Life Along the Orthodox Way
I think Adolf Hitler ruined the remarkable Charlie Chaplin moustache. If you were a fan of the late great actor and wanted to grow one just like his as a tribute there would probably be no end of the trouble you’d have. Certainly you’d spend many hours trying to explain yourself. The interesting thing is that WW1 pictures of Hitler show him with a handlebar moustache. Somewhere along the way he changed it and Charlie Chaplin wistful was turned into Hitler sinister. Sad.
in Branson, on signs, in gift shop trinkets, t shirts, shows, and billboards. There seems to be a little bit of him everywhere you look and on the main drag churches share the billing with music groups, animal shows, and the hollywood wax museum. In some ways he’s the unseen star of this little town tucked in the heart of the Bible belt.
Coming from the rest of the world its kind of odd, Jesus everywhere and people talking about him like they mean it and not just after hitting their thumb with a hammer. In Branson Jesus is just part of the deal, along with stores that sell knives, ozark buffets, and rich guys who pretend to be hillbillies for two shows a day.
It could be, of course, that I just come from up north where that kind of thing doesn’t happen as much. We don’t get a whole lot of Jesus billboards in Minnesota or restaurants with scriptures on the menu. Perhaps I’m just as much a fish out of water and someone driving up here from Arkansas might be. For sure it does take a certain amount of adjustment to take it all in.
Certainly if I don’t always understand or appreciate the whole tourist trap Jesus on bumper stickers and key chains sort of thing I appreciate the desire behind at least some of it. For some its probably just about what sells but for others it seems that at least some people think enough of Jesus to talk about him outside of church. There are true believers in these hills, regular folks who are trying to find their way through life and are looking to Jesus to show them how. I can respect that even if i don’t get all the trappings.
And if the truth be known I hope they would be able to respect me looking out over Table Rock lake, prayer rope in hand, and pondering the silence. I have my trappings too and I could just imagine what a person from the First Free Will Missionary Baptist Church in some small town would think when they walked through the doors at St. George.
Still, an onion dome or two down there might look nice…
Anger is by nature designed for waging war with the demons and for struggling with every kind of sinful pleasure. Therefore angels, arousing spiritual pleasure in us and giving us to taste its blessedness, incline us to direct our anger against the demons. But the demons, enticing us towards worldly lusts, make us use anger to fight with men, which is against nature, so that the mind, thus stupefied and darkened, should become a traitor to virtues. Abba Evagrius the Monk(Texts on Active Life no. 15)
about the increasing demand for, and therefore price of, gold as people around the world look for a place to put their money to ride out the hard times. In truly hard times, though, what good would gold be? Difficult to carry in large quantities and impossible to eat a truly desperate time would make gold essentially worthless.
In a truly hard time it would seem you would need something larger than yourself to believe in to help you make it through, the skills to produce food, clean water, and shelter for basic survival, and a community of people with you to share the tasks and lessen the dangers of life in a world of scarcity. Gold is incidental to any or all of these things. After all what would be more valuable, the ability to consistently feed yourself and your group or a bag of shiny metal?
Of course if you’ve already learned how to live low to the ground, what has often been called “thrift” you’re already ahead of the game. You don’t have the illusions and the dead weight of investment in fictions to recover from before you set out to live in a hostile world.
I wonder, sometimes, though, if all this economic chaos we’ve been going through may actually, when all the noise and clutter are taken away, be God’s way of reminding us of where our treasures and our hearts actually should be. In light of that gold may not matter as much as we think.
Hat Tip to Jihad Watch
Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul!
While I live I will praise the LORD; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help.
His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, Whose hope is in the LORD his God, Who made heaven and earth, The sea, and all that is in them;
Who keeps truth forever, Who executes justice for the oppressed,
Who gives food to the hungry.
The LORD gives freedom to the prisoners.
The LORD opens the eyes of the blind;
The LORD raises those who are bowed down;
The LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the strangers;
He relieves the fatherless and widow;
But the way of the wicked He turns upside down. The LORD shall reign forever—
Your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the LORD!
…Somewhere along the way, standards seem to have been not so much lowered as eliminated. “Content” has replaced that archaic term “substance” and seems to promise much less. Style, in many cases, is content; that’s not even really news anymore. The bar has been lowered so many times that it now just lies there on the floor, lifeless and limp, the outmoded relic of other eras.
The Beautiful Path 