about trapping skunks (I have some interesting conversations) and I found out what you use to bait the trap. Spam and sardines. And yes, there apparently is a market for skunk pelts but I do not want to know where.

of reflection, the month of my birthday, the month that marks the passage of time. Every August I think about things, where they’ve gone, and where they may go. August is a pondering month.

When I was a child the age I am now was unimaginable, the age of parents and teachers and doctors. How far away these days were, and how far away were their concerns. But mirrors do not lie and neither do hard to get out of bed mornings. I have arrived and much too quickly for my liking.

I’m happy with the music, a musician being what I should have been if I could do it again, but still it is good to know that it has never died. I’m happy with my family. We’ve changed. We’ve grown. We’re the same faces but different people. Except for the yawning chasm left by my brother’s death there is goodness among us. I continue to write, it feeds me and I feed it. I’m lucky in love, unfortunate in hairline, spreading out some in the middle, but not too old to dream.

Yet I’m restless too. I believe there is something more and its close but not yet here. I feel it but it is undefined. I still have a horizon and probably always will. Always within me is the sense that I was destined for something more, something better, but it is not about the fleeting passage of fame. Rather its the sense that this world, this place, these days, are not my final destination. Everybody hears that call but few listen.

I cannot drown it out.

can be found here.

of the morning when dreams are most vivid I had a dream as well.

I was with a young child and we were walking through my hometown of Wausau, Wisconsin. I was showing him various places and we finally made it to the last home we lived in which, far from its current run down shape, was bright, vibrant, and large. On the street by the house there were a group of teenagers playing basketball, some I knew and some I didn’t, but I joined the game and took a few shots.

Then, in the moment, I said “You know what I want to do when I get to heaven? I want to shoot hoops.”

Interesting, and a pleasant dream.

given to bumber sticker faith but I did have one of those small oval stickers on the back of my car with STE on it for St. Elias. The sticker is faded, though, and peeling so I’ve decided to replace it with another oval sticker that says “Wake up and smell the incense…Eastern Orthodoxy”. I thought it was kind of neat.

At least it helps me find my rather generic (but extremely durable) Saturn in a parking lot.

runs through some beautiful country on the road from LaCrosse to Boscobel, WI. It’s coulee country, hills with deep valleys that the Ozark folks call “hollows” and roads that wind in whatever gap is wide enough for lanes. I imagine how it must be in fall when everything is lit up with nature’s own leafy fireworks.

Little towns straddle the road with names like “Mt. Zion” and “Soldier’s Grove”. Other towns are just a sign pointing down a side road and into another valley. It took a real sense of the need to get home to avoiding a turn and finding out what “Gays Mills” or “Wauzakee” looked like. But the skies above looked like rain and I wanted to rest just a little bit before the work week took hold. So the car and I pushed ahead, down and back, with little time for rest. Things to do, places to go.

I did, however, make one stop along the way and jogged north for a few miles past Westby, WI, to see Living Waters Bible Camp. When you’re young and in the Plymouth Brethren bible camp is summer vacation and spiritual retreat combined and I was part of the group that helped build Living Waters back in the day when it was part of a farm and we camped out in tents at night and built things during the day, occasionally taking a break to wander in the hills.

The camp had, of course, added things in the years since I’ve been there but the shape is the same and just seeing it brought back memories. We had spiritual moments there and sometimes we had girlfriends of the kind you can only have at bible camp. Living Waters was the place where we fought for the sugared cereal in those little boxes at our campsites, where I got a black eye once but kissed a girl too (happened same year but not related) and also where we met distant friends and told stories long into the night.

As I drove slowly around the grounds all of it came back to me and it was everything I could do to not stop, get out, and see if there was anyone there I remembered. I still know the family names from the old days and they still, even though I haven’t been with the Plymouth Brethren for decades, probably remember mine.

But there were, as usual, places to go and miles ahead and so I turned back up the valley and drove past the old tobacco shed (in the old days people around LaCrosse grew tobacco in the hills) and up the winding road. My dad, rest his soul, would be proud to see the camp he helped build still alive, functioning, and blessing. As for me it was about continuity, linking my past to the present and finding healing, strength, and joy in it all. How long ago it was and yet how close as well. For a moment I was both the boy who stayed in those dorms and wandered the hills and the man with the collar just passing through and pondering as time stood still.

today, this time to Boscobel, Wisconsin for a funeral. They say it might rain but for now the skies look clear and in less than an hour I should be away.

The person I’m doing the service for was not in my parish but is Orthodox and the service will be at the grave. The skies above will determine its length, sun means longer, rain means shorter, and I hope I can provide some comfort and do right by a group of folks who’ve slogged through a long period of illness.

One of the things I encounter out here in southwestern Wisconsin is the reality of scattered Orthodox. People come to Wisconsin for many reasons, not the least being the scenery, and if they’re Orthodox there’s a dilemma. With not too many more then a dozen parishes in the state the coverage can get thin. St. Elias draws people from nearly an hour away, the geographical size of the parish extends across two states and many counties. The tightly clustered rules for urban Orthodox communities don’t apply here and so you have to find a church where you can and services as they come. If the weather gets bad all bets are off, especially in the hill country around LaCrosse.

This family in need came from small town Wisconsin and then moved to the larger venue of Eau Claire, a city of over 60 thousand but still without a local Parish or a resident Priest. I was closest to the small town they came from, they didn’t know I commuted from St. Paul, Minnesota, and so I was called. I don’t mind helping, but part of me is sad.

Why isn’t there a parish in Eau Claire? Over a hundred thousand people live within its borders or an easy drive and still no church. Orthodox, who, for whatever reason, move to towns like Eau Claire often have no place to go. Why should we be surprised, then, when they drift away or scan through the Yellow Pages hoping to find someone, anyone, available when a crisis occurs.

The hardest part of this is that I feel so limited. As the range of St. Elias circle of influence increases my ability to care for all the good people scattered through the area decreases. Surely these people are at least entitled to have someone come and bury their dead.

Regardless in less then a half hour I’ll be on the road again and since I’ve never been to Boscobel before it will be a chance to see some new country. We’ll gather at 2 this afternoon and lay this man to rest, it’s a good and right thing to do, but I wonder what will become of this family once I turn my car around and head back north.

if someday, somehow, everything comes true? External audits, diocesan Bishops, decentralized and conciliar administration, transparency, all the things we claim we want. What happens?

Someone once said “Be careful what you ask for because you may get it.”

If we are indeed in a time of change we should be preparing ourselves now for the time of responsibility that is to follow. The sad truth, of course, is that much of what we are experiencing now might not have happened if we all had taken real responsibility earlier but that’s history now and hopefully we’ll not repeat it. Still we have to face what will happen when the walls fall and the castle is laid bare.

Because its easy to cry “Revolution” and get caught up in the spirit of the moment but much more difficult to run the country you’ve now taken. Once the glow is faded and the banners stowed away bills still need to be paid, paper has to move from place to place, phones have to be answered, and questions addressed. For years we’ve said “That’s the Priest’s job.” “That something for the Bishop.” “Send it on to New Jersey.” Then we expected problems to magically vanish, money to come us without strings, and truth to flow without effort.

Could this be part of why we’re where we are now?

Yes, our hierarchs, our trustees, our structures, our systems, they all need to be, as best as sinful humans and things can be, transparent, effective, moral, holy, and right. But what about us? The truth is that “speaking truth to power” is much easier than speaking truth to ourselves. Holy Bishops come from holy churches full of holy people. A living Church cannot be made of dead stones. If we chafe with the idea of being treated like children then perhaps we also need to tend to our own maturity as well.

In this lies the difference between revolution and revival. In a revolution people demand that the powers that be change. In a revival the people change as well.