Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says “Dam!”

Read the story of the Vatican’s reaction to a journalist who posed as a penitent to write an expose on his experiences.

Everyone who believes in God probably has a question or two they would like to ask just to kind of make some sense of things.

My current one is this. I wonder why God allows humanity to get so crazy?

Whether its manic Muslims looking for nukes or people who think sex with animals is worthy of an investigative film the world has had its share of people, myself included, who sometimes just go off the deep end and have moments or even whole lifetimes of barking madness. Even whole cultures succumb.

I suspect there are more than a few people who watch the news or wander around online and just end up scratching their heads and saying “What the h—?” And just when you think it can’t get worse someone finds a way to up the ante and get wierder, or madder, or more perverted, or more distant from sanity. Can anyone argue that a world where Parish Hilton is a celebrity and Hugo Chavez is a President is a world with a grip on things?

Now revelation tells me and faith accepts the existence of a plan. But there are moments when I can’t get my head around how that plan is working out. Part of that, maybe most of it, is due to the fact that I’m not God (which by the way is a good thing for the universe). Yet a fair amount of it is really a matter of pity. I don’t always understand where the mercy is in letting finite beings, fragile to the extreme and broken in body, mind, and soul, to their whims.

The Psalmist says that God “remembers our frame and knows that we are dust…” and that’s probably the most provable statement in the universe. So what good can come from letting us descend to our depths and endure the pain and suffering that comes from that incoherence? Where does free will need to end for the sake of mercy? When is enough, enough?

God only knows. But I still wonder sometimes.

A few weeks to go and the fast begins. Clean the cupboards out. Make your home ready. Tell the kids why they’re not going to have all those treats and why this matter. Remind yourself. Prepare yourself. Embrace the joyous struggle. Know that the humble will be, in God’s good time, exalted, the penitent forgiven, and those who engage the struggles and challenges will be given the victor’s crown.

The snow came down hard on Sunday morning and the 1 to 3 inches they predicted was already on the ground before we left the hotel. As it brushed off the car the snow was like feathers or dandelion seeds in the wind. Every snow has its character and wispy snow is easy for tires to grip but blows cloudy and renders you momentarily sightless when trucks pass on the road. And one did, even in the short trip to St. Elias Church, and we held on and hoped that the driver in front of us wouldn’t suddenly stop.

Heat was just coming on in the church when we arrived so there was the kind of cold of cement bricks still lingering when we stamped our feet, turned on the lights, and set the copy machine to its morning warm up. The routine is always the same and the old building gradually takes on a kind of life as task to task prepares us for the Liturgy ahead.

LaCrosse is a city set on the only level ground around and pushes up to the eastern bluffs of the valley until the angle and height allows no other dwelling to be built. In the hills beyond the town there are cuts in the terrain called coulees where valleys, sometimes tight and vertical and other times gentle and rolling, have been carved into the land by the effects of water and time. Roads snake through these valleys and cling to their sides as they wind into the city below. Snowy days mean that travel will be slow and as morning prayers give way to the Liturgy one can tell people are arriving even if your back is to them by the sound of the door and the stamping of snowy shoes. When you live in the hills you arrive exactly when nature allows.

But the turnout is good for such a day and the faces are familiar. In a small parish no one is ever lost for long. If you crave the anonymity of slipping into the back row of a large and darkened cathedral you will not find it here. So, too, is the assurance that people are here because they want to be, especially when the snow is thick and full.

This old parish has been around for some time by local standards. There were a lot of lean times and decades when Priests came by only now and then to celebrate a wedding, bury the dead, or serve the Liturgy for the sons and daughters of the immigrants who founded the church. Lacking the money and importance that comes with a big city the church spent most of the last century drifting here and there. And the grandchildren, with no certain parish, drifted away to wherever lost generations go and we see them now only at funerals.

At times it seems like we’re a clutch of birds huddled against the cold wind or the last remnants of a heroic regiment marching in a parade with tattered uniforms and old medals we bring out for the occasion. But not today. Because somewhere inside of us there must be some ember still burning, a smoldering wick, some flickering light that keeps us coming to this place on a day when lesser folk look out their window, roll over, and go back to sleep.

And as long as there is, it still matters.

I can be a pain to travel with sometimes because I like looking at churches. Jane and I will be driving through a town and I may see a steeple and off we go a few blocks out of our way just to drive by and take a look. I like the look of churches. I like the smell of churches. Every church is unique and every one has a story.

People’s hopes and dreams used to be tied up in churches. In a culture where most people spent their whole lives in the employ of others the church was often the one place where a group of people could build something for themselves and create a legacy for the future. Even in an old church building you can still feel some of that spirit, the dreams and aspirations of people who have long since passed from the thoughts of those who serve and sing and worship in the present.

And I confess to a certain romanticism about it all. I may be naive but I do believe the world can be changed for the better by the Church. I do believe there is grace and power and life and light that resides even in the most humble parishes. Properly guided and allowed to flourish, it can change lives and communities and nations. It’s why I chose ministry and perhaps why ministry chose me and I’ve seen enough glimpses of the good stuff to know its real and there’s more out there and I’ve spent large portions of my life trying to help people discover it in themselves and their parish.

What you don’t know is that every time I come to St. Elias a transformation takes place inside of me. The church is empty when I arrive, the lights are off, and the only sound is usually Jane working on the bulletins downstairs. Almost every time as I go about the prayers before the liturgy I think to myself “Is it worth it?” “Am I making a difference?” Sometimes I’m tired. Sometimes I’m sad. Sometimes I worry. Sometimes I’m frustrated. But the prayers carry me along.

And without fail by the end of the Liturgy I am at peace and rest and any of the internal struggles have drifted away. I see your faces and feel your hearts and hope arises again. Every Sunday ends as it starts with the church dark, the sounds of Jane downstairs, and me standing in front of the altar one last time before I go. When I do I pray for revival here in the parish and I thank God for the privilege of serving you as Priest. The trip home passes in peace.

Everything in the life of the church can be taught except one thing. Our Orthodox history is full of examples for us to follow, saints to emulate, parishes who have modeled a life of holiness, service, and worship. There are a thousand techniques to make a church healthy, self supporting, growing, and thriving, and we can learn them together.

But only hope cannot be taught. It cannot be finessed. It cannot be sold like a product. It cannot be charmed. It exists or it does not and the very future of things is tied to whether it lives or has long since passed away. Everything can be taught except for hope.

If hope is present people will endure the struggle. When hope exists people will give of themselves for the sake of it. A living hope inspires. Hope gives wings to dreams, turns faith to sight, and transforms those who have it and those who need it. Hope is why this parish was founded and why it was restarted and it will be the core, if in God’s will we are to become what we were meant to be.

And what is hope?

For Christians hope is not just positive feelings or wishful thinking. Hope is not a disconnect with reality. Instead hope transforms the reality we experience in light of something larger and more real. Hope is a kind of vision that lets us see with the eyes of faith and know that God exists, God providentially has all time and history in His hands, and He will strengthen the weak, empower the powerless, bless the poor in spirit, work His salvation in us and in the world, and bring all creation back to His embrace.

Yes we must trust people and make plans but ultimately that is all secondary to this ultimate hope in God. This is the hope the Apostle Paul had as he writes in our epistle, the hope that allowed him to endure and work and see things yet to be as if they already were. Despite the troubles that often plagued him and the dangers he routinely faced he had a deep and abiding confidence in the love and care of God which guided every step he took and allowed him to come to the point where life, death, and all that we fear were swallowed up in the reality of God.

Hope in God can put a fire inside of us and give us the vision to see what we could be, what we were meant to be. Hope will give us the strength to bend our shoulders to the tasks ahead. Hope will give us generous hearts. Hope can motivate us to learn and grow. Hope stills our shaky voices and gives us the courage to stand and speak. Hope drives us to our knees to lift ourselves, each other, and our lives to Christ our God. Hope challenges us to stand together, work together, and be something greater together than what we could be apart.

In a little while we will be at our annual meeting to care for the business of this parish. Practical things must be handled but not as an end to themselves. My desire is that this meeting will be, above all, a place where hope begins to bloom, where we catch of vision of who God is that animates our future together and makes the nuts and bolts of things be filled with the life of God. Perhaps today can mark the start of our not giving in to fear, our temporary smallness, and the empty spaces in the pews. Maybe today will be the day when past struggles cease to haunt us, where our history gives us wings to fly, and hope moves us, in joy, to worship, prayer and action. Let this day be filled with an abiding trust in the reality of all that God is and because of it let us never be the same again.

A recent headline in the New York Time proclaimed that a majority of women in the United States are now not married. How did they get to that conclusion? Why by playing fast and loose with the numbers of course!

Spent some time this morning reading the conversion story of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, in this case from a generic and secularized Christianity to Catholicism. A good read and a story that is repeating over and over as well educated participants in all the best of secular culture leave that world for historic Christianity.

The reasons, of course, vary but the general thrust seems to be the same. At its heart a secular life is counter human, meaningless, and an endless journey of personal indulgences that destory the very soul they claim to liberate. Freed from history and its wisdom there is only spiritual, intellectual, and social chaos and those who embrace this liberated life find that for society, and their own lives, to work there must be either a veneer of the old ways to provide cohesion or an increasingly rigorous set of authoritarian principles designed, ironically, to enforce this relativism on those whose very instincts detect its emptiness.

Enter the Church as She was meant to be, a counter movement to the brokenness of the world, and radically transforming what we consider to be normal. And yet in Her life is to be found a kind of wholeness, humanity, and life that is deep and true and meaningful. Within Her people become truly alive, many for the first time, and only to the extent the Church embraces the values she was meant to confront does it become a partaker of their death. Wise people willing to ask questions and desperate people who have bought everything, slept with everyone, embraced each fad, and in doing so come to the end of themselves discover the value of this Faith, this life, and this hope.

And perhaps the greatest irony of all is that it takes incredible faith to live a life disconnected from something transcendent, where all is as you interpret it, and where your thoughts, your emotions, your will, and this moment is all there is. To do so you must ignore a lifetime of evidence, the pain of the world around you, and the screaming emptiness inside in the hope that just one more freedom, one more liberation, one more technique, or one more philosophy will finally make everything right. Certainly more faith then it takes to believe in Jesus and be well.

Senior Islamic clergy in Saudi Arabia deny a businessman a trademark because it has the English letter “X” in it and looks, according to them, like a Christian cross.

And we’re selling these folks advanced jet fighters right?

More amazing pictures of children in the womb.

Psalm 139:13-16