I took a look at the date for the last post and realized that it’s been a while.

Most of it has to do with just being busy. Things at work, things at church, life.

We filled half a ten yard dumpster last Saturday with excess stuff from St. Elias. It’s amazing how much stuff accumulates even in a building that’s tiny by the standards of most churches. Some of it was about being frugal. Some of it was about being afraid of offending people by throwing stuff they gave or made away even if it was broken or had long since stopped being useful. All the toys are still there even though a good deal of them are in tatters because who wants to be the one to tell our handful of children there are less toys even if they’d probably never notice? Some of it is also probably a kind of cluttered way of being that comes with being a small church in a run down section of LaCrosse.

It’s interesting, though, to see how people positively react to clean up and getting our little building back into shape. For its extremely small size and complete lack of functionality for a modern, and by modern I mean anything after 1950, parish it still has a charm buried beneath a pile of stuff that once unearthed is revealed. A few flowers here and there, a coat of paint, a repair or two and the place looks at least serviceable and reminds the older members of better days. Regardless, its a step in the right direction, a mark of progress to be able to root around inside and lighten the load.

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The past few days have seen some welcome relief from the high temperatures that mark a typical July / August in these parts. It’s normal around here for it to be hot for a few days and then to have a good sized thunderstorm come through and wallop the place while trailing cool air in its wake. But for most of July we had the heat without the storms and things were getting brown. A couple of thunderstorms later and even the grass is starting to recover, and so are we.

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My boss at work retired this past Friday after nearly 20 years service. That in itself is unusual in the human services field. Normally we stay in the field but just swap companies every few years when stress or corporate politics or sheer fatigue burns us out. At conventions its usually the same old faces and only the name tags are new. 20 years in one place is amazing and with her departure an era ends and the time for corporate policy changing has begun.

Sometimes it really is necessary but I think a lot of times policies are changed not so much for greater efficiency, although that’s given as the reason, but rather because in this world there is a hunger to leave a legacy and absent a way to truly do that or the understanding of eternity that undergirds so much of the Christian sense of what really matters, we settle for a few lines of policy in the company manual as our mark on the world. But its still just treasure on earth where moth and rust do cause decay and where the next person in your office will undo everything you worked so hard for the second they get your office.

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I’ve been noticing, too, how tired I’ve been lately. Part of it is the heat. Much of it is the work load.
Tired is now the baseline for me and I barely remember what it was like to be refreshed and completely awake. Yet I’ve been sustained and that makes all the difference because the cause of St. Elias is a worthy one and with just a bit more work we can start to find our way up and out and on our way…

An article from England where research is showing increases in illness due to our increasingly pleasure seeking lifestyles.

Could it be that all that stuff about moderation and morality is actually true…?

A story about the Minnesota Gambling Board and the regulation of “Cow Pie Bingo”.

Yes, its real!

As you probably already know a bridge through central Minneapolis collapsed and fell into the Mississippi River. The 35 W bridge is, perhaps, the most traveled bridge in Minnesota as commuters from both the northern and southern suburbs cross it to get to downtown Minneapolis or simply to pass through town. Apparently the years of heavy duty in all kinds of weather extremes were simply too much and at 6:05 PM it gave way. As morning breaks in Minneapolis we’ll get a more exact number of dead and injured and our hope is the figure is small.

At a point in the past I don’t recall something changed inside of me. I don’t get rattled by tragedy in the way that people sometimes do, demanding that God give account for why He didn’t prevent this horrible thing or that from happening. Bad things happen and I’ve simply come to realize this and even as I wish it weren’t so I’ve stopped shaking my empty fist at the sky.

The world is broken, and I don’t always know why, and may never know why. Things people make, things people do, people themselves, are flawed and mortal at a primal level and yelling about it seems to be as helpful as bashing your forehead against a brick wall hundreds of times. Your efforts will yield no answers and your pain will only increase.

What matters seems to be my response. Will struggle and tragedy make me hard and brittle or will it transform me into something better, something more human, something more like God designed me to be? In the face of chaos and the struggle for meaning in it all that’s one thing I can control, a little bit of sense when things seem to be off the hook.

From the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and “Jihad the Musical” a wonderful parody in music and song.

Ethnic Albanian Muslims desecrate an Orthodox Church in Kosovo.

Now you won’t see this on American Mainstream media where they’ve painted the Serbs as the “black hats” and rarely show evidence that contradicts the offical story line of Muslim “tolerance”. Yet the point of this is not to hate but first to pray for those people venting their fury on an Orthodox temple for they are still persons made in the image of God and second to be wise and realistic about what it is we often face as a radicalized segment of Islam strides to the front of the world stage.

The year I spent in Kansas as Pastor of a Baptist church was often a painful one. Simply put it was not a good fit and I suspect there were some at First Baptist, Lindsborg, Kansas who were as relieved to see us go as we were to leave. I was changing, they wanted to stay the same, or at least that’s my side of the story. Looking back it all makes sense and I see the hand of Providence in it all. I was destined to find my way home and so I could not stay and nothing was left behind.

But two cats did come with us from Kansas strays who found a home with us and made that large Baptist parsonage, and every home we’ve had since then, alive in a way that only cats can. Bo, an athletic tuxedo cat with dark fur over his eyes that made him look like Zorro and Tasha, slight and delicate, walking through our home like a shadow. Bo has been gone over a year now, a tired old man, top cat to the end, who even in his dying let the vet know of his contempt and Tasha who yesterday took that same car ride and was mercifully put to sleep.

Never a large cat, she was so skinny and frail that she was a shadow of even her own slender self. Wracked by all the maladies that come to old cats she was tired, had gone blind, and wandered the house for a few days bumping into things and crying in a way only cats in distress can. We agonized for days and then our not wanting to see her suffer out weighed our desire to keep her with us and the decision was made. The vet sent a sedative home with us and after my wife and I spent the afternoon with her I gave her a shot and she fell asleep. While we gathered her favorite blanket to carry her to the vet’s office I placed her in our doorway for one last brief rest in the sun and then we carried her off. Before the needle was a quarter empty her tiny heart stopped and she went limp.

We stayed for a little while looking at her lying there, quiet and still, no longer crying and pacing through the house in a sightless fog and then we left. In a week or so a small box will be waiting for us with her remains, a swatch of hair, and one last paw print in clay. It will all go into a little box on our mantle next to our other Kansas kitty, Bo, and I suspect every once in a while we’ll open it up and remember.

Although the Scriptures, and, to my best knowledge, the Tradition are silent on this I do have a part of me that hopes there is something of the life of animals that lives on in some way. In prior posts I have mused that animals are perhaps the most innocent of God’s creatures because they did not sin and are broken only because of the mortality that came to the world through our rebellion. I don’t think we ponder that as much as we should, the idea that when animals hurt each other or get old, blind, and ill that this, too, is on our shoulders. Regardless, for the love they give I hope there would be some reward. But I don’t know and like so many things I don’t completely comprehend I trust that God will do what’s best.

So now the house seems a little more empty, empty of her presence, empty of the era in our life that her stay with us marked, empty of her soft footfalls and her thoughtful chatter when she answered as best she could whenever we asked her a question. In time the images of the old and fragile cat will fade away, replaced by so many happy memories. What stories we could tell and we will. Because of that she’ll always be our little girl, the shy cat who loved to lay in a sunbeam and made a hard year in Kansas, and every day until her last, a little better just by being ours.

And if there is a place for her that’s known to God alone I hope she’s there, her eyes bright, her body full, her fur shining, with gentle breezes coming through her very own window on an endless summer day.

When a politician talks about how bad things are someone should ask “But aren’t YOU in charge?”

A few weeks ago His Grace, our Bishop MARK, set a date to visit our little Parish, September 21-23 to be exact, and so ready or not here he comes.

It’s not that fearful at all. OK, I’m lying. I am a little bit nervous, but we’re getting everything into high gear and preparations are under way. There are things to be cleaned, arrangements to be made, and services to be prepared. In a certain way there are things that needed to be done anyway that a visit by the Bishop will get done with a renewed intensity. We’re having an all church clean up day in a few weeks and we’ll soon be in proper trim and ready to go.

Perhaps all of this sounds desperate but its really not. Sometimes Orthodox Christian just need a jolt, even a crisis, to get them to do what they should have been doing all along. A good Priest can use these events to help the Parish discover some of its own inner strength and goodness, its ability to rise to the occasion and the realization of how good things can be when we put our hearts and hands together. The people of St. Elias will shine not because of me or the events but because they have it in them but they just don’t always know how to let it flow.

It will also be good for the people of St. Elias to have a whole weekend with our Bishop. We need to understand our connection to the larger church that he embodies and I know that he’ll impress people with his presence. Our Bishop speaks of his being “drafted” into the episcopacy and that’s probably true in one sense but I think as he continues on that people are also seeing why it was that he, and not some other Priest, was drafted in the first place. A modest first rounder is still a first rounder.

The question is, and my pride is showing up here, will we impress? I think we will. We’ve made some significant progress in the past two years and there is a sense of hope for our future. I think we’re at that place where the snowball is just starting to roll at the top of the hill before it picks up speed and snow in its descent. There are people at St. Elias who are Orthodox to the core and have real dreams for St. Elias’ future and the willingness to put their money where their mouth is. We’ve got a ways to go but we’re starting to get there and I know he’ll see that as well.

And now to the paperwork and phone calls…