is scheduled for execution because he has converted to Christianity. The US and world media yawn.

there really is a Green Bay Packers casket. Thought it was an urban legend. I wonder how the archaeologists who dig this up 1000 years from now will respond.

the 1960’s. By the way the 70’s were pretty much the same. So were the 80’s, the 90’s, and yesterday night at the club.

will either be a moral sea change, a determined effort of people to change the world beginning with themselves, or a culture in chaos crying out for a leader to solve their struggles and willing to sacrifice their freedoms as the price.

laid to rest and the blame mongers are out in force in response to the horrid shootings in Arizona. Lines are being drawn, sides being taken, and the voids in fact are being filled with inferences and speculation. Everyone seems to want this sad, disturbed young man to stick to someone else.

But what happens if that’s truly what he is, just another twisted, broken, ill or confused person with, in this case, a gun and the full weight of his mortality spewing out each time he pulled the trigger. Everyone seems to want to blame but no one wants to say the word “sin”.

To say it was politics is easy. To link it to a person or a movement is convenient in a world where no moral explanations are allowed. Yet what if those explanations don’t pan out? What then? Are we allowed to say that there is darkness in the world, chaos, and evil, that simply exist to wound and destroy?  Are we allowed to say there is such a thing as sin and its power is immense whether we see it revealed in corners cut in the quiet of a corporate office, the dark thoughts of our hearts, or the explosion of rage and evil that marked that day in Arizona?

No it must be something external to us, a bad childhood, drugs, a girlfriend who walked away, some talk radio host, or the economy. Something, anything, to find an answer to the questions in something we think we can control. Something, anything, that allows us to look at these events without looking inside and realizing how toxic the world really is and how much we are like him and he like us when we strip away the illusions.

from an Orthodox perspective. Worth the read.

Part of the failure of marriage is that we treat it as a commodity we can discard when it no longer pleases us. The ceremonies people use often reflect this, services shaped to reflect the customers current needs, events rather than sacraments, and a show over and above the worship of the God who makes two one.