The Arrow's Path

One of my parishioners is doing the drum solo in this.

The following is some Palm Sunday artwork that I gamed up both by hand and with the help of some photo software. Please feel free to use them for bulletin covers, if you so desire. A few are a little bit edgy. 

This can only mean that we must be getting close to Palm Sunday or the florist made a rather serious faux pas .  I am pretty sure it is the former and not the latter. The sad thing is that there are another 3 vases full of these downstairs. But, hey, they are environmentally friendly.

Google.com bought out blogger.com a while back. Heretofore, they have left blogger.com alone. Since they have finally decided that foisting Google+ onto the world was not enough idiocy, Google.com has in its infinite wisdom decided to "upgrade" the user interface for this blog. Frankly, I hate it because they've turned it into Google+, which is completely and utterly worthless. That has no bearing on the readers of the blog, but the blog editor (yours truly) really does not like being bossed around and forced to use a product that has been "upgraded for my convenience" when said upgrade is anything but convenient and actually living proof of what is known in geek circles as the technological imperative, i.e. "if it can be upgraded, it must be...even if the upgrade does not improve anything or even makes the program worse." (I'm looking at you Facebook Timeline!!) As such, I am going to give the new blogger.com interface a chance. It is not look...

Now New York Mets knuckleballer and writer R.A. Dickey has released a memoir . I remember watching him pitch at the University of Tennessee back in the mid-90s. He was an extremely good pitcher back back then, one of the best starters Tennessee ever had.

The universe to scale . It may take a minute to load, but it is well worth the time. Note: you can go backwards and forwards.

Good stuff is found here in the Church Times. A few things you must know before I render opinions. One must understand that the next Archbishop of Canterbury will likely be from the Evangelical/low church end of the C of E. The candidate holding the office of Archbishop of Canterbury tends to go back and forth between Evangelicals and the High Church/Anglo-catholic crowd, and Rowan Williams was a flaming Anglo-catholic.So, you will notice that most of the people on this list are on the Low Church/Evangelical end of the spectrum. One must also understand that the Evangelical crowd in the Church of England is very powerful and has a lot of money. There are Evangelicals in the Church of England of the American variety 'Evangelical.' This simply seldom, if at all, exists in the American Episcopal Church. When I say Evangelical, I mean it. There are Willow Creek-Mega Church C of E types that wouldn't touch a Book of Common Prayer for any amount of money. The Church of Engla...

How big is our solar system in scale ? There's a lot of scrolling on this one, but it is worth the time.

(I borrowed this off Facebook.)

I have long ago stopped getting most of my news from any syndicated or network American news source. People complain about Foxnews, but almost all the American news channels are completely devoid of anything of substance. Case in Point: The US just entered into a massive free trade agreement with South Korea , on the level of NAFTA or GATT, and not one major news source in the country that I am aware of has even talked about it, much less what an impact that this could have on our economy (good or bad.) It is completely and utterly off the American news radar. The Asian news sources (One Chinese, one South Korean, and even Al Jazeera-English) that I read or watch have not been able to talk about anything else for days. Honestly...reporters, please do some reporting.

A while back, I started an endeavor to answer this question . My first response is found here , in which I laid out the scripture warrants for anointing. I had grand visions of doing a whole Lenten discipline of blogging on the subject, and yet here I am. Lent is half over, and I have not had time to sit down and write up more responses to this issue. I never know which season is busier: Lent or Advent. Usually the season I am in dictates my answer. This year, it has certainly been Lent. Not that this is an excuse; as I said yesterday, mea culpa . I have simply been wicked. So without further adieu, I am trying to rectify this. As I have preached before: it is never to late to start a Lenten discipline. So, let us consider the historical context of anointing of the sick. In the years before Vatican II, the Roman Catholic church often referred to the sacrament of the anointing of the sick as Extreme Unction. 'Unction' is derived from the Middle English derivative of...

I have not forgotten the series of posts I had hoped to work on during Lent which concerned Unction and the Teachings of the Church. I plan to get to that, hopefully having one up this week.

For Saint Patrick's Day, this is a picture I took back in 2006 of the Guinness Brewery in St. James' Gate, Dublin, Ireland. Ironically, its next to a church.

(Pardon the short commercial at the beginning.)

My alma mater sent me an alumni e-mail today, which I thought was a clever spin job. My alma mater has been known as Carson-Newman College since its inception. The double name was the merger of the name of boys school and one was the name of the girls school that merged after the Civil War. (Please, don't ask me to tell you which was which...I forget.) The school has had academic "university" status since at least the 1990's, if not the '80's. Time and again, though, various administrations have tried to get the name changed to Carson-Newman University. They even had a vote of the student body to approve the name change when I was in college [cough]over a decade[cough] ago. Of course, every time it went to the student body, it went down in flames with less than 2 percent of the student body ever going for it. Carson-Newman College students like going to a smaller college, if only in name. If we wanted a major university, the University of Tennessee is jus...

Most people don't know all the charitable stuff Peyton Manning did in Indy and in his college home town of Knoxville for years completely under the radar. He would rent out the Indianapolis RCA dome out of his own pocket on fall weekends when the Colts were away so that Indiana high school teams could come and play a game in an NFL stadium. Just tons of stuff like that you never heard about in the media. I think the Indianapolis Colts made a huge mistake cutting Peyton. Even if he never plays again, he could have mentored the next quarterback and eventually been transitioned into the front office or management after he retired. But, I will say, Peyton Manning had class even when it became clear the franchise he carried on his back for 14 years wanted him out. I know it was a money decision, but look at the horrendous season they had last year without him. Do they think its going to get any better without him? Good luck with that.

This is actually my own original thought that stemmed from an article a friend of mine posted on Facebook concerning some Evangelical-like Atheist billboards that are apparently going up in the Metro-New Jersey/New York area . My comment was this: Flannery O'Connor, the Southern writer, in an interview once was asked if she thought the South, which is notorious for being a hotbed of religion and piety, was "Christ Centered." Her response was, "No, I believe the South is actually Christ haunted." I think the same is true of the New Atheist crowd like this article is talking about. They are not really centered in not believing in God, they are still God haunted on some level but just can't let the notion go.

The Rt. Rev. William Bahemuka, the Bishop of Boga Diocese in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has issued a call for emergency support to avert increased militia attacks in the region of Bukiringi, 15 miles north of Boga, the seat of the Diocese.  On Friday, 24 th  February, as the Bishop travelled from Bunia to Boga, he was stopped by the militia on the road and they demanded payments from him. After giving them money, he was released and proceeded safely to Boga. The militia has shown willingness to enter into talks with the Government, but the Government has taken a long time to respond in the wake of their recent contested elections.  The residents of Bukiringi, where the militia is living, have only recently left the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp and returned home. In order to reduce violent attacks, the militia needs to be fed. But, the residents do not have enough food to feed them because of their recent return from the IDP camps.  The Bishop, there...

If the NL adopts the Designated Hitter rule , I am gone.

There is a serious rumor floating around from my sources in the Middle East that Iran has executed Christian Pastor Yusef for apostasy. One source says it is just a rumor . I pray it is just a rumor and that he is still alive, but they were having a parliamentary election. Ironically, no media source I have found in the West is carrying this story one way or the other. Please Pray.

Weary of wandering from my God, And now made willing to return I hear and bow me to the rod For thee, not without hope, I mourn: I have an Advocate above A Friend before the throne of love. O Jesus, full of truth and grace More full of grace than I of sin Yet once again I seek Thy face: Open Thine arms and take me in And freely my backslidings heal And love the faithless sinner still. Thou know’st the way to bring me back My fallen spirit to restore O for Thy truth and mercy’s sake, Forgive, and bid me sin no more: The ruins of my soul repair And make my heart a house of prayer. The stone to flesh again convert, The veil of sin again remove; Sprinkle Thy blood upon my heart, And melt it by Thy dying love; This rebel heart by love subdue, And make it soft, and make it new. Give to mine eyes refreshing tears, And kindle my relentings now; Fill my whole soul with filial fears, To Thy sweet yoke my spirit bow; Bend by Thy grace, O bend or break, The iron si...