How to find out if you are really out of shape

Try shoveling snow for the first time in fifteen years.

We have ten inches of snow down here in the Foothills/Piedmont of North Carolina which is a weather Armageddon for us. I am shoveling our driveway today. I don't even own a snow shovel. I am using some sort of strange utility shovel which is cracked down the middle. I feel like I may perish at any moment. I am taking it easy as befits one my age. Fifteen minutes of shoveling and then an hour and a half of rest. I wouldn't want to over do it.

PBS Report on Haiti features LCMS

The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and Rev. Glenn Merritt and Rev. Matt Harrison feature prominently in this PBS report on faith based help in Haiti.

So that weeping over another I may mourn for myself

Preserve, O Lord, Your work, guard the gift which You have given even to him who shrank from it. For I knew that I was not worthy to be called a bishop, because I had devoted myself to this world, but by Your grace I am what I am. And I am indeed the least of all bishops, and the lowest in merit; yet since I too have undertaken some labour for Your holy Church, watch over this fruit, and let not him whom when lost You called to the priesthood, to be lost when a priest.

And first grant that I may know how with inmost affection to mourn with those who sin; for this is a very great virtue ... Grant that so often as the sin of any one who has fallen is made known to me I may suffer with him, and not chide him proudly, but mourn and weep, so that weeping over another I may mourn for myself.

Ambrose, On Repentance, 2.8.73.

Whether the songs are profane or spiritual ...

I know very little about St. John of the Ladder (aka John Climacus), have never read any of his work. But I ran across this and I think it is exactly right:

When we hear singing, let us be moved with love towards God; for those who love God are touched with a holy joy, a divine emotion and a tenderness which brings them to tears when they listen to beautiful harmony, whether the songs are profane or spiritual.

Thanks to Orrlogion.

Hit Singles From the 1990's in Passive Voice

From McSweeneys.

Bryan Adams: "Everything That Is Done By Me Is Done By Me For You"

Aerosmith: "It Is Not Desired For A Thing To Get Missed"

U2: "I Should Be Held, I Should Be Thrilled, I Should Be Kissed, I Should Be Killed"

Live: "There Is Some Crashing Of Some Lightning"

Puff Daddy (feat. Mase): "Can't Be Held Down By Nobody"

Boyz II Men: "You'll Have My Love Made To You"

Chumbawumba: "Having Been Tubthumped"

There is at the center of all things a goodness

The debate is over what is at the center of the universe. Underneath everything, what is there?

One who subscribes to atheistic evolution holds that at the center of all things is randomness. The engine of existence is blind chance.

The one who subscribes to intelligent design points to an intelligence, an ordering principle at the very least. The engine of existence is rationalism.

The Christians goes further, radically further. A Christian looks at the universe and says at the center of all things is goodness. Not simply order or intelligence or a purposeful design but love.

How does the Christian know this? Both the atheistic evolutionist and the one espousing intelligent design look at nature, existence itself, data, whether it be natural selection or the horrible randomness of events like earthquakes or disasters and say, "Look, there is no order, there is no meaning." Intelligent design looks at the vast complexity of the world and humanity which requires some explanation, some designer to understand how it came to be.

The Christian says there is a goodness, love, at the heart of all things. How do he know this? Some Jewish guy in first century Palestine died and then showed himself alive to his friends.

That is the Christian claim and it is by all accounts a fantastic one, foolish and incomprehensible to anything but faith. The meaning of all existence, the answer to every question, the origin of all life, of every molecule, every solar system, of every person and event is one real historical Jewish man around 30 AD who lived and died and lived again and still lives.

Clearly, the Christan claim is not a scientific one, it is one not driven by data or sensory input but one known only by faith. It is a proclamation, a mystery hidden from the foundation of the world but now made known.

At the center of all things there is a goodness. His name is Jesus.

We are just like Oprah

Frank Turk writes that we are just like Oprah in a nice post.

Here is a bit:

The truth is that most people are dissatisfied with church because it doesn’t make sense to us — it just doesn’t work for us. Some people have been hurt in the local church. For some people it’s just a rote activity, as Oprah admits, which she learned as a child. Some of us are much smarter than our local church can bear, and some cannot stand how smart the church thinks it is. Worse still for others: it will simply be completely useless. You know: the first chapter of Matthew which lists the “begats” of Jesus doesn’t seem to apply to me — because my name isn’t listed there — so preaching on the “begats” is a waste of time. We’re never going to have to build a temple to the living God, so preaching on Exodus 35-39 doesn’t have the same appeal as This Old House or HDTV. Deuteronomy 6 is a little dry because I have public utilities, and I pay for them every month, thanks a lot; preaching Moses’ summary of the Law puts me to sleep.

We tremble not, unmoved we stand

That line is one of my favorites in Luther's great hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. I always get a lump in my throat as I sing it. I stand a bit taller and thrust out my chest just a bit in defiance of enemies, spiritual and otherwise.

But it is a curious moment. For literally it is untrue. I do a lot of trembling. I am frightened often. I wish to run from conflict, hide from the duties God pushes upon me.

Yet in the singing of the hymn I am filled with hope and even a bit of pride as if I weren't scared, as if I am brave and fearless. The moment is revealing in its contradictions. The quivering Christian in boastful voice shouting out a taunt he cannot fulfill.

Yet in another more important way, the words are true. They are a shout of faith. In and through the words I claim something that is not my own. As I sing I grab hold of Christ's bravery, his solitary stand against sin taken on the cross, his victory on Easter. And I make it my own.

That peculiar mix of a Christian's awareness of his own weakness at the very moment of appropriating its opposite from our Savior happens often.

We receive forgiveness and are clean and pure even while we feel our sins. We say that one who believes in Christ will never die even as our flesh wastes away and death is indisputably near. We thank God for giving us our reason and all our senses and all our members even as amputees or blind or hard of hearing. The Christian who does not have enough to eat confesses that God gives meat in due season.

Such is life under the cross. It is all faith, all the time. We have nothing but claim all things in Christ. Bereft of goods, fame or spouse the Kingdom ours remaineth.

The marvellousness of constant recurrence

The miracle indeed of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby He made the water into wine, is not marvellous to those who know that it was God's doing. For He who made wine on that day at the marriage feast, in those six water-pots, which He commanded to be filled with water, the self-same does this every year in vines. For even as that which the servants put into the water-pots was turned into wine by the doing of the Lord, so in like manner also is what the clouds pour forth changed into wine by the doing of the same Lord. But we do not wonder at the latter, because it happens every year: it has lost its marvellousness by its constant recurrence.

And yet it suggests a greater consideration than that which was done in the water-pots. For who is there that considers the works of God, whereby this whole world is governed and regulated, who is not amazed and overwhelmed with miracles? If he considers the vigorous power of a single grain of any seed whatever, it is a mighty thing, it inspires him with awe. But since men, intent on a different matter, have lost the consideration of the works of God, by which they should daily praise Him as the Creator, God has, as it were, reserved to Himself the doing of certain extraordinary actions, that, by striking them with wonder, He might rouse men as from sleep to worship Him.

A dead man has risen again; men marvel: so many are born daily, and none marvels. If we reflect more considerately, it is a matter of greater wonder for one to be who was not before, than for one who was to come to life again. Yet the same God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, does by His word all these things; and it is He who created that governs also. The former miracles He did by His Word, God with Himself; the latter miracles He did by the same Word incarnate, and for us made man. As we wonder at the things which were done by the man Jesus, so let us wonder at the things which where done by Jesus God. By Jesus God were made heaven, and earth, and the sea, all the garniture of heaven, the abounding riches of the earth, and the fruitfulness of the sea—all these things which lie within the reach of our eyes were made by Jesus God. And we look at these things, and if His own spirit is in us they in such manner please us, that we praise Him that contrived them; not in such manner that turning ourselves to the works we turn away from the Maker, and, in a manner, turning our face to the things made and our backs to Him that made them.

St. Augustine on the Cana miracle

Death to the Fascist Insect ...

"Death to the Fascist Insect That Preys on the Life of the People."

Ah, there is nothing like a little overblown, over heated rhetoric from early 70's California radicals. It just makes a guy feel good!

That quote comes from the Patty Hearst kidnapping saga and the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). I was listening to an entertaining and enlightening podcast on the subject put out by the Stuff You Missed in History Class Podcast. It is a nice little podcast if you enjoy such things.

Oh and buy your SLA t-shirts and coffee mugs here! Capitalist, fascist insects peddling revolutionary knick-knacks. Wonderful!

My Life is Sweet

Here is an infectious, acapella (Beach Boys, Queen style) ode to "sweetness".

Listen here.

The artist is Roger Klug who is mostly unknown but has put out two very nice records of power pop, rock, guitar music. He is from Cincinnati and he is a good singwriter. You can buy his stuff here.

"Wind chill": little more than shameless puffery

From Slate:

If the weather makes headlines only when it's horrendous out, wind chill is its PR agent. This week, when temperatures in New York City dropped to single digits, newspapers and TV meteorologists breathlessly reported that the wind chill had hit minus 11. In Ohio, they told us, the thermometers read close to zero, but gusts of cold air made it feel like 25 below. Banner stories proclaimed a wind chill of 35 below in Chicago.

The weathermen trot out these arctic, pumped-down numbers to put an exclamation point on the banality of winter. Wind chill readings make excitement out of mere inconvenience; they imbue a miserable day with the air of epic calamity. A temperature of 5 degrees is unpleasant. A wind chill of 20 below—well, that's something to talk about.

The gaudy negative numbers do more than describe the weather; they try to tell us how we experience it. The reporting of wind chill carries with it a paternalistic impulse to explain not just how cold it is, but how cold we'll feel. Well, I've been out in the cold every day this week, and I know exactly what it's like. If wind chill can tell me only what I've already experienced—my cell phone hand too numb to dial a number, my moustache freezing on my face—then we should just get rid of it altogether.

The weatherman's favorite alarmist statistic has been around for more than 60 years. Its ignoble history began with a pair of Antarctic explorers named Paul Siple and Charles Passel. In 1945, the two men left plastic bottles of water outside in the wind and observed the rate at which they froze. The equation they worked out used the wind speed and air temperature to describe the rate at which the bottles gave off heat, expressed in watts per square meter.

In the 1970s, the Canadian weather service started reporting numbers based on Siple and Passel's work. These three- and four-digit values meant little to the average person, however—the "wind chill factor" might have been 1,200 one day and 1,800 the next. American weathermen took a more pragmatic approach, converting the output from the Siple-Passel equation into the familiar language of temperature—statements like "it's 5 degrees outside, but it feels like 40 below." What exactly did these phrases mean? The meteorologists would figure the rate of heat loss in watts per square meter and then try to match it up to an equivalent rate produced in low-wind conditions. For example, the rate of heat loss in 5-degree weather and 30 mph wind matched up with the one for minus-40-degree weather and very little wind. So, 5 degrees "felt like" 40 below.

As the use of equivalent temperatures spread, people started to notice inconsistencies between real temperatures and their wind chill counterparts. For some reason, a day spent in a minus-40 wind chill was a lot easier to handle than a minus-40-degree day with no wind. Around 2000, two researchers—Randall Osczevski in Canada and Maurice Bluestein in the United States—began looking closely at this problem. Before long, they discovered that the adapted Siple-Passel equations grossly overestimated rates of heat loss.

The two nations' weather services formed a committee to address the problem. By 2001, the Joint Action Group on Temperature Indices had created a new system that toned down wind chill readings across the board. After the recalibration, conditions that were once said to feel like minus 40 now "felt like" minus 19. (Click here for a sidebar that explains how Osczevski and Bluestein came up with their new wind chill table.)

Read the rest here.

I have had lots of experience

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
- Oscar Wilde

Until he calls us out of the hospital of this world

On the importance of the daily renewal of the Christian:

Yes, sin is forgiven in justification, but it still retains its roots in our heart. If the Christian therefore does not renew himself daily, his heart must soon become wild again, like a tree which is not pruned, or like a garden which is not weeded. True, in justification and regeneration we are born as God's children, and thus the beginning according to God's image is brought about in us. But at first we are still weak infants, who must receive their daily nourishment and strengthening in renewal if they are not to die and perish again.

In justification we are like the one who fell among murderers. Christ indeed took pity on us and bound up our deep wounds of sin with the balm of His gracious gospel. But now, in daily renewal, we must remain under the treatment of His Holy Spirit until we are fully healed when He returns and calls us to Himself by a blessed death out of the hospital of this world. Justification and the new birth are the spiritual creation. The daily renewal of the Christian is the work of spiritual preservation. However, just as the created world would long ago have perished but for God's preservation and government, a Christian cannot remain regenerated but for daily renewal. It is indeed well if faith has once been implanted in the heart, but then it requires daily watering, as Paul says. In this way the Lord grants also the final increase for final apprehension and enjoyment of eternal life.

Hence, what is daily renewal? It is the continuation of the work of grace begun by the Holy Spirit in our soul in justification by faith. It is the heartfelt diligence of the faithful Christian to put off the old man increasingly every day, that is, increasingly cast off all error, and to weaken, restrain, and kill sin in himself more and more. It is the daily earnest concern of a child of God to put on increasingly the new man, that is, to grow in all doctrine and knowledge and spiritual wisdom and experience, and to become more and more conformed to the image of Jesus Christ in thoughts, words, attitudes, and works.

CFW Walther

In choosing to be born for us, God chose to be known by us

Peter Chrysologus on the Feast of the Epiphany


In the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation there were clear indications of his eternal
Godhead. Yet the great events we celebrate today disclose and reveal in
different ways the fact that God himself took a human body. Mortal man,
enshrouded always in darkness, must not be left in ignorance, and so be
deprived of what he can understand and retain only by grace. In choosing to be born for us, God chose to be known by us. He therefore reveals himself in this way, in order that this great sacrament of his love may not be an occasion for us of great misunderstanding.

Today the Magi find, crying in a manger, the one they have followed as he shone
in the sky. Today the Magi see clearly, in swaddling clothes, the one they have
long awaited as he lay hidden among the stars.

Today the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in
heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the whole universe cannot contain
now enclosed in a tiny body. As they look, they believe and do not question, as
their symbolic gifts bear witness: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for one
who is to die.

St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermo 160: PL 52, 620-622

A conucopia of catchphrases and cliches!

This is a wonderful article on the catch phrases of the last decade.

Good riddance to :

How's that working out for you?

outside the box

epic fail

it is what it is
(did you know that can be used as a buddhist lesson teaching point... I didn't)

under the bus,

not so much

just sayin'

public option

and many many more.

Philosophy argument from a bathroom wall in Asheville NC

Graffiti #1 : True freedom is having no possessions. St. Francis of Assisi

Graffiti #2: Your possessions own you.

Graffiti #3: Cake, hmmmm, delicious cake.