The Arrow's Path

It has been a little strange around here the last few days. My daughter is visiting my parents for about a week, and that is really been the first time she has been away from the house for more than a day or so since she's been born. It just seems strange to have a quiet house. I suppose I'm getting the first taste of being an empty nester. Thankfully, I still have several years before that becomes a permanent phenomenon. However, that day is coming and that right soon. More so than I probably want to think about. I will say I've been amazed at how much I've been able to get done. Before she left, my daughter picked out some colors for her room that she wanted me to repaint while she was gone. It turned out pretty well, although it looks like an Easter egg exploded in there. Pastel colors like blue, pink, and purple are not necessarily my thing, but then I am not a young girl either. It does look pretty good, and I'm sure my daughter would like it. A Pepto-Bismol...

I don't talk politics too much on this blog. I'm actually never have. I will probably going to keep it that way. Politics just makes people crazy these days But, given the latest spat between all manner of people both here and abroad, I just want someone in some government somewhere to be an adult. Is that too much to ask?

Today is the feast day of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, my patroness saint.

I am currently grilling steaks in my backyard. Summer must be here. For once this year, it is not raining.

"Dad, what's it like being left handed?" "Just like being right handed except backwards, and you have a weird sense of humor." "I can tell that, yes..."

The Diocese of Lincoln could learn from this .

The right here is what I have said for years. Voyager has such potential and they flushed it all.

To all my Canadian friends, eh?

 A few weeks ago on Father's day, the local airport hosted a fly in from www.flytheford.com of a vintage 1929 Ford Tri-motor plane.  I decided to take my daughter, being a great father's day present.  It was a surprisingly smooth albeit loud ride.  If you get the Indiana Jones theme stuck in your head, I am sorry. If it comes to your area, take a ride. Worth every penny...

I apparently have a cook book that won't go away. I keep putting it in the trash or recycling and somehow keeps returning to my cookbook shelf. Go figure. Must be a bookergeist.

But two hobbits just came and threw a ring into the room. (Actually, I never think Nebraska gets all that hot, but I needed to tell a joke...)

There is nothing more asinine in major professional sports than the mid-season all star game. There...I said it. The NFL used to have a Pro Bowl after the season which was at least something to watch for those suffering from football withdrawal after the Superbowl. Then (like  virtually anything else in the No Fans Left league) they had to ruin even that. Now they play that before the Superbowl in that weird no man's land between the NFC and AFC championships and the Commercial Fest...I mean Superbowl. The problem with that is what plagues all all star games: no player wants to get hurt, especially before a Superbowl, and so no one really tries. It is not even as rough as a collegiate intramural flag football game. It's a beauty pageant for jocks. The same thing plagues Major League Baseball. It is a game where the desire to win and the hustle level is somewhere between a church league softball game and two brothers playing each other in Mario Kart. In other words, milliona...

I have to admit that when I heard that the Toy Story franchise was going to launch a fourth movie back last year, my initial reaction was, shall we say, not enthusiastic. Very rarely when a series of movies gets to the third sequel or later, is there really anything new to be had other than nostalgia and bad script writing. Case in point: Star Wars. The original trilogy was classic. The prequels were fair. I have never been a complete basher of the prequels because at least they generally had an overarching story arc from a single creator. Were they as good as the originals? No. But neither where they complete trash. The newest ones however are not even of that quality. Episode 7 had possibilities, and I generally didn't loathe it. Episode 8 was just garbage. I realize some people liked it, but Luke Skywalker as a disillusioned, crazy old man on an island drinking blue milkshakes from a walrus just did not work for me. Having seen all of the Toy Story films in the theater, I did ...

I have decided to relaunch this blog. I have taken about a year off from blogging because I was a little burned out in my personal life, but I feel now that I can resume writing about things. I'm not sure at this point but I will be talking about. Heretofore I have largely done things of a theological topic or occasional comments on sports and life, but I think I make now go in a somewhat new direction. I will probably still talk about theology, philosophy, and ethics on occasion, but I do not think that will be the primary impetus of this blog any longer. For all things there is a season. Stay tuned...

Getting back to my series on soteriology (it's been a long week), one of the major theories in Christian soteriology, or how God's saving action works to save us, is the doctrine that goes back to the early centuries of the notion of "There is no salvation outside the Church." The Latin phrase, if what to get all really fancy, is  Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.  Needless to say, much ink and blood has been spilled over the centuries parsing this little number. As always, one has to look at the historical context of any catch phrase or theological doctrine to make heads or tails of it. To try to divorce any distilled doctrine in isolation is a hazardous undertaking because nothing in theology exists in isolation to other theological or philosophical concepts. It's like a big tapestry. If you try to pull one of the threads and examine it apart from the over-arching tapestry, you are not going to get very far and might end up unraveling the whole thing and ruining ...

I apparently created something of a sensation this week in Omaha. I was up there on Tuesday for my job, and happened to catch a radio segment on one of the AM news radio stations when the program DJ was interviewing a member of the Korean War Veteran's Association. It was a particularly good interview retrospective on this former vet's memories of Korea , etc. The DJ in question is more a comedian and right-wing political talking head, but occasionally he does some interesting interviews or talks about local Nebraska politics like interviewing the Omaha mayor or what have you. If I am up in Omaha, I will at least tune in to see if he has anything interesting to say. Well, a few days later, I wrote the DJ a short e-mail, thanking him for having this gentleman on his show. Both my grandfathers and my great uncle were in the Korean war, and so hearing this old guy reminded me some of them, all three of whom are long since dead now. My great uncle in particular came back from Korea...

What the Catholic church teaches on the issue of how we are saved (soteriology) is extremely complex. To get a grasp on it, one has to basically look at it from the standpoint of really three different time periods that had some very different cultural and theological worldviews: 1. What was taught and/or assumed to be taught in the Middle Ages (Anselm and Thomism), 2. What was taught in the Council of Trent (which was responding to the Protestant Reformation), 3. What was taught through and in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. I will try in the coming days to devote at least one or two blog posts explaining each of these time periods. One really does have to get a grasp of the historical backgrounds and conflicts of the various eras to begin to unravel why the Church teaches what it teaches. It can be confusing and a vast sea of teachings and seemingly conflicting theological ideas and suppositions, but there is a method to the madness. Before I get to that, however, I posi...

As I talked about in my previous post on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Aslan's harrowing of hell, i.e. the Witch's Castle, I made reference to the concept of soteriology. I can tell it is an obscure theological term because blogger.com's auto-correct is having a meltdown every time I try to type it here. It was getting so adamant, in fact, that I actually started to doubt myself and double checked my dictionary to make sure I was spelling it correctly, which I was. So, what is soteriology, exactly? Soteriology is one of those 50 cent words you learn in seminary that some denominations get all bent out of shape over. I have seen screaming arguments over the topic before, both in real life and certainly in the online world. (Twitter, I am looking at you, you human sewer!) If you want to get technical, soteriology literally comes from the Greek words of σωτηρία sōtēria "salvation" from σωτήρ sōtēr "savior, preserver" and λόγος logos ...