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Three droids for the Coder Kings under the sky
 Seven for the Venture Lords in their halls of stone
  Nine for Tech Support doomed to die
    One for the Droid Lord on his Dark Throne
        In the land of Google where the data lie

 One droid to rule them all
  One droid to find them
    One droid to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them
    In the land of Google where the data lie.

Sponsa Christi quae per orbem

Bride of Christ, whose glorious warfare
Here on earth hath never rest;
Lift thy voice, and tell the triumphs
Of the holy and the blest;
Joyous be the day we hallow,
Feast of all the saints on high,
Earth and Heav’n together blending
In one solemn harmony.

First the blessèd virgin mother,
Reunited to her Son,
Leads the host of ransomed people,
Who unfading crowns have won;
John, the herald, Christ’s forerunner,
More than prophet, leads his throng,
Seer and patriarch responsive
Unto psalmist in their song.

Lo, the twelve, majestic princes,
In the court of Jesus sit,
Calmly watching, while the conflict
Rages far beneath their feet;
Lo, the martyrs, robed in crimson,
Sign of life blood freely spent,
Finding life, because they lost it,
Dwell in undisturbed content.

All the saintly host who witnessed
Good confessions for His sake—
Priest and deacon, world renouncing,
Of their Master’s joy partake;
Virgins to the Lamb devoted,
Following with steadfast love,
Bring their lilies and their roses
To the marriage feast above.

All, their happy lot fulfilling,
God omnipotent proclaim;
Holy, holy, holy, crying,
Glory to His holy name!
So may God in mercy grant us
Here to serve in holiness,
Till He call us to the portion
Which His saints in light possess.


- Translated from Latin by John Ellerton (1826-1893)

The Abrahamic Faiths

"All gods are one god, and all goddesses are one goddess, and there is one initiator."
 - Dion Fortune, The Sea Priestess

In some streams of modern Neopaganism and New Age teaching this text by Dion Fortune is nearly a credo: that there is but One Divine Source, no matter what the name that we call, what the path that we walk.  This teaching reaches back to ancient mystery religions and Western philosophy.  Socrates was already discussing "god" rather than "gods". This is not a theological statement about the Deity, but about man: We make up stories about god or gods but we're all talking about the same thing.

For Neopagans, there is an on-going discussion about "the gods" and reality: are the gods "real" or just projections onto a Nameless Mystery or only Jungian Archetypes that help us understand ourselves? All of these questions play out in other communities, of course.  One Anglican priest, known to me to be a self described Atheist, reports to having rediscovered his inner deity by reading Rodney Bromford's "Symmetry of God", a purely psychological discussion of the "god idea" as good for self-healing.  Think also of the "Higher Power" of the 12 Step Programs, where the "Higher Power" can be anything from "a god" to a tree, the Superego. From there you can either say that "thing" is a real thing or not.  The steps between "All gods are one God" and "God is dead" and "There is no god" are all far too short.

It's Pr0nz All the Way Down

I don't need to rehash any statistics about pornography on the internet. If you want to know anything about that, please go to Fight the New Drug.

But there's porn everywhere. Our whole culture is devoted to Porn. There's "Flesh Porn" if you will, which comes in any number of orientations and permutations.  But there is also Food Porn, Room Porn, Design Porn, Shopping Pron, what else... Increasingly I feel the "ironic" selection of "porn" is those categories is exactly right.  What is the Food Network if not porn for foodies? What is HGTV if not porn for Designers? Personally some of my favourite porn is Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, Jacques Peppin's various cooking shows, and The Frugal Gourmet.

Advertising is porn, of course.  That goes without saying. We see something designed to stir up covetousness within us.

The movie, Dances with Wolves, is a kind of porn as well: great western expanses, loud "American" style classical soundtrack music, and stirring images that strike chords of patriotic American exceptionalism.

9/11 is porn.  Not only for terrorists for whom it is more of a wet dream, but also for Americans for whom it is - like Dances with Wolves - a collection of stirring images and patriotic feelings drummed up by playing on the same pathways in the brain that actual patriotism would hit.

Almost everything in our culture is porn: fake images designed to stir up some emotion or another.

And we go straight for it.

Granted it was reading up about "real" (sexual) porn that caused me to realize this, but our collections of pictures of everything from Baseball Cards to movie stars, from museums to even icons. Anytime we let a collection of beauty become objectified, it's porn.

Thing is, we do it a lot.

Anglophilia

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green & pleasant Land

A Church in Exile

I'm Eastern Orthodox.

In my lifetime... members of the Church were killed for confessing their faith by Communists. Members of the  Church were expelled from their schools by Turks. Members of the Church had their communities bulldozed by Israelis.

We get tax benefits form the state that we refuse to give up.
We get payments to our charities that we bend over backwards to keep.
Our clergy are invited to serve in the military (and we let them do so).

Yup.

Exile.

I know it sucks to not be the center of attention any more, but let's find the blessing in not sucking up to Caesar so much any more.

So let's get saved, ok?

Guard Your Peace!

A friend of mine who is a Priest reported in a homily that once he was talking to a friend of his, who is a Bishop: not his own Bishop, mind you, but rather a trusted friend and mentor. My friend, the priest, was complaining about all kinds of things until it went from simply whinging to nearly ranting. Suddenly the Bishop said, rather loudly, "Father! Guard your peace!"

I thought of that story recently reading in 1 Peter where the Apostle, quoting from the Psalms, urges us who would "Love life and see good days" to, among other things, "seek peace and ensue it". What is peace? What am I not only supposed to seek and to ensue (chase after)?  I found the following from Strong's to be of great interest on the word "peace" or ειρηνη in Greek:

irḗnē (from eirō, "to join, tie together into a whole") – properly, wholeness, i.e. when all essential parts are joined together; peace (God's gift of wholeness).

It ties in well, pun intended, with several other important Greek words: σῴζω - to make whole (also "to save"); from whence we also get σωτήρ - the one who makes us whole (also "savior"), ie Jesus. I found myself wondering if "Salvation" might not be seen as this "peace" that the Bishop was asking my friend to "guard".

Christian salvation is not the following:

1. We sin.
2. God exiles us from Heaven/banishes us to Hell.
3. Jesus paid for our sins.
4. We get into Heaven/get out of Hell free.

There are many claiming to be Christian who teach that. But the Church founded by Christ has never taught it.  Salvation Can't be taught in a sound bite or in a four-point tract from Campus Crusade. Here rather, is the Faith Once Delivered to the Saints:

• God is Life.
• There is a difference between Life (which can never end) and just breathing - which will stop. The difference is so great that the New Testament has two different words for these two different types of living.
• Our primary calling is to God's Life - but our weakness leads us into distraction.  
• Our distraction divides us from the divine Life, loops us into ourselves. Our desires become what feeds us: we settle for smog and dust rather than the pure, clean air of the mountainside.
• We confuse our petty choices and appetites with divine promptings. We mistake our passions for our souls.
• We end up eating to survive, killing to get on with only breathing. When food runs out or our age and weakness destroy our ability to get food or our other desires, we stop breathing.
• Then we die.
• Try as we might humans have never found a way to get over that cycle - or to simply give up be satisfied with being trapped in it. We know there is something more: we feel it in our guts. 
• Denying that gut feeling leads to depression, psychosis, megalomania, fear, hate. More death.
• Humanity runs this road together, Over and over.
• Jesus is God - Life - grafted into humanity. (We are all one; Jesus is one of us. God is one of us.)
• God's life is connected to us.
• Jesus heals the division, restores our wholeness.
• We need only to live it (by first changing our mind about what real living actually is) in order to participate in the healing of the division between us and God, between us and each other. 
• Living God's life makes us whole, heals us.
• Brings us peace.

But it is so easy to get distracted.

Guard your peace.