The Arrow's Path

December 29th is the Feast Day of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The church calendar called him St. Thomas Becket.  I always greatly marvel that Henry VIII's fingerprints are still all over poor Thomas of Canterbury, even in the Catholic church to this day. No one referred to Thomas of Canterbury as St. Thomas Becket before Henry VIII launched the great smear campaign against him that still reverberates to this day. St Thomas of Canterbury was by far the most famous saint in the Middle Ages other than the Virgin Mary herself. His shrine was one of the marvels of medieval England that was pure gold and jewels. People would travel from all over the world on pilgrimage to St. Thomas of Canterbury's shrine. The Vatican even has a record of a pilgrim from India who walked into the Vatican after traveling on foot most of the way to get a safe passage letter from the Pope to travel to England to see St Thomas of Canterbury's shrine. Archaeologists have found St Thomas of C...

 The Huron Carol: Oldest Known Christmas Carol ever written in the New World:  In English:

 Most don't know that the classic Advent carol "O Come, O Come, Emanuel" is a composite of the O Antiphons that I have posted the last few days.   

 O Emmanuel, our King and Giver of Law: come to save us, Lord our God!    

 O King of all nations and keystone of the Church: come and save man, whom you formed from the dust!    

 O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.    

 O Key of David, opening the gates of God’s eternal Kingdom: come and free the prisoners of darkness!  

 O Root of Jesse’s stem, sign of God’s love for all his people: come to save us without delay!    

 O Leader of the House of Israel, giver of the Law to Moses on Sinai: come to rescue us with your mighty power!    

O Wisdom of our God Most High, guiding creation with power and love: come to teach us the path of knowledge!    

I made the mistake of going to one of the major Daily Comic syndicates where you can read the Dailies if you don't get a newspaper.  There is one comic that I still like to follow that is not carried in my daily paper. (Yes, I still get an actual, physical daily paper.) As I follow a Facebook group dedicated to that one particular strip, I can usually read that one daily comic as I doom scroll Facebook and don't have to go to the actual Comics syndicate website to look up that one comic.  A little back story about myself: I was a cartoonist in a former life. I had a weekly and then daily strip for a few years that started in the college newspaper and got picked up by a small conglomerate of about 10 Southern newspapers back in the late 1990s. I was actually getting a little traction and then a national paper (I think it was USA Today but don't recall exactly whom it was now a quarter century later) came in and bought up that newspaper group and immediately came in and fired...

 A friend of mine still in the Anglican Church world just e-mailed me a redacted picture of something he saw at a Church conference. Apparently, Cliff Huxtable-style clergy shirts are all the rage in the jolly olde Church of England this year, and I have questions: This is ghastly I have no words for how ridiculous is. If I saw this on the street, I would have no idea exactly what I was even looking at. This completely defeats the purpose of a uniform. I mean, if you saw a policeman in a uniform with this sort of pattern, would you take him seriously as an officer of the law?  If you want to wear something fashionable as a member of the clergy, just do that. You don't have to wear a clerical collar all the time. You can wear a suit and a tie or whatever. I am not, contrary to what you might think, a complete old crank, but this is just truly crazy.  Lord, have mercy.  

I had someone pose a question to me as to why I did not convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, as, apparently, I have a great and apparent interest in the Christian East. It is true that there is much in Eastern Christianity that I think is good and right. I love icons. I do not have a major issue with the ideas of theosis and God's Essence and Energies. I do not find those concepts to be incompatible with Roman Catholic theology.  There are several reasons I chose Catholicism over Orthodoxy, which was actually the first door I went knocking on when it was clear my Anglican days were coming to an end. I won't go into great length here, but I found the historical gaslighting that a lot of Orthodoxy does to be false. They pretend like they are the extra early Church with no development of doctrine. They have had just as much development of doctrine and practice in the East as the West has. Look no farther than the Iconoclastic controversy, which was a massive doctrinal and praxis...

I have been discerning for some time what path to pursue in terms of doing a little volunteer work. I post this not to toot my own horn. Please don't take it as such. Some people's entire social media feed is filled up with how great they are by all their charitable work(s). I mean, it's great to do charitable work, and there are many fine charities and causes out there that need all the volunteers they can get.  Volunteerism is something that really can make or break a society. As I was prepping for writing this particular blog entry, I dove a bit into statistics to see how prevalent volunteering is in the US and around the world. In my online research I found an interesting study put out by, of all places, the United Nations. It had the most recent numbers that I could easily access, as of this writing. (Only in a UN document of 154 pages would they not cite any useful stats or info until page 42, but that's a separate issue.)     Now, I am going to cite the figur...

 Originally written as a round with 4 singers in a quartet , it's a very nice little piece that's been forgotten in the 100 years or so since it was first published.   

 I am told it is National Mutt Day . I have no idea who comes up with this stuff, but in honor of the day, I simply post this meme woven from the finest internets:

My favorite time of the year began yesterday for Catholics and Anglicans and others on a Western liturgical calendar. Eastern Orthodox folks get 6 Sundays of Advent. I would say the Orthodox are lucky in that respect, but they get the strict Orthodox fast without much of the good Western Advent music. They have their own liturgical tradition which is beauty but its a whole different bird than the stock O Come, O Come Emmanuel and Lo, He Comes on Clouds Descending . Other mainline and Evangelical churches just jump right to Christmas, although a few are rediscovering the beauty of Advent. Although, unlike Lent, I have found non-liturgical Protestants who do Advent are really just doing Christmas with liturgical purple, but, you know, small steps... The roots of Advent can be traced back to the early centuries of Christianity, particularly in the 4th and 5th centuries. While the exact origins are somewhat obscure, it is believed that early Christians observed a period of preparation ...