Leaving the Light On

Reveal Your presence,
And let the vision and Your beauty kill me.
Behold the malady
Of love is incurable
Except in Your presence and before Your face.

John of the Cross, the Spiritual Canticle

About Baptism

If there was one area you would think Christians would be in much agreement on, it would be baptism. After all, it is a joyous occasion. There are the white gowns, the words that bespeak hope of a new life, the water, symbol of life... and the innocence of the newly beloved of God, the catechumens truly becoming something new in this wonderful initiation into new life.

Although we Catholics can be closed up (perhaps even too closed up) in how we will interact sacramentally with other Christians, one way in which we do throw open the doors is baptism. For us, any baptism that is in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a baptism. The baptism of a Baptist or Presbyterian minister is as real and powerful as one done by the Pope himself. I guess we see baptism as the truly unifying thing that all Christians do, and indeed submitting to baptism was in many ways the first important step in Jesus' own ministry.

But as with all things Christian, we can't always seem to agree. Some Christians have a more restrictive formula of what makes a baptism valid. Mormons rebaptize just about everyone. Baptists insist in full immersion. The Orthodox are often skeptical that any baptism undertaken by the churches of the west is valid, and often insist on re-baptism.

Although it is often suggested that the Bible never portrays anything but immersion baptisms, in truth, the New Testament does not go into much detail about how baptism should take place at all. All we do have for certain is the baptismal formula from Matthew 28:19, "baptizing... in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit." Where water is concerned, the New Testament does not give only a single mode. The baptism of Acts 16 clearly does not happen at the river, since it appears to obviously be in the context of treating the wounded Christians who have just been let out of jail in a bath.

Also, St. Peter clearly warns against "water legalism" earlier in Acts 10, when he tells of the holy-spirit filled catechumens, "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the holy Spirit even as we have?"

Then there's the scene that you'd have noticed in "The Gospel According to Matthew", "The Passion of the Christ", "the Gospel of John" or any Jesus film: water left the side of Jesus, the very symbol of the "life giving water" Jesus spoke of at Sychar. The moment baptism took on its efficacy was when the water and the blood emerged from his side.

Now clearly this didn't happen in amounts that would have "immersed" anyone. And yet this was the very moment that true baptism into eternal life was born. So how can we say that immersion was necessary when this first baptism of the new life itself probably produced no more than a trickle or stream?

Insistence on immersion puts the emphasis on the rite or sacrament, and not on the saving power of Christ. It isn't the amount of water that saves - it is the grace and truth of Jesus, given in baptism, that saves.

Its about Jesus. Not the abundance of H20.

Unsolicited advice of the day

If you ever have boy children, name your first Schmendrick the Magician. And not because it is a good idea for you, or his prospects for keeping his lunch money at school.

But it would please me. That's what counts, right?

The Forgotten Fall Leaves

I haven't taken any fall pictures this year, I am sad to say. The leaves peaked in the middle of the week at one point, and then when I went for a walk in the woods with my folks Thanksgiving weekend, I forgot my camera.

But I don't think I blogged any pictures from last year, so here is this year's fall meditation. These were shot up at the cottage. I believe my daughter shot the middle picture, but I am not entirely sure.


EARTH! my likeness!
Though you look so impassive,
ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect
there is something fierce in you,
eligible to burst forth;
For an athlete is enamour’d of me—
and I of him;
But toward him there is something
fierce and terrible in me,
eligible to burst forth,
I dare not tell it in words—
not even in these songs.

(Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass) 

My weird cat...

Is chasing imaginary mice on the floor, and running around the room like he fell in a vat of catnip. I hope I can still do that when I'm a hundred years old! (He's twenty, which in cat years is a hundred.)

Ahmadinejad the strange

Anyone who knows me knows I'm almost instinctively against any military resolution of conflict. I find it hard to even think of the idea of how much suffering civilians experience in war, a policy tool too many governments rush to all too quickly. Iraq is the classic example of it for me, a situation clearly local in scope that never needed to be resolved in a quagmire that has resulted in so many casualties among Iraq's civilian population and the US' military.

However, the leader of Iran and his pronouncements that so eerily echo those of Hitler's are making it very difficult for me to find the inevitable here objectionable. His latest claim is that Israel has no reason to exist, and soon won't. This is a chilling statement, and an example of exactly the kind of thing that necessitated Israel in the first place - with so many people determined to literally extinguish the Jewish people, the tools of statecraft (diplomacy and a standing army) do seem to be the only things that can warrant their safety.

What is particularly frightening about these tirades is that they portray this as a religious conflict. Past experience shows us that religiously motivated conflicts are not only brutal, but generational - look at Ireland. And yet here there's no reason for it! The chapters "Ta-ha" and "Al Isra" of the Quran clearly suggest that Islam incorporates the very idea of Israel as a promised land to the people following Moses  - the Quran literally calls these people Israel, just as the Bible does. "Ta-Ha" particularly tells the whole story of Exodus in condensed form, even about how quail were blown into the desert en route to feed the people!

If conflict is to be averted, perhaps the answer lies with religious people. Perhaps the answer lies, as Bruce Feiler suggested in his most recent book, in the prophets. It didn't take kings and empires to turn the tide of history. It took ordinary and often reluctant men and women. Simple people, speaking truth to power. Maybe our job is to keep tirelessly pointing out to the world that the place governments rush to all too quickly is not a place God wants them to go. He does not command them to it, and does not march with their armies.

Maybe our job is to remind people that God is more sovereign than they think, does not need them blurting out genocidal proclamations on his behalf in the name of strange religious theories, and can leave the course of history to him.

Do not remember the formers things,
Or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing,
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:18-19)

Pictures to remember us by

Tonight I collected some pictures to send to a friend of ours - I couldn't fit many, so I had to find the ones that best represented us. There were some of us camping, that cute baby on the floor I posted the other day, my daughter with a horse, one of us on the beach in Florida... and a picture of my wife and I looking into the eyes of my daughter's newborn baby.

I think I like that best. If you can photograph love, it is such a moment. What a wonderful invention photography is, and what a wonderful gift that inventor gave to future generations. Isn't it a great thing to be able to look back at such precious moments of your life, and to be able to reexperience them so vividly?

Cute baby

That's the granddaughter. This was taken at Thanksgiving, and as you can see - she now has a certain agility to her. We've warned Mom she better start wearing jogging shoes around the house! :-) 

MercyMe

The contemporary Christian pop group MercyMe recorded a great song called "So Long Self" with a fun little video. In it, the band is watching a television announcer saying, "You're watching a live sound-check by MercyMe, who are getting ready for their show tonight."

The singer Bart says, "Hey, that's not us!" to which one of the band members replies, "How can you be sure?"

He answers, "Because we're here, and they're.... we gotta stop those guys!"

They run out of their tour bus and spend the rest of the video tricking the fake band out of performing. Now what I love about the song is the serious message underneath the playful message. Although Christianity is hardly the only religion to embrace the idea of freeing oneself by cutting loose ego and selfishness, the Christian analogy for it is a really effective one: "dying to self."

http://music.yahoo.com/ar-280688-videos--MercyMe

In the last week, I've had a few eye opening opportunities to die to self. There is a large special choir being formed for a onetime event at church. I wasn't going to participate in it, as I often feel our group is under-represented in these things - the soloists that sing with the piano player tend to get the best songs and are showcased more frequently. But I came to realize that none of these things matter to God, and they won't matter to the person this is being done for. The only thing that will make him happy is seeing a large group of people come together to sing for him. "It isn't about me," I reminded myself.

Last week, a song sort of came to me riding my bike. It was perfect for the series of events that the choir is also for. I recorded it promptly at the urging of one of the people who work at the church. She took it to the organizing committee. Last night one of them phoned me, and more or less brushed off my efforts (but in a very friendly and polite way, of course.)

So what do I do with this song? I don't know. I have to start to realize these things are not up to me. They are up to God. It is really for him to decide how things turn out. I have to realize that I don't have to give up all ambition, because unmotivated people are no fun. But it is time that I set aside expectations. That is what dying to self really means. It isn't about what I get out of it. It is about what the moment means, and what you can learn from it.

I sure do love gospel music

I've been picking out songs for another night of praise music, although I haven't got any official approval for doing such a thing yet. It is just an idea that started germinating from the proverbial mustard seed so to speak. While trying to think up songs, I stumbled across an old Richard Smallwood number. It fits in with one of the other songs I've been looking at (Phillip can guess pretty quickly which one I think.)

This is a beautiful song, "Total Praise." I've been busy learning how to play it. And this Toronto gospel choir does the heck out of it.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandI...

Lord, I will lift my eyes to the hills
Knowing my help comes from you
Your peace you give me
In times of the storm

You are the source of my strength
You are the strength of my life
I lift my hands in total praise
To you.

The Iraq war is toast

Come on folks. It is time for us to face the facts. The head of the British army has. So has the Secretary of State from Bush 41.

There's not going to be a victory. There just isn't. The situation has been too badly degraded, and collapse into civil war is inevitable, if it has not already happened. I've already noted that Riverbend has either fled or died. That is becoming an altogether too common fate for Iraqis. Coalition forces aren't able to stop it - they just provide extra targets for insurgents to roadside bomb or shoot at.

People may say, "yeah but Saddam was evil!" Yes - everyone knows he is and was evil. But is at least some semblence of civil order not at least a lesser evil than complete anarchy, chaos, and meaningless and brutal civil war? For this is what has been unleashed. The number of Iraqis who would be alive if Saddam were still in power and contained would be greater than the number of Iraqis alive today. You can't even say that people in Iraq would be in more fear if Saddam had continued on, for most Iraqis are justifiably terrified today.

The just war doctrine has an important principle - the proposed war must not cause disorder and evils greater than those which would result from the situation the war seeks to resolve. Clearly this war has failed that test - the brutal condition of Iraq is arguably worse than how things would have continued with Saddam. Saddam would have met his eternal reward one day anyway - it isn't as though he is immortal. And in the meantime, many Iraqis who did not deserve to die would still be alive.

But despite these objections, the war did happen.

So now what?

[Editorial note: edited for idiocy - "Saddam were still alive" was kind of dumb. What was I thinking? Changed to "Saddam were still in power."]

Translation Troubles

In my other blog, I am very slowly translating the Gospel of John. I haven't been at it in a while, and going back into it tonight, I found it a hard slog. First of all, I haven't been studying much Greek lately, so my Greek's gotten very rusty. Also, I ran into one of the traps translators know well - translation politics.

In this case with the word "adelphoi":

[John 2:12] After this he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother, and his [adelphoi], and his disciples; and they remained there not many days.

Now, this typically means "brothers," but it can also mean "brothers and sisters," or can mean a group of people with a familial aspect (such as the early Christians regarded themselves), and it can refer to relatives other than immediate family as well. I ended up using 'relatives' here, since the disciples are also refered to separately. But it is a tough call, trying to pull clarity from ambiguity.

There were other tough spots, too. It is not always entirely clear what the apostle John means in his writings, and I often have to really rely on the insight of my Douay Rheims and Vulgate (St. Jerome) forebearers - how did they interpret a passage when I struggle with it?

The more I do this, the more respect I have for real translators!

What's up doc?

Deadly carrot juice. I guess nothing is safe anymore.

Thanksgiving

It is Thanksgiving weekend, and the sun is rising over the just-past-their-peek leaves out my window. It is a pretty site, to say the least.

My parents are coming to stay with us. I am looking forward to it, because I made a mock radio documentary with which to roast my Dad. I'm looking forward to a good roasting. :-)

God is real

Every once in a while things happen that convince me that God is there; he's not just an abstract non-presence who may or may not have created everything. He's actually and really right there.

On Saturday, my wife and I went to a conference on formation, a session on teaching catechism classes basically. Part of the session involved recreating the rites, with a couple of the participants playing the part of catechumens. When we went to the doors to get the catechumens... there's no other way to put this, as quaint as it may sound... the Holy Spirit fell on us, and we were all weeping. I know how this must sound - like charismatic claptrap. But I have to remember that this was not a group of sentimental charismatics. This was a large group of Catholic instructors, generally the most straight-laced and by the book people we have. And we wept freely, like children. Nobody went to move.

Yesterday, I went in to mass early to accompany one of the other music groups on the mandolin - specifically on a spanish song. When mass had ended, someone came up and told us of how her mother had passed away to the strains of that very song, two weeks earlier. None of us had known about this, and yet we had been instruments of both tender gentleness and incomprehensible power.

Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it?
Into what were its pedestals sunk, and who laid the cornerstone,
While the morning stars sang in chorus and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
(Job 38:4-7)