From Salvo magazine…

Christianity is antithetical to the culture. Our devotion to it makes us offensive from the get-go. In other words, you know something is wrong when your values no longer offend; it most likely means that you are becoming a part of-and not merely engaging-secular society. And as I said earlier, we have a moral obligation to help keep others from caving in to the culture’s value system, because it will likewise prevent them from making choices that have the propensity to deteriorate their mental, physical, and spiritual health.

Sunday morning, 6:30 AM, south on highway 61.

The light is beginning to break through the fog on the valley floor and the tops of bluffs are catching the first sun as it reaches over the Mississippi. It’s a good time to travel. Most everyone is asleep, the tourists will show up after lunch and only people with a purpose are out this time in the morning, farmers, truckers, and folks on the day shift.

The trees are here and there just starting to turn. Fall colors in this part of the world are like paint poured over the land flowing north to south. In two weeks the fiery colors will have rolled down from Lake Superior but right now there’s only a drop or two, a spill from the world a few hours north.

September can be the best month of all, cooler temperatures, clear nights, a respite from the hot craziness of summer. Things feel more like routine and even though the sun goes down earlier the daylight seems more precious and more alive. People like to get married in September because of it and go to football games too.

But I’m driving south, listening to something on XM and thinking about the day ahead. There are things to do, things under deadline. September is about the reminder of tasks that need completion before the cold sets in and changes everything. A swirl of colors settles over the world in September but so does a swirl of tasks and when I park the car in front of St. Elias I know there will be much to do.

But not now. The car is fine. The sun is breaking through the valley fog and the tops of the bluffs are coming into view at sunrise. I have the road mostly to myself and my phone is on but everyone who could call is asleep. Minnieska slips by in the quiet and that’s good enough.

On the “Orthodoxy of Tomorrow…”

An interesting article from Frederica Matthewes-Green…

The front pages are clogged with stories of economic failure. Politics is partisan, nasty, and ineffective. The culture appears to be growing more coarse and immature with each new season on TV. The America I knew as a child seems like a dream and the one I live in now a nightmare without the relief of morning.

Is God judging America?

In the time following the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell suggested something to that affect and was roundly critiqued for expressing his opinion that the hand of God could have been behind those events. The critiques, though, were often more about the unfashionable nature of the idea that God would judge America, or judge anyone or anything, and less about the actual content of Rev. Falwell’s theory.

But could God be judging America?

The answer is “Its possible.” As Christians we understand that God is active in history and can use the ebb and flow of events to hold both people and nations to account. There is no asterisk in that understanding for the United States. Only a distorted sense of our exceptionalism would have us believe we’re immune from the possibility of God calling us to task and using the events of history as tools of His sovereignty. Why would there be one standard for say, the Philistines, and another for us? Why should there be?

The problem, given that understanding, is not about whether its possible that God is using the events of these times as a kind of judgment but whether we can state that with certainty. There have been times, as our Faith tells us, that certain people have been given a gift from God to proclaim with specificity that events were being directed to chastise and call a culture to repentance, and in the perspective of hindsight we can affirm that gift. But in throes of immediacy and without such a charism it would be good to proceed with caution. History is full of date setters and “prophets” who have only one thing in common, they were wrong. Are the events of these times the beginning of the end or the birth pains of a coming revival? God knows, we don’t. What is heaven’s take on 9/11? God knows, we don’t.

But we do know something with certainty. We do know ithat ideas, constructs, and behavior have consequences. We have fallen prey, for a variety of reasons, in this country to a kind of life that is at once technically advanced but spiritually, emotionally, and socially selfish, materialistic, and bankrupt. Our institutions, as reflections of ourselves, have become poisoned as well with the results being fodder for the headlines. To what extent God’s hand is in all of this remains unknown but perhaps we’re bearing the consequences of our own actions, the pain of our abandonment of sense and the emptiness of a life detached from authentic moral order. One does not need a prophet to suggest this, one simply needs to read the Book or, for that matter, the newspaper.

So is the craziness of these times an example of God’s judgement, the consequences of our own choices, or some mixture of both? I haven’t the gift to say with certainty. I only know that the sickness of my culture begins to end when the I address the illness of my own soul. The rest, as one politician of note has said is “Above my pay grade…”

“We are not led to undo the work of creation or to rectify the Fall. The duty of the Christian is not to leave the world a better place. His duty is to leave this world a better man.”

Read the rest here.

Hat tip to Five Feet of Fury

It’s said that if it rains on their wedding day the couple will be wealthy so the future looks bright for my sister and her new husband. Suffice it to say among the readings there was the passage from the Song of Solomon recalling how “many waters cannot quench love…” and such was the case.

But the roof of St. Clement’s didn’t leak and everything inside was warm and very properly Episcopalian in its aesthetic. A small choir of men accompanied by organ led the music and the rector was dressed in cassock and surplice. The people of the church had taken great care in remodeling the facility not to destroy its classic charm, the rood screen, chancel choir, wooden arched ceilings, and high (but unused) east altar. The building was stone, the doors were red, the bride was radiant, the groom steady and tall, the mother nervous. All in all fairly typical.

The liturgy itself was orderly and tight. This is the Episcopal Church after all, the place where they painstakingly keep all the architectural details but can celebrate the Liturgy as a kind of avant garde jazz. The taste of St. Clement’s, though, is country parish high church, small but well done and such was the case here. Of course, being the Episcopal Church the rector had to add the word “partnered” throughout the service like shards of broken bottle on a village green but otherwise she wisely kept to the book. When Western liturgies refuse to succumb to the temptations of “relevance” they are marvelous, elevating, things.

In the hours that followed we danced and talked and renewed old acquaintances in the way that always seems to happen at such events. As the night wore on we, one by one, began to take our leave, at once tired by the events and refreshed by their renewing effect. I was among the early departures as I needed to be up and ready at 4 the next morning for the journey along the river road now in its fourth year.

And so their journey, my sister and her tall, shy, Italian scholar, begins.

This coming Saturday my sister will be married in a tidy and well appointed Episcopal Church here in St. Paul. For our family it will be, as they say, “The event of the season…” and a time of joy. I will read an epistle, everyone has some job to make it all fit together, and my sister will, in my humble and unbiased opinion, be stunning as she walks down the aisle on my uncle’s arm.

There will be tears, of course, but they will be tears of memory for those who are not with us mingled with tears of joy for this day. It’s been a long time coming, this wedding, a journey of more then a few struggles and heartbreaks mixed in with the craziness of bureaucracy and flavored throughout with the kind of love that only comes when a man and a woman stand before God and look each other in the eyes. I wish them the best and godspeed always.

I have a wistfulness about it, though. I wish it could have been a crowning but alas it was not to be. There is much in Orthodoxy about how people are coming to the Faith but this one, my sister, is one we let get away. Chrismated, faithful, a member of the choir, my sister was an asset to her Orthodox church but events, personalities, and the feeling of never quite belonging took their toll and she left for the Episcopal Church. It goes to show that we can possess truth but if we do not also possess love the truth loses its value.

How I would have loved to have led her around the table just once as Isaiah’s song was sung. What joy to say those words “The handmaid of God is crowned to the servant of God…” Yet what is done is done and these thoughts will never throttle my happiness on her behalf or the joy of this day. Everyone grows up, everyone makes decisions, and little sisters magically become women and lead, as they should, their own lives. It’s the way of things, we leave our families and make new ones, we say goodbye to something but even in that parting life is renewed.

And it begins tonight in a tidy and well kept church in St. Paul

Most-holy Master, accept the prayer of Your servants and as You were present at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, be present among us now, granting all of us Your unseen protection. Bless this marriage and grant unto these Your servants a peaceful life, length of days, chastity, love for one another in a bond of peace, long-lived children, the joy of grateful children, and a crown of glory that will never fade away. Make them worthy to live to see their children’s children. Keep their marriage bond undefiled. Give them of the dew from the heavens above and the richness of the earth. Fill their home with bountiful food, and with every good thing, that they may have enough to share with those who are poor and in need. Grant to all those who are present here this day, all of their prayers that are for salvation.

For You, O Christ, are a God of mercy, compassion and love, and to You do we offer up glory: together with Your eternal Father and Your all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now and forever, and to the ages of ages.