The Arrow's Path

"Mommy, you're pretty!"  "Why, thank you, sweet heart!"  "Is Daddy pretty?" "No, he're not pretty, he's old!" "So, you never want an allowance, is that what I'm hearing you say?"

The following is my edition of the Friday Reflection. It is a Russian version of the Phos Hilaron, many Anglican versions of which exist. It is found in text form in Evening Prayer. The text of which is believed to be the earliest known hymn of completely Christian origin: Hat tip: James Coder

Arrrrggh....I have been reticent about inter-league play in Major League Baseball for this very reason . If we pay pitchers hundreds of thousands of dollars, is it really too much to ask them to take some regular batting practice? If we have to have a Designated Hitter, at least have two different leagues that play substantively different styles of baseball with and without the DH. I don't watch a whole lot of other professional sports because of this. If you are going to have leagues or conferences or whatever, at least make each league unique. Otherwise, it is all just a scheme for more making more playoff money.  Bud Selig, have some integrity for once.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I would respond to a suicide in my parish. Let me be clear that I do not believe anyone in my parish is having such thoughts, but I have been doing some historical research on how the Church has dealt with the issue over the centuries. This was spawned by a discussion I had some months ago with a priest out on one of the reservations in this state who was constantly having to do funerals of suicide victims. For a myriad of reasons that I won't go into here, suffice is to say that this is an epidemic problem facing Native American reservations these days, particularly amongst the young. By the grace of God, I have never had to pastorally face that scenario as a priest directly (and I pray I never will), though I have had to deal with it personally more than once from friends who have taken or have thought about taking their own lives. For my own pastoral ministry, I have thought it was important for me to research some of these issues ...

USA Today has this very interesting interactive map here on the breakdown of religious affiliation by state. It is from the Pew Forum on religion which is notorious for being somewhat slanted, given Mr. Pew's own anti-institutional religion views on things, but this seems pretty straight forward enough. I would be interested to know how he calculates "unaffiliated." Is that unchurched or atheist/agnostic only, or does that also include the "spiritual but not religious crowd, the "All I need is me and Jesus!" crowd, and the "Protestant floaters" that attend church occasionally but seldom at the same church more than once or twice in a row?

Read this before attending General Convention.

From today's Bike and Kite Festival in town... One good thing about living on the Northern Plains...there is usually a lot of wind for kites!

While I was waiting in line for a lemonade at the Kite Festival this afternoon:  1st guy: Are you going to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? 2nd guy: I think I'll wait for George Washington: Mothman Smasher. 1st Guy: Oh, they're already planning a sequel? Awesome. ...

Today on some calendars is the Feast Day of Saint Alban, reputedly the first Christian Martyr in England. Saint Alban is mentioned in "Acta Martyrum", and also by Constantius of Lyon in his Life of St Germanus of Auxerre, written about 480.What we know of Alban also comes from the history of the Venerable Bede who died circa AD 735. Alban lived in the Roman period in Britain in a town called Verulamium, near the current Cathedral of St. Albans north of London. The ruins have been excavated. I visited them some years ago when I was living in England. Archaeology being a hobby of mine, I and have some pictures: Mainly what you are seeing is the Roman earthen amphitheater. Closer to St Alban's Cathedral, you can still see some of the original Roman walls: (I had more hair back then...)  Of course, there is St. Alban's Cathedral itself, which is quite lovely : Most know the Christian story of Alban by Bede, which is worth a re...

I discovered this clip while doing Morning Prayer at Mission St. Clare and really liked it: Mision St. Clare is a truly remarkable resource for Morning and Evening Prayer. It walks you through the daily office and has several musical clips you can listen to as part of the office.

Continuing on through the first paragraph of the original preface to the Book of Common Prayer, we read (emphasis mine): "There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted: as, among other things, it may plainly appear by the common prayers in the Church, commonly called Divine Service: the first original and ground whereof, if a man would search out by the ancient fathers, he shall find, that the same was not ordained, but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness: For they so ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once in the year, intending thereby, that the Clergy, and  especially such as were Ministers of the congregation, should (by often reading, and  meditation of God's word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort  others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were ...

In my introductory post on the Preface to the original 1549 Book of Common Prayer, I largely spoke on the first clause of the first sentence (no, it was not a run-on sentence) of the first paragraph. Basically, Cranmer sets out his justification for liturgical reform in saying that all things eventually become corrupted over time and occasionally need to be pared down and reformed. This is the basic premise of the Reformation. Today, let us turn to the second major clause which I will place in bold for our purposes: "There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which  in continuance of time hath not been corrupted: as, among other things, it may plainly  appear by the common prayers in the Church, commonly called Divine Service: the first original and ground whereof, if a man would search out by the ancient fathers, he shall find, that the same was not ordained, but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godli...

"For you have the Creed and the Lord's Prayer. What can be briefer to hear or to read? What easier to commit to memory? When, as the result of sin, the human race was groaning under a heavy load of misery, and was in urgent need of the divine compassion, one of the prophets, anticipating the time of the Lord's grace, declared: 'And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered.' Hence, the Lord's prayer. But the Apostle, when, for the purpose of commending this very grace,  he had quoted the prophetic testimony, immediately added: 'How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?' Hence, the Creed. In these two you have those three graced exemplified: faith believes, hope and love pray. But without faith the two last cannot exist, and therefore we may say that faith also prays. Whence it is written: 'How shall they call on Him whom they have not believed?' " -Saint Augustine o...

The local United Church of Christ asked me to post this invitation to any Episcopalians in the area who might be interested. The Episcopal Bishop Henry Whipple at the time was very involved in trying to stop this, writing to President Lincoln directly. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------    Dakota 38 a smoothfeather production In the spring of 2005, Lakota Spiritual Leader Jim Miller awoke from a dream in which 38 of his Dakota ancestors were hanged. He soon learned that he had dreamt about the largest mass execution in United States history, ordered by Abraham Lincoln on December 26, 1862. Four years later, Jim and a group of riders decided to retrace the 330-mile route of his dream on horseback across the great plains to arrive at the hanging site in Mankato, Minnesota on the anniversary of the execution. This is the story of their journey to bring reconciliation and healing to all. This event is an intentional st...

Meet the Press did a good interview with former Major League Pitcher, Jim Abbott , who has a new book out. I saw him pitch at Yankee Stadium in 1994, not too long after his no hitter.

I have been promising for some weeks to do a series on the Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer. I have been researching that topic, but then I hit vacation and &c., and have not gotten around to posting on this yet. I am about to remedy that now.  Before I get into that, a little preface on the Preface might be in order. We, Episcopalians, take the Book of Common Prayer for granted. As is common in most Church life, the things we do, we often do without really stopping to think why we do things a certain way. "We've always done it this way!" In some ways, this is actually a true statement, at least as it pertains to how worship came to be governed in what became the Church of England via the English Reformation and the Church of England's theological descendants like the Episcopal Church in the USA. The Book of Common Prayer was the brainchild of a man named Thomas Cranmer. I have written on this before at some length. (I was halfway through seminary b...

From the Sioux Falls noon newscast: Kudos to KELOland for covering this event and to Father Tim for walking.

Andy Staples, over at CNNSI.com, has written a very interesting piece about an assistant football coach who has a rather shady background in the rap music business. He is from Miami and now coaches at an impoverished high school there with great success in getting young men out of gangs and into coach through football. It is a curious case concerning ethics and coaching as well as hiring and coaching. Such questions raised are as follows: Should a school allow a volunteer coach to not be screened with a background check? If so, how much should the prior background check blackball a proven coach simply because of bad behavior many years before? Read this piece and let me know what you think.

The following is an editorial I wrote that will appear in the local paper tomorrow. -The Archer -------------------------------------- "Things You Can Learn From Monks." I was saddened earlier in the week when I learned that Blue Cloud Abbey, the Benedictine Monastery and Retreat Center in Marvin, South Dakota, had announced that is was closing due to a lack of vocations. Blue Cloud Abbey is a truly neat place to which I often go for retreats if I ever felt like I needed to recharge my batteries. Many people think of monks and monasteries as being very austere and joyless places. While some monastic communities are like that, what endeared me so much to that place is the joy and humor that I always felt emanating from the residents of that community. On my first visit to Blue Cloud Abbey some years ago, I was out wandering the magnificent grounds there. I came upon one of their very large ponds. Being a retreat center, they had a canoe and a kayak on the shore for visit...

St. Paul's takes up a collection once a month to support Moses and his mission to his home in South Sudan. The local news in Sioux Falls did a bit on him last night on the 10 o'clock news.

This makes me very sad , as I was just up there last week. This was truly a neat place.

I have returned from my staycation. It was quite eventful, but I will leave that to your imagination. When you live 20 feet from your place of employment, then you really don't get any time off. Hopefully, my blogging will return to normal this week. I haven't forgotten my promise to comment on the Preface to the 1st Book of Common Prayer.

The following is my Ministerial Association editorial that will appear in the local paper tomorrow. -The Archer ------------------------------------------ "Charity begins at Home" There is an old folk saying that my grandmother used to say all the time that went something like, "charity begins at home." You would see the word "charity" engraved in the keystones of buildings belonging to municipal governments or civic organizations. The word would often be coupled with other words like truth, justice, hope, or faith. Charity was crucial in many a motto or coat of arms because the concept was viewed as a primary civic virtue. We often think of charity now as an entity. Specifically, a charity is now only viewed as an organization devoted to meeting the social welfare needs of others to which people not in need give money to get a nice tax deduction. Sadly, the concept of charity as a civic virtue is largely being lost in modern American Engli...

Interesting editorial piece from The Tennessean newspaper.

So, the new Revised Common Lectionary (I say "new" because the Episcopal church has been on it less than 30 years) has this gimmick for the Trinity Season (I refuse to use the term "Season after Pentecost") of having two tracts for the Old Testament readings in the summer and early fall. One is the traditional Old Testament readings that tries to capture the theme of the New Testament/Gospel readings, regardless of whether that makes the Old Testament reading change from book to book every Sunday. The other alternative track for the summer is one that reads an Old Testament book largely in sequence, at least in theory. Last year, it was largely the Book of Genesis. I really enjoy preaching from a Biblical text in a sequence; you can get more in depth in your sermon if you can build on things and not have the Old Testament text and theme change every Sunday. I seldom preach on the Epistles for this reason because the Lectionary butchers them so badly. You have to...