Darwin Among the Machines (1863)
We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man.
Featured
Want to Stop the Spread of Euthanasia?
My three-step plan for making euthanasia less popular:
- the remains may not be used for any purpose;
- neither Medicare, nor any other insurance plan, nor the patient, may pay any part of the cost of the killing or the any ancillary charges: the participating doctors and hospitals must pay the full cost; and
- it voids inheritance.
Abdullah M, Sedeek A, Keebler M, Hickey G, Hartwick M, Kaczorowski DJ. First successful cardiac allograft donation and transplantation after medical assistance in dying (MAiD). J Heart Lung Transplant. 2025 Jun 27:S1053-2498(25)02064-9. doi: 10.1016/j.healun.2025.06.026. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 40582651.
Better than Ozempic
October 5, 2025
The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
Did you brush your teeth this morning? Did you make the bed? Get dressed? Eat breakfast? Wash the breakfast dishes? Put them away?
Did you come to church?
Did you think much about these things first, or just do them? We are, in the main, creatures of habit. We’re formed and shaped by our habits, from care for our bodies to study and prayer. Our character is shaped by them over time.
Some decades ago I ran across, on a motivational poster, a fragment from historian Will Durant’s paraphrase of one of the key points in Aristotle’s Ethics: “Excellence is not an act but a habit.” The fuller quote is from his best-selling 1926 book The Story of Philosophy:
“Excellence is an act won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; ‘these virtues [justice and temperance] are formed in man by his doing the actions;’ [that is] we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” He continues, quoting Aristotle, “The good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life … for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.”
“But,” Aristotle notes, “most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy.”
Practice doesn’t so much “make perfect” as make whatever is done easier. Try to touch your toes each day, and it will become easier until eventually you can touch your toes. We become over time whatever we practice each day.
The disciples were students. They followed Jesus to learn. We see Mary of Bethany attentive in Luke 10:38–39 (ESV): “And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.” And after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost what did the newly baptized do? In Acts 2:42: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
It’s from disciple that we get the word discipline, “to train or develop by instruction and exercise, especially in self-control.”
And so we have such things as Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. You have heard Matthew 6:33-34 (KJV): “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Yet for some reason it’s the Aristotelians, the Stoics, the Buddhists, and the modern self-help industry, who talk of practice and the present moment. All of them, for the most part, offering no reason, no end, for any practice other than one’s self.
Paul prays for the church in today’s reading:
“[God] grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16–19)
Several commentators, among them Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, see this as a call to the contemplative life. That we, grounded in love, may grasp the full extent of the love of Christ. Calvin wrote,
“The love of Christ is held out to us as the subject which ought to occupy our daily and nightly meditations, and in which we ought to be wholly plunged. He who is in possession of this alone has enough. … He who has Christ has everything necessary for being made perfect in God; for this is the meaning of the phrase, the fullness of God.” Aquinas quotes Gregory the Great who wrote, “the contemplative life is to cling with our whole mind to the love of God and our neighbor, and to desire nothing beside our Creator.” I’m reminded of the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “What is the chief end of man? Man’ s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.”
But neither Calvin, nor Aquinas, nor Gregory, nor Aristotle see contemplation as a navel-gazing “refuge in theory.”
Nor does the Preacher of Ecclesiastes: “The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” (Ecclesiastes 12:11–13)
Nor does Paul. He follows his prayer with an exhortation to practice: “Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, … until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, cwhen each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:1,13–16)
We are to practice, so that we become rightly ordered to the head of the church — that is, to the Word of God, to seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness. There’s a fancy word for what happens, this becoming: sanctification.
WSC Q35: What is sanctification?
Sanctification is the work of God’ s free grace, (2 Thess. 2:13) whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, (Eph. 4:23–24) and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness. (Rom. 6:4,6, Rom. 8:1)
The grace of God makes this possible through the working of the Holy Spirit. We’ve been born again in Christ. The fancy word for that is regenerate. There’s been a new creation, and Christ the new Adam. So we are “to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:24)
As Paul puts it elsewhere, for freedom Christ set us free.
Recall the story of Naomi and Ruth, how death took first Naomi’s husband, and then her two sons, leaving Naomi and her daughters-in-law Ruth and Orpah, with nothing, impoverished. Now on the way into the city of Nain, Jesus and crowd of disciples come across a large party of mourners, carrying a young man, his widowed mother’s only son. One can assume, now that her only son is dead, she, like Naomi, is impoverished. “And Jesus had compassion on her,” and raised the young man to new life, and restored him to his mother. The ancient church fathers, and later authors, Augustine, Gregory, Aquinas, and Calvin among others, read the raising of the widow’s son together with the raising of Jairus’s daughter and the raising of Lazarus as a trilogy, describing our redemption from three kinds of sin, that is, from death, and our spiritual rebirth.
Augustine writes, “These three kinds of dead persons, are three kinds of sinners whom even at this day Christ does raise. For that dead daughter of the ruler of the synagogue was within in the house, she had not yet been carried out from the secrecy of its walls into public view. There within was she raised, and restored alive to her parents. But the second was not now indeed in the house, but still not yet in the tomb, he had been carried out of the walls, but not committed to the ground. He who raised the dead maiden who was not yet carried out, raised this dead man who was now carried out, but not yet buried. There remained a third case, that He should raise one who was also buried; and this He did in Lazarus.”
What three kinds of sin? The thought, the act, and the habit.
The thought is only in your heart and mind, a private, little thing of no consequence. What does it hurt if I salivate over chocolate cake? Who, after all, knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? God. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, the same sermon from which everyone likes to quote the Beatitudes, said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” (Matthew 5:27–29)
The act takes that thought and brings it into the open, carries it out in public. I want that cake; and so I take it and eat it.
The habit repeats the action, over and over again, so that there is no longer thought, but gluttony. And so a simple thought is transformed.
This is not to say that chocolate cake is, in itself, sinful. Nor that habits are. Such a small thing, that first thought; and such a difficult thing to cure, that habit.
“But all these in mercy He restores to life.”
Our salvation is no small thing.
You came to church this morning. That’s a good habit.
One of the means by which God’s grace acts in and on our lives is the regular reading and hearing of his Word.
Another means is the perfection(?) of our baptism with the Lord’s Supper, whereby we are fed by Christ in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving:
“The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ. The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is Faith.”
We gather together today to give thanks to God. To “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:2) We too devote ourselves “to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42)
Resolved, that I Remember the Deadline
I missed the deadline to propose resolutions for this year’s diocesan convention, by 22 hours and a lot of planning. Ooops. For your amusement, here are the first drafts; they need consultation and review with wiser minds than mine, and co-sponsors.
TO PROVIDE FOR FREE DEBATE
Resolved, that applause, cheers, jeers, hoots, hollers, and other indications of passionate affirmation or antagonism shall be suppressed in Convention; and be it further
Resolved, that all votes of the Diocese in Convention, whether for election or resolution, shall be by secret, written ballot by order; and be it further
Resolved, that Canons 3.5 and 10.8 of the Diocese, and other canons applicable as determined by the Chancellor, shall be revised to reflect the intent of the resolutions above.
EXPLANATION
The Lord our God speaking through the prophet Isaiah says, “Come, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). Discerning the will of God requires free and open discussion in good faith.
The deaf cannot hear and the mute cannot speak, and thus vote by voice acclamation explicitly prevents their involvement and removes them from the body politic.
Our sincere desire to ensure good relations with our fellows and our sympathy with others may lead us to follow the loud voice of the crowd rather than the still small voice in our heart. We may betray our conscience to seek the approval of our peers, or to avoid the displeasure or seek the favor of those in positions of power over us.
TO ENSURE THEOLOGICALLY SOUND RESOLUTIONS
Resolved, that all propositions brought before the Convention, excepting those of a purely grammatical or procedural nature, shall be prefaced and justified by a specific Scriptural authority, or logically so derived from a specific authority, that directs us so to proceed; and be it further
Resolved, that Canon 4.3 of the Diocese be amended to reflect the above.
EXPLANATION
The Lord our God has commanded us that we shall have no other gods before Him. Further, that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our mind and with all our soul. The Church, being the Body of which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the Head, should therefore put God first in all we do. God has provided us with the Word of God in the form of the Holy Scripture, as affirmed by the ecumenical Councils of the Church, containing all things necessary to our life and our salvation.
TO AFFIRM OUR ALLEGIANCE TO CHRIST THE KING
Resolved, that no entity of this Diocese shall display any flag or heraldic emblem other than that of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States as adopted by the General Convention of 1940, or of the United States, or of the several states, or of any administrative division thereof, except when visited by representatives of another temporal or ecclesiastical power and due honor is desired to be shown to said guest.
EXPLANATION
The Lord our God has commanded us that we shall have no other gods before Him, and that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has said no one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13). Yet the Apostles Paul, Peter, and James counsel us to submit to temporal authority (Romans 13:1).
Flags and heraldry are symbols of allegiance. This church should clearly demonstrate that all authority comes from God and that we are subservient only to God.
TO AVOID THE SIN OF PARTIALITY
Resolved, that this Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States shall neither require nor teach any material identifying itself as anti-racist.
EXPLANATION
We are assured by our faith that there is no redemption but through Christ Jesus. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ welcomes all to his embrace. The Apostle Paul assures us that in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew. The Apostle James warns us against the sin of partiality, that is, of preferring one above the other due to his or her physical or economic characteristics. Our duty to God requires that we should neither condone nor teach doctrines abhorrent to the Word of God.
Yet certain members of the Church in former times erroneously identified the curse of Ham with the peoples from the African continent, taught that those peoples were inferior, kidnapped them from their homes, and enslaved them in an unfamiliar land. Aware of our sin the Church, attempting to redeem itself, has further sinned.
Racism and anti-racism both violate the clear directive of Holy Scripture by teaching that some children of God are inherently better than others. Contrary to its promises, instruction in anti-racism has been shown to result in racist behavior [1]. These teachings cause dissension among the people of God and are to be avoided.
[1] https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/Instructing-Animosity_11.13.24.pdf
TO CONDEMN MEDICAL ASSISTANCE IN DYING
Resolved, that intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms and motives, is murder, gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the Creator; and be it further
Resolved, that in those jurisdictions where euthanasia is legal and assistance may be compelled, medical professionals must refrain from providing such assistance for they imperil their immortal soul; and be it further
Resolved, that those providing such assistance may not come to the table until they have confessed their sin, repented, and no longer engage in said sin.
EXPLANATION
Thou shalt not kill.
New York State’s legislature has recently passed a bill permitting doctors to kill their patients. [1] It awaits Gov. Hochul’s signature. Whether called medical assistance in dying, assisted dying, or assisted suicide, euthanasia perverts the practice of medicine from the restoration of wholeness. By enlisting the aid of another in one’s death it turns doctors into murderers. It replaces palliative care. Evidence from other jurisdictions, particularly Canada and the Netherlands, shows that regardless of the stated intentions of its advocates, there are no safeguards [2], becoming merely a scheme to kill off the economically nonviable. It condemns those deemed useless and unworthy of life to the ovens.
The early Church distinguished itself from the pagan world by its care for the poor, the sick, and the weak. Christians were known for being those strange people who did not kill the infirm, the elderly, or children; and who instead took in the abandoned, the widows, the orphans.
That we are silent or even advocating for these deaths on the grounds of “consent” shames the Church.
[1] https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S138
[2] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/no-other-options, https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/compliance-problems-maid-canada-leaked-documents
TO AFFIRM THE GOODNESS OF GOD’S CREATION
Resolved, that God made man and woman in God’s image, and declared that they were good; and be it further
Resolved, that life is a great gift; and be it further
Resolved, that the bodies that God has given us are good, suitable for God’s purposes and our needs, and to be used in harmony with God’s will as revealed in Holy Scripture; and be it further
Resolved, that to assert that God has made a mistake by placing a man in a woman’s body, or vice versa, is to place ourselves above God, and is idolatry and hubris; and be it further
Resolved, that none of us is without sin; and be it further
Resolved, that the Church loves and cherishes all those who comprise the body of Christ.
EXPLANATION
The Holy Scriptures teach us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and that on the sixth day God brought forth living creatures according to their kinds, among which were Man and Woman, and that all that God created was good. “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. … And God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:27,31 NRSV)
Some people feel that they and their bodies are incongruent, that their nature is different from how they are embodied. Some seek to use technical interventions to choose a different body. Some others after doing so regret those choices. These technical interventions are both irreversible and impossible: one cannot change one’s sex, only the appearance of one’s sex. To unquestioningly affirm the perceived incongruity does not offer guidance according to God’s Word, abandons all those who later change their mind, and leaves the advocate liable to suit. A properly pastoral approach reminds us that God’s creation is good, that we have difficulty living in harmony with God’s intent, and seeks to guide the perplexed to understanding.
TO ENCOURAGE OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH
Resolved, that the 249th Convention of the Diocese of New York encourages all the faithful to avoid participation in sports leagues that play or require travel on Sunday; and be it further
Resolved, that the Convention encourages the faithful to refrain from activity on the Lord’s Day that is not essential to life or health, or which prevents others from observance of the Sabbath; and be it further
Resolved, that the Convention encourages the faithful to advocate for legislation that would allow families to enjoy time together to worship the Lord our God.
EXPLANATION
We are commanded by the Lord our God to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
Many families today participate in sports leagues that schedule games on Sunday or require travel on Sunday, often on the erroneous assumption that these sports will increase the likelihood that their children will be granted entry into the college of their choice. This prevents or discourages those families from attending worship services.
Other families are compelled by economic circumstances or the exigencies of their employment to work on the Lord’s Day, often in professions that are not essential to life or health. Many activities we enjoy on the weekend compel others to work for us, thus hindering their worship and rest.
“And Like a Good Neighbor…”
The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
It’s a beautiful day out today.
One of the joys of coming here to Highland each month is walking outside at night, looking up, and seeing the vast uncountable sea of stars, billions and billions, so bright and clear and twinkling. Each point of Ursa Major so well-defined the constellation makes sense as a big bear and not just as the big dipper I can still see in New York. How bright they must be that I see the dipper even over the artificial glare we’ve made that hides them from us. There are so many blurring into the Milky Way that I can take off my glasses and still see it stretching across the sky from end to end. What a promise God made to Abraham! “I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. (Gen. 22:17-18)
Zechariah, when his tongue was loosed after the naming of John, later to be called John the Baptist, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied: the promise is being fulfilled.
[72] to show the mercy promised to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
[73] the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us
[74] that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
might serve him without fear,
[75] in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.[78] because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high
[79] to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:72–75,78–79)
…
Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, writes,
[16] yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
[7] Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. [8] And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” [9] So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
[10] For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” (Galatians 2:16, 3:7-9)
…
[25] And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25)
Do?
Out of faith Abraham obeyed God’s voice, and kept his charges, his commandments, his statutes, his laws. Out of faith a blessing has been given all the nations. Now comes this lawyer seeking a quid pro quo, an exchange, this for that. But it’s a trick question: an inheritance is not earned; it’s undeserved. No matter how obsequiously attentive we are to the rich relative, an inheritance is a gift. The lawyer should know this.
And he’s a good lawyer. He knows the law. He knows the answer to his test. He quotes Deuteronomy and Leviticus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)
“Do this, and you will live.” (Luke 10:29)
This answer is also not new.
Moses laid out blessings and curses before the people of Israel.
[26] “‘Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
[1] “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. (Deuteronomy 27:26, 28:1)
[58] “If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, … [then] Whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God. (Deuteronomy 28:58,62)
“Choose life.”
It’s an open book test. Everyone has the answers right in front of them.
What shall I do to inherit eternal life? The same question is asked by the rich man in Luke 18:18. The rich man who knew and kept the commandments, or thought he had, save one: his wealth came before God.
“Do this, and you will live.”
That’s impossible! How could anyone perfectly comply?
The lawyer putting the test is a good lawyer. He attends to the details. And so, desiring to justify himself, that is, to save himself, to seek acceptance from God on man’s terms, on his own merits, by his own work, asks, “And who is my neighbor?”
There’s always an out, some easy way to comply — and yet not comply. John Calvin notes in his commentary on this text that “the hypocrisy of men is detected by means of the second table [of the Ten Commandments] — for, while they pretend to be worshippers of God, they openly violate charity towards their neighbors.”
“Who is my neighbor?”
The lawyer wants to know, to whom is he obliged?
In English we clarify neighbors by their distance from us: our next-door neighbor, the neighbor down the street. The Greek word used in the text is an adverb meaning near. The Hebrew word means, if I understand correctly, to associate, more or less closely, and as a noun can vary in meaning from another to lover. So it’s not exactly inappropriate to ask “Who is near to me?”
And so a parable is told. The two who know the Law cannot bring themselves to help the dying man. They stay far, far away. But the enemy of the people, the Samaritan, traveling in the land of his enemies, does. He shows compassion for the dying man, tends his wounds, gives generously to pay for lodging, and places himself at risk to do so.
“Which of these,” Jesus asks, “proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36) Another translation gives this as “Who turned out to be next to the man who ran into the bandits?” It could be rendered as, “Who came near the man?”
In the parable Jesus doesn’t answer the question “Who is my neighbor?” He answers others: “What does it mean to be a neighbor? How can I be a neighbor? To whom?” Compassion. Mercy. Generous care. To anyone. Come near anyone in need.
“Who are the people in my neighborhood? They’re the people that you meet when you’re walking down the street. They’re the people that you meet each day.” (Sesame Street)
It’s not like we weren’t given examples. The Law and Prophets taught this in Leviticus
[9] “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. [10] And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God.
[11] “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another. [12] You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.
[13] “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning. [14] You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.
[15] “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. [16] You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
[17] “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. [18] You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
[33] “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. [34] You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:9–18, 33-34)
And in the book of the prophet Micah:
[6] “With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?[7] Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”[8] He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:6–8)
Christ reiterates the lesson. As Calvin put it in his commentary, “to make any person our neighbor, it is enough that they be a man; for it is not in our power to blot out our common nature … [T]he compassion which an enemy showed … demonstrates that the guidance and teaching of nature are sufficient to show … there is a mutual obligation between all men.”
Even the Greeks recognized mutual obligations among men: how else could a city function? But we’re inclined to limit the scope to our families, our kin, our townsmen, our countrymen. Instead of neighbors we have fellow citizens and paisanos. And many days not even that. We are divided against each other, tempted to violent hate, very little understanding and much demonization.
Today’s reading from the letter to the Galatians left off Paul’s introduction. He writes,
[13] For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. [14] For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” [15] But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. (Galatians 5:13–15)
We love imperfectly, incompletely. Thank God there’s grace enough to go around.
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
With God’s help we shall keep this law.
For it’s a beautiful day for a neighborhood.
On the Incitement to Violence
After every tragic shooting in the United States, politicians blurt the same knee-jerk responses and take their canned solutions off the shelf. Then the talking heads argue over gun-control for a day or two, and everyone throws up their hands at how politically difficult it is. And no one looks at actual causes and so never considers any potential solutions.
Part of the difficulty is that everyone thinks our Constitution prohibits making laws for the common good if they also restrict speech, commerce, or weapons of war. Part is actually understanding the causes. How culpable is Reddit or YouTube, for example, for constructing a platform that rewards some behaviors more than others? Perhaps algorithmically-modified content makes any social media platform liable for the behavior of its users. Perhaps personalization by way of, for example, the “like” button, or targeted advertising, is sufficient to make the purveyor of such things culpable for the behavior of anyone subjected to it. The Marketing Department does, after all, argue that advertisements will increase sales. That is, that they *can* change behavior. And, if they can change behavior, and if the behavior changes, who’s to say they aren’t guilty?
I read this article: It convinced me to act. The author succeeded in his intent. Should he not also share the blame? If someone in your friend group incites you to riot, is he not also at fault? If a doctor makes a suggestion, and you follow through on it, is it not also, in some respect, his act?
What if it is an ideology, a set of ideas, which makes something seem not only likely but desirable? Who to blame for an idea, particularly one that all the Right People share?
There might be a chilling effect. That’s OK. Those with authority and power should exercise prudence and restraint.
“I see you have six fingers on your left hand.”
Inigo Montoya was but a young Spaniard when his father made the finest sword in the all the kingdoms on commission for the finest swordsman. On the day the blade was ready, instead of paying the agreed upon price, the swordsman killed Inigo’s father. And all Inigo remembers of the murderer is that he had six fingers on his left hand. He spent the rest of his life preparing so that if one day he should meet his nemesis, this six-fingered man, he could avenge his father. We learn this sad story as Inigo fences with a mysterious man in black, who, later that days, meets, recognizes, and loses Princess Buttercup to the six-fingered man. To say more would spoil The Princess Bride.
The six-fingered man is easy to recognize. He has six fingers in a world where almost no one else does.
There’s a theoretical concept in computer science called the Singularity, indicating a point in time at which technological development irreversibly outraces human control. The Singularity is generally associated with attempts to create an artificial general intelligence. In recent years the pattern-matching and predictive ability of what is popularly called AI improved enough, and the underlying hardware became fast enough, that these large language models and machine learning algorithms were opened up to public use and experimentation. This has had some curious results. One is that people play with new toys, so once the models were capable of generating somewhat realistic images, they started showing up everywhere. But these models don’t know what things are. They place pixels, colored dots, on a screen. Given a large inventory of digital images, which are not properly photographs but mathematical descriptions of how to draw a photograph, and given that the images are tagged by humans who do know what things are, the algorithms can then write similar images. The images have tell-tale artifacts because there is no substance to the objects depicted: often six fingers or three arms or oddly stilted postures. The models that generate words or mathematical equations have their own errors. They’re really bad at math, for one. And they fabricate output to suit the demands of the request. The field calls these inconsistencies with reality “hallucinations.” At least one company now offers to let AI hallucinate Biblical exegesis for busy, or lazy, preachers.
This is not to say that the tools do not have their uses. They are, in essence, algorithmic methods using statistical probability to suggest the likelihood of something. But they are subject to a fundamental principle of computing: garbage in, garbage out. So it’s no surprise that students are submitting AI bot work to teachers who then use AI bots to grade the work done by the AI bots. Nonetheless, it’s astounding just how quickly people have personified the models as alien intelligences or as other people. There are cases of relatively normal adults developing romantic relationships with their computer friend. There is at least one case where a child killed himself after a chatbot told him to. And many of the scientists and investors behind AI are no only intentionally working toward the Singularity but think they are creating God.
They are creating false prophets.
They are creating idols.
They have a disordered relationship with a tool. They have mistaken the creation for the creator.
The Christian Century in its August issue published a laudatory review of a new book by postmodern theologian John Caputo. Both review and book argue for a post-theistic Christianity; that is, one in which God does not exist — except as a figment of our imaginations.
I simply cannot imagine any reason to be a post-theistic Christian. A Christian without God? What is even the point? Yet Mr. Caputo’s opinions are not rare, nor new. People have been denying that God is for a very, very long time. What’s strange is that prominent publications claiming to be Christian do. What’s strange is that seminaries, ostensibly training the next generation of pastors, do. What’s strange is that the late John Shelby Spong, a bishop in the Episcopal Church in the United States, spent his long career arguing against every doctrine he could think of. What’s strange is that he is not the only one.
I remember one day shortly after we moved here from Ohio. I was 12. We were driving back into Monterey from Staunton, at the intersection of 250 and 220, and I asked Dad which church in town had the most people. “That’s who we have to beat!” I said. And he replied, “It’s not a competition.”
Funny how some things stick with you.
Anglicans, Baptists, Brethren, Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, Orthodox, Roman Catholics, even Presbyterians may be in error concerning some point of doctrine, but they are still recognizably Christian. They are easy to distinguish from, for example, Scientologists and Hindus. And individual teachers preaching contrary to the Gospel can be easy to pick out: they’ll often tell you. But if the church looks Christian, but no longer holds to the deposit of the Faith? What do you do when the elders fail in their duty? When both presbyters and overseers teach falsely? How can you tell? It’s not like they have six fingers on their left hand.
This is not a simple question. It has been a concern of the Church since the earliest days. The concern shows in Jesus’s teaching in today’s reading from Matthew. The concern shows in the letters of Paul, Peter, James, and John. Wars have been fought over it. Luther nailed theses to a door over it. The Presbyterian Church exists because of it.
Over time the early Church held councils. They settled on a set of common books, the Scriptures. They attempted to settle disagreements over doctrine by finding common ground in the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed. The Reformed tradition attempted to settle those questions with standards of unity, the historic confessions of faith, founded on Scripture; the Roman tradition by allegiance to the Bishop of Rome and a magisterium, founded on Scripture and tradition. They could all find common ground in Scripture, enough so to even have arguments.
Richard Hooker, rector of Temple Church, London, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was accused in 1586 by one of those radical presbyterian types of being too soft on Catholics. In response he delivered a three-week series of sermons, A Learned Discourse on Justification, Works, and How the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown, in which he defended the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone, explained how Catholics could still be saved, and how the Roman church could still be wrong. To do so he describes the foundation of the faith, salvation by Jesus Christ, and how the foundation can be overthrown. He writes, “Those who deny it directly overthrow it directly; and those who assert anything which would logically result in its denial can be said to overthrow it directly or by consequence. … What is the question separating the [unbelievers] and us, but this: Is salvation by Christ? … This is the main point on which Christianity stands. … [A]ll unbelievers directly the deny the foundation of the faith. But by consequence, many a Christian man, indeed whole Christian churches, have denied it, and deny it to the present day. How can this be — Christian churches denying the foundation of Christianity? They do not do so directly, for then they would cease to be Christian churches; but they do so by consequence. Inasmuch as they hold the foundation, we do and must consider them Christian.”
He then goes on through several chapters of examples.
But his argument rests on a preliminary assumption: the truth and reliability of Scripture, without which we would not know of Christ. Or, as the Westminster Confession of Faith, Article I.1 has it:
Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manner, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.
Without the Word of God we cannot know God’s will. We have nothing beyond what Reason can find manifest in Nature. A church that in its doctrine and practice ignores the Scripture would, in Hooker’s terms, deny the foundation of the faith by consequence of omission. And, ignoring Scripture, allow false teachers, for they have no rule and measure left; they have no cornerstone to guide construction. It is only in the Scriptures that we hear Jesus warn, “by their fruits you will know them.” And what fruits are these? Again in the Scriptures, from Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:19–23)
“O Timothy,” writes Paul elsewhere, “guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” for by professing it some have swerved from the faith.
“Grace be with you.” (1 Timothy 6:20–21)
Amen.
Good News!
Sunday, March 31, 2024, The Resurrection of the Lord
Readings: Isaiah 25:6–9, Psalm 118, 1 Corinthians 15:1-28, John 20:1-18
On this first day of the week, in the still quiet before dawn, there’s a Spring chill, perhaps a trifle damp, in the air. The night animals have gone to bed. The cricket orchestra rests. The dawn chorus waits. The Milky Way and the waning gibbous moon, no longer full, light Mary Magdalene’s way through the garden, past daffodils waiting for the first brush of the sun. She had watched Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemos lay Jesus in the tomb. She had stood at the foot of the cross when he died.
She seen one she loved betrayed, mocked, scorned, tormented, flogged, killed. She had followed him. Where could she be but the depths of despair? But she awoke that morning to come to the garden before dawn.
In Mark and Luke’s telling, Mary Magdalene and the other women came to garden to wash and anoint the body for proper burial, but John does not tell us what she came to do: “The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark.” (John 20:1)
There are great thematic cycles in the Bible’s stories of God acting in historical time. Not exact repetition, more like the spiral shell of a Nautilus or a repeating fractal pattern, echoes or ripples. The seasons and feasts of the Church are a reminder that these things happened in time. A slow day-by-day, year-by-year, reminder that they are real — not a fiction, not a binge-watched show where all the time the drama takes collapses together in a tired haze.
This is less explicit in the Presbyterian and Reformed traditions than in, for example, the Anglican and Roman Catholic. Each Sunday, the Lord’s Day, is a celebration of the Resurrection, 52 times a year. Around that basic remembrance of new life, other traditional observances have grown up as further reminders of the story of creation: the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, Christmas, Advent to prepare for Christmas, Epiphany, Lent to prepare for Easter, this past Holy Week.
The congregation in Anglican and Roman churches actively participates in the reading of the Passion of Christ: we are the crowd. It is we who cry “Save us!” as the Son of David enters Jerusalem. It is we who clamor for his death and demand his crucifixion. We the disciples who can not stay awake. We who flee and abandon him. We who, with Peter, deny we even knew him. We who are guilty.
The memory embodied in these observances ties us back to the beginning of time. When, the timing of a thing, should help us remember. The crucifixion and resurrection happen during the feast of the Passover on purpose. The identification of Jesus as the Paschal lamb is explicit. More than a title, this should draw our attention to the story of the Exodus and the journey to the Promised Land. If you recall, the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, making bricks and building Pharaoh’s monumental pyramids. The cries of the people rose up to God, and he called Moses to do his work:
When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!†And he said, “Here I am.†“Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. … Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.†If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’†((Exodus 3:4,10; 4:22–23 ESV)
It took some encouragement: ten plagues. The first nine would have done for me, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart. The tenth plague is a whopper:
[4] So Moses said, “Thus says the LORD: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, [5] and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. [6] There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.
Exodus 11:4–6 (ESV)
The people of Israel can avoid this devastation, through the sacrifice of a lamb: “the LORD’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:12–13 ESV)
This is not all. The people of the Lord must remember forever. And must forever after sacrifice every firstborn male to the Lord. Their sons they must redeem, or buy back, with a substitute sacrifice. Thus we say, Christ, our Passover Lamb, is sacrificed for us. Christ, the firstborn of all creation, has redeemed his people.
The Exodus did not happen overnight. Before the people of Israel wander forty years in the desert, they had to escape Pharaoh’s revenge. Remember the Passover, we remember the Exodus. Remembering the Exodus, we remember that God saved his people from Pharaoh’s armies with a flood. Remembering the saving flood, we remember that God saved Noah’s family from the capital-F Flood. Remembering that Moses talked with God, and Noah walked with God, we remember Adam and Eve, walking in the garden with God.
And hiding in the garden to their shame.
They — and we — have trouble remembering even with all this structure to help us:
Remember, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, [17] but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.†(Genesis 2:16-17) Remember the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Do this in remembrance of me.
Our failure to trust goes back to creation, to our time in the garden. God’s constant reminders throughout the Old Testament, and from Jesus in the New, are lost in the onslaught of our enemies, in the depths of our despair, and in the blur of our busyness. We forget. We forget to rest. We forget to trust. We forget God saves, though the reminder is right there in Jesus’s name: Yeshua: God saves.
Let us return to Mary Magdalene crying in the garden at the tomb. What will be in this garden that is not Eden?
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1) And God said, “Let there be light,†and there was light. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. (Genesis 1:3,5)
“Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark.” A light breeze rises with the approaching dawn. The birds begin to wake. Mourning doves cry. And the Gardener asks, “Woman, why do you weep? Whom do you seek?”
The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9)
Jesus said, “Mary.”
And such joy explodes in her heart. A cry of recognition escapes: “Rabbi!” And, since Mary is not from around here, she smothers Jesus in her arms, enough so he says, “Do not hold on so tightly!” The risen Son is real, solid, flesh Mary can embrace.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
Later Thomas will place his finger in the wounds, and cry out in ecstasy and recognition, “My Lord and my God!”
As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow put it in his 1864 poem “Christmas Bells”: “God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.” He lives! Christ is risen! A new dawn, a new creation, has touched the earth that day in the garden. What does this mean?!
The Psalmist writes, “I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord. … This is the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” The Lord makes every day. This is the day. Today. Now. Let us rejoice! Sing out with joy for we have hope. It is never too late. We can turn from our errors with contrite hearts and find amendment of spirit each day.
“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” The builders used their own flawed judgment and rejected the way, the path, the Lord’s law. And yet, now, today, the way, the truth, and the life has become the guide for all our future work, so that whomsoever shall trust in him shall not perish but have eternal life. As the prophet Isaiah writes, “He will swallow up death forever, so that he might save us.” Paul argues in his letter to the Corinthians that the Resurrection has destroyed death, the payment for our sins, the consequences of our disobedience in the first garden.
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
Good news! We are no longer bound by sin. We are saved through no work of our own. Our help is in the name of the Lord. Full of thankfulness Paul asks in Romans 6:1, “How then shall we live?”
Everyone God addresses by name is given a task. In the garden, Jesus tells Mary, “Go and tell the others.” In the coming days he will give us all the Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.†(Matthew 28:19–20)
I do not understand how Christ atoned for our sins, the need for his sacrifice, how his death on the cross reconciled us with God, or how it turns God’s wrath from us, but I trust that some day I will. As we sing in the hymn, “Great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning, new mercies I see.” “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23)
How then shall we live? We find our guide in God’s law. And in John 21:12 we find a start:
Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.â€
Extraordinarily Ordinary
Sunday, December 24, 2023, the Fourth Sunday of Advent
Readings: Genesis 18:1-15; Luke 1:5-56
Almost from the time the leaves begin to yellow, we begin thinking of the upcoming holidays: All Hallow’s Eve, Thanksgiving, and now Christmas. The individual days may be filled more with work and preparation than with eager expectation, unless one’s a small child, yet this long, extended period feels, to me at least, like the only remaining time of year when everyone is engaged in a shared tradition. And it will suddenly stop on January 2nd, as if exhausted by an orgy of consumption. But for now, Christmas has been in the air — or at least on the radio — for weeks. So many songs telling so many stories: stories of parties and consumption, of gluttony and lust; stories of a young refugee mother on a long journey, arriving late at night, finding no place to stay, exhausted and unwanted, and giving birth in a cold stable.
But what does scripture say?
Much has been left to our imaginations. Two versions are preserved in the canonical Gospels. And like any good tale told around a campfire, each teller tells the story his own way. Matthew takes explicit care to link the nativity with prophecies of a virgin birth, and of origins in Bethlehem, and Egypt, and Nazareth. Luke leaves it to his listeners to connect the dots.
Luke begins, not with Jesus, but with the parents of John, called the Baptist, who prepared the way of the Lord. Listen: this is a story of two women, from the same family, who could not have children. Once upon a time, in the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah. And he had a wife, named Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, but they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
While Zechariah is alone in the temple, the messenger of God tells him Elizabeth will bear a son. Zechariah recovers quickly from his initial fright, and exclaims, “Inconceivable! I’m an old man, and my wife, she’s no spring chicken either.†The messenger Gabriel is taken aback. He’s given Zechariah the news of a lifetime, and instead of a thank you he’s asked for proof? And so, Zechariah is struck dumb, perhaps both deaf and dumb. And he will remain so “until the day that these things take place … which will be fulfilled in their time.†Incommunicado, he returns home to Elizabeth where, in time, she conceives.
No one else knows.
Elizabeth hid herself. We can presume that few, if any, knew she was pregnant. Even today it’s customary to wait some time before announcing, especially outside the immediate family. Elizabeth, I’m sure, has her suspicions. She hid herself for five months, perhaps out of custom, perhaps because she does not know whether she has conceived or is no longer “in the way of women.â€
Six months after Elizabeth conceives, Gabriel returns. This time to Mary.
Zechariah trembled at the angel’s appearance. The shepherds quaked with fear. And so Gabriel’s first words to them are “Fear not.†Not so with Mary. “Hail, favored one,†he says. Mary’s cool. She’s calm. She’s collected. She’s puzzled, not scared, wondering to herself, “what does that mean?†Mistaking confusion for fear, Gabriel goes on to explain, “Fear not. You have found favor with God. You will bear a son.†Unlike Zechariah, Mary does not ask for proof: she wonders, “How can this be?â€
Gabriel goes into the technical details, then offers a sign: “Your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.â€
Gabriel paraphrases Genesis, drawing Mary’s attention, and ours, to the founding of the nation of Israel:
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?†The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the LORD?â€
(Genesis 18:11–14 ; ESV)
Sarah, hearing that she would bear a child, laughed, the sarcastic laugh of “Yeah, right. That’ll happen.†Mary, in contrast, given this extraordinary visit, welcomes it: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be.â€
But then, then she rushes off to visit Elizabeth.
Luke makes no mention of a difficult journey, but of haste. Mary might have been running next door for a missing ingredient at a key moment in her recipe: an ordinary trip. To speculate otherwise, we would have to look outside the Bible, at a map. Luke tells us Gabriel came to Mary in Nazareth. Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. (Matthew doesn’t.) Luke tells us that Mary went to the “hill country of Judah†— that is, the area around Jerusalem, which topographically is a lot like the Appalachian Plateau — to visit her aunt Elizabeth. Tradition says Zechariah and Elizabeth lived in Ein Karem, about 5 miles to the west of Jerusalem. Bethlehem is about 5 miles south of both. Each is about 90 miles from Nazareth, up hills and down. The trip is roughly the same, both in distance and terrain, as from Staunton, over Shenandoah and Jack and Allegheny and Cheat mountains to Valley Bend, in the Tygart Valley of West Virginia. Or as if I walked from my house in New York through Connecticut to Massachusetts and back on the Appalachian Trail. So, not exactly next door.
These days our sense of distance and difficulty varies so much from what was usual before the automobile. Unless we walk we have nothing to compare it to. Even when we are familiar with the route, it’s hard for us to imagine Jackson’s army moving from Staunton to McDowell over a day — but they did — much less for us to imagine Mary’s trip in the landscape and circumstances 2,000 years ago in Roman Palestine. It’s almost beyond comprehension the distances people traveled, on a regular basis, without planes, trains, and automobiles. But they did; it just took longer.
I get tired just thinking about it. Earlier this year, Evan and I, along with his Boy Scout troop, hiked up and down a couple of hills in New Hampshire’s Presidential Range — 18 miles, 6,325 feet up and 6,480 feet down — over three days. Our plan was to take the long, steep, scenic route along a creek with multiple waterfalls to the Appalachian Trail above the tree line on the ridge, make our way to the next summit, then rest for the night in an Appalachian Mountain Club hut before heading out to the next two peaks and another hut. I was not prepared at all. Evan had no problem: he’s 17 and fit, not 52 and unfit. I slowed us to a crawl by stopping to admire the view — and breathe.
At the trailhead we had parked next to two young ladies, in their early 20s, one of whom was pregnant, setting off a hike with their infants. I was surprised to find them happily enjoying the hut before us, their children crawling about the place. The next morning they sprinted off up the hill heading south down the trail while we headed north. If memory serves, we met them again in the parking lot, two days later, just as fresh as could be.
So Mary rushes off to visit Elizabeth, where the extraordinary is made plain.
And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.â€
Now, Elizabeth knows she is blessed.
Now, Elizabeth recognizes Mary is blessed.
Now, Mary knows she is blessed.
Before this moment, Elizabeth did not know she was pregnant. Now she knows. Before this moment, Mary did not know. Now she knows.
“And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her home.†In three months, after the birth of John, as anyone who can do the math knows, Mary returned to Nazareth three months pregnant, walking another 90 miles, up hill and down. Then did it again, this time to Bethlehem.
The extraordinary thing about the birth of Christ was how ordinary it was. Joseph’s family is from Bethlehem. Mary’s family, Elizabeth’s, is in the next town over, the distance from Monterey to McDowell. What took them all the way to Staunton is unsaid: probably work. The Empire needed them to fill out some paperwork at the Bethlehem office, so they did what one does: stayed with the aunts and uncles and cousins on the small bed in the spare room, upstairs, under the eaves, away from the goats and chickens on the first floor, away from the aunts and uncles and cousins on the main floor. “And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him the manger, because there was no space in the spare room.â€
Neither Sarah, nor Elizabeth, nor Mary could bear children. Sarah and Elizabeth because they are too old; Mary because she is unmarried. But they do, and such children! The father of Israel, the Forerunner, the Savior. Neither Sarah, nor Elizabeth, nor Mary could have expected to amount to much.
Just ordinary people.
Ordinary people by whom God did something extraordinary.
Why would God choose them, of all people? Who knows. The idea is so inconceivable we look for reasons and imagine stories to explain away how ordinary they are. Just women, overjoyed they will have children. Just women to whom miracles happened. Our minds rebel at the thought miracles happen to ordinary people. And not just to our modern minds. It’s not enough that God chose Mary, so stories arose that she was conceived by the Holy Spirit to a barren mother; stories that she was not from a poor family or an average family, but to a very wealthy one; stories that she remained forever virgin: extraordinary, not ordinary, fitting man’s idea of the appropriate Mother of God.
But here she is in Luke. Just Mary. Her uniqueness is her unusual calmness when a fierce angel appears, her unusual agreement to be God’s vessel, her unusual normal-ness of rushing off to visit Elizabeth to see if it’s true that Aunt Elizabeth is pregnant, because she is, after all, just an ordinary girl.
The stories we tell matter quite a bit, but we tell stories that help us to understand. And the truth? The truth of it is that God is with us. Not a god only of the rich and powerful. Not a god only of the poor and weak. But the God of all, with us, wherever we are. Such an extraordinary thing, with ordinary people, from an everyday birth, for “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.â€
Ready, and Waiting
A firm opinion I hold regarding the Church as an institution is that it must be present, be consistent, and be ready to meet people wherever they are. This means open, unlocked doors. This means frequent services, but, just as or more importantly, it means dependable schedules. This means talking to strangers on the train.
Perhaps what most attracted me to the Anglican tradition was the ready-built framework of tradition provided by Thos. Cranmer that not only allows but encourages worship throughout the day, that no only allows but encourages lay participation. Not all parishes have a priest, for those who need one, or a minister of the Word. Not everyone can attend a morning service at 06:00, or a mid-day service at noon, or an evening service at 18:00, or a night service at 21:00. Some, unfortunately, can’t attend Sunday. Some can, but not Sunday morning.
I grew up in what is now a large suburban not-quite-megachurch congregation, but we moved and I spent my teen years in a tiny one. A tiny one of the four churches that Dad served. His time was divided; but whether they had a sermon or not, they came together to worship each week.
So I’m puzzled when churches pull back, reduce their hours, close their doors.
How can anyone find you then?
It’s not unlike scheduling any other meeting. The more people you have, the harder it is to pick a time convenient to everyone, and the more the need to just pick a time and shrug one’s shoulders about those who will miss out. This may work for presentations from Human Resources, or an academic conference, or the World Series, but the Good News is unlimited. God does not fit in that one convenient hour once a week.
God is patient. He waits.
For three months now I’ve been leading Morning Prayer at 07:30. At most there are three of us, usually just two, sometimes one. We should probably announce it more loudly. Anyone could lead a noon service. Anyone could lead an evening one. When I move to that town, I will.
Giving Up
Beware this trap.
I’ve been in congregations of varying size, the largest of which was Catholic. The second largest of which was located at the intersection of I-71, I-275, and Fields-Ertel Rd., and sold its property to finance growth. The smallest congregation I was adjacent to was two people. Those two old folks kept the building in tip-top shape until they passed and it was sold–to, of all people, Episcopalians.
If we were to retire all churches with fewer than 50 attendees, we would close more than half, including all in Alaska, though not the two in Micronesia.
If those with fewer than 150, then 93% of all congregations, 71% of all attendees.
The first reason this does not work is that Episcopalians were thin on the ground before they started declining. The decline was coincident with certain changes in practice if not in doctrine, but was presaged by events in other denominations. Some folks might like to blame it entirely on Bishops Pike and Spong; they were accelerants, not a cause.
tl;dr: It’s the Boomers.
The participation rate in church attendance during the middle of the 20th Century was absurdly abnormal. This is due to a couple of reasons, the major ones being not having to work on Sunday, lots of kids, and disorganized sports. We’re dealing with the decline from all of these.
It is no coincidence that the decline in church attendance aligns with the advent of the Rust Belt and the Me Generation’s adolescence, but not for the reasons that all of the fancy people think. It’s only because of 1) economics and 2) adolescence.
In the meantime, the church has been chasing phantoms trying to entice the past three generations of rebellious adolescents to come inside by being cool, and in the process has lost itself. It did not help that earlier in the century most denominations sided with the Modernists.
They became subject to the whims and chances of fate: poll-driven, not unlike the waffler Bill Clinton. So that now they resemble nothing more than another press office for whatever progressive politics cares about this week.
How could that possibly attract anyone, much less cynical youth? They may as well join the Democratic Party or a world-saving, money-grabbing NGO and get their religion from the source.
So, what to do? The parish is critical. Centralization of the physical presence of the church will not work. It will only hasten the decline, for two reasons: 1) it increases the cost of attendance for those who are already attending, and 2) doesn’t address the core problem. It addresses neither doctrine, nor general economic failure, nor the built environment, nor why people move from one place to another. It assumes that we will continue to subsidize large houses and large cars and cheap gas. It assumes congregants have both cash and time.
The middle of the 20th Century was a once-in-a-lifetime event, equivalent to the end of the Black Death in Europe. It has been been obvious for decades that it can’t go on, but we have not changed our behavior one whit.
So what might work? The Rev. Crosby notes an area of expenditure which sucks funds from the work of the church: administrative staff. I’ve not looked at the numbers for the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, but the balance in the Church of England is out of whack. Redressing this may entail not being active in random social programs.
One thing which may help local parishes is paying for the livings of clerical staff from the central fund. On the one hand, this would allow distributing staff where needed. On the other, we’re currently in the red due to the assessed contribution to the general fund. See above. Along those lines, one reason clergy need $$ is because of debt. Which brings us to the seminaries. I would prefer they be orthodox, but whether they are or not, postulants should not be saddled with debt and years of waiting before engaging in pastoral work.
Orthodoxy, however, is critical. The Gospel is the reason the Church exists. Without preaching the Gospel, what is the point? Thus, catechesis is as important as evangelism. Teach the people already there. Then spread the news.
All of that is well and good, but we need children. They come back after adolescence, if the church is still there and treated them well. Not all return, but some, perhaps most. And to get children we need to marry men and women. Pragmatic utilitarianism, if the outright injunctions and prescriptions in the Bible won’t, requires that the Church insist that marriages be between men and women and result in children.
Our congregants left. Some have died. Where did they go? Do they play travel soccer on Sunday? Are they working at Walmart? Did they get the hell out of Dodge? If the latter, does that destination have a congregation for them? If it’s a schedule conflict, how can help that? We can, by being ready and waiting, generous and available. But, we do need to realize that barring extraordinarily well-distributed economic prosperity, the church’s natural membership rate is closer to 20% than it is to 60%.
There’s a certain amount of money necessary to keep things afloat. Roofs need repair every now and again. And the congregants do like heat in the winter. And ministers of the Word should be free of worldly care and concern. But income inequality is outside of our direct control: unless of course, one is a believer, a banker, and in a position to effect change. The widow’s mite must sustain us.
The polities of some denominations do not scale as well as others. Some are limited by their view of the sacraments and who can deliver them. Some by what education is required of the minister. Some by who exactly can be ordained. Some are not. It is for these reasons that there are more Baptists and Methodists than there are Presbyterians and Anglicans. And so depending on the denomination there are different logistical considerations which must be taken into account, unless one wants to change one’s polity.
Using statistics to make decisions, rather than simply inform them, can lead one astray. This is true whether one is a church or a Fortune 100 company. Arbitrary cut-offs cause lying.
But more critically, I suppose, they cause one to abandon one’s mission.
I will use Average Sunday Attendance (ASA) <150 as the cutoff in the example below, since there are few congregations between 100 and 150 in average Sunday attendance and I don’t have the full 2022 dataset. See the histogram for 2021 below.
If we were to retire all churches with fewer than 50 attendees, we would close more than half, including all in Alaska, though not the two in Micronesia. If those with fewer than 150, then 93% of all congregations, 71% of all attendees, or 366,686 of the 372,952 who come to church.
Thus very effectively pivoting to video.
Church membership, like almost everything, is a Pareto distribution.
I would like to thank Rev. @benjamindcrosby for starting this discussion. If it were not for thoughtful, concerned clergy like him, this church would stagger blindly over the cliff, wondering all the time why pews were empty while event rental revenue wasn’t making up the slack.
And I would like to thank @iamepiscopalian, because it has offered a refuge for those who have not fled God but who need shelter from the works of men. Though we differ on essential matters, Articles of Religion XXVI still pertains. More theologically, it is not the building but the people who are the church, and where two or three are gathered together, so shall Christ be.
The Beloved Family of God
Sunday, September 10, the 15th Sunday after Pentecost
Readings: Ezekiel, 33:7-11; Psalm 119:33–40; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:11-22
- We are the adopted children of God
- Siblings fight.
- Eventually, sometimes, they kiss and make up.
- God wants a whole family
- Don’t fight.
- Here is a procedure for reconciliation.
Peter has no questions about who is his brother. But he wants clarification. How often shall I forgive my brother? Jesus replies: constantly.
But I have questions! Who is my brother? I must make sense of this to make sense of the passage. Because Jesus also says to let your brother go and treat him as someone from another tribe or a tax collector. So many questions! Who is my brother? I should treat my brother as a Yankee or revenuer? But wasn’t Matthew a tax collector? What does he mean we hold the keys to heaven? How do we constantly forgive? We just cast our brother out!
The first question is relatively easy to answer: Jesus tells us.
And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.†(Matthew 12:49-50)
Those who trust in him as the way, the truth, and the life. Those who repent of their sin and follow him. These are the children of God. Paul talks about this all the time, as in Romans 8:14–17:
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!†The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
Who is my neighbor? He tells us this too, in the parable of the Samaritan. But that is not the question today. Today we ask, who is my brother? Each member of the Church is.
So. We are children of the same family and as siblings do, we fight.
When my brother wrongs me, what should I do?
Have you held a grudge against your brother or sister for so long that you have not spoken to them in years? Why? Was that cause worth it? It seemed so at the time, yes?
Jesus tells me to repent and seek forgiveness if I have wronged my brother.
So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:23–24)
My broken relationship with him harms my relationship with God. I must imagine it saddens God. One of the great joys of my life is hearing my children laugh together. And the great sadness is like it: when they sneer and scowl and blame.
Today Jesus tells us go, seek to reconcile with your brother who has wronged you. Our brother might not ask for forgiveness; we should ask him. The burden is on each of us to restore our relationships. This is a tough charge from our God. He asks us to swallow our pride and seek forgiveness for our wrongs. He asks us to swallow our pride and forgive those who have wronged us.
Can we do that? It seems impossible. It is impossible. How could we even?
We can, with God’s help.
And so we have been given a procedure to help order our relationships. Our Presbyterian Church takes this particular injunction fairly seriously. It is in the historic Reformed confessions, in the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Confession, and others. And it is reflected in the method of discipline in the Book of Order, however infrequently used.
Notice in our own families how divisions start. One person does something stupid. Another may become annoyed and stop talking to the others. We seek allies, we gossip or slander, and the offensive party is cut off. No more invitations to Thanksgiving dinner. No more Christmas gifts. No more wedding invitations. It’s a strong power, cutting someone off from the family.
We are given almost the same procedure. The difference being loving-kindness instead of spite. We go seeking reconciliation, not dominance. We should approach our brother, or our sister, with compassion and tenderness, in humility, not swollen by an overweening righteousness. Not because we were wrong, but because separation is sorrowful.
Jesus says, try once alone; try again with witnesses; try again with the community. And if that fails, you did your best: let them be on the outside. And this has consequences.
That is what is meant by the keys of heaven. God’s family, the adopted children of God, will join him in Heaven. And if one is separated from the family, how then could they join God in Heaven? As night follows day, actions have consequences, on earth as it is in heaven.
But the instruction does not end with a permanent separation. What ends are our attempts to reach out to our brother. For recall it is on both of us to repair the breach. We have done our part, and now his relationship with us and with God is no longer our concern. It is his.
As Ezekiel puts it,
But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, … you will have delivered your soul.
What never ends is our responsibility to welcome him back.
Can we do that? It seems impossible.
We can, with God’s help.
God wants his whole family. That is why the Shepherd comes to find us. It is not through our efforts that any of us are saved. Only through God’s grace alone. We are lost, and cry out.
God continues to look for his lost sheep. He is patient, and steadfast in the search. Longing desperately, as the parent of a runaway child longs, to welcome us home again if only we return. You recall the parable of the prodigal son? The prodigal son, like us, has frivolously spent his trust fund. He has nowhere else to turn, and heads home, willing to do anything to regain the smallest favor. The lament of Israel in Ezekiel might be his:
“Our transgressions and sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?â€
“I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked,†says God. “Turn back. Turn back!â€
Reach out to the hand of God and he will pull you in. He is there waiting.
Jesus called Peter to walk to him across the water but Peter lost faith and sank. But Jesus plucked him right out. God does this throughout the Bible, from Genesis on. He created man and woman in his image, gave them the will necessary to take care of the garden, but we, as children do, did not listen. For God so loved the world, he made a covenant with Adam, with Noah, with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David — all leading to Christ. God inserted himself in the world and time to sacrifice himself for us.
I admit: I do not understand this mystery.
There was a time I may have come close: the night home from the hospital after my first daughter was born. She didn’t quite want to sleep, so I walked this tiny bundle around and around in the circle of moonlight on the living room floor until she relaxed into a heavy weight on my shoulder. And of a sudden I was overcome. I had no words, no way to say what I felt, except “for god so loved the world.†How could it even be possible to love something so much more than this? That moment, holding my child, I thought I understood. I would give anything for her.
This is why it’s such a puzzle that God gives his Son for the world. Until we recall the Trinity, and realize God gave Himself.
In response our duty is to accept God’s grace, repent of our sins, and spread the Good News. But if the one who hears does not listen, what more can we do? If the one who has heard will not repent, what more can we do? We are only human, after all, born to make mistakes.
And when shall we respond to God? When shall we respond to God’s sacrifice? Now. Now is the moment to wake from sleep. Now is the time to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
As the Psalmist says: Give me understanding. Lead me. Turn my heart. Turn my eyes. Confirm your promise.
How then shall we live? Honorably, as in the day. Gratify not the desires of your flesh. But go to your brother whom you have wronged, go to your brother who has wronged you. Reconcile yourselves. And live together as children in the beloved family of God.
On the Religious Population
From 1850 to 1946, the U.S. Census counted religious communities and structures. If one is aware of the history of the 20th Century, and the role played by Hollerith’s machines in that history, what other option was there than to stop counting after the war? Besides, it might be impolite.
There are many reasons people look at these numbers, but one is “Why is my church shrinking?†This is not the same question as “Why is my church declining?â€
Generally speaking, the answer to the former is twofold, and does not involve theological arguments: transportation and demographics. People have cars. People left your town. And your congregation isn’t having children. (As just one example, in 1970, the Sunday School at Grace Episcopal Church, Millbrook, NY, had 100 children enrolled; in 2023, it has 4, more or less.)Â
The answer to the latter includes the former, but also the distribution of wealth. In particular cases it may include theology and practice.
The Census data conveniently allows us to expand our statistical view of religious practice beyond the last few decades given in most graphs. And so here are local organizations and edifices as a rate of the population.
Americans rapidly formed new religious communities and built physical homes for them between 1870 and 1900 — the number of congregations and buildings more than doubled between 1870 and 1890—yet by 1930 the proportion of each relative to the population was roughly the same as in 1850. Notably, the above does not show individual persons, but buildings and congregations, so we cannot estimate the size of these congregations. Many of the structures remain and architectural historians could provide an estimate of seating capacity. However, the Census also reported membership from 1890 to 1936, and compiled membership numbers provided by other sources thereafter, so we’ll just use those. In 1890, 34% of the population was a member of a religious body. By 1920, 51% were. This dropped slightly during the roaring Twenties, but by 1960 was up to 64%. By 2020, this was 49% — which is low only by comparison with 1960.
Assuming the accuracy of the data. The Census notes that “data presented are not directly comparable from census period to census period.†Where they overlap, these numbers contrast sharply with those from the Yearbook. The ARDA numbers don’t overlap. And there’s a large 15% gap between 1970 Census numbers and 1980 ARDA numbers, which probably reflects the different survey methods.
So, how many people per congregation is that? On average, 131 members per congregation in 1890, to 452 per congregation today, down from a peak of 622 in 1970. But that’s an average. A dive into the statistics of a given body would show Pareto’s long-tailed curve: many tiny churches, a few enormous. However, we can safely surmise that there are fewer, larger churches now than in the past. Why? Because the number of congregations as a rate of the population is lower, yet the average size is higher.
—
Sources:
- 11th Census of the United States 1890, Volume IX: Report on the Statistics of Churches in the United States https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1890/volume-9/1890a_v9-01.pdf
- Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2, Chapter H: Social Statistics, Series H 788-792, H 793-799 https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1970/hist_stats_colonial-1970p1-chH.pdf
- Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB), The Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches (The Yearbook), https://www.yearbookofchurches.org/interactive-charts-maps. The Yearbook was formerly published by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States, who began data collection in 1916.
- The Association of Religion Data Archives, U.S. Religion Census, https://thearda.com/us-religion/census/congregational-membership and https://www.usreligioncensus.org
While It Was Still Dark
I’ve been thinking about this verse from Sunday, and particularly about “while it was still dark,” as the preacher attempted to make a point about the depths of despair.
Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.
John 20:1 (ESV)
Or, as the hymn has it, “while the dew was still on the roses.”
On Maunday Thursday, the first day of Pesach, the moon was full. By Easter Sunday, the waning gibbous moon was still quite bright, so “while it was still dark” was not that dark. And even with a New Moon the sky was somewhat like this photograph of the Milky Way, taken in the Negev.
And the garden somewhat like this, depending on what is meant by σκοτίας ἔτι οὔσης. I like to think the author meant 04:00. The silent time. The night animals have gone to sleep and the birds have yet to sing.
Metaphorically, dark. Yet a world beautiful and good.
Go out early, just before dawn, smell the world in Spring and listen.
Wait.
Something is about to happen.
Almost Heaven
Climbed the fire tower on Sounding Knob with some of my children this morning, and after overcoming the vertigo looked out over the oldest mountains in the world.
And one of the oldest volcanoes.
The Trouble with Populism
Good piece by Sohrab Ahmari in the New York Times today. (Shame he blocked me on Tweeter after I suggested he might be an idiot for all the shilling he did for Trump. He’s not a moron, usually, but did play one for the New York Post.)
Opinion | Why the Red Wave Didn’t Materialize
Fake G.O.P. populism challenged “woke capital†— companies that it believed had become overly politically correct — but didn’t dare touch the power of corporate America to coerce workers and consumers, or the power of private equity and hedge funds to hollow out the real economy, which employs workers for useful products and services — or used to, anyway. The Republican Party remained as hostile as ever to collective bargaining as a new wave of labor militancy swept the private economy.
Republican economic policy remains overwhelmingly beholden to a donor class of plutocrats and high corporate managers. Seen from that perspective, it makes sense for the party to talk about adjuncts and baristas as though they were members of the ruling class. In doing so, these faux populists can remain indifferent to issues like wages and workplace power, health care and the depredations of speculative finance.
On Tuesday, it seems enough members of the “the multiracial working class†may have decided to repay that hostility and help deny Republicans their red wave: either by staying home or casting their ballots for the party that, despite its other failings, keeps entitlements inviolate, supports collective bargaining and has sought to ease the student-loan burden. Boo Hoo!
All of his observations may be equally applied to the Democratic Party. Both are controlled by an oligarchical plutocracy who struggle, for some definitions of struggle, with how they might pretend to be of the people and for the people without actually giving much attention to the people. Despite that, the Biden administration has somehow managed to begin reining in some of the excessive behavior of that class, in a slow, either half-hearted or deliberate depending on your perspective, fashion.
This does not so much make the Democrats a better party than the Republicans, as one which has at least read The Dictators Handbook and is throwing the dogs a bone.
Faded Fluorescent Light, Dirty Tile, and an Enveloping Sound
One humid summer night, passing through Maryland on a long road trip, I stopped for gas and a pack of smokes. In those days gas stations weren’t often open at all hours; when they were, they were lonely and alone—and often still are, off the beaten path.
Brothers
I once was able to escape entirely into books, and could leave the world behind until one was done, no matter the troubles troubling my heart. My brother, a mere 15 months younger than I, crumpled his Miata this morning, and lies unconscious with a not-entirely-fractured neck in a hospital in Virginia, while I am here in New York in front of a computer.
So close in age, we were fairly inseparable until those horrible years of the mid-teens where one cuts all ties. We wrestled. We fought. We played Little League baseball together. He was Tom Seaver. I was Johnny Bench. We were in Scouts together. We put away folding chairs after church events together. We snuck out of the service and ran around the building. We tried drinking coffee. We helped Mom in the food pantry together. We rode our bikes around town and gave little old ladies heart attacks with our daring street crossings together. We mowed lawns together, then rode those bikes and bought comic books, chili dogs, and cream soda together. He would grow up to be a police officer and I would be a fireman. Or maybe we would both be Millionaire Super-heroes. We made Big Plans for our Secret Lair under the mountain where he’d have a bedroom near the underground hanger and I’d have one near the boat dock on the hidden river. We read The Hardy Boys’ Handbook: Seven Stories of Survival, and plotted all of our adventures in Great Detail.
Everyone thought we were twins. Life as an adult without him was unimaginable.
Then I withdrew into myself in high school, went away to college, got married, and we drifted.
Three weeks ago I was in Virginia riding in that Miata with him, thinking about the Hardy Boys, off on an adventure.
Serving Mammon
On Marketplace last night, Kai Ryssdal stated the unspoken obvious: “Guns are a business. A big business multi-billion dollar business in this country.â€
I’m reminded of an epigraph from Myth Adventures:
War may be Hell, but it sure is good for business.
The Association of Merchants, Manufacturers, and Morticians
When will life become more profitable than death?
Evidence
This here book I’m reading is older than I am, but just by a hair. It was checked out four times before I was born; the last just in time.
It remained popular through 1972, then interest slowed. Perhaps everyone had read it by then, or they were watching the continuing story on television. Interest picked up a bit in 1986, or someone took real long to read these 109 pages. But who can say, other than the librarian, if I’m the first to have read it since July 15, 1995?
Lost in ?
It was 18:30 just a few minutes ago and the sun had no thought yet of setting. Now it’s black out, and my computer woke up to tell me it is going to sleep. “Where does the time go?†the lady asks. I’ve no clock here telling of those inexorable seconds ticking off each moment.
Ten years ago I would have said I’d lost the time to online media. Today, though, no. It’s been raining and I’ve been sitting here listening to the rain and, every now and again, thinking. Three hours seemed like forever so long ago. Today? Just a moment lost in thought, like tears in the rain.