The temperature outside is dropping like a rock, down to 25 below zero Farenheit in some areas, and I took a day off from Valerian to let my body chemistry readjust so I’m awake and writing. All I can hear is the furnace kicking on again and again as it struggles against the cold and I wonder how much that’s going to cost when we get the bill in February. Oh well, I’ll be back in bed in a minute or two and this won’t last forever. They say we could be in the 30’s by next week and it’ll be nice to go outside without looking like the Michelin man. One more hard day and the mercury starts rising.

BTW I’m not sure what kind of original equipment battery comes with a Saturn Vue, probably an AC/Delco, but mine is amazing. Yesterday morning, below zero, cranks right over. Takes a few miles to get warmed up but starts like a charm.

It’s hard to watch, sometimes, the endless fighting in the Middle East, two cultures with a hand on each other’s throat and an unwillingness to let go. From a distance and the safety of these shores it seems unreal, senseless like two street gangs doing battle over the same dank street corner save for the advanced weapons.

One wonders, how many will have to die? When will two people looking at each other across the divide finally think to themselves “This is insanity, honor, country, people, everything distorted and the only thing real is the blood flowing out of our children.” People long dead started it all and fresh bodies join them on an assembly line powered by grudge. Larger forces play the greater game but like everything else the pawns get brushed off the table. Young men pay for old men who can’t forgive or forget and young women join their mothers in the black clothes of widows.

On the face of it there is no answer. Contemporary Arabic culture is steeped in hatred of Jews, those people whose very life affronts their sense of honor and whose survival calls to mind their ongoing defeat. Jews, with wounds still raw and bleeding from the Holocaust, vow “Never again” and fight to claim a land for themselves and the safety of borders as if the people who’ve lived there for centuries don’t matter. Will the last Palestinian and the last Israeli left alive at least agree turn out the lights when they leave this world?

And here we are as Orthodox Christians, somewhere in between the apocalyptic fueled love for Israel from the right and calculated and oft manipulated Palestinian rage of the left. Somewhere in the middle trying to make sense of it all even as in our hearts we probably have already figured out that sense, at least in the world’s understanding of it, may never come. The diplomats burn fuel trying to make it go away but the fire never stops.

Only one thing remains and that is prayer. Prayer not for one side or the other but prayer for peace, for hope, for wisdom, for that moment when somehow, somewhere, the Holy Spirit touches two people burning with anger and allows them to see the person in the body they are about to exterminate, the child of God under the uniform and say “Enough.” Only our Lord will be able to heal the land of his wayward family, this struggle between the sons of Abraham and until that time comes we cannot forget to pray for that sad, hurting, chunk of the globe, engaging the spiritual forces and principalities which have woven themselves in and through every human experience in anticipation of the day when faith becomes sight.

In your mercy, Lord, let this day be soon.

If you are so inclined there is a great opportunity to help an Orthodox mission parish in Iowa City, Iowa, raise money to buy a much needed building. St. Raphael Mission has been meeting in a rented facility so small that people have to do synchronized metanias to avoid smacking each other in the back (that’s not necessarily a joke) and they have the possibility of purchasing a Christian Science church building that could meet their needs for years to come.

Click on this link to find out how you can help.

It looks like snow for tomorrow and below zero temperatures through Friday. That’s the bad news. The good news is that weather wise this coming week is historically the coldest of the year and as the days keep getting longer the warmth will have to break through. I’m not cancelling my trip to Las Vegas though. There’s a trip to the Star Trek museum with our name on it!

News from Th!nk of Norway on the development of an electric commuter car for the US in the near future. When I was a kid I used to draw “cars of the future” in my doodles and now some of those doodles are coming to life. I’m ready for an electric car for making pastoral calls and around town trips if they can make it cheap enough to not bust my budget.

BTW my reservation for a new Smart Car is on track for September – November of this year.

Interested in some substantial reading on a blog? Try “Postmodern Conservative“.

A link from “Get Religion” related to an ongoing study of clergy health. As a Priest realizing, again, that I’m not indestructible all I can say is “Amen”.