Blogger Love

Thanks to all who have said nice things about the bloggage. You can tell the weekends my wife is working twelves because that's when the posts shoot up! Now what about that laundry...and finishing the hardwood floor I've been installing for ten months...?

I've put a couple other links to the right, links to skeptics magazine and the secular web. Why not? Why become insulated with authors who only say what I want to hear? Good arguments deserve to be heard, as well as not so good ones. It's just that I'll be darned if I'm going to use apologetics like a miracle sign: ah, that was a good argument, now I can kick back and smugly ignore the rest.

No doubt, apologetics can become a replacement for a personal and living faith (which the righteous really do have to live by); same with evangelism; these can be a compulsion even, a way to provide a feeling of certainty and order where anxiety exists (see Schermer's story at skeptics mag; he also columns in scientific american). Not that we shouldn't pursue apolgetics and evangelism! If it weren't for both, I don't know that I'd be here writing. But since I have never seen a physical miracle, questions have their place in my spiritual life. When I do see a physical miracle, I guarantee you guys will be the first to know.

Okay, I'm getting heavy again. Jeez. It's loud in here. Someone turn down the lecturn mic.

Fact is I am so appreciative for the support I've received from all who have responded. And what a disparate group. People I would never ever have seen again in my life are reading and writing to me. Not a lot of people, maybe a half dozen. But hey, I love this!

Now I need to trot over to your blogs and put in my two cents. Only fair.

Be well all.

t

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Step and the Consiliari

Wife and son have the bug and went out late to the midnight after thanksgiving sales...best of luck. I am far too old for that madness. I had my first meeting with my priest and formally announced my intention to enter discernment. Or, in the lingo, "articulated my call." I really don't like the "call" term. I mean, St. Paul, blinded for three days in Luke's account; now that's a call. Surely, Peter, fishing when Jesus shows up and says follow me; that's a call. My own complex process of discernment? Not sure if the term fits. I said a long time ago, right here on this blog, that I'd only enter ministry if 1) I had the desire 2) others had the desire for me and 3) circumstances permitted. I actually think number 2 has been the case, quietly the case, around me at my parish for some time; I'm sure I'll get the chance to explore that more deeply. Right now number 1 is pretty much still the case for me. I am trying to be very caref...
Read more

Hey Gang

Well, it's nice to be back. My life has changed to much since my last posts all I have time for is an update. Deep breath. I gave up the idea of the priesthood around the last time I wrote about it here, maybe a few months before. When I realized five years ago that my son would be starting his freshman year at college, and we'd be paying for half of it at least, splitting costs with his bio-dad, the same year I would start seminary I thought: this just cannot happen. My wife was still underpaid, working as an intern, and I had been the primary breadwinner all the years we've lived together and my son is, well, my son. It is my job to make his life as good as I can. It felt selfish, narcissistic, I am not sure of the word, but I knew I could not pay for both or was not willing to try. Maybe I should have, maybe I should have, but instead I began re inventing myself in other ways. First, anyone who actually reads this will be glad to know, my ocd symptoms, so jarring f...
Read more

On the Sacraments, Baptism (Christianity from the Inside 5.0)

This essay has sat on my hard drive for two weeks; it may not be done, but since I can't type well till my finger heals, here goes. I think I have almost an entirely evangelical audience (save romy, if she ever heads this way) so this may not seem very relevant. It is simply an issue I was working through for myself attending an Episcopal church and looking at church history. On the Sacraments: Baptism Salvation by faith alone, sola fide , is the absolute cornerstone of evangelical theology as I know it. Certainly that phrase as it's understood now has roots in the Reformation's reaction to medieval theology. Yet it's tough not to read Paul's arguments in Galatians, Romans, and elsewhere, and not see that he believes that what truly saves a person, what justifies a sinning soul before God, is faith. There are passages in the ot which seem to say the same thing (and Paul quotes them). In Paul's reading, sure Abraham was obedient to God, but befor...
Read more