The Arrow's Path

You can tell a lot about a community by what they believe. If you ask a baseball fan about where the game of baseball was invented, you will likely hear the story of Abner Doubleday. So the story goes, a young Abner Doubleday one summer day in 1839 went into a field near his parent's home in Cooperstown, NY, gathered a group of kids, and drew up the basic rules of what we now recognize as the all-American game of baseball. If you go to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, you can walk up the street to Doubleday Field, the field where supposedly the game of Baseball was invented. The problem is, while all that tells a great story, it is completely made up. After a series of scandals and a stopped World Series at the beginning of the 20 th Century threatened to erase the whole concept of professional baseball, Albert Spalding who had made a fortune selling baseball equipment and had created the Spalding sporting goods empire that still exists, decided ...

Something Lighter for Easter: Truly one of the Greatest Cartoon shorts ever made. Happy Easter, everyone!

I am thankful he is back to normal after an Paschal Fire ordeal .

Way cool . (Sadly, don't read the reader comments. They will depress you.)

O holy and ever-blessed Jesus, who being the eternal Son of God and most high in the glory of the Father, didst vouchsafe in love for us sinners to be born of a pure virgin, and didst humble thyself unto death, even the death of the cross : Deepen within us, we beseech thee, a due sense of thy infinite love; that adoring and believing in thee as our Lord and Saviour, we may trust in thy infinite merits, imitate thy holy example, obey thy commands, and finally enjoy thy promises; who with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest, one God, world without end.  

There have been a few requests for me to run the version of the Stations of the Cross that I drew back in seminary. I have not run them for Good Friday for a few years.They are still found on the blog if you search, but I will here link to all the Stations in this blog entry. Before you look at them, read my initial posting on why I drew them. They are on the disturbing side. The 1st Station The 2nd Station The 3rd Station The 4th Station The 5th Station The 6th Station The 7th Station The 8th Station The 9th Station The 10th Station The 11th Station The 12th Station The 13th Station The 14th Station

Another Version of the Good Friday Reproaches.

"A lmighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen." -From the Good Friday Liturgy, Book of Common Prayer.

I can think of nothing for suitable for my 1900th entry on this blog that to announce St. Paul's Holy Week Service Schedule: Maundy Thursday Service with Foot Washing and Striping of the Altar is at 7PM. Good Friday Liturgy is at 12:05 Stations of the Cross at 5PM Easter Vigil with lighting of the Paschal Fire is at 7PM Easter Morning with Blessing of the Easter Baskets: 10AM Please Come and Join Us!

When did the optional  Baruch 3:9-15, 3:32-4:4  or  Proverbs 8:1-8, 19-21; 9:4b-6 [Learn wisdom and live]  reading get added to the potential readings at the Easter Vigil? That's not from the Prayerbook as far as I can tell, but the RCL on its own usually doesn't usually touch the readings from the Apocrypha unless its from a pre-existing liturgical lectionary tradition.

On National Geographic's website ...interesting stuff.

I grant that I am an Anglican priest of the high church variety, and we are notorious for being formal both in behavior and dress. Sometimes, this is to our detriment but often it serves us well. Personally, I believe the difference between a "priest" and a protestant "pastor" is that a priest has to keep a bit of professional distance from parishioners. My impressions of the more protestant pastor is that they tend to be largely "seeker friendly" which is good, but the tendency is for them to pole vault over that into pseudo-drinking buddy or moral cheer leader. To me, being a spiritual father is different than being somebody's spiritual buddy. But, this is neither here nor there. I took my youth mentoring pupil to a South Dakota State production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew last night. My pupil had never been to a real theatre production, much less seen a Shakespeare play. I was curious how he was going to react to it. I tend to err on...

Google.com reminded me that today would have been Charlie Chaplin's 122nd birthda y. I am both a silent film fan and a Chaplin fan (I have all his movies.) He was, of course, the iconic comedic genius. He made his mark as "The Tramp" character around 1915 when he was working for Mutual. Many of his Mutual Shorts can be seen in their entirety here . If you have never seen any, they are quite hysterically funny. Most people don't know the musical side of him, however. He was more than a silent film comedian; he was quite the musician in his own right. In fact, he composed quite a bit of his own film scores as well. In fact, he was a pioneer in the realm of matching the musical score with the action being depicted in the given film. Heretofore in silent films, either music was provided live by a Wurlitzer organ which could vary from theatre to theatre, or there would be some canned music played from a phonograph contraption, largely of a symphony or some piece of mu...

John Sentamu, the Anglican Archbishop of York, has penned a thoughtful piece on the role of parents and Gang Violence . It is worth a read.

I was the editorial writer yesterday for the local ministerial association's weekly column. -The Archer -------------- You Are Invited! Clergy get asked strange questions at random times in public settings. Some people feel the need to defend or explain themselves, even they do not personally know the cleric in question or even to what denomination the particular cleric belongs. Such questions are often really declaratory sentences to which there is no easy response. This is simply an occupational hazard to which clergy have to adapt. I was somewhat taken aback by such a declaratory question that was posed to me last week. A lady came up to me as I was at a local park in town as I was taking the opportunity to enjoy the nice weather. I was obviously wearing my black clergy shirt and clerical collar. Such clerical attire often attracts such declaratory questions much like those blue fluorescent zappers that people have on their back porches during the summer months attract b...

Hat tip: James Coder

Hmmm...interesting thoughts from the Archbishop of Canterbury .

I'm all for combating racism and such. While it might not be against African Americans or Mexicans or Muslims, I remain convinced that everyone has a prejudice of some kind. That's just human nature to be averse to things or people that are different from us. This tendency did actually serve a constructive purpose back in primordial times when humans were barely even hunter/gatherers. What you didn't understand could kill you. This was nature's way of helping people survive. If you are ever out in the wilderness, and something doesn't look or feel quite right, chances are it is probably not. You discriminate between things you understand and things you don't.  Contrary to popular belief, the word "discriminate" is not inherently bad in and of itself. To discriminate is to simply make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing. Simply put, to discriminate is simply to differentiate. You discriminate all the time in everything from colo...

For those at St. Paul's who were in the adult forum on Sunday morning, we had an interesting discussion about the "Valley of Dry Bones" reading from  Ezekiel . As an example, John (and later myself in the sermon by happenstance) made reference to the reading's influence on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. John made reference to the outcry over the Thomas Edison 1910 silent film that a lot of people thought was blasphemous, particularly the creation scene. For those interested, the film is seen here in its entirety (all 15 minutes). Being a silent film buff, I enjoyed the discussion. The scene with the flames when the creature is created was actually filmed and shown backwards, which is what produces the really creepy effect. Given that this was probably the first film moving film most people had ever seen, one can understand the outcry. It is pretty wild, even by today's standards. This film was thought to have been lost for many years until it was released ...

I've been puttering around with my old desktop computer, as I am a computer geek at heart. Windows XP completely crashed on it a few years ago, and it has been sitting in my closet ever since. I decided to try different operating systems from the Linux world and experimented with several Linux based systems, including YLMS 3.0 , Fedora 14 , Ubuntu 10 , and the new Fedora 15/Ubuntu 11 Experimental Alphas. I had installed a much earlier Ubuntu OS on the desktop a few years back. I think it was either Ubuntu 6.0 or OpenSuSE . I never particularly cared for the early Linux Operating Systems. While they were functional, you had to know a bunch of computer code and command function, almost like the early MS-DOS command prompts. I could do it for the most part; however, adding any sort of Windows based programs or drivers (particularly internet and printer drivers) was a major pain. I finally gave up on the project. Linux operating systems are open source, which means the computer cod...

I saw this on Facebook this morning, thanks to my friend George Christensen (who is ironically now a member of Australian Parliament .)

It might have been an illusion, but I think I saw a crocus blooming in the yard up the block. Maybe this never ending winter is finally drawing to a close. 

After some 60 years, another St. Paul's church has been re-consecrated. Care to guess where? 

So, I broke down and got the full MLB.TV package from Major League Baseball. I have had the radio package for a few years, which is the radio feeds of all the games, but I splurged and got the full TV package since I now have a Roku internet . I can now watch or listen to every game on my regular TV in relatively high def. (I still have a tube TV because I refuse to get a flat screen.) I was again expecting a bit of a jerky picture, given the nature of an internet broadcast and high motion sports action. Honestly, I think what I see on the Roku internet stream is higher quality than even cable TV. It is an incredibly clear picture. I think baseball fans should be proud. I don't think there is a TV/media package anywhere in sports that compares, particularly if you watch it on your computer, as you can watch up to 4 games simultaneously and watch pretty much most minor league games as well (at least AA and above levels.) 

Some of these are pretty good.