If you give it away…

An interesting article from “First Things”.

It looks like a night and day of snow here in Minnesota even as we’re on the cusp of spring.

That’s not unusual, though, because even as the daylight grows and the fierce northwest winds subside the snow still comes. Thick flakes today, wet with moisture and covering everything in a coat of white. By tonight most of it may be gone because the weather and the change of seasons cannot be denied but still in the small hours of the morning there is a kind of beauty to it all, a memory of the best of winter.

Being the stoic folks we are we often find ways to rationalize about the weather. In winter when the snow falls deep and travel becomes messy and the pace of our lives unwinds we often rationalize it all by saying “Oh well, we need the moisture.” It’s our way of coming to terms with a nature that’s bigger then us and our own fragility in the face of it all but right now it’s actually true as well. We’re pretty dry. Most of the large snow storms this past winter have journeyed south of us into Iowa and through Illinois, nicking the edge of Wisconsin as they pass. We’re below average, water wise, and every bit of wet we get will make a difference months from now.

There is a double blessing in a March snow. In a dry time it brings vital water and no matter how much we get in March there is a different sense about it. A March snow still brings things to a crawl, still messes up our lives, still makes everything inconvenient to us as defined by our current “gotta have it now ” culture, but its different. A foot of snow in December means we have at least two months to deal with it. A foot of snow in March may be gone in two days. On occasion tulips will show their leaves right through a March snow, and our own hope emerges as well. Spring is coming and nothing snow can do will change it.

Yup, he’s one of ours.

From the London Times, a story of an award for a scientist working the math regarding creation.

The Lenten Fasting rules from Fr. Joseph at Orthodixie…

Among the simple gifts of life is a good sleep. The best kind is one reasonably undisturbed in a safe, warm, place, long enough to provide rest but not so long as to promote sluggishness. When you have two jobs such a sleep is near sacramental in its effect and the morning after is almost irrelevant because a rested body can easily face nearly any kind of day.

1 in 4 American teenage girls has an STD according to this study. But wasn’t all this supposed to go away when we had all those classes and gave everyone who wanted one a free condom and stopped making those inhibiting moral judgements?

Apparently not, and therein lies a lesson. Some time ago I heard a Christians speaker named Tony Campolo and among his comments was his belief the Christian life would be worth living even if there was no heaven.The story above is a case in point. The ancient wisdom of those Christian traditions and texts stressing faithfulness, chastity, and marriage, far from being some less enlightened notion, are proving to be the way of health and wholeness as disease responds to our lack of inhibition. Nothing but the Christian life will ever stop the ills of our indulgent and godless culture and even if we don’t see ourselves as “religious” thier truths are still inevitable.

That all being said it’s been one of the discoveries of my life as I grow older, how the Christian path just makes sense, how it flows with the rythms of nature and how its call to live in the world and with others is the way not just to eternal bliss, but to true contentment even in this broken world. How realistic Christian faith is, how practical, how life enhancing, how deep a well it is full of life giving water! My life is most at rest when it flows within this Faith and most troubled when it flows away because these truths were built into the very design of things by the Creator. And so it is, or at least should be, for the world as well.

An article from First Things on stem cells.