An interesting article, actually a review, of a book that addresses this issue.

A link to this story of one Somali town’s methods to encourage daily prayers…

An article with some seldom heard insight on Constantinople, Islam, and double standards with regard to holy places.

Free Constantinople items available here.

Lost in the shuffle of the press coverage of the Pope’s visit to Turkey was the actual purpose of the visit, namely to meet with the Ecumenical Patriarch and continue dialogue aimed at healing the rifts between the Roman and Orthodox churches.

From the Orthodox side of the divide there are still issues of substance that need to be resolved in all of this, pesky things that can’t simply be covered over by theo-speak papers and pronouncements. Ironically the very concept of what the Pope has become is one of those things. Yet pressed by secularism in the West and the rising tide of angry Islam in the East the divides are getting smaller, the inconsequential issues are losing thier power, and there may be some movement towards talking about and dealing with the major items like Creed and Papacy that won’t be settled by “live and let live”. We’ll see.

And therein lies a related point. What crisis, what threatening horizon will finally force the various jurisdictions of Orthodox Christians in North America to return to unity? Its obvious that in peaceful times with the cash still flowing the people who can make a difference on this issue seem to be moving very slowly. Everyone agrees the current situation in North America is non-canonical, even sinful, hampers the work of the Church, and keeps us from having the resources, will, and voice to truly impact our culture but when push comes to shove there is neither.

They say these things take time and there is a truth in that but time for what? I don’t believe its about the time needed to negotiate the merger of structures, the arrangements of dioceses, and the building of a cohesive national church. We could live with that. I think it’s more about ethnic turf, hanging on to sentimental old world arrangements, money, and the fear of change even for the better.

The worse part about it may be that it will take some catastrophe, some threat, some real harm to provide the impetus to make unity happen. What could be done peacefully, deliberately, and with care may have to be put together at the last moment under the gun and at terms not nearly as favorable as those which presently exist.

Regardless I believe God will guide us and bring us together. It is His will that Christians be one. I just hope we are blended together by joyful obedience to His desire and not melted together in the furnace.

It hasn’t hit me yet. The Christmas spirit that is.

In the past few years I’ve just been a slow starter, a man going through the motions of preparing and doing this and that until one day it hits me. Until then it’s just business, a kind of detached working through task upon task while the clock ticks away.

Now it’s hard to say what will be the trigger this year. Sometimes its a song. Other times its something I see. Once in a while I will be just sitting there by myself and it arrives. Who knows? But one thing is certain. Right now there is nothing, like someone from Mars seeing everything for the first time and not having a clue as to what’s happening and no particular curiousity about it at all.

The truth is right now I mostly want everything to get done and over with and the sooner the better. My day will be December 26th, the Feast of the Most Tranquil Sleep, when all that lies between me and my happiness is a pillow. That all being said it should be noted that I’m not some Scrooge with a primordial loathing of this time. I’m really a guy for whom this time is mostly about work and a kind of exhaustion based game of chicken with December 25th. The magic and holiness and grace of this time has not left but finds, over the years, more clever places to hide with a correspondingly harder task of seeking. Right now not even Nat King Cole’s Christmas CD, usually a fairly effective unearther of the holiday spirit, works.

It’ll come, though, maybe only when I’m driving back from LaCrosse on Christmas morning. Maybe sooner. I don’t know. Until then I’ll just work and wait.

Christmas is coming but it doesn’t feel at all like that time of year, at least how I remember it. It’s an angry time in the world, a time of power, of ambition, of people each seeking the most for themselves without regard for the other and no moral problem with the idea of violence as the means.

At times I feel the anger as well. I even participate in it. From the thoughts that run through my mind when I see crazy things and people on the TV to the words that sometimes slip out of my mouth when the traffic runs foul I swim in this crazed sea and find myself struggling just to stay afloat. There are moments when I would relish being dictator of the world for just one day with the power to set the world in my image and secure harsh justice by the power of my word.

Some of that is natural, the world seems crazy and sane people will think insane thoughts just to have some sense of order in their world, some sense of being secure and in control of the ride. People voted Hitler into power and there are still folks who have sentimental thoughts about Stalin. Although most of me is repulsed to the core by the thought of it I can see, in that dark angry part of me, why that would make sense to a generation feeling lost and out of control and willing to take the risk of totalitarian rule to make it all go away. I suppose it could happen here as well, why should we be immune to the seductions of such ideas?

And though I sometimes come close to the edge I do not want to give in to the will to power, the angry mind, the treating of the other as an object of my will, to hate, and the rampaging emotions of our times. I am aware of these days and part of me wants to run away and hide and another part wants to engage the game by the rules that seem to be presently in play but the end of both is futility.

There is another way, a way often drowned out by the voices of a sad and broken world but still the way things must be if we are not to extinguish ourselves. It is the way of the child of Bethlehem, the One who came into this world to bring light and peace and a taste of heaven here and its fullness in the time to come. Some feeble poor number of us have to hold out for it, as tainted as we are, and risk being called naive, idealistic, or insane. Some few lights need to shine like candles in a great dark wind and take the risk of being snuffed out as the cost of knowing what light is, even for a moment.

What a task for imperfect people, for sinners, to assume yet how much more is its undertaking required when the world seem so crazy and the order of things struggles like a wounded animal. But to know this is to understand Christmas, the time of nativity, in its most basic and primal truth and the hope of the angel’s song on that long ago night.

Here is the story of a judge’s order to cover a cross deemed “offensive” (Christians know that the cross has always been “offensive in its own way 1 Corinthians 1:23-24) with a video about the action below.

Jesus said “I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33 RSV)