Opening the car window on a hot day, sitting forward, and letting the breeze dry out the back of your shirt.

Politicians are the only folks who can mess things up and then campaign against their own mistake.

If they have to advertise, they’re not really a psychic. A real psychic would be calling you.

A simple rule: If you want less of something tax it, if you want more subsidize it.

The simplest diet costs nothing: eat less, move more.

I recently had a Priest from Ohio write after he learned that I traveled over a thousand miles per month back and forth to St. Elias and tell me he’ll never again complain about his 50 mile commute. It brings up a good point.

Every parish, every assignment, has its strengths and weaknesses. Because we Priests are often the only ones of our kind for miles and because we largely work alone the struggles of our tasks often feel more significant because we have little to which they can be compared. Our problems are our own in a unique way and our isolation magnifies their significance. Everything has to be seen in balance.

I drive a lot but at the same time I work with a dynamic, proactive, and solid Parish Council. There are other Priests who have larger churches and higher incomes but their parishes are in conflict. What can you say? To survive in ministry you have to see the larger picture, not in a dreamy idealistic way, but with reality tempered by hope. You’re not perfect, your Parish isn’t either. You’ll have problems, but then so does the Priest up the highway.

Sometimes realizing this just takes an email from Ohio.

One of the great simple pleasures of life, taking off your shoes and socks at home after a long day of work. Ahhhhhhh!

I’m looking for writers and thinkers for a new site called Orthodox Revolution…

When I first started this blog I hoped to present a snapshot into my life as a Priest traveling down the river road from St. Paul, Minnesota and LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The road allows time to think and time to think is the seed of writing.

As I traveled around the www myself I began to see a picture of the world that sometimes left me cold. The www thrives on the freedom of speech, the ability of people like you and I to investigate, learn, share, and encounter as journalists in our own right. Yet such freedoms are often under threat. In past times, especially in the West, the idea had been that free speech was dynamic and a good for its own sake, the free give and take of ideas the definition of a free people. Repression of speech was the mark of dictators, repressive regimes, and a backwards past. This is changing.

Across the West there has been a significant contraction of free speech. Whether in the speech codes and blinding uniformity of much of American academia to the human rights commissions of Canada to the hate speech laws of Europe the idea that speech is best encountered with more speech is gradually dying and being replaced by the idea that those in power have the right, for the sake of some notion of fairness or tolerance, to suppress speech in the hope of an elusive harmony.

This, of course, is hogwash. Repression of free speech doesn’t produce more tolerance it produces a fascism where the powerful maintain power by denying dissent. Repression of speech doesn’t produce human advancement, it smothers it as good ideas die for the fear of expressing them. Repression of free speech doesn’t produce enlightenment because it limits the horizons of human thought. Societies that permit the repression of speech eventually decline, the victims of the intellectual, social, spiritual, and political contraction that comes with denying expression.

I believe its time for people of good conscience to begin to get educated about how their rights of free speech are being chipped away around the world. Education means facing the facts and becoming aware of how things actually are. This is not about paranoia, seeing things that aren’t there, but about opening your eyes and seeing the big pictures often obscured by the day to day business of living. Too often we find ourselves so busy with the miscellania of our lives that the larger trends of our culture, especially its darker side, can achieve their effect in stealth. We fall asleep and wake up to a different world in the morning.

We need to rediscover, again, that freedom requires constant vigilance. Freedom is messy sometimes, it requires the engagement of the free to maintain it, and sometimes means that we have to live in discomfort. Too often we humans are willing to surrender our freedom in the hope of avoiding the work, the discomfort of what it means to be free. At times we hope, instead of freedom, for a world where we control the puppets strings and achieve our vision of utopia by silencing dissent. Mostly we’re just lazy and don’t care about what happens outside our own comfort zone. The result is that most precious right, the right to learn, grow, speak, debate, and express ourselves without fear is being, sometimes harshly and more often quietly, eroded and as it does we may find ourselves descending into a long night stunting the human soul for generations.

I’d like to underscore something to put some context into the posts about same sex marriage that are posted on this blog.

We need to know what we’re up against as traditional Christians. There are movements afoot by certain elements of the gay community to try not just for accommodation by the greater culture but to use the power of law and society to harass and marginalize us. In the same way that gay activists used Christian’s natural compassion and unwillingness to close doors to engage in an endless round of “dialogue” designed not to seek understanding but rather to wear down opposition the larger society is now experiencing this skilled maneuver aided by the deep sympathy of many in the media and academic worlds to the gay causes. The goal for these people is victory and we need to understand this.

Knowing that, however, does not mean we must respond in kind. We must be firm, factual, truthful, but also loving and understanding. By this I mean we cannot weaken our Christian vision but we must understand that our vision includes not just the truth but grace as well. Our goal is not social conquest but salvation. Those who oppose us, as harsh and vicious as that opposition can be, are still objects of God’s love, persons in His image, and although we believe they have strayed in a part of their life (just as we have strayed in parts of ours) we can never lose the hope that one day they, and the whole world if possible, could be reconciled to God in Christ.

I’m not advocating quietism, the living of our lives under the radar of life in the hope that the world will leave us alone. We can and should be involved in all the processes of our culture. Rather I believe we need to live as revolutionary Orthodox Christians, working out our own salvation and through this bringing salvation to others and then to the larger culture. One person at a time our lights must shine and and the be passed on. In time, as in many cultures of the past, the light of Christ, the light which can never be overtaken by night, will again prevail.

It would be easy to see what is happening in the larger world and grow angry. It would be easy to see our culture so full of flagrant and unhealthy sexuality and grow disgusted. Instead we need to see to our own salvation and as part of that pray. When you see two men romantically kissing in public, pray for them. When the newspapers are full of pro-gay propaganda pray for the people mentioned and the writers as well. When court cases emerge pray for the judges who will decide. Pray for their salvation, not for revenge, and pray for wholeness and healing for them and yourself.

Above all remain confident and do not give in to fear. History remains in God’s hands and the end of things will not escape God’s love, God’s plans, and God’s design.

I just put down my deposit on a Smart Car. It’ll take about a year to arrive and hopefully I’ll be settled in one place. It’s a decent car, lots of room for two inside, and should be a great car for a non traveling Priest to use for calls. Mine will look like the one pictured above. My first Pastor car was a Ford Festiva, which I dearly loved, and I hope this one will do as well. The Smart Fortwo has good gas mileage 40/45 by 2007 standards, 33/41 by 2008, easy to park, easy on the earth, and fun to drive. A good little city car.

One of the things people may not know is just because I’m skeptical about the global warming hype doesn’t mean I’m not an environmentalist in my own way. I feel that taking care of the environment and living on the Earth in the lightest way possible is about respect for God’s creation. I like to think that not consuming as much is a way to promote peace in the world. I believe we have a moral responsibility to, as best we can, leave God’s creation in at least as good, and hopefully better, shape as we found it. It’s just that I guess I’m not “Al Gore” green so much as “Garden of Eden” green, if that makes sense.

Many of us here in the US are completely unaware that in our neighbor to the north, Canada, there has been a concerted effort among certain gay and leftist activists to use various governmental and quasi-governmental bodies as hammers against people who stray from a politically correct orthodoxy. Of particular concerns are the various human rights commissions who receive complaints and have the power to act on them, including assessing penalties and forbidding certain kinds of speech, without following judicial process, rules of evidence, or even the various rights spelled out in the Canadian Charter.

The most visible current case is that of Mark Steyn a conservative columnist who has written a book about, among other topics, the spiraling Muslim birth rates in Europe and the potential demographic fall out. He has been brought before a human rights commission in British Columbia by a Muslim man who claims that he has been harmed by an article in a magazine covering roughly the same ideas as the book even though the facts, figures, and quotes are true and often merely recount what Muslims leaders themselves say. Mr. Steyn will almost certainly lose the case, virtually every one brought up before these commissions does, and will have to spend precious time and money to continue his defense (the government of Canada covers the expenses of the complaintant).

There have also been Christian clergy brought up before these comissions and draconian infringements on the rights of these clergy to speak, especially on the topic of sexuality, have resulted. It looks, for now, that if Canadians themselves don’t wish to fight for their freedoms and their leaders stand back that the country will gradually descend into a quasi-totalitarian state where the rights of those who disagree with the current political correctness will be gradually shrunken to the point where they are meaningless.

First, pray for Canada and the handful of brave Canadians that are fighting these travesties in the public arena. Second, as much as possible refuse to do business with Canada. Spend your travel dollars elsewhere and tell the authorities about your unwillingness to support a system of government bent on oppressing traditional religious believers. Third see what has become of Canada and realize that some of the same hate crimes and hate speech laws now being used to suppress religious freedom and dissent are in place or coming soon to this country. Speak now so your rights won’t be taken later. Hold your legislators electorally liable for their votes on these matters. Get educated because seemingly benign laws can be used with terrible effect in the wrong hands and when they come knocking on your door you’ll discover how.

While I have theological disagreements with Roman Catholicism I have often admired the ability of their Bishops to make precise, cogent, and reasoned arguments on issues of debate in the public square.