they say i should cut my hair
its driving me insane
i grew it out long to make room for my brain
sometimes people don’t understand
whats a good boy doing in a rock and roll band?
A Little Humor…
There’s been a thing circulating around Facebook asking you to find the #1 song on the week you were born. The song for my week? “It’s Now or Never” sung by Elvis Presley. Now that gives you a little sense of how old I am but the funniest thing is that I was overdue and the doctor induced my mother. Smile.
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Humility…
I just checked and found out that this blog is the 760, 243rd most popular site in the United States. Watch out number 760,242 because I’m hot on your trail!
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More Insights…
When controversies are ignited and flare up in the Church, which happens and has happened often, alas, we inevitably hear appeals from Church circles to cease these controversies in the name of peace and love. Now, this would be cause for great joy, if only in these appeals there were no unmistakably different overtones: “Your controversy is not important. It is of interest to no one: only ‘specialists’ and ‘scholars’ can understand it, so all this argument leads only to seduction and harm.”
And here we must point out to these accusers something very important which they have apparently forgotten. They have forgotten that peace and concord in the Church are inseparable from the Truth. An outsider who does not believe and is not part of the Church would smile and shrug his shoulders, “What is truth?” That is precisely Pilate’s question to the Savior who stood before him. And the Savior did not respond, because and “outsider” does not believe in the possibility of Truth. For him the truth is always relative and measured according to advantage, improvement or expedience. But for us who know and believe that the Church is founded on the Truth made flesh, that all her life is in Him who said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life,” for us there is nothing in the Church which is unimportant, because everything is measured by this Truth and is subordinate to it.
Yes, there have been many controversies in the Church, and its earthly history is replete with them. They occurred not only in times of trouble, like ours, but also when Church life flowered, in the golden ages of the Ecumenical Councils and the Fathers of the Church. Only then no one would have dared to acknowledge anything in the Church as unimportant. So for this cause they debated and for this cause they were persecuted and exiled for one word, for one “iota” (an accurate assessment of the Aryan controversy at the time of St. Athanasius the Great), that above all on earth they placed the Truth and fidelity to the Truth. And in these controversies there was more true love for the Church and her people, whom the Lord Himself through His incarnation deemed worthy of the knowledge of the Truth — more ardor, more faith than in the lukewarm “latitude” and “tolerance” of our time, when so much in the Church has become the portion of the clergy alone and the “specialists”. We should not be seduced by controversies about how to plan our Church life in accordance with the Truth, because in these controversies there burns a living anguish for the Church and its destiny, but rather by the sea of indifference among the Church populace itself which surrounds these controversies and by the skepticism with which even religious people treat these “unimportant” matters.
Of course in our controversies there is so much human passionateness, sinfulness and narrowness. They should and must be enlightened by prayer, love and patience. No one person embodies the Truth in its fullness, but each one is required to aspire to it, to call upon his spiritual intellect, his will and his heart to come to “the knowledge of the Truth.” “Put everything to the test; hold fast what is good,” says Paul the Apostle. And if in humility we attempt always to obey the Truth, if we try unceasingly to overcome all which is sinful and narrow for the sake of the Truth, then our controversies born of human weakness may lead to the glory of the Church, “for the strength of Christ is made perfect in weakness.”
Priest Alexander Schmemann
The Word of the Church, Paris, December, 1949
Translated from Russian by Robert Parent and first published in English in the Holy Trinity Cathedral LIFE, Vol.1. No. 6, February 1994″
From http://www.schmemann.org/byhim/important.html
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Don't Die Stupid…
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A friend of mine hands me what looks like a business card. It says, “Don’t Die Stupid.” As America begins another round of voting to select the next president, or retain the current one, what we need is a stupid test. Flunk it and you shouldn’t vote.
Evidence of the dumbing-down of America is everywhere. Some of it is chronicled in a new book, “Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and the Everyman Elevated America” by Daniel J. Flynn(Buy the book at a 34% discount by clicking here) .
Flynn contends popular culture has divorced itself from the life of the mind. He has plenty of examples in case television, texting, video games and improper use of English (“she was like and then I was like”) are not enough.
Flynn calls the digital age that has sped up the process by which we receive information “Idiotville,” because it has made us less intelligent.
“Stupid is the new smart,” writes Flynn. He says we arrived at this lower level of brain activity because as recently as the last century “the everyman aspired to high culture and … intellectuals descended from the ivory tower to speak to the everyman.” Today, he says, “Those who pursue the life of the mind have insulated themselves from popular culture. Speaking in insider jargon and writing unread books, intellectuals have locked themselves away in a ghetto of their own creation.”
That has left the nonintellectual class to fend for itself. One library inPortland, Me., rather than leading, is being led by the unformed teenage mind. “Video gaming is just a new form of literacy,” says the “teen librarian.” If so, what’s the new form of illiteracy, ignorance about how to use a joystick?
Flynn quotes from Steven Johnson’sbook, “Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter.” Sure, and sugar makes us slimmer. Johnson says, “Reality shows … challenge our emotional intelligence.” Emotional intelligence? In an age when feelings trump everything and too many reality TV programs feature well-heeled housewives and love-starved bachelors, “emotional intelligence” is a contradiction.
“A mind is a terrible thing to waste” is the slogan of theUnited Negro College Fund. It certainly is.
Here’s a potent example of what Flynn means when he writes about the destruction of our minds: “At the tony Cushing Academy in western Massachusetts, $40,000in tuition doesn’t even get you a library anymore. ‘When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’ the prep school’s headmaster notes, adding, ‘This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451.” ”
“It is, and ‘1984,’ too,” comments Flynn. “In place of the twenty thousand discarded books, the school spent$500,000on an Orwellian ‘learning center’ complete with three giant flat-screen televisions and a cappuccino machine. School officials guessed that only a few dozen books had been checked out at any one time.”
The solution? Get rid of the books. Don’t get kids interested in books when they’d rather play “World of Warcraft,” or if younger, watch cartoons, which can’t be that different from “The Canterbury Tales,” right?
Our intellectual depth increasingly resembles floor wax; shiny on top, but lacking depth. A muscle atrophies if it is not used. Similarly, a mind becomes lazy if it is not well fed. And a weak mind dumbs-down our politics. We elect people we come to dislike because too many of us require no more of them than we require of ourselves. We then wonder why little seems to work and the country soon suffers.
In Iowa this week, followed by New Hampshire, South Carolina andFlorida, Republican voters will begin the process of selecting a presidential nominee. It’s not that sufficient information about the problems confronting us — along with solutions that actually work — are not available. It’s just that we’re not reading much about them.
Like, ya know, man, that’s just the way it is. Like, ya know what I’m sayin’?
Cal Thomas
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A Little Housekeeping…
From time to time I change the theme and layout of this blog. Call it boredom, call it experimenting. Perhaps its because I like orange and black (my first team colors in grade school). I’m not sure exactly what drives it but I kind of like this new theme and hope you do as well.
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Wisdom…
Orthodox news sites can sometimes be places where people simply argue, places long on rhetoric and short on solutions yet www.monomakhos.com has also provided some gems like this one from the late Fr. Alexander Schmemann.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann
On New Year’s Eve we feel the mystery of time more powerfully than at any other time. We feel, in other words, that its flow – in which we live and in which everything constantly vanishes as the “past” and constantly places us face to face with the unknown future – essentially contains within itself the main question that everyone is called to answer with their lives.
“Vain gift, chance gift – life, why have you been given me?” asks the poet [Pushkin] in his immortal line. Indeed, it is enough for one moment to turn away from the cares that absorb us, enough mentally to stop the ceaseless waterfall of time, disappearing into the abyss, in order for the question “Why is life given and what is its meaning?” to rise from the depths of the subconscious, where we normally hide it from ourselves, and stand before us in all its implacability.
I was not, now I am, and I will not be; thousands of years passed before me, and thousands will come after… On the surface of this unimaginably infinite ocean I am but a fleeting bubble, into which a ray of life flashes for a split second, just to be extinguished and disappear then and there.
“Vain gift, chance gift – life, why have you been given me?” What, in comparison with this only honest, rueful question do all the loud theories mean that seek to answer this with tiresome theoretics of a “bright future”? “We will build our new world. He who was nothing will become everything” [from The Internationale]… The most naïve, gullible, and dull-witted person cannot but know that all this is a lie. For both the very one “who was nothing” and the one who “will become everything” will disappear from the face of the earth, from this hopeless mortal world.
Therefore, regardless of whatever we were taught by pathetic prophets of a pathetic happiness, only one real question stands eternally before man: does this ever-so-brief life have any meaning? What does it mean, when compared with the boundless abyss of time, that this flash of consciousness, this ability to think, rejoice, and suffer, this extraordinary life that, however seemingly futile and random, is still looked upon by us as a gift?
Now the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s. And as long as it strikes life for twelve short seconds stops and pauses, and everything as it were focuses on what is now to begin, posing and responding to the same torturous question: what is this – another step towards a meaningless end and disappearance, or the unexpected flashing of a ray of renewal and new beginnings? In response come words from an infinite loftiness and an infinite profundity: That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name… And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth… And of His fulness have we received, and grace for grace (John 1:9-12, 14, 16).
These are the words of the Evangelist John the Theologian in the very beginning of his Gospel. They are thoroughly imbued with the joy, confidence, and love of a man who has seen the light of true life, about which it is said that it shines in darkness and was not overcome by the darkness (John 1:5). Listening attentively to them, the very same joy, the very same confidence, and the very same love begin to be kindled in our own souls. Time is powerless if this light shines above us. Life is not vain, life is not chance, but is a gift from on high, from God, about Whom the same John the Theologian said that in Him was life, and this life was the light of man (John 1:4). And every man that comes into this world is once again set alight, is once again gifted this life, and the love of God is addressed to each one of them, and to each one of them is addressed God’s commandment: “Live!” Live, in order to love! Live, so that your life will be filled with love, light, wisdom, and knowledge! Live, so that in your life darkness, meaninglessness, and eventually death itself will be overcome! For eternity already shines through this world and through this earthly life. This gift of life in the world and with the world is given us that eternal life with God and in God may become part of us.
Yes, suffering, doubt, trials, the bitterness of separation – all these have fully become part of our lot. How often we are weakened in this battle, and give up, and fall, and change! How often we are scared and lonely, how often we lose heart when we see how evil and hatred are triumphing in the world! But the One Who gave us this life and granted us freedom taught us to discern good and evil; He gave us the loftiest of all gifts: love. For He said, and continues to say: In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world (John 16:33). We, too, can overcome in this very world, and in it our lives can shine with that same light that once flashed forth and continues to shine – that light that the darkness has not overcome.
The clock strikes… Let this mysterious future come to us; for, whatever it might bring with it, we know and believe that God is with us, that Christ has not orphaned us, that He is faithful that promised (Hebrews 10:23). Here are the marvelous words of Vladimir Soloviev:
Death and time reign on earth, Do not call them your masters; Everything, whirling about, disappears in the haze The only thing fixed is the sun of love.
Yes, this is our calling, our freedom as children of God: not to call “masters” those things whose dominions have been destroyed, and not to close ourselves from access to the Sun of love, faith, and hope.
The holiday will soon be over, and routine, labor, fatigue, and depression will begin. But let us not permit the daily routine to overpower ours souls! Just as sunlight penetrates through closed shutters, so too let the light of Christ, through this mysterious holiday, become present in our daily lives, rendering our entire lives an ascent, a communion with God – a difficult but joyful path to eternal life. For the Apostle John said: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16).
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As the Music Door…
starts to swing open I find myself asking questions. Most of them are about faith.
For most of my adult life I’ve structured my Christian life around my work as a pastor. It’s rhythms and flows shaped what I did, where I went, and how I was a Christian. I know little of any other world. I’ve been preparing or serving in churches and chaplaincy since 1985. I’ve been involved in some sort of pastoral responsibility almost permanently in that time. So what would I do if that role was gone?
Could I be a faithful Christian if I wasn’t a Priest, if I didn’t have the order and duty of a Priest surrounding me? Would I end up being distracted? Would the cares of life and just all the busy things take me away? Would I lose my grip?
After all preparing to be, and serving in some ministry capacity is most of what I know. Even when I was bi-vocational for the past five years I thought of myself as a Priest and tried to live, as best I could, like one. If that part of my life ended what would it be like? More importantly how would I be a faithful Christian if my title was only “mister”?
Right now I’m glad to help where I can. I don’t mind traveling to make sure a church is served when their pastor needs a well deserved break. I’m good at doing an exclamation or two during the Liturgy and I can usually find something to do or clean when there’s down time, and there’s a lot of down time.
At the same time I am a good musician. People pay money to hear me. I’ve made friends. I’ve made connections. In the Church I’m on the side but on the stage I’m front and center. When I was a child I would dream about days like this and now they seem to be here. The doors seem really wide open.
Yet what good what any of this be without faith, without the life of God? In the end there’s only an audience of One that matters. What good would any of it be if at the end there was only the applause of earth? New directions are out there and they have a call but is this “the” call? Is this God or is it a clever ruse to take away the most important things and leave me stranded?
I’m still figuring these things out. One thing I do know is that my admiration for those people who live this Faith day in and day out in the “world” beyond the Church walls has grown. It’s easy, in some ways, to be a Christian when you have all the trappings of ordained ministry. The church walls can protect you and people’s expectations change when they see the collar. I am convinced that the true heroes of the Church are those people who find the way to be faithful without the props that come with vocational ministry.
Could it be that I am supposed to enter this world? Could it be that one part of my life is over and a new one has begun? I don’t know and frankly even the idea of asking such questions is frightening. I guess for right now its just about being faithful and putting one foot in front of the other.
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Sabbatical, Year Two…
and now what? Where to go what to do?
There is unspent energy out there, energy waiting to go somewhere, energy that exists without a goal. There are people waiting in the wings while the stage is full, just watching. There is old and there is new but nothing in between.
Times are tough. If you’re a Priest and you have a reasonably good situation then you hold on for all its worth, especially if you’re not financially able to retire or haven’t really prepared. If you’re a seminarian you know you’ll probably get something, anything, because the Church has paid your way and there’s an interest in return on investment. But there’s nothing else.
If you’ve been out of the loop for even a short time there is really nowhere to go. No one is retiring and anything that comes open goes to the kids. I understand this. I was warned about this when I asked for a sabbatical. Yet its still hard to be floating somewhere in the middle, attached but not grounded, needed in some way but without really knowing for sure. Harder still if you’ve been too busy to develop the kind of corporate connections you thought you wouldn’t need because this is the Church.
The truth is that the grass is always greener on the other side. There are Priests out there who probably feel trapped in their own parishes but have no way of reasonably getting out at this time. So they mark the days and envy those of us not really tied down to a parish and the freedom that comes with it. Meanwhile there probably are others who look at life in a settled parish with a certain kind of envy as well. Its hard to be trained to do something and then find yourself unable to do it.
Ideally, I think, it would be nice if there was a wave of support for developing new parishes that could soak up some of the people and the energy of those who are temporarily out of the loop. Yet parishes are having a hard time keeping afloat themselves and so supporting a mission is problematic.
Its possible, as well, that a glut of Priests could be the catalyst for conceiving of priestly ministry in ways outside of the parish pastorate. What other things could Priests do as Priests in the world outside the parish walls? The possibilities seem to be there but can the wineskins hold the new wine?
As for myself I rested, relaxed, found a home here in the Twin Cities and then, realizing that the usual doors for ministry were at least temporarily closed decided to make my own way. The door that opened was music and I’m walking through. I have no idea if I’ll get that letter in the mail from a Bishop requesting my service. I’m in the bubble, not a seminarian who will get a parish or a senior pastor well rooted so I’m not holding my breath. Yet the music door is wide open and i can get into places and serve people with my bass guitar in ways that I could never do with my collar.
So I play, here, there, and everywhere. It keeps me busy. It keeps me doing things for God and others. Who knows? One day it may provide me with a living. The point is ministry is ministry whether I’m serving at the altar or up on stage singing about God. That, in the end, seems to be the answer, just be faithful with whatever gifts you have and lets the details rest in higher hands, not just the Bishops.
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For Those of You…
who’ve wondered about the band I play in you can see some very rough video of tonight’s show in River Falls, WI, on Facebook. Just go to Facebook and search for “The Redemption Alley Band”.
