like heroin. Now you could get charged for paying your bills on time!

that the people who advocate population reductions as a cure for global warming always seem to want somebody else to be the person “reduced”. After all if you really believe that an excess of breathing humans is an environmental disaster there are any number of ways you can stop.

will believe anything. And they think religious people are nuts.

are indicating that the recent meeting of the Antiochian Archdiocesan Board of Trustees and Synod of Bishops has resulted in a decision to have an “internal” audit of the Archdiocese’s finances, the return of Bishop Demetri to retirement, and the redirection of the manual for bishops to a committee.

Bishop Demetri, who was convicted several years ago of a sexual offense, had been retired and was quietly returned to a position with the Archdiocese of Mexico and the Caribbean with his salary paid for through the Archdiocese in the US. If the tentative information is true he will return to retirement.

An internal audit of the Archdiocese’s finances, if the preliminary reports are correct, is not the external audit that many have requested but it, depending on the nature of those selected to conduct it, could be a step forward to greater transparency and trust in Archdiocesan finances.

The manual of hierarchical responsibilities, depending on how it was worded, could have become a divisive document and its postponement to committee may also be related to the development of such a manual by the Holy Synod of Antioch.

For more information go to ocanews.org.

Keep us in your prayers.

tattoos in the world can be found here. I’ve never thought of anything I’d like to tack on my body forever and I’m afraid anything now is just destined to slide down as the years march on.

the BBC has now changed its mind on global warming. Apparently they were noticing all the snow and record cold temperatures around the world. Ya think?

We had the chance to play an open mic last night at the Riverview Cafe in Minneapolis. We were a duo, Ross and I, and because we were new we had the chance to jump up in the list and get on stage for our three songs before the event closed.

An open mic often draws singer/songwriter types who wish to try out material with an audience and this night was no exception. The problem is, though, that so many of the songs are, in effect, the emesis of some personal tragedy or larger global concern. If rock and roll can be critiqued for being too trite folk music could also be critiqued for taking itself to seriously. I wish I had a nickel for every time someone stood up on stage at an open mic and said “I wrote this song in a very hard time for me…”, or “I’m so concerned about the environment that I just had to write this song…” which unfortunately sounds like all the other protest songs on the topic. Maybe that’s what is meant by reduce, reuse, recycle.

Ross and I, though, we keep our emotional baggage to ourselves and we save cans without singing about it. Our set was swingy, light, Cajun, and made people feel like dancing. Not a shred of heartbreak, not a single emotional crisis, and it was like air was let into the room for the first time. Come to think of it maybe that was our message.

Anyway, we’ll be back and next time I want to see some people dance.

for the Synod and Board of Trustees now meeting in Houston, Texas. Many around the Antiochian Archdiocese, myself included, are watching and waiting in the hope these meetings will produce a new era of accountability, transparency, and hope. The effects of the decisions made today and tomorrow will be far reaching so we pray the Holy Spirit’s presence with thos gathered.