The Arrow's Path

O God, who dost bring into the way of truth them that are gone astray, dost gather together them that are scattered abroad, and preserve them that thou hast gathered; we beseech thee, of thy mercy to pour out upon all Christian people thy grace of unity and concord, that, all divisions being done away, they may be one flock, in one fold, under one Shepherd, and do thee worthy service. Through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen. -from the Anglican Missal Mass for the Ending of Schism.

The forecast tonight is calling for a wintery mix. I sure would like more of a summery mix with just a hint of springtime freshness coming in from the South.

My Husker readers will appreciate this... -The Archer ---------------------------------------- The Gospel according to a Husker fan And it came to pass in the land of Lincoln , in the kingdom of Husker Nation, that a man named Pederson arose to rule the realm of Athletics. He was of the Kingdom, from the city of North Platte , and was a follower of the Huskers of Corn. But he was not a wise man, forsaking the ways of the Husker Nation, sending the leader Solich into the wilderness, and turning away the warriors of old who wore the tunics of black into battle in ages past, even removing their portraits and pictures. And in the place of Solich, he selected from the land of La-La a strange man, once known as leading a failed army known as Raiders to defeat after defeat in the grand Coliseum of the Land of Oaks , a city by the bay of San Francisco , a wicked city of Sodomites and practitioners of perversion. And did this man, known as Callahan, become the general of the Husker armies, fors...

As part of my spiritual well being, I generally like to attend church services at other places when I get the chance. I cannot describe how refreshing it is to just be able to sit in the pew and participate in a service without having to do anything official. Sunday mornings for me are still worshipful, but being a parishioner in the pews and being an ordained person with things to do in the liturgy are two different ball games entirely. You just can't sit and let your mind ponder the Holy Mysteries for too long as a liturgical leader, as you are always having to be mindful of what is going on in the service and what comes next. You can't be so caught up in the operations of the liturgy that the service really has no deeper meaning for you, but you also can't let your mind wander too far a field. There is not, unfortunately, an Episcopal church in Lincoln that does a Saturday eve service or Sunday night service. Thus, if I want the opportunity to go to a worship service on ...

I am amazed at how many people have never had real cranberry sauce. I guess they grew up eating that cranberry Jell-o stuff from the can. I have never understood this, considering how easy it is to make. I have had more than one person ask me for my recipe. Cranberry Sauce (yield: about 2 1/4 Cups of sauce) 1 to 1.5 Cup(s) Sugar 1 Cup Water 4 Cups Cranberries (This is one 12-ounce package preferably fresh, but frozen will work) 1 to 2 Cinammon sticks Optional: Pecans, orange peel, raisins, currants, blueberries, nutmeg, allspice Wash and pick over berries. Bring 1 cup sugar and water to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Add cranberries and cinnamon sticks, return to boil. Reduce heat, simmer 10 minutes until cranberries burst. While simmering, taste to see if it needs more sugar. This is to your taste. If you want to add a pint of fresh blueberries, no additional sugar will be needed. (I don't tend to use the blueberries because they turn the sauce a slightly bluish color). At t...

Christ the King Sunday is over. As much as I like Christ the King (there's such jolly good hymns on that Sunday), that means Advent is coming! I just love Advent. The liturgical green of ordinary time is finally put away for a good while. I like Ordinary time green, but it is up for half the year and it gets old. What we need is another mini-liturgical season in the middle of Ordinary time. I am not in charge of such things, so I guess I have to stick it out with the green. Advent is purple, although a lot of churches are increasingly using a darker (royal) blue to differentiate it from Lent, although Lent is technically violet. I sort of like the Advent purple myself as Royal Blue is technically reserved for Christ the King. Although most churches don't have the money for a vestment set that is only used on one Sunday a year, white has become the standard for Christ the King. Likewise, a brighter blue is reserved for Our Lady. I had to get the Advent wreath together today. Tha...

Granted, I have been a loyal Netflix member for years. Perhaps that makes me a bit biased, but I have just never been a big fan of Blockbuster, the movie store chain. I am sure they are a fine business, that's not what I am getting at. My fiancée has a membership to Blockbuster. I think I technically still do, but its to the one in Omaha, so I haven't used it in like 4 years. We decided to rent a movie a few nights ago. We have slightly differing tastes on movies, so our track record of trying to go to the store and rent one together has ended up in our renting some complete turkeys that neither of us ended up liking. (FYI, you would need at least two Ph.D.'s in Family Systems Theory and Clinical Psychology to make heads or tales of the movie Constellation with Billy Dee Williams.) We trotted down to the Blockbuster a few nights ago with a brilliant idea. We could rent a rendition of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol since we had just put up some Advent decorations. ...

Junk food that gives you the façade of eating health food.

Well, Tom Osborne (the interim athletic director) pulled the plug on the Nebraska football coach this morning. I can't say I blame him. Callahan was a nice guy, but he just was not the right fit at a place like Nebraska, a place that is fanatically devoted to the football team. 2 losing seasons out of 4 at a place that hadn't had a losing season in decades. Still, I do feel a bit sorry for Callahan a bit. I think a coach should get at least 5 years because it takes that long to get a group of players in place that you completely recruited and trained all 4 years. The 4th year, your seniors are largely people your predecessor recruited. That having been said, I think Callahan ultimately dug his own grave in terms of recruits. He kept being lauded as this recruiting guru with top 5 recruiting classes every year. With the nasty losing streak this year due to a defense that apparently lacked the ability to tackle 4 year olds carrying inflatable beach balls, he recruiting just coul...

a day late, but better late than never... -The Archer+

I was digging around in the basement, trying to figure out of the Advent candle situation and came across a box of old photographs from back when St Mark's was the University Chapel. The original University Chapel, dated 1949. And the priest is wearing a maniple, a word which the blogger.com spell checker has no idea about. (Do you mean municipal? manure? mandolin?) Ah, the good ole' days (before spell checkers). This was the interior the first building that would become St. Mark's. This is now the de-consecrated kitchen/lounge area. You can still see the line in the floor where the altar rail used to be. This was the old worship area, seen in the above picture. In the 60's, when the new worship area was built as an adjacent wing, this area became a place that helped feed students on the weekends when the University dining hall was closed on the weekends. Bless my pack of smokes, Father? Nothing like bringing a butt can to the Bible study. This was the intermediate wor...

It's snowing... In November... That's just so very wrong.

This is just cool.

I am always somewhat befuddled by Thanksgiving Day (or eve) church services. I don't really have a personal issue with mixing Church and State holidays, but I know there are folks in the Episcopal Church who abhor having anything that smacks of civic religion or patriotism influence the church. I always find that view, in itself, also a curious phenomenon seeing as our tradition comes from the Church of England, which is patronized by the state. Even that ECUSA propaganda paper periodical Episcopal Life has a bulletin insert quoting George Washington's original Thanksgiving Day decree. Thanksgiving in its true meaning is a fine American tradition. Unfortunately, it has become more synonymous with gluttony than with being thankful. I physically cringe when I hear someone refer to the holiday as "Turkey Day." I find that disrespectful of the meaning of the spirit of the day, and downright demeaning of the turkey. I mean, if I was a turkey about to be slaughtered, I wo...

Just as it should be . We'll just forget about your playing for the Mets. Welcome home.

It was only a matter of time . Cheaters never prosper...except homerun hitters in Major League Baseball and former Presidents.

One vacation, I decided to take the Cog Railway up to the top of Pike's Peak, near Colorado Springs, CO. This is the train platform near Manitou Springs, where you catch the rail. And this is the train, which has run for almost a century in various forms. Most of the track is at a 25% grade up the mountain. We start our ascent up to the heavens. The rocks start as soon as the tree line ends. There was a tree up there that was 4400 years old. Ah, here we are at the top. (Yes, that says 14,110 feet.) The Archer's on top of the world! This looks out across the Continental Divide. Other shots from the top.

The bishop has approved a tentative date for my ordination to the priesthood: May 1st, 2008 (Feast St. Philip and St. James). Don't tell the house mother, but pass it on...

But, yeah, I told you Ohio State was way overrated because they hadn't played anybody, but no one listens to the Archer. Even by beating a good Oklahoma State (the Illinois of the Big XII this year) team, Kansas still doesn't get any respect. Granted, Kansas has to play Missouri and then Oklahoma in the Big XII Championship game. If they are still undefeated at that point, I have no qualms about putting them No. 1 over LSU.

I just got back from vacation in Colorado Springs. I thought I would upload the first batch of pictures. We went on a little walk through the Garden of the Gods, a national park on the outskirts of Colorado Springs. You got good views of the Rockies. It was actually pretty warm for November in Colorado. Pike's Peak is something else. I will have more on Pike's Peak tomorrow. The Garden of the Gods had incredible rock formations. The views were spectacular. I was particularly fond of this shot as the sun rose and a jet was flying over.

I am on vacation. It is a weird feeling to be on paid vacation. I have never had it before and I do not believe my father has ever had a paid vacation in his life. He could get time off, but if he wanted vacation, he would just not go into work and hence not get paid for it. My mother gets paid vacation days but never uses them. She's constantly at the limit of the maximum number of paid days off. She had to take a sick day off earlier in the month and it was the first time she had called in sick for 15 years. So, here I am gallavanting off to Colorado and getting paid for it. I am such a slacker.

My cousin who my parents basically adopted some years ago is having some serious issues. Please pray for him in your prayers.

Everyone is gushing about Ohio State being undefeated and bashing Kansas "for not playing anybody." And who exactly has Ohio State played? Wisconsin? Penn State? Neither really deserve to be in the top 25. Ohio State will finish the year not playing a single legitimate top ten team or a conference championship game. Both schedules are ridiculously weak, so neither should be considered for No. 1 at this point. If Kansas wins out and beats Oklahoma in the Big XII championship game, they should be No. 1. Ohio State should not be rewarded for its continuous lack of opponents.

This is from the last newsletter reflection from the rector who preached at my diaconal ordination. Sadly, he is having to retire for medical reasons. I thought I would share his wisdom... Fr. Scott’s last Rector’s Reflections The following is a collection of my main sermon themes over the last thirteen years as your rector. You have heard these themes from a thousand different directions. They are for me the essence of our faith. FR. SCOTT’S CRIB NOTES ON BEING A CHRISTIAN (Episcopalianism for dummies like me) ALL IT TAKES IS A MUSTARD SEED OF FAITH So often I hear people say that they do not have enough faith to do the Christian life. Or, they do not have enough faith to do a difficult thing. Bull roar! All it takes is a mustard seed of faith to move mountains. Believe with the little faith you have. Just talking to God is huge. Going forward in an action while talking to god is even huger! PRAY AT ALL TIMES IN ALL SITUATIONS Talk to God at all times and in all circumstances in life....

I think the NRSV translator must have been too close to quitting time on a Friday when he came up with this one: Daniel 7:1 "In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay down bed." I don't know about you, but I hope to never have visions of my head. Dude...my head is so...like big! I am the Walrus!

This is an interesting article about drought in my home state . This is particularly disturbing because my parents tell me they have had to go on water rationing for the first time anybody in their town can remember. Since the TVA was started back in the 1930's and early 1940s, Tennessee has had the most abundant water supply in the country for over a half century. Oh my...

There was an interesting link to an article from another blog that I read, which was talking about the now common phenomenon of couple cohabitation. While I frequently do not agree with what I read which comes out of the Southern Baptist Convention, the article does bring up an interesting point. I started to write a comment on the blog that linked to this link, and I think I will continue it here because it really is too long a post for a blog comment. As an engaged person to be married in the next few months, I think I can speak to this issue with some relevance. I was always brought up in a family (and largely a local community) which still openly frown (to put it politely) on cohabitation. I think that has always formed my opinion on the matter. In small towns in the South, that is just the way it is, on the surface at least. I still believe that, but sometimes I wonder if I was brought up as an anachronism. That is certainly not the belief or understanding of the culture at large...

The silliness of Halloween is over. It is now All Saints' Day. This day is not simply a remembrance of those faithful people who have gone before us. The bible tells us that we are surrounded by “so a great cloud of witnesses.” All Saints' Day is a day where we join and give thanks for that cloud of witnesses who have made a difference for the Kingdom of God throughout all ages past, present, and future. Or, in the words of Saint Bernard of Clairveaux, "Clearly, if we venerate [the memory of the saints], it serves us, not them. But I tell you, when I think of them, I feel myself inflamed by a tremendous yearning. Calling the saints to mind inspires, or rather arouses in us, above all else, a longing to enjoy their company." Happy All Saints' Day!