The Arrow's Path

Following are key links for Episcopal Relief & Development's Hurricane Sandy response. I would especially encourage you to get the bulletin insert to your parish representatives, diocesan communicators and other key individuals in your respective dioceses and seminaries.  If you are holding a diocesan convention this coming weekend, please encourage an offering designated for the Episcopal Relief & Development Hurricane Sandy Response Fund  ( http://www.er-d.org/donate-select.php ) .   Along with getting your dioceses and parishes to post articles, circulate social media, etc. we would like you to contact your local newspapers and media and get the word out that Episcopal Relief & Development is responding and that people can give to the Hurricane Sandy Response Fund. EPISCOPAL RELIEF & DEVELOPMENT HURRICANE SANDY UPDATE SITE: http://er-d.org/Hurricane-Sandy-Caribbean-East-Coast-Oct-2012 EPISCOPAL RELIEF & DEVELOPMENT HURRI...

I am finally about over my head cold where I apparently lost a day or two. I sat down at my office this morning about 9:08 AM and realize, "Holy buckets...I have a Ministerial Association Meeting like 10 minutes ago..." Luckily it was at the Methodist church right up the street, so I ran up the alley. Whew...that was close.

If anyone gets Archaeology Magazine, there is a fabulous article in this month's edition about the excavation of a Christian Church in the Sudan from the Medieval Period, a short blurb of which can be found here . If you want to read the whole article, drop by and see me.

Baseball season has officially come to a close with a sweep of Detroit by the oddly bearded San Francisco Giants. I admit I found the Giants to be somewhat entertaining in that they all had various hairdos and beards that made them look like a team from 1978 sans the bad polyester uniforms. Other than that, the playoffs have ended what was otherwise a very compelling regular season very anticlimactically. I loved that teams like Washington and Baltimore put together teams that went the distance into the season; both were sadly eliminated in the first round. My Braves had a solid Wild Card season, only to flame out in the weird Wild Card playoff game marred by riots (I still can't believe good Southerners would do that) and Outfield Fly Rules. Cincinnati finally put together a good team, only to likewise flameout in the in the playoffs. The Athletics came out of no where to knock out the Texas Rangers from first place on the last game of the regular season. The Rangers just had ...

So, we had two visitors in church this morning, both of whom turned out to be from my hometown of Knoxville, TN. Turns out one of them even graduated from my old high school. Small World After All...

Upon opening this bottle of honey from Sarah's Godfather, I looked at the label: My first response: You have died of dysentery! Anyone who went to school in the days of the old Apple 2 Computers with the real floppy disks will remember Oregon Trail. It was a classic video game .

I have never cared for San Francisco or any of their sports teams. The Giants were particularly obnoxious when Barry "Wink, wink...I didn't know that was steroids I was taking...nod, nod" Bonds was playing there. I did like Dusty Baker when he was coaching there, but the Giants in their infinite wisdom even axed him. So, it is with no small irony that I have to thank the San Francisco Giants for being the team that finally popped St. Louis' magic playoff bubble. I admit, as I have often admitted before, that I really do not like the Wild Card concept in Baseball. To me, baseball is a game of numbers and percentages where you earn your trip to the playoffs by winning a division. I really don't like the 2nd Wild Card scheme because it further turns baseball into a "lowest common denominator" sport. The thought of the Cardinals going to the World Series by not even being the best Wild Card (re: 2nd place) team just rubbed me the wrong way. Combined with...

The Episcopal Church Foundation is doing a webinar (web based interactive seminar) on an interesting ministry to those ensnared in sex trafficking. (ECF does a lot of webinars, but they are usually monetary snoozers like "Running a Capital Campaign" or "New Things in Estate Planning.") This is certainly something the church has been somewhat neglectful in tackling. You can learn more and sign up for it free of charge at the link above. The blurb sent to me by ECF says this: "Finding Our Voice on Human Trafficking As the rector of St. Alban's in Davenport, IA, ECF Fellow Brian McVey (2011) is leading the Episcopal Church to address the issue of human trafficking, one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the world. Brian began with a "ministry of presence" at a truck stop on I-80, one of the top sites in the U.S. for transporting, buying, and selling women, children, and men for all forms of forced labor. That ministry is evolving into...

The picture displayed above in my title bar was taken by my mother from my parent's home. Apparently, God was particularly paying attention to the fall colors in East Tennessee this year.

I had an unusual visitor for Mass this morning. As I began my Friday morning daily Eucharist, I noticed there was a little ladybug crawling around on the side altar. It crawled up and down the candlesticks and around the cross several times. After mass, I went to get my camera to take a picture of my holy little visitor, and it had completely disappeared. This was ironic as the Daily Office readings that I use for the Eucharist had the gospel reading story of the Transfiguration. Go Figure...

Check out these photographs of WWII pictures superimposed on modern pictures of the same places.

I just learned from my hometown paper that my former dentist from my high school days passed away at the age of 65 . He's the only dentist I ever had that I liked personally. He was truly one of the most colorful characters I believe I ever met. He makes a big stop here at about the 6:40 mark: Here's to you, Dr. Nick.

I had a New Testament/Early Church professor in seminary who was notorious for saying, "It's more complicated than that." Usually, but not always, he was right about that. My church's adult forum book discussion group has decided to read a book entitled The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book by Timothy Beal. Beal is apparently one of those whom I call Neo-Evangelicals like Rachel Evans , R ob Bell , and others. Some might refer to this sub-group of American Christianity as the Emergent Church movement, and perhaps some of those people might actually identify as such, but I do not think that is a clean descriptor. The Emergent Church movement is more of what I call Generation X in ecclesial form. It is simply the attitudes of the MTV generation that can't be bothered to actually get off their duff and constructively engage civic society. They would just as soon drop out and do their own rebellious thing. In the Emergent Chur...

As American news is fixated on the filling of a 4-year executive temp job (re: President, US, 4 year term limit), it cannot be bothered to actually cover news from a place that it may or may not know actually exists. Sadly, East Africa is on the brink of erupting into all out religious animosity and perhaps even war . Very few in the West know about what is actually going on.   Please pray.

Think about it.

I just got back from my weekly Lectionary Bible Study. It is technically open to anyone in the Ministerial Association, but of late it has become what I refer to as my "Several Lutherans and a Token" group, with me being the token non-Lutheran. We have a floating rota of presenters, and usually we try to talk about the Lectionary reading for the Sunday a week and a half off. In other words, not the readings for this coming Sunday, but the next Sunday, as some people have already started preparing their sermon thoughts for the coming Sunday. (Again, that's not me...) Two Sundays from now (which would be October 28th), apparently Lutherans (both Missouri Synod and ELCA) do this really weird " Reformation Sunday " that has its own readings. I am told other Protestant denominations do that as well, though I am not exactly sure which ones. I had never heard of such a thing prior to moving here to Lutheran Lake Wobegon Country. Apparently it is a big to do in Luther...

You have to see this one to believe it .

Good Guys Wear Black did a great Top Ten list of "t hings pastors hate about pastoring ." I would add the assumption of parishioners that the pastor was taught clairvoyance in seminary, so,  it is somehow still pastor's fault that the parishioner never said anything. “I’m mad that you didn’t come to see me in the hospital!” “Did you tell me you were going in the hospital?” “No.” “Did you or your family call the church office? Or have the Hospital call the church?” “No.” “Was it published in the local paper that you were admitted to the hospital?” “No.” At which point the pastor thinks to himself, "And this is my fault how???" but actually says something like, "Well, bless you heart. I'm sorry."

I just realized it is less than 3 months until Christmas. Summer went slow, but September and October have flown by. How'd that happen?

Hat tip: Fr. Ed Tomlinson, Pembury, UK

I am back in town after a short trip to visit the in-laws and the annual steer butchering. True to form, someone always dies on my weekend off, so I get to rush around and tend to that today and tomorrow. Prayers are requested.

So, I was puttering in my garage and someone from the parish walks in. Hilarity ensued (actual pronunciations in italics; void where prohibited): "Father, do you have an owl ?" "A what?" "Yeah, you know, an  owl ?" "Nooo...why are you hearing one?" "No, a wood owl ." "Why would have a wooden owl? You got crows or something you want to scare off?" "How would you scare crows off with an owl ?" "Then what would you need a wooden owl for? Decoration for Church school or something?" "We talking about the same thing?" "What other kind of hoot owl is there?" "(laughs) No, no...an owl ...the wood tool." [awkward pause] "You mean an awl ?" " All of what? No, I just need an owl . That thing right there in your tool box." "Yeah, an awl . Just take it. Whatever."

There is an interesting article here  that is worth reading. It's flamingly pro-life and I don't agree with some of the article, but the primary point the article makes in terms of debate and dialog whether religious, theological, political, or what have you is worth considering. What he is discussing, though does not name, is the rhetorical idea of the non sequitur . That is basically Latin for "it does not (necessarily) follow..." In common parlance, one might say a debate that uses this involves comparing apples and oranges. You saw this last night several times in the Presidential debates. The question from the moderator would involve something having to do with some domestic policy issue. Each candidate would then say something like, "You should vote for me because my opponent believes Y  (about this policy involving X with which nothing to do with Y ." While is might be true that the opposite candidate might believe Y , that is an illogical position ...

While I don't always agree with Pope Benedict on everything, I do agree wholeheartedly with his latest comments on the purpose of the liturgy , "It is not the individual — priest or layman — or the group that celebrates the liturgy, but it is primarily God’s action through the Church...This universality and fundamental openness, which is characteristic of the entire liturgy, is one of the reasons why it cannot be created or amended by the individual community or by experts, but must be faithful to the forms of the universal Church..." We do pray in common in the Episcopal church, hence the term Common Prayer. It is very trendy in the Episcopal church and in the Church of England under the guise of liturgical diversity to have all these specialty little liturgies. Some are politically correct language liturgies that cater to varying political whims (I'm looking at you, Enriching Our Worship series!). Some are "season of creation" based. Some are whimsical i...

Congrats to Miguel Cabrera, Major League Baseball's first triple crown winner since Carl Yaz is 1967. I didn't expect to see that during my lifetime.

Here is my editorial reflection that will run in tomorrow's local newspaper. It seemed appropriate to run it here in advance of that silly little debate going on tonight.  -The Archer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Searching for Political Substance" I was visiting a parishioner earlier in the week, and the parishioner had the television on to one of the mainstream 24-hour cable news channels. While we were talking for about a half an hour or so, the parishioner was sitting in a chair and physically facing toward me, while the TV with a lowered volume stayed on in the background as we chatted. I ended up with an odd vantage point of facing both the parishioner and the TV that a few feet behind her in one direct line of sight. This happened to be the day before the first Presidential debate, and all the talking heads on this 24-hour news channel were in rare form. One might charitably say they were all gaga over ...

My parish won two awards from the Mayor of Brookings, SD, at the annual Awards night banquet for our elevator project last year. One is for Historic Preservation and the other is for Handicapped Accessibility. The Mayor gives out awards like that every year for projects benefiting the whole community. Well done, everyone!

" 'I'm Spiritual but Not Religious' is a cop out ."  from CNN.com no less.