I did, for some reason, want that watch but the collection of tie tacks was for my brother and I to share and I invited him to choose. Somehow he knew that i wanted the watch. Was it a slip of the tongue? Something I did? I don’t know but he chose the tie tacks and let me have the watch. I was prepared, as I have often been, to take lesser things out of a place in my heart that still recoils against ahything being unwanted or alone, but yesterday what I wished and what I received were the same because of my brother’s thoughtfulness.

I have no idea whether my sister in law remembers that Christmas over 20 years ago, but I do. And years after that watch has stopped working its value will lie not in who it belonged to but what larger good was given to me in a simple act of Lenten grace.

Simply put, I believe we may be on the cusp of a revival in the life of the American church.

Now I’m not talking about those phony staged “revivals” where people desperate for an emotional “fix” from their dull lives fall on the ground weeping, have their moment, and then two months later show up at another church for another fix. Any good preacher can bring the show but when he leaves the show goes with him.

True revival changes the culture in which it occurs altering the fundamental way in which people see themselves and in turn act. The glory of the Pentecostal movements in the early part of this century had little ultimately to do with ecstatic experiences, which have been part of humanity’s religious landscape since people walked the earth, but rather that it provided a common spiritual ground for people of different races and cultures to worship together, to see each other in Christ in a way that rigidly segregated American culture did not. When the Holy Spirit came to those gathered at Azusa Street a movement was born but racism in the American Church itself was fatally wounded and though the task is ongoing a great cultural evil met the power of the Holy Spirit and lost.

In this current age we’ll know when revival occurs not by the emotions involved, although there may be an intitial emotional expression, but by the pornographic web sites that don’t get visited, the marketers of consumption for its own sake who find their stores empty, the decline of decadent entertainments (imagine singer famous for, well, singing) and people in public life who speak remorse for their part in making our culture coarse and inhumane. People’s hearts will be turned to each other and the poor will be lifted up not by government programs but by caring hearts. Our obsessive focus on self and gratification will fade away to be replaced by a life given to higher things. Drugs, violence, gangs, corporate greed, and cold hearts will be broken by the power of God. We will change not because a group of politicians passed a law but because the law of God lives in us.

And I believe it may be coming.

There are a few markers that have historically been present in American culture in the time immediately before a religious reawakening which seem to be present today. First there is a growing realization of the depths of cultural decline and its bitter aftertaste. In our present age more we are starting to slowly but surely recover a sense of what is proper by hard experience. Cultural decadence is the fuel which powers revival and the more we experience the more people, in their pain and sense of being lost, look for something else. They may not experience this as a spiritual thing. It may be felt only as a utilitarian thing ie this life I’m leading, this path we’re going is a dead end, but its fuel awaiting a spark.

Second there needs to be a weeding out in the Church, a time of pruning off dead wood so that the faithful can be unburdened. In our time some churches are doing this by themselves, that is they have so abandoned the faith they simply don’t matter anymore. Sadly the prime example of this in our country is the Episcopal Church which is a media darling noted for its baptizing anything the cultural winds blow its way but frankly doesn’t mean much to anyone outside of its walls and on its present course will be a non entity in a few decades. From those ashes, though, new and more dynamic forms of Anglicanism have emerged and will, if they remain faithful, have significant impact. Simply put the future, for all communions, belongs to the faithful. As part of this pruning a process of scandal and judgement is underway for the cleansing of bodies maintaining some form of faithfulness. The sex scandals of clergy, the financial misdeeds exposed, the lack of seriousness brought to light among the faithful may be, strangely enough, the hand of a loving God . God will not waste his purifying discpline on those who have no hope or whose hearts have been profoundly hardened but He will seek to cleanse the faithful, even if their faith is small and weak, to make them more faithful still. Such a time of cleansing seems underway.

Finally, there needs to be a spark, or a series of sparks to light the fire. For a while the situation after the horrible attacks of 9/11 brought some people to church, but that has largely waned. We’ve seen a move towards historic faith with the result of whole parishes and many seekers embracing Orthodoxy, and Catholicism, and other communions who have refused to compromise, but that’s still a trickle in the larger picture. There is, outside of the electronic shouting of the media, a growing sense of loss, dislocation, and even disgust with our society, its leaders, and its institutions but it still is only in the simmering phase. Somewhere and somehow an event will occur or the weight of the darkness will reach such proportion or a heart of significance will turn towards God and the fire will be lit.

At this point we can only wait and pray because this is totally in God’s hands. If we force it it will not be genuine, and as the old saying goes “God leads and the devil stampedes.” However the scenario plays out we need to avoid the listlessness of simply waiting and watching without doing. This time, with all its darkness, is a time for us to grow strong, live lives of faith, and lift the world up in prayer. In God’s good time, and it is God alone who knows the right time for all things, our commitment may have dramatic impact but if we must wait then at least we will be counted faithful. We cannot afford to be paralyzed like so many of the “end times” speculators who keep looking into the sky in fear while their neighbors perish anymore then we can be like the unfaithful servant who feared his master and hid his talent.

Still, there is something inside that says it may be close.

Even if you don’t always agree with his politics this article shows why you should always pay attention to the work of Mark Steyn.

An interesting article on the religion of enviromentalism and global warming.

And another here.

A thaw is on the way and winter is slowly releasing its grip one finger at a time. That’s a good thing around these parts where spring, because of its scarcity, is a treasured commodity.

Those who’ve never lived where the snows flies horizontally propelled by cold winds screaming south from Canada may not realize that the charm of winter diminishes exponentially by its distance from Christmas. What’s scenic and beautiful in a Currier and Ives sort of way on December 24th becomes an annoyance by the middle of January, veritably loathsome when March rolls around and capable of making decent Christians swear bloody oaths if it lasts to April, which it often does.

So when the warm winds start rolling up from Colorado and begin their path through Nebraska and the Dakotas to us we wait with anticipation and track them on the weather reports with an intensity that rivals brokers scanning stock tickers. That warm bubble of orange, and sometimes even red, on the weather maps is our beacon of hope, our sense that we can, even for a moment, shrug off the cold, see each other without sweaters and remember what grass looks like. People’s moods actually improve and the slog leaves and bounce returns to our steps.

So this Thursday it may crack 30 degrees farenheit and by the weekend 40 and next week perhaps even 50. Every street will be wet with little rivers trickling down their sides. Roofs will reappear in patches with icicles growing and then finally dropping to the newly exposed lawn. Heat begets heat and with the insulating snow gone even the air will grow warmer and stay that way. By the end of March a few courageous tulips will already have stuck their heads above ground and the sidewalks will be open enough for kids to ride their bikes. People who huddled around their tables in the dead of winter with seed catalogs for consolation start thinking about real gardens and their faith returns. Birds stop huddling in whatever shelter they can find and start staking their claims to this tree or that.

Its always been that way. Winter, no matter how long it seems, gives way to spring and the intensity of winter amplifies the passion for its arrival. There’s something in that all about life and death and resurrection and Pascha (Easter) but I’ll let you decide what you think it may be.

The truth is I’m not in much of a hurry to get home on Sunday afternoons. I have one world in LaCrosse and one in St. Paul. Each has their own joys and struggles and both demand something from me with the time in between often the only time truly my own. So why hurry?

I suppose it would be different if there was nothing to see, but the road along the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi River from St. Paul to LaCrosse is among the nicest trips around. Everywhere there are trees, bluffs, sleepy farms, quaint river towns with names like Maiden Rock and Alma, and old houses with fresh coats of bright paint clinging to the hills. On its best day Minneapolis seems contrived and mechanical compared to, say, Trempeleau or Stockholm. More often than not a part of me just wants to pull off the road, find a job, and spend the rest of my life looking at the river, writing poems, and watching the sun set.

The truth is that I’m charmed by it all and the vision of quiet nights listening to nothing louder then the bugs on a front porch swing. Life seems to be too precious to blow it all on commutes and standing in long lines at enormous stores. As my car moves along the road thoughts like this tug at me and touch a place inside that’s beyond the reach of the various roles I’m asked to play in a production not of my own choosing.

And its not the first time I’ve felt this way and it probably won’t be the last. Some day, when the time is right, I’ll park my car somewhere along the river, say “enough” and find an old house with a big window for the cats, floors that creak in all the right places, and walls full of time.

If not now then at least in my dreams…

My weekends are filled with the tasks of serving St. Elias Church but my weekdays take me to an assisted living facility just outside of Minneapolis where I oversee the activities program. It’s good work, work that helps people, work that pays the bills. And every so often I pick up on something.

Several days ago I was tending “Valentino”, our facility hamster, and a thought returned to me. “This animal” I thought, “is my moral superior”. In his life, however long it is, our hamster will do nothing to deliberately offend God or neighbor and anything he may do that we would consider to be “wrong” is nothing about intent and all about an instinct broken, not by his beligerance, but by that of my species. If it were a matter of simply stacking up good things versus bad our hamster would make it to heaven with saintly speed and the best I could do was hope to pick the lock on the gate.

The truth is that we humans are what’s wrong with the world. Absent our presence this planet would still be an Eden floating in space with clear skies, peace, and lambs sleeping with lions in the noonday sun. Everything that makes life here insufferable has a single cause, us. In our baser moments we are a virus infecting this world, a virus with the capability to wipe out all existence by virtue of the heights of its technology and the depths of its pathology.

Most of us rarely stop to think of how far we’ve sunk or how much damage we’ve caused or how even the best of still often slash and burn our paths through life. Most of the time I just go with the flow myself and madly shop without a care or let any potential deep and transforming thoughts be carried away on the sea of daily noise. I’d like not to think there are parts of me as ugly as that, a little Hitler just beneath my skin.
I’d rather not see the truth because it would be overwhelming.

But sometimes it shows up anyways, the uninvited guest crashing my party, the pain beyond medication, the inevitable morning hangover. Some times I can’t trick my eyes into seeing illusions. Some times I can’t drown out that still small voice that speaks veritas in my ear. Some times I don’t see through a glass darkly and there is no comfort in this clarity. Despair is the inevitability of the honest soul, even if that honesty only lasts a moment.

It would be easier, probably, to be like our hamster whose life is all of eating, sleeping, and making more of the same without the burden of even recognizing the face in the mirror. It would seem a kind of blessing to not even care about life in a cage or what happens when everything finally goes dark one day. But such is not to be. In the scheme of things the benefits and the terrible cost of intellect and conscience and responsibility has fallen to all of us near naked bi-peds with the glory of language and the curse of knowing we are going to die.

Yet hamsters are as hamsters will always be but within us is planted the understanding that we were to be something more. That we were designed to be so gnaws at us with a primal despair. That we could be greater than angels but are often the cruelest of beasts tears at us in any moment when even one second of truth is within us. But we can be transformed as well, the one benefit of the kind of knowledge that separates us from our pets.

And if that is also true just imagine what could be…

A must read article for those who have come to Orthodoxy, myself included.