The Arrow's Path

Great stuff here .

One of the classic old episodes of the classic TV Show, The Twilight Zone, had a story in one of the early seasons when Rod Serling was writing most of the scripts entitled, “To Serve Man.” Basically, the premise of the story was these seemingly benign aliens coming down to earth whose mission they said was to “serve man.” They seemed very nice and made promises of serving man and they duped all these people into getting onto their ship so that these aliens could better serve them on their home planet. The classic Twilight Zone grotesque kicker in the last scene is that one of the primary humans who had been suspicious of these aliens from the beginning finally uncovers a book from the alien spacecraft which is entitled “To Serve Man.” It turns out the book is a cookbook. The innuendo as the flying saucer is flying away is that the aliens apparently intend to eat the gullible humans they have duped. I always think of that episode when discussions of economic theory and policy ...

I have been pondering what the second step is in my ruminations about St. Augustine, the Church, and healthcare. There are myriad different aspects and angles that I could tackle. This is a very difficult and broad set of questions, and there are no magic bullet answers. If it was an easy fix, we would have fixed this issue decades ago. I have been watching some fine documentaries on the US Presidents of late. PBS ran a series a while back called The Presidents . The narrator was noted historian David McCullough. They were well done, though I thought a bit biased, as they only tended to interview people from within the administration for Democratic presidents, but curiously had a plethora of critics for Republican ones they covered. That came off as a bit slanted to me, as I think constructive criticism should always be included in documentaries, but that is neither here nor there for purposes of this blog. Reading on the PBS website, I see they are working on Season 2 of that fine d...

Now that I am working in a non-clergy job, I feel a bit freer to discuss some things of a more political nature on my blog on rare occasions. I tried as clergy to avoid political discussions because I believed it was my calling to be a spiritual father not a political advisor. I really detest clergy who misuse their pulpits and clerical collars to beat their political hobby horses of choice. There is a time for the Church to speak, and there is a time for individual clergy to keep their mouths shut and not use the Church as a mouthpiece for their peculiar brand of partisanship. My rule of thumb was always to believe that unless one could definitively prove that such-and-such a political stance was clearly what Jesus and the Church has consistently taught, a clergy member had to be very careful about taking modern political sides in a debate. I think if Jesus walked into the halls of Washington or any State court house or legislature right now, he would not have particularly good thin...

I am not the paranoid type, but...yeah...this makes you think .

In my current job, we are hiring for an “administrative specialist.” (If anyone wants to submit a résumé, shoot me an e-mail off blog or leave me a comment which won’t be published). Since I am the office supervisor, it has largely fallen to me to read over the résumés submitted either in person or online through Monster.com. Given the current job climate (not phenomenally good or bad but mediocre), I have been astounded (one might even call it flabbergasted) at the horrendous level of résumés that have been submitted. We have had a few stellar ones, but mostly they have been stuff my 6th grade teacher would come out of retirement to beat me with a ruler if she ever got wind that I had turned in such odious fare. Now, I am not a marketing guru, job head hunter, or a flaming grammar Nazi (okay, maybe the latter), but here’s my two cents for anyone considering submitting a résumé for a job. They seem pretty simple, but they do make a major difference, even if you are just mindlessly s...

It's subtitled, but amusing...