Boy, howdy, did someone miss the point

No, I am not making this up.

Widow's Mite Jewelry - 14k Gold Cross Pendant with genuine Excavated Widow's Mite Coin

Widow's Mite Jewelry holds a "widow's mite", an excavated coin expertly set in 14k Gold. The Widow's Mite Coin was used in first century Palestine (modern day Israel). Comes with Certificate of Authenticity.

Regular price: $1,076.00
Sale price: $661.00
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Jesus wept. And then banged his head on the table. Repeatedly.

Sunday Funnies

Boy, was I not into it this year. Also,



Woo hoo (one finger circling in the air).

On to whatever sports season this is. Curling. Winter Olympics, here we come!

William Temple

Hot on the heels of Richard Hooker, we celebrate the feast of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury 1942-44 (among other things). My favorite part of his biography was this:

He was at Oxford (Balliol) from 1900 to 1904, and was president of the Oxford Union (the debating society of the University). Here he developed a remarkable ability to sum up an issue, expressing the pros and cons so clearly and fairly that the original opponents often ended up agreeing with each other. This ability served him in good stead later when he moderated conferences on theological and social issues. However, it was not just a useful talent for settling disputes. It was, or developed into, an important part of his philosophy, a belief in Dialectic, derived from Hegel and from Plato. He thought that beliefs and ideas reach their full maturity through their response to opposing ideas. (emphasis mine, natch.)

Why am I thinking that the response in question is a bit more than "I'm right, you're wrong, I hate you, nanny nanny boo boo"?

A lot of people would call William Temple wishy-washy, I suppose. (One quote I found from him was, "Reacting to evangelists' fondness for quoting Isaiah 1:18, 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. . . .' [Temple replied,] 'All my sins are grey.'") But I think it's a much harder and more treacherous road to understand the position that you instinctively oppose, knowing that to understand mean you might change.

Happy 40th Birthday Sesame Street

We grew up together. You continue to amuse.

Collect for the feast of Richard Hooker

O God of truth and peace, you raised up your servant Richard Hooker in a day of bitter controversy to defend with sound reasoning and great charity the catholic and reformed religion: Grant that we may maintain that middle way, not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Boy, we could use a Richard Hooker or two, couldn't we?

Happy All Saints Day!

It's a wonderful day to remember that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses.
The image is from the Dancing Saints icon at St. Gregory Nyssa in SF. More images of the icon here.

I'm on vacation, so blogging will be sporadic over the next week or so. Happy November to you!

From the theological closet: Good Christian = Happy Christian

Reading these books made me think of an unexpressed but strongly implied belief from my childhood--namely, that if you are unhappy, there is something wrong with your Walk With The Lord.

Sunday School in junior high and high school always started with a few songs. Here's one of the ones we sang practically every week throughout junior high school.

It's a happy day
and I just love the weather!
It's a happy day
and I'm livin' it for my Lord.
(shoo-be-doo-bop-bop)
It's a happy day
and things are gonna get better
livin' each day by the promises in God's Word.
It's a happy day, oh yeah!

verse two went like this:

It's a grumpy day
and I can't stand the weather.
It's a grumpy day
and I'm living it for myself
(phlllbbbt)
It's a grumpy day
and things aren't gonna get better
livin' each day with the Bible on my shelf.
It's a grumpy day, oh yeah.

OK, so how bad is this theology? Pretty darn bad. But, boy, this song has stuck with me now for over 30 years. And it came roaring back with the desperate up-beatness of the people Kevin Roose encountered at Liberty University.

When I was looking at colleges, I looked for about 20 seconds at Wheaton College, a Christian college in Illinois. I couldn't do it for two reasons: one was the intellectual dishonesty I heard in the tour when our tour guide told us that there were rules against drinking, smoking, and dancing, "not that we think dancing is wrong, but it's tradition;" and the other was seeing the encounters between people on campus, over-exuberant to the point of being unnerving. "Hyper-happy Christians," I labeled it to my parents afterwards.

I mean, I'm a person who reads obituaries for fun. Can you imagine how much it would annoy me to have people constantly telling me to cheer up? Smile, God loves you? I hate that. And the implication that if you're unhappy or don't like the weather it's because you're living for yourself--boy, is that pernicious. This has got to go. Out. Not even to Goodwill with you. In the trash.

I'm going to go be grumpy now. And I'm going to enjoy it. Phhlllbbbt.