When dealing with us in a disciplinary situation in which we'd avoided punishment this Time but sure as aitch would get it next Time, and there'd dee well better not BE a next Time, our father would conclude, "... and that's not a threat, that's a promise."  It comes to mind at this Time every year as the church sinks into Advent season with its promise or threat of the End of Days and the Second Coming of Christ to judge us. As in  Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Not a celebratory prospect, "Why would you have the Day of the Lord, is it not a day of darkness, not of light?" At any event, it's a dusky, nebulous, threat for a world whose ending, scientifically scheduled, is on calendar for some four billion years hence. Yes, the trumpet could sound for a sudden Mass Extinction Event as we head to church this morning, but not very threatening to the modern mind, w e can ignore it and turn all our Advent attention to deco...

Tangentially in my life I know a young man whom I admire tremendously for the almost defiant way he has lived and is living his life, seemingly random, no evident life-plan; detaching and off on his own after college, his own person, tied to nobody's expectations of "normal" but heading out, off and far away to places only he has been, would go and abide a while. Still today, a decade or a dozen years after college graduation, on his way to whatever his dream turns out to be, maybe simply settling into it as it develops, unplanned, just happening.  While reading Rachel Kushner's essay below, and thinking of myself in that stage of life that, if going back and doing over I wouldn't change a thing, but if doing a second Time I would do so differently, I thought of him and his life that he claimed and is living his own way instead of living his life everybody else's way. It's an ideal, at least for me, a dreamer of sorts. My dreams can wander. I kicked into M...

The article "Give Thanks" is from The Morning issue of the NYT for Thanksgiving Day: Give thanks Here’s a Thanksgiving mantra, though: Everything is going to be all right. That turkey you’re roasting for the first or millionth time? It’s going to be fine, even if you overcook the breasts. That casserole your cousin’s bringing, again, as she always does, with the marshmallows and underdone yams? It won’t hurt anyone. The potluck you’ve been invited to will be fine. Your stepfather’s enjoying himself, frying a bird on the slope of the driveway. Step away. You have a fire extinguisher. (Right?) Give thanks for friendship, for family, for whatever it is you find yourself doing today on this strange secular holiday that binds so many of us together in the presence of food and drink. You’re good. She’s good. They’re good. On Thanksgiving, we’re all good. I’ll tell you four more things about the holiday before we get to the rest of the news. First, if you’re just starting to sketch ...

Recently in the 10:30 Sunday worship service at our parish we were using Eucharistic Prayer C with its images God of all power, Ruler of the Universe, you are worthy of glory and praise. Glory to you for ever and ever. At your command* all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home. By your will they were created and have their being. From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill.  very powerful, and, to me with my own internal images that, in my Time with my byline "No manner of belief makes anything True," and my ongoing struggle "Seek The Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What It Will," have so influenced and shifted my image and images of the divine. "Who or What is God?" my seminary theology professor used to challenge us, and his response:  God is Whoever or Whatever led Israel out of Egypt. Go...