A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His. -Roger Ebert, film-critic (1942-2013) Independent, never related to his word for the day, Anu Garg always gives something to think about at the tail end of his message. The word is usually interesting, but sometimes, as today (pungle), the thought is more intriguing than the word. I probably read this thought in Ebert’s book Life Itself: A Memoir but he had so many cogent things to say that it’s hard to remember. Anu stirs a good one this morning. Over a course of twenty-five or so years I served as an EfM mentor, a program of Bible and theological education by extension offered for lay people by the school of theology of The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. “Education for Ministry” is not meant to make ordained clergy of folks, it’s designed half and half to give an education similar in part to that re...

Tuesday morning: walking day, Tuesday and Thursday. Starting behind our school, we take turns choosing the route, my turn today, I’m thinking we may walk out Bunkers Cove Road past where several classmates, Cove School class of 1949, lived in those days, the forties. Thursday we go home exhausted, Tuesday concludes with breakfast and, on the way home, a visit with an extraordinary friend or two. We aren’t CrossFit candidates, we’re just staying alive in company with each other and common memories. Two good old boys enjoying the good old days. In the news this morning, two articles I especially liked. One, a high school senior and his graduation speech. Without intending such, he’s all about defiance of stupidity and the plain vanilla police. I pray he does well in life and that before his life is over there are many more like him.           http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/16/god-redacted-from-high-school-graduation-speech/ The other art...

St. Denio Goodness, for a holy man I do sometimes wander from the divine Subject. Or Object, don’t I, is the divinity Nominative or Accusative? May D be l.c. or capitalized, an issue in English that German solves: nouns are caps or is that rule fading? Is deity common or Proper, abstract as in Love, collective as in Elohim, animate, or compound as in heavenly host? Or theologically is God a verb: Love may be an active verb or an abstract noun, which is it? What means “God is Love” unless God is predicate nominative and a verb -- is I AM the same as I BE -- Sitting down with coffee first thing every morning I generally think for a moment about whether to open Pages to start typing and decide halfway through what it’s about, or to open Google News and see if Flt-370 has been found, or to open G-Mail, or to open Lectionary A and think on Bible readings for the upcoming Sunday. Probably most often, unless something hits as I swing round and place flat feet on the floor, I com...

Still thinking on the Trinity. One of the best explanations I’ve heard in 78 years, in yesterday’s sermon. Though I won’t recall or tell it well, perhaps the point will be taken. An English boy on assignment in France meets a German girl on the same assignment. Hitting it off, they do their best to communicate in their stumbling French. When it’s over, the boy returns home to England and the girl to her home in Germany. He soon receives a letter from her, a love letter, in German, which he cannot read. He goes to the library for reference books and and does his best to work through the letter word by word. Finally he gives up and accepts the letter for what it is, her expression of deep love for him. Yesterday I commented of the Trinity, “You’re not supposed to understand it. Just sing the love song.” It fits with the story of the boy, and his letter, and the girl. He can’t work it out perfectly, but he understands that he is deeply loved, and that’s all that matters. We d...

Someone said it just makes sense. Well, it don’t make no sense to me, not at all, is it too late to straighten it out? Even each Roman and Greek god was just one person, our God is three people, three. Check it out:   Quicunque Vult c ommonly called The Creed of Saint Athanasius Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish      everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity,      neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory      equal, the Majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. ...

This morning I might prefer to snicker through the squabbles over marijuana in Washington State, where prim holdouts in some municipalities have refused to issue retail licenses to legal distributors. Comes to mind from college fraternity days, a drinking song that we started with the tune to “My country ‘tis of thee” or the British national anthem, “Down with king alcohol,” then breaking into shouting chant, “ee-yi-yi-ee-yi-yi-dubya-see-tee-yuu,” mocking W.C.T.U., the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. It is a human perversion to rise up in self-righteousness to forbid, outlaw, even render unconstitutional those things we are against, the Prohibition Era for instance.  We freedom-loving Americans love to forbid and punish the “wicked,” laying our particular values and views on everyone else. In a smoke-filled room of the religious certitudinous, a martini toast to celebrate a constitutional amendment deciding who other people can love and marry. In a nation of the prim and c...

Not already, OMG please, not already Seems early for a CFB numnutz KnowNaught to be cruising BleacherReport for 2014 news and predictions, but I found some I like. Though my BR feed is PennState oriented it ranges far and wide, mainly B1G and SEC. Not much west coast coverage. PennState has been so quick and earnest to clean up after the debacle that my love for them returned that began immediately we arrived in the Harrisburg area in 1976 and could tell who was state boss and hero by the autographed pictures of Joe Paterno in every restaurant we sampled from that classy gourmet place on the West Shore of the Susquehanna to that rundown pizza dive on the shadiest backstreet of downtown Harrisburg, carry a firearm and leave the hubcaps in the trunk.  For all his goodness in so many ways, JoePa was as innocent as the day is long when it came to facing and dealing with the unthinkable unmentionable. Coach Paterno was a little older than I am, nine years, but close enough t...