or Good Friday


Christina Rossetti


 




Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
     That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,
     And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
     Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
     Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
     Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon-
     I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
     But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
     And smite a rock.

“It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles as well, and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact. And even if he does admit it, he will admit it as a fact of nature that was previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born from miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then, precisely because of his realism, he must also allow for miracles.” Dostoevsky in Brothers K, p 25

Let’s Get Jesus Back

A very thought provoking article written by Bill Moyers.

The Writer's Almanac: "Ham and Cheese on Rye

I am an old man sitting on a sagging dock,
fishing in the rain, with not a fish in miles:
it is a perfect night for fishing.

Droplets run down my glasses, blurring my vision,
but there's nothing to see beyond the circle of light
from the dock, anyway.

I know they're out there, lurking in the weeds,
hiding in shadows, waiting until hunger brings them out,
forcing them to react without thinking, making them
bite against their will.

Like them, I feel the gnaw of hunger working. Like them
I try to hold off, stay put, keep from being like all the rest.
But time wins out, wears down the will,
and I reach inside my coat for a ham and cheese on rye."

“It is in these things which we neither see nor feel that it is especially necessary to guard against the extravagance of our imagination, which forever inclines to stop beyond the bounds of truth and is with great difficulty restrained within the narrow line of facts.” Lavoisier in Elements of Chemistry

"Instead of applying observation to the things we wished to know, we have chosen rather to imagine them. Advancing from one ill-founded supposition to another, we have at last bewildered ourselves amidst a multitude of errors. These errors becoming prejudices, are, or course, adopted s principles, and we thus bewilder ourselves more and more. The method, too, by which we conduct our reasonings is as absurd; we abuse words which we do not understand, and call this the art of reasoning. When matters have been brought this length, when errors have been thus accumulated, there is but one remedy by which order can be restored to the faculty of thinking; this is to forget all that we have learned, to trace back our ideas to their source, to follow the train in which they rise, and as Bacon says, to frame the human understanding anew.” Abbé de Condillac (quoted by Lavoisier in Elements of Chemistry

The Writer's Almanac: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address.

Still good advice today!

Dick Staub:
Staublog -
Finding Your Identity in an Age of Polyvocality: "Culture says: (In the movie Fight Club) “Listen up, maggots, you are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” Faith says: You are fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image.

Culture Says: Work sucks just have fun:
Faith Says: Unique gifts equipping you for work that expresses your talent, provides for your family’s needs and allows you to be involved in God’s mission on earth.

Culture Says: Family is an illusion, marriage (and children are an inconvenience) Faith says: It is not good to be alone. Children are a gift from God.

Culture says: religion isn’t real and the church too-often promotes Christianity-lite.
Jesus says: I am the way the truth and the life. I have come that you will have life m ore abundant. Deny yourself, take up a cross, Follow me.
"

Dick Staub:
Staublog -
Love the Oscars? My Changing Appetite.: "Walter Bagehot said “The reason so few good books are written is that so few people who can write, know anything!” And Ingmar Bergman adds a theological insight: “Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days, the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans: eternal values, immortality and masterpiece were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished vulnerable and natural humility.”
"