We need a Hero.

A hero is someone who, apparently, leaps into the unknown, reaching the heights of performance or courage or both. It is a selfless act. Heroes go beyond ability or any reasonable expectations. We can find heroes in the arts, in sports, in war, even in politics. An arts example is Rembrandt. There is technique to his painting, unquestionably. But, where does this extraordinary beauty and life come from. It is so far beyond technique that it is considered impossible by other artists. You can't get there with human ability, but all things are possible with God. To achieve this mastery, it was necessary for Rembrandt to go beyond his technique. Doing so exposed he had to go beyond self, but it was also the only way to reveal the art.

Vocalists have an analogous situation. We find the soprano and tenor voices fascinating because the physics of the vocal instrument is being taken to the edge. This is an enormous act of courage by the singer. He or she is intentionally exceeding their ability to control and focus the voice when they take their instrument to the edge. We, the hearers, "feel" it. It is beautiful and very intense, near the breaking point of the instrument. By stretching beyond comfort and control, the vocalist truly meets the divine and beauty is the result. Bach signed all pages of his music with the acknowledgement to God that it needed. He knew at the end of his talent was music that exceeded the notes. It came from God.

So, I have definite criteria for a hero. He, or she, must exhibit great courage. They must exert themselves to the point of self-abnegation. A little death. Jesus said that he who wishes to gain his life must lose it. At the point where the person crosses over from simply human to fully alive in Christ, he hands his life to God. God's glory is man fully alive! There miracles happen. Rembrandt painted like that. His art goes into the miraculous. Great athletes do this. They do things that look impossible, even to them, upon instant replay. Great singers do this. The reason that the human voice is so fascinating in the upper registers of soprano and tenor is that it has been taken to the breaking point, physically, and beyond. Enormous courage. Losing the self. Surrendering to God. And those with spiritual insight know that this is what they are doing. That's the reason for Bach's signature and acknowledgement. He knew.

Rembrandt put himself in this painting. If you count carefully, you find that there is one too many apostles on board. Rembrandt was saying something, perhaps something like "We're all in the same boat!" That's how I feel, too. Rembrandt (in blue) looks out from the painting at us while the "other" apostles react to their peril. Some fight the storm, some hide. some are sick, and some approach Our Lord in the stern to wake Him so that he might save them.

Fr. Stace's homily was to this point today. The boat that Jesus took was the one that resulted in his crucifixion. He gave his life for us. Similarly, we have taken up our cross to follow Jesus, and we will lose our lives in order to gain them. There's no turning back. We left everything behind. All of our futures come behind our decision to follow Him. We will sink with Him, we will swim with Him, and, if He allows it, we may even walk on the water with Him.

How about that water walking? I'm up for that.

Storm on the Sea of Gallilee 

It's Colder in Boulder.

I work in Boulder now. The office move gave me a beautiful, but wretched commute, lengthening my day by two hours. I can see conversations going on around me in the godblogosphere, but can just stick my head in the doors, only partially participating.

I am immersed in life. My daughter divorces, my previous co-workers loose themselves from their families to lie and to "lie" together. My grandson cuddles on my lap. I notice that NO movies draw me. Books have to be renewed at the library. The pages turn so slowly now. Sleep is sound. The morning is sweet and quiet.

Hope you are the same.

From Touchstone: Mere Comments section.
The YMCA?
Recently we've been discussing on this site the feminization of American men, especially in the American churches. I wonder whether we're using the wrong word.
Let's suppose that "feminization" describes what happens not when you actively pursue a policy of turning boys into girls, but when you indolently neglect to try to turn boys into men. A better word might then be "emasculation," with the caveat that you are not cutting off what has made someone a man already: you are failing to provide what would make a man a man in the first place.
The implications are crucial. I am suggesting that it is a foolish dream to say, "We ought to stop encouraging our boys to be like girls, and ought instead to hold before them examples of manliness," unless you are willing to back encouragement up with traditions, customs, institutions. Manhood needs to be won; it does not steal upon you while your body develops. That cannot happen regularly unless boys are for a time trained by men, apart from the company of girls. The old Boys Clubs of America were founded for that purpose -- they took the street toughs and tried to train them up in civic virtue, giving them also skills for men's jobs (woodworking, auto mechanics). Now those clubs are co-ed, which means that you do not take in the street toughs (how can you have such, around women and little children?); they are day-camps and summer kindergartens. The YMCA is no longer Christian, nor for the Young, nor for Men.
Show me where a troubled boy in the United States can now go to learn to become a man. Maybe the Boy Scouts -- and yet even they now, in a partial capitulation to stupidity, allow women to be scoutmasters. The Knights of Columbus? Show me where. And if the boy does grow up to be a man, show me the institution wherein he can exercise that manhood freely, speaking his mind and using his judgment to sever right from wrong, wise from foolish. A university? The town council? I say it again: the reason why we do not develop manhood in our boys is not that we are afraid we might fail, and turn them into louts and bullies. We fail now, and our streets are full of louts and bullies. We are afraid we might succeed.

The above text is from a website called Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity. There is a blog there called Mere Comments. This is today's blog.

Those of you who know me well know that I carry a card that says "Become a Dangerous Man for Christ!" I believe that Men's Ministry is vital today that that most of society's ills are associated with the problem listed here. Boys 2 Men is the name of a musical group, but a rare occurrence.

More later.

WorldNetDaily: Evolution vs. intelligent design

This from WorldNetDaily today. Great addition to our conversation.

Intelligent Design?

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2005-07-27/news/feature_print.html

Phillip E. Johnson gave a talk at our church last summer. If you would like to see what is new with the founder of Intelligent Design, this is a pretty balanced article from the East Bay. I correspond with Phil and Kathie, his wife. He had another stroke last December and is a little worrysome as a result.

This week President Bush extolled the virtues of "teaching the controversy" about Intelligent Design in a question and answer session. This startling development makes a re-examination of Phil's work timely. If you haven't had the pleasure of meeting Phil, you will love the aquaintance. Truly a gentleman and a scholar, he is one of the most important intellectuals of our time. What he has done is bring into sharp focus the atheism and flawed reasoning of Darwinism and its insidious stepchild, Social Darwinism, which was the central idea behind many of the last century's greatest evils. His work and his life are a gift from God.

I mentioned a piece in First Things on the slide in theology away from traditional doctrine. It's a great article, worth reading. Here is the link:
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0506/opinion/turner.html

The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America and Politics without God.

I just finished reading George Weigel's short book on the Europe problem. He considers it our problem, too, of course. Not just because of Iraq, but because of the trends which are completing there that are continuing here.

Europe has eighteen countries who are not replacing their population (2.1 children per woman); the demographic replacement rates are really startlingly low: 1.2 to 1.7. Why? Weigel believes that aggressive European secularism has left them bored about the future, uninvested in seeing it come to pass. They have no sense of self anymore. Each international political event shows this clearly, as they select away from any self-determination or hard choices, deferring to the Hague and the international tribunals to find a "truth" which they no longer believe exists. Since WWII it is obvious that they have not been able to identify "evil" in obvious places: they refused to criticize the Soviet states and were therefore shocked at the democratic reforms that came from Catholic-led solidarity, unexpectedly, to them, filled with intellectual and spiritual vigor which Europeans find distasteful.

Weigel's title comes from the construction of a huge, opulescent cube that has become the symbol of new Europe (La Arche). It is the boast of the architects that Notre Dame Cathedral can fit inside it. Weigel believes that this is a symbol of the intent, recently expressed in the process of creating a constitution, to revise history. The document is over four times longer than the U.S. Constitution. It presents European history without Christianity quite deliberately. It was and is the intention of the founders of unified Europe to erase Christianity from history, and in their constitutional rationale for the "values" of European culture, they have been successful. According to the approved constitution, Christianity added nothing to Europe and was not responsible for any aspect of the growth or extension of Eurpoean ideals into the world. Hmmm.

I also read a critique of Episcopal-Protestant mainline theology in a journal called First Things which was quite thought-provoking. The author, a seminary professor at Neo's old seminary who had spent ten years enmeshed in African-Anglican growth through spiritual strength, identifies a "common" new gospel which now dominates American churches, strangely avoiding crucial and essential elements of Christian doctrine by substituting radical tolerance and a bland "God is love" mono-theme. The parts de-emphasized by omission are "sin", atonement, redemption, God's wrath and retributive justice, and biblical authority.

Finally, I attended a family reunion in San Luis Obispo, California. Forty-two of my relatives from as far away as Lebanon and all over California came. The Condon/Deveney clan got along very well. I will have stories.