There are voices in the hallway,
Shouting, accusations, tears.
And a little boy with the covers pulled
Over his head, behind the bedroom door
Shouting in complete silence
“Stop, just please stop.”
It’s the first taste, but not the last,
Of being caught between hope and reality.
One of the mistakes…
we may make when crises come is to look around us when, in fact, we should be directing our attention towards God. The short term answer to the question “What’s happening?” is important but of greater importance is the answer to “God, where are you in all of this?”
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Please consider….
that if the normative canons, bylaws, and procedures can be changed at will to affect Bishops how is it that individual Priests, Deacons, and Laity, perhaps any one of us, will be exempt from the repercussions? Struggles and times of challenge within the Church are always hard, always distasteful, but in this case we really do have an interest in what’s going on. It matters to us, if not now perhaps in the future, and our prayers, our thoughtful insights, and our voice must be engaged.
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According to a survey…
atheists and agnostics actually know the most about major religions and most Americans actually know very little about even the religion they profess.
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Among the greatest…
of the historic American blues/gospel songs sung by the great Son House.
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Packers lose…
but you can’t blame the Bears for taking advantage of a team record 18 Green Bay penalties. I wonder what the topic will be this week for Packer’s practices? Note to other NFL teams: It’s probably not a good idea to overlook da Bears.
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If silence wins…
then nothing changes. That which troubles us will remain and become calcified, harder to heal and more resistant to light and grace. It’s not the discussion, the prayers, the confession, the communication, the give and take that will kill us but the silence, the pretending, the hope that we don’t have to look into the darkness within and without.
Silence is the hope that the storms passes somewhere far away. Silence is the desire to avoid the sin without for the sake of the revealing of the sin within. Silence covers the wound before it can heal. Silence shuts the door on forgiveness, change, and redemption. Silence is darkness and death.
Who wishes to be exposed? Who desires to face their sins? Who craves the light that shines in dark corners? No one but the person who finally has nothing left to lose but their soul. Until then, within and without, silence is the enemy of grace, the poison of mortality willingly consumed.
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I wish I could…
be a Minnesota Vikings fan. Of my 50 years the large majority of them have been lived in and around Minnesota and most within an easy drive of my family home in Mahtomedi. Yet for some reason cheering for the home team has eluded me.
It’s not the team itself. Although they’ve never won “the big one” the Vikings are a decent team usually at least somewhere between the top and the bottom of the league. Like any other NFL team they have their heroes and their crazies, their glory days and times that everyone would like to forget. Certainly compared to some other teams, like the Detroit Lions, they’ve been fabulously successful.
So why am I not in purple and gold on Sundays? Some of it is the lingering effect of wonderful childhood memories of the Packers. When I was a child it was the still the age of heroes and the Packers were ours and mine. At times I think the truth is that I’m really a fan of the Lombardi era Packers and the current team gets my loyalty only because they are their descendants.
Some of it is the way some native Minnesotans treat people from Wisconsin. There is a kind of myopia here among some who were born here, a conviction that this place is the center of the civilized world and that there is no life outside of Minnesota. People from the Dakotas are clods. Iowans are idiots. People from Wisconsin are some kind of hillbillies. A good thrashing of the Vikings is a way to send up the snobs.
Most of it, though, is about the fans. There are true blue die hard Vikings fans out there but it seems that most of those who cheer for the purple and gold flow up and down as per the team. Win a few and the bandwagon starts to fill up. Lose one and it empties. The needle seems to be pinned on either adulation or contempt and very few seem to be happy. One can almost hope the Vikes win a Super Bowl just to shut the whiners up but that seems to be little reason to cheer for the team.
Who knows? I could get that episcopal phone call and we’d be off to a new city and a new team. I’ll probably get the new jersey and join everyone else in the fun. It just doesn’t seem to be happening here and until then I’ll stick with green and gold.
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A thought…
It’s possible to not love where the Church is at any given moment and still love her for where she has been and where she will eventually be. This is, in part, how she and those who love her have endured.
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The destination…
1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
The Beautiful Path 