In a prior post I talked about Sen. Biden’s eyes looking “spooky” and I, apparently, wasn’t the only one.

I can’t tell you if the Senator had botox or some sort of lift and for the most part I don’t really care. I just find it very puzzling that in this culture we have people who seem to be willing to basically disfigure themselves for the illusion of looking “younger”. I envision one day we’ll be able to know who’s old not by the wrinkles but rather by the artificially tightened look of their faces.

I guess, at least, it’ll save the undertaker some work. Sigh!

A sample below the rest of it here…

No matter how hard they try to protect the gospel from corruption, ministers who focus on politics and politicians as a means of redemption must minimize their ultimate calling and message. The road to redemption does not run through Washington, D.C. Politicians can’t redeem themselves from the temptations of Washington. What makes anyone think they can redeem the rest of us?

Yesterday, my homily focused on how the surest way to change the sickness of our society lies not in electing a man who couldn’t change his own city or one who has been in the center of governing for years but rather for us to simply be Christians. If you’re tired of all this, be as Jesus says “Light, salt, and yeast”, in this dark culture. If you’re looking for meaning follow Him. If you’re overworked and stressed out by it all, take on His yoke, an easy and light thing compared to the weight of a sinful world.

Words of wisdom from a Bulgarian banker turned Orthodox monk.

Find it here and pass it on.



Hat tip to Paradosis

I was planning on going to bed early tonight to start making up for all sleep I somehow can’t get but I decided to stay up and watch the vice presidential debates. I chose Fox but also switched to CNN for the post debate wrap ups.

Right away you need to know that I’m not crazy about these “debates”. I’m not convinced they’re debates at all but rather question and answer sessions where, more often than not, the emphasis is on answers and not questions. “Senator Smith what do you think about energy policy?” “Well, thank you for asking, as I’ve said before we need to provide health care for every American…” And I think, as well, that most people watch them like they watch car races, that is they put up with the going around in circles in the hope they may witness a crash.

But I did notice a couple of things. Sen. Biden has spooky eyes. I don’t know who did his makeup but when he looked at the camera he often looked like the grumpy old man who used to live down the street and yell at kids when they came on his lawn. I know he didn’t intend that but it was the first thing I picked up on. And Gov. Palin came awful close, at times, to sounding like “church lady” from the old Saturday Night Live. Again, I don’t think she was trying but it did come out that way.

I thought Sen. Biden was at his best when he spoke of the loss of his wife in the automobile accident. It was a very human moment and for me I wish we would get to see more of the person behind the persona in these debates so we can make a better choice. I thought Gov. Palin showed that she was up to the job. She didn’t obviously have the broad depth of detail in her responses that comes with being in the Senate for decades but she did evoke confidence and the sense that she could quickly fill in the gaps. For a person who has been mercilessly hatcheted by the mainstream press in a way that would and never have happened for Sens. Obama and Biden it was a positive opportunity to present herself unedited and without National Enquirer type filters.

The problem for me in surveying these debates is that I don’t fit in a single category. I’m sure those on the Left will say Sen. Biden won and those on the Right will give the nod to Gov. Palin. But in rough terms I’m a social conservative and a fiscal liberal. I believe in traditional faith, traditional values, and traditional culture and as part of that I see the need for the power of the state to be used, at times, to assist the poor, protect the environment, and use its wealth for the common good. I believe in neither the hyper or the laisze faire state. I believe that personal morality and decency is what keeps us from tyranny or anarchy. I’m pro life but i know it means more then just being against the injustice of abortion. I sometimes think the Democrat party has abandoned me on the fronts of faith and morality and the Republican party on the questions of the larger social contract.

In the past I’ve used the issue of abortion as a kind of litmus test in the belief that a person who supports the fundamental right to life can, at least, be drawn to better things based on that understanding but a person who believes that the State and not God is the source of human rights (and this is a core of the abortion argument) has the potential to do great harm. I’ve also looked at how they would appoint judges because I believe in the current political climate the freedom to practice my faith can be changed in an instant depending on who sits on any given court. So I sit back and digest it all knowing that one person will never fit all my criteria and they and I will be making imperfect choices.

Having said all that I will go to bed. I know which of the two human beings I will be voting for and the debate didn’t reverse that choice. But I’m glad for the fact that we still have the right to debate and make the choice.

I pray I make a good one.

If anything about these past weeks and months, the political stuff, the financial issues, makes sense it would be found in the still, small, voice of God behind the fury of the storm.

“Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest…” When you and I are done placing all our hopes and labors into politicians, the market, our careers, our dreams, or whatever else is taking up our time there is God, still waiting and watching for his prodigal children to discover again that true rest is found not in the transitory things of the world but in the quiet peace of the Father’s house.

When Christians, who have for so long bought into the empty promises of the world they are basically indistinguishable from it, rediscover this the real revolution will begin.

The more I see of human politics the more I want the Kingdom of God.

The voices of financial doomsday are waiting for Monday.

As we begin to fall asleep here the Asian markets are waking up and looking at their world. What they see, that mixture of fact, figures, psychology, and gut, will start the day and by morning here the alchemy will be running its course. Speculation abounds. And if the herd panics, what then?

There’s a helplessness in it all, the idea that a handful of people on phones halfway around the world or halfway around the country can destroy, in a moment, the savings of a lifetime, the thin line between enough and want when work is no longer possible. Where is the trust? Where is the responsibility? Where is the sense? And what will happen when those words become like litter on the floor the morning after a party?

One thing is certain. We’re all about to wake up from the American dream. Whether the morning finds all the fine strings of the financial world still together or if it all comes unraveled the idea that the horizon is limitless, that wealth is unending, and acquisition is the content of life is doomed. In fact it was from the start but we, as Americans, have been able to borrow our way from the reality of the world for longer than most. Bills are coming due and the checkbook is empty.

What remains is the shape of the world which emerges from these days. Will the apprehensions of these days call us to ponder that which is greater and enduring or shape a culture where people turn on each other for whatever remains? Will we see the futility of the life we believed was right, a life divorced from transcendence, centered on materialism, and lived without the sense of a future? Can hardship and uncertainty burn away our conceits or will we become hard and bitter? How will the end of our illusions find us?

And how will it find the Church? It is for these moments, these times when the dreams are over and all the bills are due that her Truth becomes more stark against the background and more alive as well. When the facades of a culture dancing in illusion’s ballroom fall there will be a hunger that only Christ can truly fill. Will we be ready? Will I?

I don’t know, but as Sunday gives way to Monday we may all find out.

This is not a new finding. In his 1983 book “The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener,” skeptic and science writer Martin Gardner cited the decline of traditional religious belief among the better educated as one of the causes for an increase in pseudoscience, cults and superstition. He referenced a 1980 study published in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer that showed irreligious college students to be by far the most likely to embrace paranormal beliefs, while born-again Christian college students were the least likely.

Read more here.

Hat tip to Paradosis

I had to do something today that I never wanted to do, cancel services.

I’m on vacation now, and whether it was a matter of mixed up communications or people just not stepping up to the plate there was nobody available to serve Typica this Sunday. I spoke with our Dean about it and he advised me to cancel if no one stepped forward but I have mixed emotions about it all.

I hate the thought of our little church being empty and alone on Sunday. I hate the idea that some person may be searching for something and find our doors locked and the lights out. A part of me wants to make the trip myself, even if only a few people come, and serve what I can. It all seems like a failure to me. But I also can’t make people do what they don’t wish to do and I can’t make people care for a parish if they can’t, or won’t. And I need to rest if I’m going to keep on traveling. I’m no good to anyone if my nerves are burnt and there’s nothing left to give.

Tomorrow I will be at St. George Church here in the Twin Cities because even on vacation I want to be at church on Sunday. Yet my heart will be far away in LaCrosse in the empty quiet of St. Elias.

Rats…

Vacation starts today, a week off at home with a few projects and a Twins game thrown in. Suffice it to say I’m tired to the bone, road weary, and in need of a week or so of nothing in particular and I plan to take it, a sabbath for all the sabbaths missed.