Italians make the most beautiful espresso machines

My dream machine! La San Marco

6 years today!

Isn't there something unsettling about church tax seminar presenters who like their bling?

Crap!

So much to say, so little desire to say it.

Every time I see my blogs, I think crap. I really should write something.

Bounded

In a new country, amid new conditions, Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. after his betrothed had broken faith with him - which he felt the more acutely the more he tried to conceal its effects - the surroundings in which he had been happy became trying to him, and the freedom and independence he had once prized so highly were still more so. Not only could he no longer think the thoughts that had first come to him as he lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later enlarged upon with Pierre and which had filled his solitude at Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to recall them and the bright and boundless horizons they had revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical matters unrelated to his past interests and he seized on these the more eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above him had suddenly turned into a low , solid vault that weighted him down, in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.

How often have I felt this way? I find myself frustrated with Prince Andrews many swings. Just as he seems about to touch something significant and larger than himself, something sends him back to the base life of the crust of the earth. Yet this passage rings so true to me. Those great experiences of the boundless Eternity seems so easily eclipsed by the daily work of living.

A story about "War and Peace"

On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his had, lay Prince Andrew Bolkónski bleeding profusely and unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous and childlike moan.

Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did not know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.

“Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw today,” was his first thought. “And I did not know this suffering either,” he thought. “Yes, I did not know anything at all till now. But where am I?”

I love this image of Prince Andrew, having been hit by a cannonball looking upward at the infinite sky sensing something he had never known before. Something above himself, something all embracing.
I remember the first time the infinite blues struck me. I was on a band trip to Kansas city. I was perhaps a bit of a loner. I felt out of place, I wasn’t that great of a sax player. I felt that I always was a detriment to the whole instead of apart of the beautiful sound that it produced. I wandered outside the hotel and sat myself under a tree on a patch a grass where some other kids were talking. I laid my head back, and there it was. For some reason for the first time I had a sense of perspective, I could see how the blue stretched for miles above me. It absorbed me. I stared at it, wondered at it. My breathing slowed and I savored that I was filling myself with that infinity. Infinity embraced me. I too must have been moaning a childlike groan. I remember my reverie being interrupted by a girl asking if I was all right, and if I wanted to join their group. I said, “no, I’m just looking at the sky.”
I wonder if Prince Andrew will catch the spiritual significance of that day like I did. Or like Switchfoot put it in their song 4:12,

You said,
“I’m so sorry I’ve been so down.
I started doubting things could ever turn around.
And I began to believe that all we are is material.
It’s nonsensical.”

So you walk outside and everything’s new
You’re looking at the world with new eyes.
As if you’d never seen a sky before that’s blue
As if you’ve never seen the sky in your whole life

“It would be good,” thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, “it would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this life and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I should be if I could now say: ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’… But to whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address, but cannot even express in words—the Great All or Nothing—“ He said to himself, “or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all important.”

We leave Prince Andrew to die, but I wonder if that is all we shall hear from him, all that he will find in the infinite blue.

A resource I do recommend is The Work of the People. It is a digital liturgy. They use the lectionary texts to come up with digital resources for worship.

VISUAL LITURGY is our new line of products inspired and shaped by the events of the Church calendar and the Scripture texts of the Revised Common Lectionary. We will create new Visual Liturgy pieces weekly. These films are contemplative pieces that reflect on Scripture and help create a time of meditation in preparation for worship, during Communion, before, after or during a sermon, or even as a benediction at the close of a service. These films can be used in many ways; the goal is that they would promote focus and reflection on the Word of God.

If a picture is worth 1000 .... Christianese

I received a link in my junk mail box to www.goodsalt.com. It looked interesting, my wife is always on the look out for stock photo sites. I was disappointed. This site was full of the inspirational fluff that fills the art section of the Christian book stores. What is more, they charge amounts that rival the high end commercial stock photo places. Ugh.

IMAGE DOWNLOADS:
SMALL 1024px 72dpi:
(local church projection use only)
** US $9.95

SMALL 1024px 72dpi:
(Nonprofit website use only)
** US $49.95

MEDIUM 5-6MB 300dpi:
(half page - print up to 5x7 inches)
** US $89.95

LARGE 28MB 300dpi:
(full page - print up to 8.5x11 inches)
** US $239.95

Even their free stuff you are restricted to only projections, not web or print. This ridiculous mix of greed and Christian sub-culture dismays me, but it is what I expect from the Christian sub-culture. To their credit they do have culturally relevant images, like a black Jesus.

For a decent stock photo site, use www.istockphoto.com.

The spectre of climate change

Today we had our first real snow of the season. I have to say I have found our pleasant weather ominous. I had it in mind that if it didn't snow, some dark catastrophe loomed.