Thought for the Day

Of all human pursuits the pursuit of wisdom is the most perfect, the most sublime, the most profitable, the most delightful.
--St. Thomas Aquinas

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Away for the Weekend

I will be away for the weekend and won't have access to computer until late Monday, 12/31/07.

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Thought for the Day

The consciousness of abiding safety in the bosom of the Church is one of the most serious obstacles to an honest confrontation with the Christian faith.
--Peter L. Berger

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Thought for the Day

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage."
- Lao-Tzu

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St. Bernard Parish

There is an interesting article in today's New York Times on the politics in St. Bernard's Parish, Louisiana. Junior Rodriguez who had been the parish president for 30 years lost the recent election. The mission team worked with Habitat for Humanity this past October in St. Bernard's Parish.

Interestingly, some of us met Junior the Monday that we received eleven inches of rain in about a 10 period of time. Some of the Habitat people where we were staying asked for volunteers to go to a neighborhood that was flooding and to help with sandbags. After we arrived, this rather colorful politician showed up and began talking with a few of us. As soon as he discovered that we weren't constituents, he moved on and began talking with the neighbors. It turns out that this person was Junior Rodriguez.

We observed how small the population was in St. Bernard parish and wondered what the future holds for the people there. The picture in the article captures the sense we had when we were there.

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Thought for the Day

Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.
--Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

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Christmas Day Prayer

Giver of all that is good,
we thank you today for the gift of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord,
who was born into poverty in a hard and cruel time,
who gave himself for us,
and lives with you in glory.

We thank you for all your friends and prophets who have gone before us,
and those who taught us to celebrate this feat of the Nativity with beloved
Scripture, and beloved carols, and loud rejoicing;
help us to teach those who come after us that Christmas is a holy time, a
time to seek reconciliation and peace.

Bless us, Lord, as we seek Christ in the lowly mangers of this world,
bless us, as we seek to honor the mystery of the Incarnation in our midst,
remembering always that you made us, and all humanity, in your divine
image.

Help us to gladly welcome today, and all days,
your Wisdom, our Power,
your Emmanuel, your Prince of Peace.
--Kathleen Norris
Place full text here

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Thought for the Day--December 24, 2007

The genealogy of Jesus reveals that God chooses to work with us as we are, using our weaknesses, even more than our strengths, to fulfill the divine purpose. At tonight's vigil, in a world as cold and cruel and unjust as it was at the time of Jesus' birth in a stable, we desire something better. And in desiring it, we come to believe that it is possible. We await its coming in hope.
--Kathleen Norris, in God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning in Christmas

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Sunday's Prayer

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Parable of the Talents--Today

Check out the article about a minister in Ohio who took Jesus' parable of the talents seriously and challenged his own congregation to live it out in their lives.

With $40,000 that several donors lent him, Reverend Throckmorton distributed $50 to each adult and $10 to each child and gave them seven weeks to see how much the congregation (of approximately 1700) could make by investing their talents. People who didn't feel comfortable with the challenge for any reason could opt out and return the $50 bill they received during the service. When the time was up, the congregation found that it had doubled the $40,000. They divided the money three ways and distributed it to three different missions. I wish I had thought of that!

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Thought for the Day

It is cheap and easy to decry the injustice of others, but desperately costly to confront our own.
--Richard B. Hayes

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More on Emerging Adults

This past week I started reading After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty-and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion by sociologist Robert Wuthnow (who wrote Habits of the Heart in the '80's). Wuthnow, the Gerhard R. Andlinger '52 Professor of Sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University, believes that the church needs to get its act together in understanding this group or it will suffer significant attrition over the coming years.

He writes,

Congregations could be a valuable source of support for young adults. They could be places where young adults gravitate to talk about the difficult decisions they are facing or to meet other people of the same age. Congregations could be guiding the career decisions of younger adults or helping them think about their budgets and their personal priorities. But, again to anticipate the evidence in subsequent chapters, this potential is often going unrealized. It will continue to go unrealized as long as congregations invest in youth programs for high school students and assume this is enough. It will also go unrealized if congregational leaders focus on their graying memberships and do not look more creatively to the future (13).

He uses the word, tinkering, to capture how young adults address religion and spirituality. He does not intend a negative connotation for this word which it sometimes carries; on the contrary he writes, "Tinkerers are the most resourceful people in any era" (13). A number of influences such as globalization, less job security and more social instability have led to this age group as tinkerers.

In the next installment of this book I will review the second chapter which deals with seven key trends that religious leaders need to understand if they are to understand and adjust in ways that will impact this generation.

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Thought for the Day

Unless we learn the meaning of mercy by exercising it towards others, we will never have any real knowledge of what it means to love Christ.
--Thomas Merton

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Thought for the Day

Humility is a Divine veil which covers our good deeds, and hides them from our eyes.
--St. John Climacus

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Thought for the Day

Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
--Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary

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Thought for the Day

Courage is a virtue only in so far as it is directed by prudence.
--Francois Fenelon

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Rewired Brain

I think I have mentioned that I am taking a course on "Understanding the Brain" on DVD through The Teaching Company. The brain and its functioning fascinates me and with the enormous strides that researchers have made in the last decade have left what little knowledge I had on the brain grossly inadequate. I also am interested in the topic for philosophical and theological reasons. The more that we learn, the more the tendency by at least some scientists to reduce "the mind" to the biological firing of neurons, to the brain, as renowned Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker does.

In any case, the HealthScience section of today's Boston Globe has an interesting article, "Brain Power," in it. Samantha Parma is a 16 year old who suffered a prenatal stroke which affected the functioning of most of the left hemisphere of her brain which controls speech, some language and some vision abilities, as well as controlling the right side of her body. Doctors tried to prepare her parents to expect a child of greatly diminished abilities.

However, while she has experienced some diminishment in certain abilities, for the most part she is like a normal teenager. The reason for her to live a normal life is her brain's ability to rewire itself. Because the stroke occurred before birth, the neural circuitry is more plastic than after birth and was able to do some adapting. She has gone through thousands of hours of doctor's appointments, and speech and physical therapies to arrive at where she is today.

Neuorscientists don't understand well how the rewiring works at this point, but hope to learn in the future so that they can help adults who have strokes regain abilities that they lose. It is a daunting task when you think about it. I learned in the course I'm taking that neuroscientists estimate that the brain is constituted by 300 billion neurons (brain cells) and that there are 300 trillion interconnections between them. The neural pathway that connects the left hemisphere of the brain to the right, the corpus callosum, contains 300 million axons (part of the neuron). So the challenge to understand all of this is daunting, to say the least.

The more I learn about the brain and its functioning, the more in awe of God's handiwork I am. I'm glad that we have made the kind of progress in our understanding of the amazing brain that Samantha is doing as well as she is.

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Thought for the Day

The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.
--Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

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Sunday's Prayer

O Holy One Who Comes, we turn again to you, and we open our hearts, we open our minds, we open our entire beings to your approach. We ask for strength and wisdom that we may now prepare the way. We ask that all may receive you in joy. Now and forever. Amen.

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Saturday's Poem

I wrote the following poem a couple of weeks ago that relates to Advent and Christmas.

Impervious to Wonder

It’s so early the night is still hard—
4 a.m., two hours before the first
fissures of light begin darkness’
dismantling—a jump on the Season,
parking lots glutted, vehicles emptied,

ready transports for consumption’s fruits.
Anticipation’s rush as doors swing open,
for perfect gifts—deeply discounted—
search for happiness and meaning leaves
a sugar high soon dissipated.

Where is wonder?
A finite world cradles infinity—mystery
penetrating the universe, love’s centripetal
force holding everything together found
on another cold night.

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Thought for the Day

Humor is one of God's most marvelous gifts. Humor gives us smiles, laughter, and gaiety. Humor reveals the roses and hides the thorns. Humor makes our heavy burden light and smooths the rough spots in our pathways. Humor endows us with the capacity to clarify the obscure, to simplify the complex, to deflate the pompous, to chastise the arrogant, to point a moral, and to adorn a tale.
--Sam Ervin, Humor of a Country Lawyer

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Thought for the Day

To believe in God must mean to live in such a manner that life could not possibly be lived if God did not exist.
--Jacques Maritain

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Science and Religion, con't

One can hardly pick up the paper or a magazine without finding an article that pits evolution against faith or religion. The New York Times has an article that refers to this in terms of the differences between politics in the U.S. and in Europe. I find most of the articles in the popular press fairly simplistic as well as reductionistic.

A excellent article that treats this issue with both intelligence and care was written by Avery Cardinal Dulles in the October 2007 issue of First Things. In "God and Evolution" Dulles attempts to address the issue of evolution from a Christian position. His introduction refers to a week of study on science and religion at Castel Gandolfo sponsored by the pope in September 1987. Cardinal Dulles summarizes part of a letter that the pope wrote to those involved in the dialogue:

He [the pope] recommended a program of dialogue and interaction, in which science and religion would seek neither to supplant each other nor to ignore each other. They should search together for a more thorough understanding of one another's competencies and limitations, and they should look especially for common ground. Science should not try to become religion, nor should religion seek to take the place of science. Science can purify religion from error and superstition, while religion purifies science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each discipline should therefore retain its integrity and yet be open to the insights and discoveries of the other.

If only we would heed this advise!

Cardinal Dulles summarizes several different positions that Christians take concerning evolution. (He does not consider creationism, i.e., that the world was made in six days and began 6006 B.C. credible and does not address this view.) The first group represented by Francis Collins 'accepts the Darwinist account as accurate on the scientific level but rejects Darwinism as a philosophical system. This group believes that God uses the processes of evolution to work out his creative plan. The second group, Intelligent Design represented by Michael Behe, believe that the only way to make sense of the history of life is to see God's direct intervention at particular periods (like the development of the eye, for example). The third group represented by philosopher of science, Michael Polanyi, "agree that biological organism cannot be understood by the laws of mechanics alone."

He doesn't attempt to adjudicate between the three, although he hangs his hat on the peg of the third group. But he makes the point that reductionistic science purports to reduce all knowledge to what can be ascertained by the scientific method. As he notes,

Some contemporary scientific atheists are so caught up in the methodology of their discipline that they imagine it must be the only method for solving every problem. But other methods are needed for grappling with questions of another order. Science and technology (science's offspring) are totally inadequate in the field of morality...The tendency of science, when it gains the upper hand, is to do whatever lies within its capacity, without regard for moral constraints...To distinguish between the right and wrong use of power, and to motivate human beings to do what is right even when it does not suit their convenience, requires recourse to moral and religious norms.

We need to better inform ourselves about the relationship between science and religion especially in relation to the issues involved in evolution so that we can elude the simplistic arguing that occurs in the popular press and so that we can engage in dialogue that is thoughtful and gracious that will lead to greater understanding.

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Thoughts for the Day

The Internet is an essentially gnostic, disembodied medium: You can dispense ideas through it, but not sacraments, community, or embodiment.
--Jason Byassee

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Thought for the Day

God only comes to those who ask him to come; and he cannot refuse to come to those who implore him long, often and ardently.
--Simone Weil, Waiting for God

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Thought for the Day

Everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to.
--Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism

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Thought for the Day

To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power.
--George MacDonald

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Sunday's Prayer

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Humans, Good and Evil

The feature article by Jeffrey Kluger, "What Makes Us Good/Evil," for the December 3, 2007 issue of Time magazine is about the relationship of good and evil to neural circuitry in the brain. The subheading reads, "Humans are the planet's most noble creatures--and its most savage. Science is discovering why."

I find the progress that research makes interesting. For example, researches are discovering the locations in the brain that are associated with empathy as well as the areas involved in moral reasoning. Kluger notes that humans have difficulty with "the other." Those whom we do not consider "us" can quickly be the targets for inhuman behavior. The blood soaked 20th century is evidence enough to demonstrate that.

However, I find the notion that the "cure" for human immorality lies in understanding and manipulating the neural circuitry in the brain a step into fantasyland. Kluger concludes the article by saying,

For grossly imperfect creatures like us, morality may be the steepest of all developmental mountains. Our opposable thumbs and big brains gave us the tools to dominate the planet, but wisdom comes more slowly than physical hardware. We surely have a lot of killing and savagery ahead of us beforewe fully civilize ourselves.The hope--a realistic one, perhaps--is that the struggles still to come are fewer than those left behind.

I hope that we keep making progress in understanding the brain, but I think our hope for becoming better lies in a different direction.

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Thought for the Day

It is one thing to see the land of peace from a wooded ridge...and another to tread the road that leads to it.
--St. Augustine

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Thought for the Day

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
--Chinese Proverb

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Flash Forward

The sermon title for this Sunday's service is "Is Peace a Pipe Dream?" If you look at the texts, Isaiah 11:1-10, Psalm 72, Romans 15:4-13, and Matthew 3:1-12, all but the last mention peace.

We refer to Jesus as the Prince of Peace. But as I look around the world, I see a violent, broken world that exhibits very little peace. Even Jesus in Matthew 10:34 tells his followers that he does "not come to bring peace, but a sword." The featured article in the November 3-9 issue of The Economist titled, "The New Wars of Religion," discusses the religious conflict currently afflicting the world. What do we make of all of this as followers of the Prince of Peace?

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Thought for the Day

The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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Thought for the Day

The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
--Joseph Joubert

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Virtual Friendship

I read an interesting article,Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism," recently in the Summer 2007 issue of The New Atlantis. Christine Rosen, the author, discusses the social networking groups like Facebook and MySpace on the internet.

In her introduction she writes,

Although social networking sites are in their infancy we are seeing their impact culturally: in language (where to friend is now a verb), in politics (where it is de rigueur for presidential aspirants to catalogue their virtues on MySpace), and on college campuses (where not using Facebook can be a social handicap). But we are only beginning to come to grips with the consequences of our use of these sites: for friendship, and for our notions of privacy, authenticity, community, and identity...Does this technology, with its constant demands to collect (friends and status), and perform (by marketing ourselves), in some ways undermine our ability to attain what it promises--a surer sense of who we are and where we belong? The Delphic oracle's guidance was know thyself. Today, in the world of online social networks, the oracle's advice might be show thyself (15-16).

I think Rosen has written an insightful article that asks important questions. One of the basic ones is, What is friendship? It seems to me that "friend" and "friendship" has been devalued in cyberspace, and may, indeed, lead to more superficial friendships. Rosen writes, "The structure of social networking sites also encourages the bureaucratization of friendship. Each sit has its own terminology, but among the words that users employ most often is 'managing'...There is something Orwellian about the management-speak on social networking sites..."(27).

The gospel, at its core, is about relationships: with God and with others. It is about messy relationships, imperfect relationships, where grace and forgiveness are the mortar that makes everything possible. I wonder what effect these social networking sites will have on our young people in terms of understanding and living the gospel.

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Thought for the Day

The gospel is not a location to be defended. It is an alternate reality based on the person of Jesus Christ, who has called around himself a new community to live his life out in the world of hope, courage, and joy.
--Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor and Chaos

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The Monday Morning Quarterback

The focus of yesterday's sermon was our ability to experience wonder at what God has done in the incarnation. I argued that a prerequisite for experiencing wonder is the necessity of slowing down. The more our lives are crammed full of activities, the faster the pace at which we live, the less ability we have to experience wonder.

Imagine riding in a vehicle that is moving at a high rate of speed. You can't really focus on what is around you, to the side of you. The faster you go, the less peripheral vision you have. In order to experience wonder, we need to increase the field of our peripheral vision.

Of course trying to slow down in December sounds oxymoronic: during this time of year the pace of life seems to move up several notches. I suggested that having a daily devotional; thanking God for slowing us down in traffic or in line at the check-out counter and reflecting on God, on God's creation, on the incarnation; observing little children and their capacity to express wonder; sharing with spiritual friends about the wonder of what God has done are all small ways that we can incorporate into our lives that will help us to slow down and experience wonder.

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Thought for the Day

Every great person has first learned how to obey, whom to obey, and when to obey.
--William Ward

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Sunday's Prayer

First Sunday in Advent

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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Saturday's Pot Pourri

I have run across a number of interesting articles I thought worth bringing to people's attention. The New York Times has an article, "When football moves to head of the class" about football players who take few and easy classes to stay eligible to play. Matt Ryan, quarterback for BC (which plays Virginia Tech today for the conference title) already has his degree and takes three night school courses. Any thoughts?

Another interesting article, "Gospel Truth," in today's New York Times concerns the National Geographic's "sensational" translation of the Gospel of Judas last year. Scholar April D. Deconick criticizes the translation and the process that was used to translate the manuscript.

Lastly, Time magazine has an interesting article, "Sunday School for Atheists." The author notes,

But some nonbelievers are beginning to think they might need something [values/moral education] for their children. "When you have kids," says Julie Willey, a design engineer, "you start to notice that your co-workers or friends have church groups to help teach their kids values and to be able to lean on." So every week, Willey, who was raised Buddhist and says she has never believed in God, and her husband pack their four kids into their blue minivan and head to the Humanist Community Center in Palo Alto, Calif., for atheist Sunday school.

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Thought for the Day

Charity, to be fruitful, must cost us.
--Mother Teresa

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