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Name: Galfridus
Country: United States
State: Pennsylvania
Metro: Erie
Gender: Male


Interests: poetry, literature, technology, geography, theology, travel
Expertise: Foreign Relations, Comparative Politics, International Law, Byzantine Theology, Biomedical Engineering
Occupation: Clinical Engineering
Industry: Medical/Healthcare


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AIM: sakaara


Member Since: 12/10/2003
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Friday, December 25, 2009

с нами Бог!!


Monday, December 21, 2009

The Darkest Evening of the Year



Sunday, December 20, 2009

“And with fear and trembling stand…”

Have you ever read Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol?”  We’ve all seen the innumerable televised versions, but have you ever read the actual story?  I strongly recommend it.  It is a masterwork of both English and Christian literature and I read it every year at this time.  You can find it easily on the internet or in a library.  I’m endlessly enchanted by how something, which is essentially a horror story, has skillfully become a meaningful Christmas story.

“They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
"Spirit, are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end."”


Sunday, December 13, 2009

Painful Pasts

Just spent an hour or so going back through some of my old entries from Decemebers past.  It amused me, because there's some good stuff there.  It depressed me a bit because it is mostly better stuff than I have now.  It saddened me to read the comments of people who have abandoned Xanga.

To the people who aren't reading this: I love you.

To those of you who are: I love you better.


Thursday, December 10, 2009

Missing the Connection

This comes from Until Translucent via the estimable Buddhagazelle.

"An interesting piece from the Duke Div School blog, answering a graduate who wrote in asking how to deal with a congregation that didn't seem to appreciate the sacraments. The answer is quite insightful and helps me along a bit in my constant struggle to grasp how people formed in evangelicalism think about church (on a very basic, "why are we even here today?" level). Excerpt:
Different ecclesiologies are different games with different internally coherent sets of rules and strategies. Your congregation has been taught a set of rules taken from methods that go back to 19th century revivalist Charles Finney, channeled through Rick Warren. This is its fundamental purpose for worship: “Our goal is for individuals to be led into a deeper personal relationship with Jesus.” A strategy accompanies this rule: “We will use a variety of creative methods to enhance worshipers’ relationship to Jesus.” A related strategy: “Adherence to tradition tends to get in the way of a fresh, contemporary relationship with Jesus.”

A catholic ecclesiology, on the other hand, would have a different fundamental purpose for the assembly: “Our goal is to be the local manifestation of the universal Body of Christ, for the glorification of God.” A strategy would be: “We intend to worship in union with all the saints throughout all human history.” A related strategy: “Tradition has been handed down to us by the saints, and keeps us in union with the universal (catholic) church.”

What happens when you go through the historic catholic pattern of Word and Table with its Eucharistic Prayer in your context is something like this: You say, “It’s time to kick a field goal,” and your congregation asks, “How will that help us get to home plate?”
One thing I like about this is it helps clarify what's going on the more protestant appropriations of liturgy that are very common these days: they're essentially trying to incorporate liturgical actions as one among several tools for achieving the Finney purpose. This may or may not work - I'm sure it does in some cases - but it helps me see why I so often can't quite parse what's going on. It also helps explain why some important aspects of the liturgical vision of reality never seem to get appropriated in evangelical contexts -- they're just too far from the Finney vision of what church is for. "



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