Law vs. Love

One of the things I learn about God the more I study the universe, the great theological writings, the lives of good people I meet in my life, and the scriptures - the more I learn that there is not really a difference between God's law and God's love.

A good example - take any of those wonderful nebula pictures we see from the Hubble telescope. God designed that - he designed it in part via the laws of physics, which causes hydrogen plasma to coalesce into luminescent clouds that become stars. When a nebula forms, it does so in perfect conformity to the natural laws God established in the universe. But a nebula also isn't just a thing of law, is it?

No, it is also a thing of great beauty - far exceeding the creative reach of the greatest human artist.

The lives of good, humble, and Godly people are also a similar reflection of the unitive nature of God's law and love.

In my Christian faith, I see this unity, in fact, in Jesus himself. His role literally is obedience - "not as I will, but as you will." It is the love of the Son for the Father that is the reason for this obedience, but it is the guidance of God that Jesus is obedient too - God's perfect plan for his creation.

But this is not exclusively a Christian outlook. In Judaism, Rabbi Hillel also made clear that the law was love, for he said the greatest law was "Love your neighbor as yourself, and that which is hateful unto You do not unto others, all else is commentary."

Even in the very beginning, God's commands and his affections are one, for Genesis tells us, And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.

This is how law and love are unitive - they are both interested in the dignity of love's subjects. Love does not "enumerate the evil... but rejoices in the truth," in the words of St. Paul. Law and love are two sides of the same coin. It is a great mystery how, but in the end we will know in full.

Prayer is not ineffective

The first scientific study on intercessory prayer in the 1980s, a low profile double blind study conducted properly, found that it had a noticeable impact on the health of the patients being prayed for. However, the issue has been tested since, and and in some of these studies, including this most recent one, no results have been noticed. The scientists who conducted the test have cautioned people not to read too much into their study, noting that it looked at specific kinds of prayer for a specific kind of patient.

But why would these tests have produced no discernable result, some might wonder? Should this shake peoples' faith?

I would argue, no. It is just as likely that if there is an omnipotent God responsive to prayer, a being that powerful and intelligent may not appreciate being poked and prodded by science, as though he is a lab rat. Or as the Bible puts it, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." (Deuteronomy 6:16 and Luke 4:12)

At any rate, praying is not about forcing God to do difficult stuff for us. Praying should not be a results-oriented exercise. I was horrified by the Jabez prayer movement for this very reason. Prayer is not just petition - it is praise, thanksgiving, and contrition, too. But even more fundamentally, it is a conversation. Sheryl Crow, of all people, put it best: "You gotta talk to the one who made you, talk to the one who understands, talk to the one who gave you all the light in your eyes."

Praying is not just a means to an end - it is the end that has meaning.

Baghdad Burning

Every once in a while, her stories of her life break your heart. I don't know how I could live this way.

Baghdad Burning

All things must pass

This is the last day that my eldest daughter will be living with us - she moves tomorrow. I remember when she was little I used to joke about putting the boots to her the second she turned eighteen. That seems like a very long time ago now, but in a peculiar way, it also seems like just yesterday. She was the little girl I popped up onto my shoulders all the time.

We lived downtown, and back then we did not own a car. There really was no need, since everything was well within reach by car, bike, or bus. We walked most everywhere, and as soon as we set out, my little girl would reach out with her hands shaped like lobster pincers, opening and closing her fingers. This was her, "I want up" gesture. And she went everywhere about like this. She just belonged up there, and I could not imagine a time when I didn't have my pal up there.

When you have someone leaning on your head everywhere you walk, you talk to them - about anything and everything. Why the sky is blue, what happens when we die, what makes cars go, why people take the bus, who made the buildings, and how airplanes work. Sometimes you just talk about silly things that make no sense either in hindsight or even at the time.

Today, there is no way I could hoist that pregnant lady onto my shoulders. And in twenty six hours, the fledgling flies. She has her own nest to make, and soon a young one of her own to care for. She will talk to her baby, and care for her, and someday hoist her up on her shoulders, and if I am lucky, tell her about how Grampa used to do that, too.

All things must pass. But in my memories, they do not change. She is forever in my memories the three foot red haired elf that lives on my shoulders, telling me to walk into that tree in the park. :-(

The Difference

The difference between live and love is only one letter.

This is the day the Lord has made

It is certainly a cliche to say that every day is a gift from God. And certainly, not every day feels like it is a gift from God. I spent two and a half hours on the bus today, trying to complete a trip that is supposed to take forty five minutes.

But as I waited at one stop for over an hour, I got to watch the afterglow turn pink and then a deep vermillion - the same colours the sun turned as I watched the afterglow the night I turned forty. So why should this day not be special? Spending an hour of it at a bus stop was not my plan, but my plans are just plans. I often wish I were in complete control of the universe and especially the way my day unfolds. But life would have no meaning if the unanticipated never happened, and I am not even sure that a day without random happenings would even qualify as life.

I don't know about you, but I learn more from exploring the unplanned detours of my life then I do preparing for things that seldom go as planned anyway.


All wisdom is from the Lord,
and with him it remains for ever.
The sand of the sea, the drops of rain,
and the days of eternity—who can count them?
The height of heaven, the breadth of the earth,
the abyss, and wisdom—who can search them out? (Sirach 1:1-3)

Tuesday

Answer me quickly, O Lord;
my spirit fails.
Do not hide your face from me,
or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit.
Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning,
for in you I put my trust.
Teach me the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul. (from Psalm 143)

Not every day goes the way you plan it, particularly during Lent. "Oh I am going to be pious today," I tell myself, "virtuous!" And then I spend the day distracted, angry, mean, or even worse cold, cynical or distant.

God uses a day like this to remind me that grace isn't from me. And Lent isn't about me, either. I am not going to be pious or virtuous if I boast, even to myself. Jesus says it is the tax collector who says, "have mercy on me for I am a sinner" who is justified - humility is a more authentic piety than the ambition to be pious.

Give me the strength, O Lord, to spend my day reminded that this Lenten season is not for me, Lord. It is for everyone I must be a servant to. They have a right to my charity (in the original sense of the word, love and empathy, not a tax deductible donation.) And I have no right to boast should I offer it, for it is as you say, "We are only unworthy servants who have done only what you have asked!"

Test tube sausage

I wonder if this would let vegetarians (not vegans obviously) eat meat?

globeandmail.com : Will consumers have a beef with test-tube meat?

Pure of Heart

I will walk with integrity of heart
within my house;
I will not set before my eyes
anything that is base. (Psalm 101:2-3)

How difficult this is to do. It is always easiest, especially at home, to become your worst self. I'll snap at a family member long before I snap at a stranger, and yet my family has earned my kindness more than anyone. Home may be a castle, but who lets their guard down in a castle? That's why there's a moat, right?

Sunday

St. Augustine once preached, "If any one will piously and soberly consider the sermon which our Lord Jesus Christ spoke on the mount, as we read it in the Gospel according to Matthew, I think that he will find in it, so far as regards the highest morals, a perfect standard of the Christian life..."

At their heart is affirmation. The beatitudes of course, but also his belief that good people should go and be good people out in the world.

"You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."

And he raises the bar further: "Be perfect, as your Father is perfect." Perfect is not a state of being - nor is it a state of self-reproach; but a positive response to imperfection. It isn't trying to find fault with who you have been, but trying with all your might to become the best person you will be.

Darwin's pet dies

Fascinating - a tortoise older than the one Darwin collected from the Galapagos two centuries ago has finally passed away. (That one is still alive.)

CANOE -- CNEWS - Science: Tortoise, thought to be among world's oldest creatures, dies in Calcutta zoo

On a similar note, last night, I let my twenty year old cat outside, as he likes to sniff the air and see what's going on. When I went to get him twenty minutes later, he had his back up and was mewling at something. As I walked over, he ran across the lawn, jumped on a white and grey cat, and started rolling around on top of him, biting, scratching and shrieking.

"Dusty!" I shouted.

The other cat ran off. I picked up my stiff-tailed cat, and dragged him into the house.

"You're a hundred years old," I lectured him. "Aren't you a bit long in the tooth for this? You could be his... distant ancestor, you know?"

His tail was still stiff as I calmed him with cat treats upstairs.

Thursday's (late) entry

At a retreat on Wednesday, a priest told us, “You're worried that the faith is dying. You worry that some churches are poorly attended, parishes are dying. Let me show you something.”

He turned the lights in the sanctuary down, and had us all light candles.

“Hold them up,” He said, and we did.

“It looks beautiful in here with candles, doesn't it? Now those of you over ninety, blow out your candles.”

A woman in front of me on the left blew out her candle. But the light was undimmed.

“Now over eighty years of age.... Now seventy.” The sanctuary remained bright.

“Sixty” - the light began to dim a little.

Fifty, forty-eight, forty, thirty-five, thirty, twenty-five, twenty... the light was mostly gone.

“Let everyone with a lit candle come forward to the altar.”

Ten kids came up to the front.

“How many of you are there? Ten... there were eleven apostles, scattered.... twelve later. But this will suffice. Go light those candles.”

In seconds, the church was alight again, blindingly bright in candles.

There is a candle in every soul

Some brightly burning,

Some dark and cold

There is a spirit who brings the fire

Ignites his candle and makes his home

Frustrated brother,

see how he's tried to

Light his own candle some other way

See now our sister,

She's been robbed and lied to

Still holds a candle without a flame

Carry your candle,

Run to the darkness

Seek out the hopeless, confused and torn

Hold out your candle for all to see it

Take your candle and go light your world

from Chris Rice's “Go Light Your World”

A protector God

In thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded; deliver me in thy justice.

Bow down thy ear to me; make haste to deliver me. Be thou unto me a God, a protector, and a house of refuge, to save me.

For thou art my strength and my refuge; and for thy name's sake thou wilt lead me, and nourish me.

Thou wilt bring me out of this snare, which they have hidden for me, for thou art my protector.

Into thy hands I commend my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, the God of truth. (Psalm 31:1-5)

Any Christian who knows what a Good Friday service is like knows the power of those words - "Into thy hands I commend my spirit." It might seem like fatalism to utter such a thing upon death. But it isn't.

It is trust. Pure trust.

if God is anything, he is spirit and truth. And commending to God my spirit does not even require me to wait for my deathbed... or even Good Friday. It requires only trust. Today.

Now.

When you pray

When I pray - if I pray - who does all the talking? Prayer is conversation with God, but who's the one expected to do all the listening? Perhaps the next time I go to pray, I will try silence: letting that conversation flow the other way. I might be surprised by what happens.

"Be still, and know that I am God!" (Psalm 46:10)

Mysteries that do not need solving

Day one of my new Lenten discipline (an additional one – I did not cave and ditch the old one.) That discipline? A daily devotional of some sort, here in this spot.

I have spent a lot of time over the years observing the dialog between people of different religions, between people of no religion and those with, and people arguing about evolution. I am struck first of all by the poor quality of the debate. I took a course on logical argument in my first year of university, and in five minutes of reading a bulletin board debate, I can review an entire semester's worth of logical fallacies.

But what surprises me most is how the Bible would become a science subject. Both religious believers and non-believers want to put Genesis to the test, such that if the text can be prehistorically falsified, then the whole thing can be called off. And so the Bible, the most powerful didactic framework ever written in the history of the world, is dethroned – either as an archaic collection of scientific heresies, or by fundamentalists who won't grasp that the fundamentals are not about science.

And what are those fundamentals?

From my Catholic and Christian sensibilities, that the Bible is true. Not even just symbolically true. More even than mythologically true. In some way – literally true. It is hard to explain what I mean, and mystics have tried for centuries. But Feiler's "Walking the Bible" comes closest. Even if Genesis depicts the dawn of people in a way that can't and won't be reconciled with scientific fact, it depicts it in a way that is still in some respects more accurate than the world paleontologists can reconstruct from stone tools and bones. What was that dawning awareness that took people out of a natural paradise for which they are perfectly designed, and set us in a world where we toil for every little thing? Genesis may hold the answer, though it can take a lifetime to fathom what it says (just ask Milton.)

It would be nice to reclaim the Bible from the realm of physical science, where people argue about fundamentals not fundamental to it. The Bible is a great mystery of its own accord, nearly as vast as the universe in scope. This is why, in part, theology was once called the “Queen of the Sciences.” Someday I will know fully, and understand what all of those mysterious stories in Genesis (like Abraham's encounter with the three angels) are about. But for now, I cherish seeing through a glass darkly.

When the universe grew

Scientists studying the background radiation of the universe have discovered that the universe grew exactly as the Big Bang model predicts. From the first tick of creation, one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang kicked off, the universe went from microscopic to "astronomical."

While they say this isn't definitive proof of inflation as such, it does kill off some alternative models. I would imagine one of those models is the colliding brane theory, which in part was created as an alternative to inflation, and also because the theorist was an atheist uncomfortable with the idea of a created universe.

So if you overindulged yesterday for St. Patty's Day, let us hope your waistline does not experience what the early universe did!

Science and religion: not mutually exclusive

I like this article.


I have never understood why some people think science and Platonic reasoning have to be exalted and deified into a new form of monotheism - thou shalt have no other forms of understanding but these.

Logic is useful. As a computer programmer, I could not even get through a day without it. But it is logic's utility that is important. It is not a God, nor even a singular way to gain understanding.

Theology was once called the Queen of the Sciences. It was exalted above others because it dealt with ideas so abstract that some of them literally can't be brought down to Earth. And yet, can I say that because this is so, that I am not entitled to think Civitas Dei a sublime work, or to find real delight and insight in the writings of Ben Sirach?

Logic is an excellent tool. But then, experience is a good teacher, the Psalmist a great poet, and God a great master! I do not have to forgo these latter to get the benefit of the former...

Spam check-in

This is my traditional inspection of my spam. I don't see it much, but I look at the filter folder from time to time, and see how those titles change over time. Rolling spammers gather no moss, i guess. Anyway, here are some of the new titles, and my take on them.

Offer for investors – deletion for spammers

You need to review this - wanna bet?

High quality watches – low quality hucksters

I burned sixty calor­ies – I deleted a 6K email

Losing weight has ne­ver been so easy! I know – one mouse click, and my mailbox feels lighter already!

EMAIL FOR YOU,READ! SPAM FOR ME, DIE!

It's not big enough. It's not deleted enough.

Don't open! Don't do­ it! Hehe! No problem.

Hostile takeover! Hostile trash can.

Looking with other eyes

At the last moment, I decided to take this week off work. It is March Break, my wife only has a couple of shifts, and I thought it would be nice if we got to spend some time together. Since it has spent much of the time raining, I've been able to do some reading. I'm taking this book slow, since I am really enjoying it – Bruce Feiler's “Walking the Bible.” (It was also a PBS special.)

Bruce Feiler is an American writer who decided he would try and retrace the route of the five books of Moses, and convinces the renowned Sinai archaeologist Avner Goren to be his guide. When he first sets out, he expects his trek to be a journalist's adventure, but as they visit the people living in these places, he discovers that the Pentateuch is a story that is more than history: it is an ever present reality. And in the people he encounters, from Israeli archaeologists to Egyptian historians; from Turkish guides to monks living in the Sinai Desert, he finds that the people of the lands of the Bible are connected to it in a living way, each in their own unique fashion.

And despite being a secular Jew, he finds his own connection to God growing, understanding that we are all perhaps like Michaelangelo's Adam, reaching out to what is really only slightly out of reach. Ending on the last mountain where God allowed Moses to look at all of the lands of Canaan, he realizes that it does not matter that it isn't actually possible to see all the lands the Bible lists Moses as being able to see, for he wasn't looking at the land. Feiler writes, “He was looking at God.”

I really recommend this to anyone looking to form their own connection with this far off place and time that still exists and is still real today.

Rat from the past

Imagine if you went missing for eleven million years, and then someone found you. That's a long time to be waiting at Mall administration for Mom!

Rock rat's family goes way back

The value of worship

Why would God even care if anyone worshipped him? Why would he want it? If he is all powerful, one might ask, would he not be indifferent to it?

You will know how he feels when you look into the eyes of your own newborn child. I loved my daughter with a power and force I had never known before, like a tidal wave crashing over my heart.

Can you imagine it any differently for the God who literally is love itself? Can you imagine how much God aches to be part of our lives? I find it heartbreaking as my children get older that I am less and less part of their lives.

That is why God desires our worship - we connect to him and acknowledge what he is to us. And believe you me, whatever we think we're offering him, infinitely more is offered our way.

City struck by bombers is Hinduism's holiest site : Mail & Guardian Online

Why would anyone do this? This is roughly the equivalent of bombing the Wailing Wall, St. Peter's Square, or Mecca!

City struck by bombers is Hinduism's holiest site : Mail & Guardian Online

Violence done against holy places - whether your own or others' - is a strike against sacredness and sanctity itself. There is no reward in heaven for this.

Never put a movie ojn you've seen a hundred times

When I got home from work last night, my younger daughter and I ate dinner. She went on the computer, and I put on Star Wars. Now I've seen these movies a hundred times, so I fell asleep within minutes. Now I am up at four in the morning!

I have a meeting this evening with the musicians I've recruited for my P&W band. Hopefully I can stay awake that long. I should be able to. I got ten hours sleep!

Bullies

I was inspired to write this by this Ignoble Experiment entry.

I was bullied mercilessly as a boy. When I was seven, I had to give a speech before the class. I had begun reading when I was about four, I understood metaphor, and so I used one: I said I was from the “blue planet.” For years, I was called “the Martian.” An entire gang, ring-lead by one of my neighbours, spent years looking for me, and then beating the pulp out of me when they found me. On the bus, they would take the sharp-edged rulers (in those days rulers all had a metal wedge for drawing straight lines) and whack me in the back of the head with it. My parents always told me not to dignify this with a response, but as I would sit there and not respond in any way at all, they seemed fascinated by the curiosity of a boy who could be hit with metal edged rulers, and not react at all.

Except for the saltwater I fought back into their ducts.

But if this was a test, I can't say I passed it. I was not alone. Another boy, David, took the same school bus I did. He looked like me. Same blond hair, same haircut, same lanky build. He wore glasses, I did not. But the same bullies tormented each of us. Every day they picked on him, I sat their burning in anger, just as though they were at me. I felt his suffering, because I lived it, and I felt like a stone weight dragged on my heart every time they went after him. But I was also relieved, because on his beating days, I got to ride anonymously. And I was ashamed for feeling it.

One day they goaded us into fighting one another in the schoolyard. I made myself hate David. He represented everything I did not want to be – hated, abused, tormented. And even though the aching sorrow I felt for him never once abated, he and I circled one another, fists raised. The mob of tormentors all looked on, gleefully enjoying the monstrous spectacle they'd made – nerdfight.

I don't know if I ever apologized to him. I don't remember doing it. And I wish that I could. Most of all, I hope and pray that he is well and truly past the inhumanity of our schoolmates like me now.

I am successful. I am prosperous. Physically, I stopped being small when I was sixteen or so, and I have had the satisfaction a few times of staring down at a few of my past tormentors in adult life.

But none of that matters. Because I am happy. For a time, these kids did take my dignity, and David's. But they could not prevent us from ever being happy. It is not a dark satisfaction, but rather a happy and serene satisfaction, to realize this.

CDs by the truckload

For the first time, I bought one of those big tubs of compact discs. There are a hundred of them. I also bought seventy five sleeves. There are some things that I have to burn, but then what? (My guess is they will vanish as quickly as the ten packs I usually buy.)

Yesterday was my daughter's baby shower. After cleaning the house all morning, I got summarily booted from the house just afternoon. So I went and bought my March transit pass at the drugstore. I walked to the grocery store, where the deli counter has the best southern fried chicken I've ever tasted outside of Wakulla Springs in Florida. That was lunch.

Armed with my new bus pass, I went to the library downtown. I browsed the CD section for a while - I still find it fascinating that you can borrow CDs. The selection of popular music isn't very good, but the selection of classical music is much better than any record store's. The jazz selection is pretty good, too. In Ottawa, despite there being a huge blues scene and a popular orchestra, curiously, the record stores all serve up the same pop/emo/punk recipe (along with nearly as many DVDs as actual records.) And they can't blame downloading either - it has been this way since the early eighties, since vinyl began to fade away.

I don't have a library card at the moment, so I couldn't take anything out. So I went over to the magazine section, and saw an issue of Discover that seemed interesting - it had articles on strange stellar phenomena and new evidence on the relationship of the Nubians and the Egyptians based on a temple of Aman in Sudan. And as I sat to read about the Nubians, how the Greeks revered them as the wellspring of civilization while the Egyptians loathed them, I fell asleep!

When I got home, I expected - had been told even - the shower would be done. But they were still in the throes of it. So I went into the basement and practiced the music for our praise and worship night (for which we still have not fixed a date yet.) Then I packed up my new guitar and strapped it to my shoulder and went upstairs to tell my wife i was going over to the local pub's "open mic" night.

"Before you go," She said, "This is [daughter's boyfriend]'s mother."

She seemed nice enough. Dead ringer for him, surprisingly. But the house was so full of people that I didn't really get much of a chance to get to know this co-grandparent.

At the pub they made me sing all night. The host would play one or two songs. His daughter would then play a song or two that she had written - she has a fair bit of talent, but since she only plays her own songs, doesn't have enough material to go for too long. And then I'd play, oh, ten songs or so. "I'm hogging the mic," I'd say, protesting. "More, play another one. Do you know any Stones?" Someone'd say.

I wonder if the host is paid. If so, I earned him a good living yesterday.

In the middle of the evening I phoned home.

"So are they done yet?" I asked.

"Mostly. Your daughter's making plans for dinner. They're having to drag her. Still a couple here," She answered. I could hear them.

"Are we still going out?"

"Probably not. This was tiring."

"If it's OK then, I'm going to have... what was it you said was so good here? The shawarma?"

"Yes, the shawarma platter."

I wish I could say I sang for my supper, but no, I paid for that. Not that I mind, of course. Nobody ever goes to the corner pub, which has changed hands five times in the last seven years.

When I left at the end of the night, the host said, "See you next week?"

"No," I replied, "Going to the cottage."

"Ah.. the week after?"

"Maybe," I replied in a non-committal way. Much as I enjoy playing, I don't have the "must play live in bars" bug anymore. Music ministry in church is far more rewarding. But the corner pub has changed hands five times in the last bit, and the owner is a really nice guy who makes good shawarma.

So maybe means maybe.

The nature of flesh

it is a funny thing to be a living multi-cellular creature. You are made up of billions of tiny living entities, most of them specialized, who cooperate to give the larger organism the opportunity to keep existing. We are seldom even conscious of it, but it is true. With my daughter's pregnancy, I am reminded of this truth, since she's baking a new such entity that will, sometime in April, be a new granddaughter!

In tonight's vespers, we pray, "Let all flesh bless his holy name, for ever and ever." What is it to be such an unusual and complex construction of biological purpose? I doubt any of us can fully understand. But I think we make it harder when we tell ourselves that body and soul are distinct. But they really are not, at least not while we are here. Every single thing we sense and do is reflected in chemicals, electrons and sinew.

It is never mind over matter. Mind with matter, perhaps. But flesh can aspire to more than corporeal corruption. It is why the Bible speaks of "ressurection", the implication that our full restoration incorporates some kind of physicality. Perhaps it is even why Egyptians spent forty days mummifying people for what they imagined to be a corporeal journey.

It is hard to know what this means, considering the complexities of physics and biology. But with my hope set on a stone that rolled away the first Easter morning, it is the mystery I contemplate every day - what is it to be a man, with his sights set on being something more? And what will it be to be this "more" should we attain it?

It really is no fun...

...to write a blog that nobody reads. Bleh. I don't know how long I can keep doing this. I feel like Paul McCartney should add me a verse to Eleanor Rigby.

"What we really might be"

I love these words of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Communion. He wrote them in the London Telegraph last year, at Easter.

"Faith is not, after all, about getting to the point where everything is clear and settled. It is about stepping into a disorienting new world: the stories you know how to tell about yourself and your world may need to be interrupted and questioned. Familiar things and persons have to be looked at with a new depth of attention.

If Easter is awkward, it is because it is always a shock to be told who we really are and what we really might be."

On the importance of clothes

There are times when I think people pay more attention to the church building than what the church is supposed to be about. Take this fellow - who is unhappy that an archbishop had the audacity to say, "I must confess that I have never been offended or scandalized by any attire that I have seen our kids wear to Church."

He exclaims that people should dress "appropriate" in order to "receive the Second Person of the Trinity in the Eucharist."

Bettnet.com - Musings of Domenico Bettinelli

While I certainly make every effort to, I do have to wonder - what if a bearded guy in sandals and worn cloth robes came in, with his face covered in blood and thorns?

Ash Wednesday

"Remember you are dust," the Priest said as he crossed my forehead with the burnt, chrismated remnants of last year's Palm Sunday palms, "And to dust you will return." As I returned to the pew, I thought of all the people I've lost. All the people I will lose. I thought of all the innocence I had once had as a child, and how little I touch the part of me where genuine innocence still dwells. How many times had I murdered or destroyed even my own fragile being, with one smirk or cruel thought? And though I knew it a selfish thing, I allowed the tears to well up, and I let them flow. For the loved ones I can no longer see, and for the little boy who sometimes seems to me to be have been just as lost. It was why I was here, wasn't it?

I went to the Ash Wednesday service after work. It is a solemn beginning to a solemn time. I had planned to rush home and meet up with my wife before going, but the timing didn't work. I found her afterwards, as everyone processed out in silence. She found and hugged all her friends in quiet. The good person she nurtures inside is well, and never far from the surface. I saw in her that people do in some measure stay who they are, since she was always this way. Perhaps it was more true of any of us than I had thought - maybe grace flows more easily than I think. All I know is I am not dining on ashes (pun intended) at the moment. Yes, we've lost - but we've also kept. And gained.

It bears keeping in mind.

Ash Wednesday

Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain-offering and a drink-offering
for the Lord, your God?
Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.

Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
“Where is their God?” ’

Then the Lord became jealous for his land,
and had pity on his people.

Joel 2:12-18

Once again, Lent begins. It is a time of year that I both dread and look forward to. I fear that I won't be able to keep my disciplines (though it never turns out to be that hard.) But I welcome a more solemn and more reflective spirituality. Lent seems to be the one time I can peer inside and gain real insight about myself. When I come out of it the other end, at Easter - I always feel truly renewed. This is a kind of ressurection, too - a shadow and foretaste of our hopes.

For anyone who may be reading and observes, may this time be a blessing for you, and may your journey to Easter be a fulfilling and happy one.