The Arrow's Path

By popular demand, here is the Irish Soda Bread recipe I use: Preheat Oven to 350 degrees F. 2 cups white, all purpose flour 1/4 cup molasses 1/4 cup Guinness (or some other thick, dark Stout style beer.) 1 tsp. salt 1 stick butter, cut into chunks or melted 2 cups whole wheat flour 2 tsp. baking soda 1 1/2 cups buttermilk 1 cup raisins Though not recommended, if you don't have any Guinness, you can use 1/2 cup (total) molasses or maple syrup or some combination thereof. I would also recommend real syrup, not the sugar free synthetic stuff, as it tastes funny after baking. Mix with an electric mixer for one minute until well blended. (It will be a rather wet and gooey consistency, add a tad more floor if necessary depending on humidity, etc.) Make into a large, free form round and place on a greased baking sheet or, preferably, a pizza stone if you have one. (I find if you make the round a more uniform thickness across, it cooks better. Otherwise it is hard to gauge when the center...

Father Ed has a great homily here .

James is a book filled with practical advice for life's many situations - it's a kind of manuel on how to live with one foot in heaven and one on earth. The issue he deals with in our passage for study concerns surviving in testing times. James gives us 5 pieces of advice the last parts of which we get in the reading today: 1st: When bad things happen James encourages us to remember that testing times promote endurance, they promote maturity, they strengthen us to meet the next hurdle. 2nd: In the face of life's difficulties James suggests that we ask for divine wisdom, that we ask for the mind of Christ. God has promised to equip us with such knowledge so it is only a matter of asking in faith, believing that God will do what he has promised. 3rd: We may think that prosperity is the key to a trouble-free life, but it's good to remember that wealth itself is illusionary. Let both rich and poor boast in their Christian standing James says for the key to...

"An angry man is not likely to do that which is just in God's eyes."

3 Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young— a place near your altar, O LORD Almighty, my King and my God. The pictures are of a nest on the outside of the church building.

Rummage sales are always an interesting experience, especially church related ones and you are working the cash register in a clerical collar. You get into interesting ethical conversations like: "Father, is this tree for sale?" "You mean the one planted in the ground?" "Yeah..." "Uh, no. All items attached to the church building or grounds are not for sale." "Is this wooden pew for sale?" "No, only the books on it are for sale." "Oh. Darn, I've always wanted one for my barn." "Do you know if this old radio works?" "No, I don't, but you can plug it in to the outlet inside if you like." "I'll pass then." "How much is this thing of makeup?" "Uh, the entire box was $1." "Oh, I just want this particular one, and I'll give you two dollars for it." "This thing is marked 50 cents. What is it?" "If I knew that, it would be a dollar....

St Paul's-Brookings, SD Saturday 8AM to 3PM Proceeds to benefit the Parish Grounds Improvement Fund

"Well, this is a cute baby one-sie...its like little pink overalls." "What does it say? 'Sweetest Pig?'?" "Sweetest Pie...." "That 'e' looks like a 'g...'" "That's a picture of a pie too." "Oh, it's pink. I thought that was a plate of Barbecue or something." [sounds of chortling] "It's early...I don't have my glasses on yet." [more sounds of chortling] "Well, it does look like "sweetest pig...and they are overalls"

So, my parish is having its summer (well, it feels like fall) rummage sale on Saturday to raise some funds for some work on the church grounds. Stuff has been accumulating in the parish narthex for a few days. Living in a rectory right next to "ground zero" has been a dyed in the wool bargain hunter's dream come true. "Oooh, look at that, I've always wanted one of those." I have a feeling I am going to be writing a sizable check to the parish on Saturday after my rummaging.

Hard to believe summertime is over here. Never felt like we had a real summer as cool and rainy as it has been. Ah well...time marches on.

When I was at camp and not able to read to my daughter at bedtime every night (which caused some bedtime issues), I recorded a few chapters for emergency use on my IPod in case I am not here one evening. It suddenly dawned on me that I have everything I need to have my own recording study in house. I did some stuff like this before when I was working with radio in college. I discovered it is truly amazing the amount of sound technology and software out there now, even from when I was in college 10+ years ago. Would anyone be interested in this blog having a podcast of Matins or Morning Prayer? I do full morning prayer every Tuesday and Thursday, usually said or sung. I believe I have figured out a way to record it and upload it fairly easily. I'd be interested to hear if anyone would find that helpful to their own spiritual life. It will probably be only once or twice a week to start to see if anyone is interested, but its pretty easy to do. Let me know, and I'll do a test run ...

So tomorrow is the annual parish Mass in the Grass with picnic to follow. So after a week of sunshine, what's on deck? "SUNDAY: Thunderstorms likely in the early morning...then chance of thunderstorms in the late morning. Slight chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon." Naturally...

The following are excerpts from an essay by Jonathan Myrick Daniels, the saint commemorated today in the Episcopal Church calendar of saints. He wrote this essay as a reflection on one of his trips to Selma, Alabama, in which he heeded the call of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to help with the Civil Rights movement. Unlike most of the "civil rights tourists," as my grandfather used to call them, who came down from the North in the summer for a week of marching, finger waging, and stirring up trouble (sometimes needlessly), and then only to return to their safe, comfortable homes in Cape Cod while leaving the white Southerners who were actually working for civil rights in the South but who still had to live there and deal with the fallout of needless Klan antagonism, Daniels returned numerous times and actually worked. WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS INAPPROPRIATE LANGUAGE AND MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUNGER READERS. I HAVE TRIED TO EDIT THE LANGUAGE AS BEST I COULD, BUT I HAV...

I was talking to a parishioner last night as St. Paul's was hosting a middle school dance (don't ask) and we had to have some adult chaperons. We were chatting and this parishioner made an interesting comment to the affect that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter were ways of being more communal in terms of personal information. This in itself was not earth shattering, but the parishioner went on to liken such internet sites to the old Party Line telephone systems. For those people under 25 who have no idea what a Party Line is (other than maybe a Conga line dance), a party line was where a town would basically have one loop telephone line that everyone used. Basically, it was like a whole town sharing one line, which meant if one person in one house was calling another, anyone else in town that had a phone connected could listen in to the conversation. We tried explaining this to a middle school kid with little luck, as they had no frame of reference for a party ...

"God is so blessed a one, that did he not hide himself and his glory, the whole world would be ravished with him; but he has, I will not say reasons of state, but reasons of glory, glorious reasons why he hideth himself from the world and appeareth but to particular ones." John Bunyan, on the Glory of God, 1656.

For baseball "bring back the spitball" purists like myself, I appreciated this bit over on CNNSI: 25 things we miss in Baseball .

Part of the bedtime routine we have with Baby Archer is that after bath time at night, I read something in the background as baby eats and gets rocked to sleep. We've read through the entire chronicles of Narnia, and are about halfway through the Book 7: The Last Battle . I had not read through The Last Battle in years, probably since I was doing a political science paper on Post Modernism when I was in college. I had forgotten how brilliantly CS Lewis subtly predicted the rise of moral relativism in this book. The premise of the novel is that an Ape and a Donkey find a lion skin. The Ape dresses the Donkey up in the skin, and tells the Narnians that Aslan has returned and basically enslaves them. The Ape gets in league with the Calormenes, and eventually gets people to believe that Aslan and Tash, the demon/god of the Calormenes were the same thing. All gods are the same, "just by a different name." By a stroke of literary genius, CS Lewis even has the Ape start convinc...

Being that it is already nearly the 2nd week of August, I am fascinated that none of the major sports websites have really released any of their preseason predictions yet. At least if they have, I can't find them anywhere on the CNNSI/ESPN, etc. websites. If memory serves, they are usually up by this point, so I am curious why they have not posted all that stuff yet. But, that's just as well. I can give my prognostications without being influenced by other media bias. Let's take a look at how I perceive the Top Ten for the season. For that, we have to start with Florida, which has won 2 of the last 3 National Championships, much to the horror of Tennessee and Florida State fans everywhere. Unfortunately, there is just no getting around the fact that Florida is the defending champ and has All-Universe College QB Tim "I walk on water" Tebow coming back for his senior season. (As an interesting side note to consider, Florida did not have a top ten recruiting season. ...

Tennessee this year is anybody's guess. They have a completely new coaching staff under Lane Kiffin, who looks like he's 24. Once upon a time he was the the young new hotshot coach of the Oakland Raiders, though he largely didn't pan out, mainly due to conflict with Oakland Raiders' owner, Al Davis. Kiffin might still be the next new SEC hotshot coach, or he may turn into a flash in the pan flop. Only time will tell. I was somewhat concerned when Tennessee hired him, mainly due to his youth and relative inexperience as a head coach. On the one hand, I was greatly concerned when in his initial press conference he was throwing around a lot of the doublespeak/Raiders jargon and buzzwords that Bill Callahan (another Raiders head coaching flop) used when he took over at Nebraska a few years ago and turned the Huskers' program into a defensive disaster. On the other hand, one can't blame Kiffin for having issues with Al Davis, who is a certifiable, grade A weirdo both...

It is the first of August, and that means college football season is right around the corner. I usually do a series of preseason analyses and predictions. I start with the home teams, as it were. The joke I have with my wife is that we are a multi-ethnic family. I grew up in Knoxville as a die hard Tennessee Vols fan. My wife grew up and is a grad of Nebraska. I root for both, as I did spend a few years living in Nebraska. Nebraska and Tennessee rarely play each other, so that causes little friction in my household. As such, I usually do individual posts devoted to preseason analysis of both Nebraska and Tennessee. My final post of the series will involve the national scene with the Archer's Preseason Top Ten. As such, I will start in alphabetical order this year and do my prediction of Nebraska. Without further ado, here goes... I think Nebraska is a team on the upswing. Bo "My Bo'friend's back!" Pelini is coming off a stellar first year as head coach. He turned ...

(Click on 'fullscreen' to view pictures at Picasaweb.) Today was the Installation service for me, which for my non-Episcopal readers means that I was formally installed as rector of St. Paul's. If you want to see the liturgy, you can read it its in the Book of Common Prayer on page 559. Its a nice service where members of the parish get to participate in various ways in the liturgy, bringing me symbolic items like a bible, holy oil, and a set of keys, etc. If you want to read the liturgy online, you can go here and scroll down about 3/4's of the way down the page to the section called "Celebration of a New Ministry." We had a good turnout, including an Orthodox priest friend of mine from Lincoln who drove up and stayed with us for the weekend. (He's the one in the red hat in the pictures.) The Bishop-elect of South Dakota and his family came up, and he did most of the service with the permission of the current active bishop and preached a fabulous sermon....

(You may have to click on 'Fullscreen' to view the slide show) The last day of middle school boys' camp at Thunderhead Episcopal Center out in the Black Hills, we hiked up to the top of Bear Butte, which is a holy site to the Lakota people. When you get to the top of it, you can feel why. It feels like going up Mt. Sinai or something.