See the bottom of the first page of this interesting story about young people and happiness.

Who are the happiest? Read the story and find out!

Tomorrow morning the road beckons again and there may be some snow. We’ve been blessed here these past weeks with very little snow and even a few peaks at sunshine. Next week it should get to be around 50 f which is very warm for this time of year. I remember Thanksgiving Days when we couldn’t travel because of the snow.

The work continues at St. Elias as the Nativity Fast begins and end of year plans (that means stewardship drives) come in to play. It’s actually good to be busy because it keeps my mind off from the encroaching darkness outside. The sun sets around 5 PM now and we’re getting pretty close to the time when we drive to work and back in twilight.

The truth be told I’d kind of like 2006 to be over. It’s not been the happiest year personally with death being the main culprit and a kind of fatigue the other. I could use a few days in LasVegas right now which is strange because casinos bore the life out of me. But the warm dry air is a tonic. I’ll put up with the general nouveau riche sleaze of Vegas baby just to get a dose of a cool summer night when the winter sets in here.

The next week will be Liturgy central with three planned on Monday night for the Presentation, Wednesday for our local pan Orthodox Thanksgiving Divine Liturgy and Sunday. This may sound strange but sometimes the Liturgy is the only place I can get some rest! It’s very peaceful to be tuned into the flow of those ancient rythms.

The fast, of course, is just starting and I’m actually looking forward to it. I’m grateful for the chance to get things back in order, take care of unfinished business, and prepare myself for Christmas. What a wonderful gift to have, these special times when the Church calls for a renewed closeness to God and greater diligence in faith. The neat thing is that when hearts, including mine, turn away from the world and towards God they’re actually happier and although I know its going to be a struggle I already have a sense, like other fasts, that it will be worth it. On the practical side its nice to feel like I’m truly celebrating the season and with grace may be able to avoid the gluttony hangovers that seems to have become part of this time. But the fast is young and I am a sinner so we’ll see.

BTW, I have a little black book now so I can remember prayer requests and if you would like to be in it you can just write at info@stelias-lacrosse.org . I’m no great saint, not even a little one for that matter, but I’ll do what I can.

A link to an upcoming book documenting philanthropy in the US.

Here’s a link to the www site of “The Thrill of the Chaste” a new book by a 30 something woman who converted both to Christian faith and a life of chastity and now speaks of her experiences as a refugee from the “Sex and the City” mentality.

As has been mentioned before in this blog there is always a certain amount of pain in speaking to the world about the health, life, and peace that comes from practicing a Christian sexual morality, a morality with both high standards and a place for self correction when sin fails the high calling. The pain comes from knowing there will be many people, not sleazes or whores, but people looking for meaning and love and touch and togetherness who will, in thier need, buy in to a values system that will hurt them and sometimes even take thier life. There are many of us who, by grace or just dumb luck, emerged on the other side in relative safety but many more who will still only come to see the value of the Christian sexual vision by virtue of traveling through some very dark valleys.

Read the book.

A new study suggests religiously observant older people are healthier then thier non observant counterparts.

As I remember, Elton John is about to turn 60…

Elton John, nearing 60, and presumably in an activitist mood has called for banning organized religion and then for a conclave of the leaders of these banned religions to get together to address the world’s problems. In addition he has blamed the Pope and the Catholic Church for AIDS and the death of his friends (apparently the Pope is running around the world forcing people to have sex with each other).

Of course, the first thing many critics will do is dismember the obvious illogic of this and expose Sir Elton’s intellectual shortcomings. After all he’s just one of a long list of entertainment celebrities who’ve bought into their own publicity and confused fame with depth.

But two things should be noted. First, there are more people than we know who share his thoughts despite thier obvious shallowness. Second, for Sir Elton and others to be able to believe and speak these things reveals a kind of something, or lack of it, in thier hearts which provides a rationale for irrationality. He himself may not even know what strange fire is burning inside.

But it’s precisely for that dark and hidden recess in our souls, even the one that spews angry words to heaven, that Christ came and while there is life there is always hope, for you, me, and the “rocket man”.

Went across the street from where I work to a Target store and saw a young man curled up in one of those 70’s vintage wicker basket chairs with a sleeping bag around him.

Homeless? No. Just waiting for Friday so he can be the first in line to get one of this store’s allotment of 8 PlayStation 3’s.

Don’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or shake my head in disbelief. Maybe God wants him to be the first person I pray for in Nativity Lent.

The www site for Church Marketing Sucks, a group of passionate Christians looking for something better and a MUST READ for anyone in the Church.

Invariably when a Priest is asked about his parish people say “And how many members does your parish have?”

Now people aren’t looking for nuance in this, thoughts about faithfulness, the stage of life a parish is in, or the historical development of things. They want a number and the higher the better. Everything hangs on the number.

If the number is low it must be about the Priest not measuring up or the parish being dysfunctional or some other dark secret that keeps it from being higher. When Priests talk to Priests the issue is the same and even when we offer the nuances and they are listened to with the appropriate and well practiced techniques the one speaking and those listening know that only the number matters. The rest is small talk.

And there is a certain truth in numbers. Numerical growth is normal in the church and when it is not happening there really does need to be an analysis of the situation. Sometimes the answer is simple and there are conflicts or attitudes that have driven people away or closed the doors to people coming in. Language still is one of the largest and it remains an amazing fact that so many Orthodox parishes, even those that have been in this country for decades, still cling to languages and customs that they never use outside the walls of the Church. But there are more and sometimes its not about desire or struggles or ethnicity but about lack of support and direction for growth, the failure to plan that means the Parish has planned, sometimes without knowing it, to fail. Some parishes, too, need to die but no one has the desire to say that let alone act on it. Its never as simple, despite our wish, as the number.

Numerical success, too, has to be examined. Is it an accident of immigration where a large community of people was already present and the church simply filled? Has it been about the movement of converts from other Christian communities into the life of the Church? Is it a generational thing, a burst of fertility from years past that has now come to fruition? Success numbers are complex too and may not actually reflect a vital congregation but one that fate, rather than ministry, has favored with the numbers that shape our idea of success.

A few points here, for a digression regarding the growth of Orthodoxy.

First certain areas of Orthodoxy in the United States have experienced growth but the context has to be examined. Orthodoxy, when placed against its own context of ethnic isolation in this country is experiencing a growth and flowering, but when placed in the larger Christian context of this culture is still a minor player. We speak, for example, of the growth of 200 plus new parishes in the Antiochian Archdiocese in the past few decades which is admirable given the ethos of American Orthodoxy but miniscule in comparison to say, the Assemblies of God, who will probably put up 200 new parishes this year alone. Our will to evangelize and build is still in its infancy.

Second we have to understand that we still are not doing a substantial job of reaching the unchurched. So much of our “growth” is really a reshuffling of the deck as other Christians leave thier churches for ours. While that, from our point of view (and thiers) is a movement from something less to something more it hardly marks an actual growth in the Kingdom. We’re just swapping folks around and frankly there are Orthodox who have left the Church for other Christian communities as well. There are few, to my knowledge, models where hard core unchurched are being brought in from the streets into the communicant life of the Church.

And although we have taken great strides, for us, in relearning and remphasizing evangelism and growth in our parishes and clergy we are still a long ways from recovering the Orthodox vision of proclaiming the Gospel in word and deed as an integral part of what it means to be a normal Parish and parishoner. Imagine where our churches would be if half the energy spent on festivals was spent on evangelism?

Where should this lead?

Perhaps the hope should be that one day numbers will matter as they truly should, within the actual history and life of the parish and as a tool to help us direct the life and ministry of our churches. Not numbers for the raw impact and idea that a lot means things are going well, but numbers that tell us where we are strong, where we are not so strong, and where God still wants us to change and become what He desires us to be.

In the end, after all, its the “why” of the numbers, that middle place between worshipping them as indicators of success and ignoring them in the pretense of piety, that matters most of all.