Spring has arrived, and that means the wee birds and beasts are quite active. Some days more than others. Last week while sitting outside there were 4 chipmunks gamboling about the yard, and the deck, and all about, chasing each other, constantly moving. They came pretty close to me without too much concern, up the stairs, behind the kayak, out on the other side.

I got back into posting and then fell off. Well, there are a few reasons for that. One is because of that Amazon Vine program I talk about occasionally, where I get a few free items each month in exchange for a review posted on their website. A few days ago I got Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 and between the weather being extraordinary and having to unload programs, do a fresh install of a new operating system, and reload programs on my desktop I’ve not been thinking about the usual posts. Vista works quite wonderfully, by the way. Very beautiful. I’m quite impressed.

Now I feel better about avoiding the ostentation of the white middle class bourgeoisie that is Macintosh.

The other reason is because I’ve a post brewing in my head on my conference experiences that relates to the session on peace. I very much enjoyed the session, but have some questions and thoughts which are, well, political. I’ve a political side to me that I don’t often express any more, not least because most of those who I know and who I resonate with on so many other issues tend to have sharply different political opinions. And being that my publisher is associated with the Quakers, it’s not entirely fitting that I spend time talking about my various thoughts on war and peace.

I’m somewhat in a murky middle on that issue, and might be offensive to different sides. So, that post is still brewing. And the brewing process tends to get in the way of other thoughts.

But I do have a few pictures of a chipmunk that I’ll be posting today.

The weather is quite cold and overcast this morning. Though, yesterday I did get some more software in the mail: CorelDraw Suite x4. It seems quite, quite user friendly and robust (without having the dreaded Adobe bloat) so I might get caught up in that instead.

The painted lady butterflies are migrating. And it might be the biggest migration ever seen.

Millions of painted lady butterflies that fluttered into California’s Central Valley in the last week of March could be just the advance guard of one of the largest migrations of the species on record, said Arthur Shapiro, a professor and expert on butterflies at UC Davis.

“This may be the biggest migration of modern times,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro said he is getting reports of “billions” of butterflies around Trona, near Death Valley, and in the San Fernando Valley. More waves of butterflies are likely to appear in central California over the next few weeks as the insects take wing.

Painted lady butterflies, known by the scientific name Vanessa cardui, spend the winter in the desert. As caterpillars turn into adults in the spring, they migrate north in search of fresh food and breeding grounds, powered by a supply of yellow fat they have built up over the winter.

Painted ladies migrate every year, but usually less conspicuously and in far fewer numbers. This year, however, exceptionally high winter rainfall in southern California has created a bumper crop of plants for the caterpillars to eat, fuelling a population boom, Shapiro said.

The butterflies take about three days to reach the Central Valley, and the current generation will fly as far as southern Oregon. Their offspring will fly on to reach British Columbia by summer, before heading south again in the fall.

I’m sitting in the middle of a thoroughfare. A constant stream, hundreds going by, a dozen at a time, coming from the south east and heading north west. Off to the Central Valley of California apparently. They don’t stop. They are flying with purpose.

My camera batteries died when I tried to take pics. But for now, a portrait from elsewhere.

Christ is risen.

Happy Easter!!

The Stations of the Cross are an important meditation. But focusing so much on that leaves out so much of what we really are about. We’re not only forgiven, we are now free to really begin to live, live free now and through eternity.

In thinking of this, after several years of focusing on the Stations of the Cross as both a physical experience at the church I worked at and as a written exercise I thought it worthwhile to have a go at the Stations of the Resurrection. I’ve heard since there are other forms of this, but as I was going by my own inspiration and couldn’t find guidance at the time I have chosen these fourteen emphases, beginning with Easter and ending on Pentecost.

Someday, given the space and opportunity again, it might be fun to put these into some kind of physical, sensory, experience.

For now… writing and art. Enjoy these Stations of the Resurrection.

He is risen indeed.

This is one of the more unusual days in the religious calendar. Friday is the crucifixion, that day in which we say that our sins were cleansed by the sacrifice of the Lamb. He took on the burden so we would not.

Tomorrow we celebrate the resurrection, the time in which death itself lost its sting, so that we who are of the Faith fear Sheol no more. To live is Christ, Paul says, and to die is gain. Death is but a transition from life to Life.

Saturday, today, is in between. Why didn’t Jesus come out on the Sabbath? Was it out of respect for the Law? Sunday had no special relevance until he made it so. Yes, the prophecies mention three days… why? Christ is not beholden to the prophecies, they are beholden to him. A curious consideration, and unknowable.

What were the disciples thinking? The Twelve, the others? Years of their lives had been spent with the man now dead. They could not return home, for traveling was forbidden for the most part. So they stayed, their lives lost, dead even though still alive. Already Christ had died on this day, he had not yet risen. They didn’t know he would. He told them, but they didn’t understand.

How many cursed Christ on this day for being deceitful? How many felt really bad about it after he rose again?

We live in the middle of the three days of the Passion, the time between times, Christ has come, Christ will come again. Already, not yet. Hoped for realities which are not apparent, no longer slaves to sin though sinners indeed, free and not free, alive and not alive, strong and weak, hopeful and fearful, that is our state. Yes, keeping the eye on the end is what helps us through the now, transforming our perspective even in the present so as to anticipate the future, letting us see time beyond time while we walk through time.

But we are living in the Saturday, the day between a day and a day, in which we expect everything and feel the loss of everything. Christ has told us what to expect, but we don’t really understand or believe it… just look at our lives, our hearts.

Saturday is an awkward day, neither here nor there. And so, it is a day of rest.

For a lot of reasons Holy Saturday is my most precious religious holiday. It is the one which I live with and the one which suits my soul. This is the day in which I resonate with the meaning in a profound way. This is Holy Saturday. My whole life thus far is lived on this Saturday. Christ has died. May Christ be resurrected. May the peace of God come into our hearts, and help us wait patiently for the fullness of Christ to enter our world for all eternity. Amen and amen.

This has long been one of my favorite religious days. Because it is the one that makes sense to me. It is the one that fits with my life thus far. As I see new changes ahead, and, in some ways, begin to maybe even see Easter’s dawn, I think it right to remember what I’ve written in the past on this holy day.

Here’s one from 2004:

There is a slight haze in the sky, some stars shining through, many not. All is quiet, not a sound, odd for a holiday weekend. No wind, no movement. Perfectly still, the noise I make echoing through the silence.

I felt this a day of rest, and rested accordingly, going for a wonderful jog through the hills, enjoying the beauty of the day. My soul felt at ease, and I let it enjoy the feeling.

It is Saturday, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. This day has more and more meaning to me as the years go by, some of which I’ve written about in other places, some of which still I reflect on.

This being a journal of my spirit and soul I think it’s good to say how much I identify with this day more than tomorrow or yesterday. I feel forgiven, I have no guilt, I do not feel the weight of my own sins. They have been released and I am a slave to nothing. And yet, I do not feel resurrected. The weight of life’s difficulties weighs on my soul, my doubts and confidence balance each other out, each gaining sway for their own time. I taste of new life, I do not dwell in new life. Much has begun, nothing is resolved. I live in utter faith that the work God has started in me will be finished, with wonderful results. There is no actual indication this is the case.

Indeed, with all of the pomp and celebration of Easter, I feel myself distant from it, not because I do not understand the significance of the day, I just wait for my own Easter, along with the ultimate Easter. Today is my day.

Because I’ve been saturated in the Christian world for so long I wonder if it is not just overexposure. I was born into the church, and have no memory of not being a Christian. Thus that transition is missing for me. So, the joy and celebration of Easter is something I taste, but have more contrived emotions in celebration than real excitement.

Of course I live the Easter life in part, the presence of the Holy Spirit in me is a result of Easter. Had Christ stayed or not risen, the Holy Spirit would not have been sent. So, that is a consideration.

But, too much of me now identifies with those dark words of Wesley and others, who miss God even as they seek him the most. It is Saturday, and all I have to do is wait, and pray, and continue to believe. Christ, we say tomorrow, has risen indeed. So too he rises in each of our lives. That is the wonder of Biblical prophecy and imagery, it means more than it means, though it does not mean less. Christ and Easter are the history, the depth of the theology of the Faith, and yet they still speak to us, meaning more than just what they meant 1,970 years ago.

The disciples sat together in someone’s house, weeping and remembering, hoping that something would happen, not yet fully without hope, still lost in the sudden change. The women were ready to go to the tomb as soon as it turned light, to do what they could, the next step they saw. That’s all I can do, the next step before me, whatever it is. For one day, I will be going about my tasks, and Easter will come, a power beyond me, changing all in an instant. He does make all things new, is making all things new.

It is Saturday, however, and all we have on this day is a promise. Such is our lives, such is my life. Praise be to the Three-in-One.

Good Friday

O my chief good,
How shall I measure out thy blood?
How shall I count what thee befell,
And each grief tell?

Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one start show’d thy first breath,
Shall all thy death?

Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?
Or cannot leaves, but fruit, be sign
Of the true vine?

Then let each hour
Of my whole life one grief devour:
That thy distress through all may run,
And be my sun.

Or rather let
My several sins their sorrows get;
That as each beast his cure doth know,
Each sin may so.

Since blood is fittest, Lord, to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloody fight;
My heart hath store, write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sin:

That when sin spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes
All come to lodge there, sin may say,
No room for me, and fly away.

Sin being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sin take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.

~George Herbert

It was added late to the schedule so I’m really glad I noticed it. I was wanting to jump right in and this was a perfect way to do it, albeit rather unexpected.

I’ve long been interested in the Orthodox church. Well, not really all that long. Ten years or so. When I was first really introduced to it I wasn’t interested at all. It was in my Historical Theology class. Robert Webber was very interested in Orthodoxy and brought in a man who was once an Evangelical firebrand and then converted to the Orthodox church.

I didn’t find much to like about the presentations in that class. Of course, I was still myself wholly Evangelical with all the biases that meant, so I wasn’t quite listening with an altogether open mind. I wonder what I would think now. I suspect I still wouldn’t like it, but I would have a better sense of the specifics.

Here’s why. Because the stories and presentation in that class were about Orthodox ecclesiology. The man who became a priest loved the Church, the history, the formality, the liturgy, the whole Apostolic succession that maintained a strict, orderly hierarchy. He was in love with the form of church the Orthodox presented.

I did, though, come out of that class feeling like the Orthodox had a much better claim for real succession than does the Roman Catholic church, whose theology likes to claim early centuries but is really late medieval. The Orthodox think the 4th and 5th century were worth keeping around for a good while longer.

Since that time I’ve done a lot of reading. I’ve done a lot of reading of early church sources, and many of the very sources that the Orthodox raise as their sources. And it hit me again and again.

Where’s the passion? Where’s the real presence of the Spirit?

What I saw was all the theology of the Spirit, this elegant, wonderful, deep theology of spirituality and holiness being poured into yet more justifications of hierarchy, and power, and church politics. The theology doesn’t match the expression. I’ve little interest in forms or power structures or thinking that I need a man in a beard and dark outfit to somehow be my connection to the living Christ and his ever present Spirit. I believe in apostolic succession but it is through the Spirit that this is conveyed, not in the structures. I wondered where the living power of the Spirit that is so present in the early church writers has gone. Why is there such political battles even as they claim to be bearers of the one who has upset all those politics?

The presentation was on the charismatic renewal in the Orthodox church. So, given all my thoughts, I was interested.

And I was in turn absolutely delighted. Father Eusebius Stephanou spoke on his own realization of the living power of the Holy Spirit forty years ago and then on his, as he terms it, prophetic ministry within the Orthodox church to bring this renewal to all. It is, as he puts it, not a matter of bringing something new to the church. The Orthodox church, he said, is the Pentecostal church, it is the church that began on Pentecost, but has lost its way for all kinds of reasons and all kinds of distractions.

He told the story of how he had absolutely no interest in those from other churches, thought them (us) all heretics. A charismatic group of Orthodox began to include him, and he was entranced by their passion for God. He didn’t feel the same warmth they did, even after they prayed over and with him, but he knew there was something there leading him to greater depths. One evening, while eating alone as he usually did, the Spirit met him. Came over him with an overpowering love for Jesus, a passion for Jesus, a love for the work of God, and began to see and think with a profound new awareness of God’s work. This was the beginning of his ministry.

What’s so interesting to me is how so much of what he said, beginning with the absolute emphasis and adoration for Jesus, were points that I talk about in my book. He expressed what I was thinking we should see when the Spirit came. He emphasizes Jesus, he wants to participate with all those who call him Lord, he sees the frustrations that a rigid hierarchy can lead to. He is filled with this love for God, and is coupled with an absolute love for his church.

In this love, in this passion, in these emphases I resonate so strongly. He is the expression of what I read in the works of Symeon the New Theologian, or Nikitas Stithatos, or any of the other absolutely profound Christian Orthodox writers who have been so central to my developing faith.

I feel a bond of unity with Father Eusebius that goes beyond so much of what I’ve felt with so many Evangelical pastors.

And so, the conference started out well for me. And it was only my first taste of orthodox and Pentecostal dialogue.

But in between I got a taste of Peace–Baptist, Quaker, Pentecostal pacifism.

Which will be the subject of another post.

Completely random here.

Put the first 10,000 digits of pi to music. You choose the notes to correspond to each number. I wish there was a way of changing the length of some notes to help make for a more interesting rhythm, but still… oddly entrancing.