Thanks to Fr. Rick Andrews, Pastor of St. George Greek Orthodox Church, St. Paul, MN

As I was walking to my car, I felt that I had done my duty and I would leave with a renewed sense of purpose and dedication, in spite of my tardiness. As I was opening the door to my car and taking off my coat, I overheard one of the workers saying to another, “I’ve been putting in septic tanks for 20 years, and I ain’t never seen anything like that before. “

A must read article from Mark Shea on not being asked out to the dance.

I’m certainly no prophet and often don’t understand the ways of the world. My wisdom is shallow. My thoughts are tepid water.

But this is true.

Somehow, some way, God still loves this small blue orb in space and all who inhabit, and sometimes seem to infest, it. I can’t tell you why this is or how it all works out. That would be because I am not God.
But I see glimmers of it and every time I feel like nothing is left and faith is gone there is always a shred of light, sometimes just a pinprick, that makes it through.

More often than not I struggle to make sense of things and sometimes get lost and feel angry and wrestle with angels or give in to my demons. Yet I am convinced there’s a plan to it all. I wish I knew what it was but somehow it is certain that God holds all things in His love. More than that I cannot say with any clarity at all and probably won’t until this Earth’s air leaves my lungs and the breath of heaven fills them.

But I still believe, or I’m unable to not believe. Is that faith? I don’t know. But somehow I feel safe in the storm.

Tonight my wife and I will go out for dinner and then a play. We’ll drive home and she and I and the three cats will all tuck in for a winter’s sleep. Together.

Now the origins of this day are the subject of debate and who St. Valentine actually was is shrouded in obscurity but hearts and flowers and dinner are the order for those who share thier life with someone. Those who’ve belonged to each other for years, those who are new at it all, and those who are still trying will all be busy tonight whether the task is making the best impression or the relaxed celebration of the years.

But for some this is the hardest day of all.

For everyone “in the dance’ as it were there are those who sit by themselves on the chairs by the wall. For most its not about being ugly or mean but rather that time and circumstances and the chance winds of life have swept them aside in the waltz of love. Some sit to the side because thier hearts have been broken and the fear of pain’s return is stronger then the hunger for belonging. Others have tried and tried but the fates have weighed against them even as they wait in hope. A few have someone to love but the call of duty has taken them far away so they are alone this day but not forever. Many have belonged at one time, to another, and that belonging has been broken by strife, or hurt, or the too soon arrival of death. They may have the comfort of moments past but the dance goes on without them.

No one on this Earth knows the whys and wherefores of it all, how it is that some are joined and some are alone on this night where everything screams “together” and those who aren’t can be run through with a hundred arrows by the thought of it. If the answers where easy the solace would be as well but as certain as love is in the air this will be a night of tears for some.

For those who have been graced with the presence of someone they love this day reminds us of our fortune and how easily we take it all for granted. We often pass by even those who are intimate with us with a casualness whose effect only occurs to us when they are gone. We too easily ignore and even hurt the ones we love simply because we assume thier presence is a given and so we can treat it like something common and disposable. Today, despite its marketing tackiness, can remind us of the gifts we have been given and those we need to share.

For those who will endure this day with a certain pain of longing a harder calling comes to mind, the task of finding the love of God of which our human loves are a type and shadow without that love being present to show us the way. Human love is a solace, a foretaste of that which God gives, a blessed taste, when it is holy, of that which is to come and those without must transcend the foretaste and discover the substance without the normal direction markers. But God is good and when our love cannot reach up His reaches down and embraces us and carries us through.

Whatever your state this Valentine’s Day, whether everything passes in a blur of events or so slowly you can hear the clock ticking on the wall that highest love remains the greatest of all and those who see even a glimmer of it can make it through the night.

Lent arrives on Monday of this next week and probably not a moment too soon.

As a child growing up in the Plymouth Brethren we had no Lent and only a smattering of holy seasons, or rather holy days like Christmas and Easter. There were, as I remember, times of fasting and prayer where individuals or “assemblies” (what we called parishes) would practice this discipline but no set season as such.

In seminary the ancient flow of the church year, with its cycles of fasting and feasts, was a kind of flavoring added to the eclectic flow of self designed worship. Professors looking to add a dose of depth or flow or novelty to worship would occasionally take snippets of the ancient ordo and attempt to graft them on to whatever form of worship prevailed at the moment. I distinctly remember a class at the Church of the Brethren seminary across from Northern Baptist where we were tasked with designing a worship service and my group grabbed “Jubilate Deo” and stuck it in with a scripture reading and a few other things to make our “service”. If I remember correctly it actually brought out a few tears in those who attended and looking back probably more in some of the Fathers. But we were at least trying to be sincere and for a few of us a taste of those ancient things pushed us to want more and were the first faint impulses of that which brought us to Orthodoxy.

And when one arrives in Orthodoxy there is a fascination with the rubrics of it all, the whys and hows, and what you’re supposed to do and what should be left behind. Having been starved from the richness of all that so many who lived their whole lives in Orthodoxy take for granted the new arrivals often plunge in headfirst and with some passion. There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, as long as people see that the rubrics and techniques and services are means and not the end in themselves. We don’t fast in Lent just because we want to be in compliance with ancient canons. We fast because we have need of that which it brings us, repentance and a life drawn closer to God.

I need to fast because I have a need to be free from all that is dark and unholy in me, and believe me there’s a lot. I need to fast because in a gluttonous culture I too have become a glutton. I need to fast because more often than I wish I have lost control of my appetites and need to bring them back into thier proper place. I need to fast because I sin and have made myself a captive and wish to be free.

At the heart of Lent, of all the seasons of the Church year, is that primal need, the need to be transformed from within and draw close to God. It’s that need that keeps the bars open at night as people seek for a moment or two to be right with the world and know joy, or at least a bit of happiness, and perhaps find a person with whom they may connect. It’s that need that keeps people at thier desks all day pursuing the money and things they feel will fulfill them. But the truth is that only God will do and in a strange twist of logic it is in the giving up of ourselves that we obtain what we need, and in the sacrificing of our desires that we are made whole. It was that need that made the Plymouth Brethren fast, we naive seminarians reach out for some fragment of a Tradition the rejection of which defined our denominations, and calls those who have traveled far to the safe shores of Orthodoxy to realize again the precious gift of Lent. Underneath the history and rubrics of it all is that hunger to be close to God, to be other than the person we see in the morning mirror, and we fortunate ones have been given a means to that end.

So I can’t tell you how this fast, once started, will end. I may make a total mess of it. But I’ve got to try. Something deep inside of me needs to. Bright and early on Pure Monday the struggle begins.

There is a crucial moment in the life of any small group of people, including churches, when time, history, people, and events, align to move that orgnaization from its smaller place to one larger. It’s not unlike those old cartoons where a small snowball tips the crest of a hill and gets larger, every avalanche begins with a snowflake. In the same way there is also a moment when years of an organization wandering, struggling, and drifting tip it finally towards irreversible decline.

A term describing this is “critical mass” borrowed from physics and referring (please understand that I am not a physicist) to the amount of elements required to create change, usuable energy, or an explosion. In every church that is now stable or growing there was a point where it was small but the right people, right events, and right inspiration moved it from its tenuous spot and on to growth.

This idea of “critical mass” is also important in the history of mass movements of people. A Hitler could use the discontent and chaos of his time to create the all encompassing darkness of Nazi Germany and the preaching of even one man, blessed by the Holy Spirit, can bring fresh winds of faith and life to the Church. Every revival in this country was a moment when the people of God, events, and leaders impacted each other to create a time of deepened fervor and faith.

And in the Christian understanding it is the Holy Spirit, the wind that blows without our knowing where He comes from or where He goes, whose presence marks the manifestation of genuine revival over and above just emotional manipulation. Sadly much of what we call “revival” in our culture is just skilled showmanship applied to the parochial setting. Any good preacher can make people cry just like any good movie. But when revival comes the culture is changed because people act differently. In this country if revival comes again we’ll probably notice it not by the people falling out all over the place but rather by the millions who expose their dark sins and refuse to buy into the myths of our consumer culture and the relativistic morality that underlies it.

The hard thing, of course, is that times often have to get very tough before God can get our attention and we have to be faced with threat or famine or chaos or war or some other terrible thing before the layers of indifference are peeled away from us and we fall on our knees in humble prayer.

But if we do…

Tomorrow I go in for a cortisone shot in my hip.

Sometimes I think the chronic pain of the past few months was everything dark and frustrated in me coming out sideways but it appears after years of sports, a motorcycle accident, and only God knows what other abuse the pain in my hip will not go away. At times it has been so difficult that serving the Liturgy became a lesson in endurance, walking with a cane a necessity, and getting out of a car a gradual process of grimace and unfold.

I would like to say the pain comes from a lifetime of ascetic practice and many prostrations but alas it is not so. I am in my middle forties and some things, especially those damaged before, are reminding me again of thier wounds. I would like to have had a miraculous healing with the faith it would inspire and the simple, practical, freedom to sleep through the night but such is not the case.

As I get older I become more and more like the seniors I serve in my “day job” and my empathy for thier various aches and pains increases. Each time I stand I am reminded I am mortal and prone to decay. Each day I learn in this small way, because others suffer at levels which make this pain insignificant, that grace is sufficient for each day.

Now if I can just get myself to the doctor tomorrow…

I remain amazed at the Orthodox Resources out there on the WWW.

Here’s one worth checking out.

It has been almost five months now since my brother, Paul, died.

In our adult life our journeys were often seperate. The life of a minister took me around the country. When Paul moved he literally bought the house across the street. He lived in the suburbs. I chose the city. He navigated corporate waters and I always sailed close to the Church. We each had our friends and the path ahead and behind.

Its popular these days to think of family as whatever you want to make it, a thing to be molded in the shape of your current needs. But the void inside reminds me it is something more. There is something about family that transcends need, and chance, and personal convenience, and legal convention. That something can be stretched, twisted, separated by time and distance, and flower in a thousand ways and yet it still somehow binds.

People who hate thier families still give witness to the bond. Siblings distant from each other by the miles still sense the presence. We may be as different as night at day and yet there is something that says we still belong together. And when the link is temporarily broken by death the absence is felt not so much in the disappearance of the other but of something of ourself.

There is a picture of the three of us brothers, in better days when cares of health and life were far away from our thoughts, on my office wall. No matter where life takes us and who is standing at the end this is the way it will always be.

We’re family.

A link to a story about how Switzerland, following Holland’s lead, is contemplating allowing the active participation of doctors in ending the lives of the mentally ill.

A question or two arises.

How do we determine the capacity of a mentally ill person to make such a decision? At what point are they sane enough to request death yet mentally ill enough to provide the rationale to end their suffering? Do we treat them until we think they’re sane enough to make a decision for suicide? Perhaps, since it would be hard to determine whether a person with a mental illness has the capacity to request suicide there should be a panel of doctors who determine, based on their diagnosis, which mentally ill person should live and which should be euthanized

At least we have a model for that.