One of the things every Priest comes to face in the course of their service is the reality they’ll never be everything everyone wants them to be. It won’t be for lack of trying or soul searching. It won’t be for a shortage of a certain sadness that some may be lost and others found. It just is the way it is.

If a Priest takes this personally they’ll chew themselves up from the inside. It’s just one of those things you don’t have to like but have to get used to. Your life is a screen on which those for whom you care project their hopes and needs, their strengths and pathologies. And it can all change in a moment, in a word, in a second of something, anything, beyond your control.

The truth is that Priests should examine themselves, but sometimes they should be careful about examining themselves too much, or at least every time they find themselves up against the reality that despite their best intentions they can’t be all things to everyone. At that point its not about growth but rather about banging your skull against an unyielding wall.

And its not worth the headache.

Had a chance to meet another “east sider” from St. Paul today and the topic went to a local watering hole called the “Cherry Pit”.

It seems that St. Paul, in its desire to protect the common welfare banned smoking in all of the bars but soon discovered that people have cars and can go to bars not in St. Paul if they wish and so came up with a solution. No it wasn’t letting people be grown ups and choose whether they want to be in a smoky bar or not. Instead the city, at taxpayer expense, decided to build outdoor patios for bars with fireplaces, heaters, and lights so the customers can still smoke, and what’s more important for tax purposes drink, in St. Paul.

So if I get this straight its okay in St. Paul to drink a lot and go home with a stranger and do whatever as long as you don’t smoke while you’re in process. Unless, of course, you’re thinking about doing that outside of St. Paul then the city will use all that spare taxpayer’s money to build a nice place outside for you in the hope that you’ll be lured to satisfy your alcoholic urges where they can get that precious per drink tax money.

And they wonder why people don’t vote.

In these days it seems the truly heroic person will be the one who has learned to transcend their immediate emotions, wants, and desires for higher things. Those who seek to do this will find their enemies are not merely armies but the whole force of culture arrayed against the quest for the noble but financially unprofitable authentic humanity.

An interesting article on the topic of death and bio-ethics and a good reason to drop in to “Paradosis” every once in a while.

An article on apocalyptic visions of weather and human history.

Are the “global warming” folks the secular equivalent of the religious purveyors of various “end times” scenarios?

This Sunday is the Sunday of the Adoration of the Holy Cross and I still am in wonder.

When I was a small child I read and re-read the classic “Pilgrim’s Progess” and remember quite vivdly the place where Christian, guided by Evangelist, comes to the cross, falls on his knees and the burden he carries falls of his back and into an empty tomb never to be seen again. I grew up knowing that somehow, some way, Jesus was able to bear the pain and sin of the world, mine included, and years and many sins later I still have a special sweet sadness when I think of what has been done for the world, and for me.

Yet the older I grow the less I understand the “why” of it all. I have no idea why God would bother to come to us and endure so much for so little in return. How could my feeble, twisted, and intermittent love, if its love at all, be worth all of that? It isn’t in any way I can figure. But I guess the figuring isn’t up to me.

Some time ago I wrote that either God is absolutely insane for bleeding even one drop for humanity or loves us in some way that renders our words useless. I still believe this is true and as I stand before the cross the wonder remains and only silence can speak of it all.

A great dust up has occurred about Ann Coulter’s use of the word “faggot” when talking about a Democratic presidential candidate. I’m glad.

It has nothing to do with embracing my inner gay (I have none) but rather with a growing weariness of potty mouthed adolescents on all sides of issues who offer increasingly vulgar rhetoric in place of actual problem solving. It’s just time the adults among us finally, peacefully, and completely pull the plug on these types by boycotting their words wherever we find them and regardless of whether they’re on our side or not.

Its simply time for civilization to return to culture.

I have been, in my life, the recipient of grace more times that I can count but events of yesterday brought two such instances to my mind.

The first happened many years ago. My wife and I were newly married and very broke. It was Christmas and we still gave gifts to all the members of her family but were unable to provide for all and so we, as they say today “regifted” a few of our wedding gifts for Christmas. Among them was a set of glasses which we gave to our sister in law, who, as I recall, had actually asked for kitchen items. Unfortunately we had forgotten to take off a label under the box which identified who had given it to us for a gift, a label which was immediately uncovered when the box was opened. I remember my sister in law looking at my wife and I, who were profoundly embarassed, smiling and nothing more of it was ever said. She understood what it was like to be newly married, in seminary, having little money and a desire to give something, anything, for Christmas.

The second happened just yesterday evening. My brother and I were moving appliances in my mother’s home, looking through old photos, and browsing through my dad’s collection of tie tacks. In that collection was a pocket watch, not particulary fancy, but one that had surely belonged to my father and perhaps my grandfather as well. I did, for some reason, want that watch but the collection of tie tacks was for my brother and I to share and I invited him to choose. Somehow he knew that i wanted the watch. Was it a slip of the tongue? Something I did? I don’t know but he chose the tie tacks and let me have the watch. I was prepared, as I have often been, to take lesser things out of a place in my heart that still recoils against ahything being unwanted or alone, but yesterday what I wished and what I received were the same because of my brother’s thoughtfulness.

I have no idea whether my sister in law remembers that Christmas over 20 years ago, but I do. And years after that watch has stopped working its value will lie not in who it belonged to but what larger good was given to me in a simple act of Lenten grace.

Simply put, I believe we may be on the cusp of a revival in the life of the American church.

Now I’m not talking about those phony staged “revivals” where people desperate for an emotional “fix” from their dull lives fall on the ground weeping, have their moment, and then two months later show up at another church for another fix. Any good preacher can bring the show but when he leaves the show goes with him.

True revival changes the culture in which it occurs altering the fundamental way in which people see themselves and in turn act. The glory of the Pentecostal movements in the early part of this century had little ultimately to do with ecstatic experiences, which have been part of humanity’s religious landscape since people walked the earth, but rather that it provided a common spiritual ground for people of different races and cultures to worship together, to see each other in Christ in a way that rigidly segregated American culture did not. When the Holy Spirit came to those gathered at Azusa Street a movement was born but racism in the American Church itself was fatally wounded and though the task is ongoing a great cultural evil met the power of the Holy Spirit and lost.

In this current age we’ll know when revival occurs not by the emotions involved, although there may be an intitial emotional expression, but by the pornographic web sites that don’t get visited, the marketers of consumption for its own sake who find their stores empty, the decline of decadent entertainments (imagine singer famous for, well, singing) and people in public life who speak remorse for their part in making our culture coarse and inhumane. People’s hearts will be turned to each other and the poor will be lifted up not by government programs but by caring hearts. Our obsessive focus on self and gratification will fade away to be replaced by a life given to higher things. Drugs, violence, gangs, corporate greed, and cold hearts will be broken by the power of God. We will change not because a group of politicians passed a law but because the law of God lives in us.

And I believe it may be coming.

There are a few markers that have historically been present in American culture in the time immediately before a religious reawakening which seem to be present today. First there is a growing realization of the depths of cultural decline and its bitter aftertaste. In our present age more we are starting to slowly but surely recover a sense of what is proper by hard experience. Cultural decadence is the fuel which powers revival and the more we experience the more people, in their pain and sense of being lost, look for something else. They may not experience this as a spiritual thing. It may be felt only as a utilitarian thing ie this life I’m leading, this path we’re going is a dead end, but its fuel awaiting a spark.

Second there needs to be a weeding out in the Church, a time of pruning off dead wood so that the faithful can be unburdened. In our time some churches are doing this by themselves, that is they have so abandoned the faith they simply don’t matter anymore. Sadly the prime example of this in our country is the Episcopal Church which is a media darling noted for its baptizing anything the cultural winds blow its way but frankly doesn’t mean much to anyone outside of its walls and on its present course will be a non entity in a few decades. From those ashes, though, new and more dynamic forms of Anglicanism have emerged and will, if they remain faithful, have significant impact. Simply put the future, for all communions, belongs to the faithful. As part of this pruning a process of scandal and judgement is underway for the cleansing of bodies maintaining some form of faithfulness. The sex scandals of clergy, the financial misdeeds exposed, the lack of seriousness brought to light among the faithful may be, strangely enough, the hand of a loving God . God will not waste his purifying discpline on those who have no hope or whose hearts have been profoundly hardened but He will seek to cleanse the faithful, even if their faith is small and weak, to make them more faithful still. Such a time of cleansing seems underway.

Finally, there needs to be a spark, or a series of sparks to light the fire. For a while the situation after the horrible attacks of 9/11 brought some people to church, but that has largely waned. We’ve seen a move towards historic faith with the result of whole parishes and many seekers embracing Orthodoxy, and Catholicism, and other communions who have refused to compromise, but that’s still a trickle in the larger picture. There is, outside of the electronic shouting of the media, a growing sense of loss, dislocation, and even disgust with our society, its leaders, and its institutions but it still is only in the simmering phase. Somewhere and somehow an event will occur or the weight of the darkness will reach such proportion or a heart of significance will turn towards God and the fire will be lit.

At this point we can only wait and pray because this is totally in God’s hands. If we force it it will not be genuine, and as the old saying goes “God leads and the devil stampedes.” However the scenario plays out we need to avoid the listlessness of simply waiting and watching without doing. This time, with all its darkness, is a time for us to grow strong, live lives of faith, and lift the world up in prayer. In God’s good time, and it is God alone who knows the right time for all things, our commitment may have dramatic impact but if we must wait then at least we will be counted faithful. We cannot afford to be paralyzed like so many of the “end times” speculators who keep looking into the sky in fear while their neighbors perish anymore then we can be like the unfaithful servant who feared his master and hid his talent.

Still, there is something inside that says it may be close.

Even if you don’t always agree with his politics this article shows why you should always pay attention to the work of Mark Steyn.