Peace is elusive.
I used to imagine that most people lived peaceful, satisfied lives and that a minority of turbulent outliers were the exception that proved the rule.
Now I know hardly anyone who lives peacefully, who moves and speaks from a tranquil soul. Least of all do I. Continue Reading »
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Lineage and chronology place the formidable ministry of John the Baptist in dangerous proximity to competition with Jesus. More than a few of the two men’s disciples looked askance, by all appearances, at the alternative thrown onto the stage by the other man. John, for all the fire of his temperament, seems to have maintained clarity about his secondary stature. He seems to have understood both his own impressive ministry and its waning in the face of Jesus’ accumulation of followers as things given by heaven:
They came to John and said to him, ‘Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.’ John answered, ‘No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven.’
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Elijah’s post-heroic flight to the desert may be a quest for further revelation. His destination–Horeb, the mountain of God—is the detail that suggest this. Regardless, Yahweh’s attitude towards his prophet-in-flight is complex. On the one hand, YHWH’s angel feeds Elijah, and on the strength of this sustenance the prophet travels ‘forty days and forty nights’ to Horeb. On the other, YHWH’s word is twice interrogative: ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’
It seems, on balance, as though Elijah should have been somewhere else, mostly likely tending to his prophetic task in the turbulent peril that was Israel under Jezebel’s scheming gaze and Ahab’s consummate wimpery. Continue Reading »
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Air travel these days provides a harried soul with very few levers of control. One often feels at the mercy of large forces that swirl about, making a guy on his way home from San Diego feel like the flotsam tossed about by some enormous waves.
So does the Clear Registered Traveler program come as welcome news to the frequent traveler. For a modest annual fee and the provision of enough personal details, one gets an escorted whiz through airport security. I’ve been using this program for a year. It has got me onto a handful of flights I would otherwise have missed and—more importantly—provided me with the luxury of countless hours at home or work that I would have spent standing in a long security line. Continue Reading »
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As an Indianapolis-based frequent traveler, getting to and through our decrepit airport (whilst we eagerly await the inauguration of our Midfield Terminal in late 2008 ) is at least a weekly adventure. I’ve tried the various parking alternatives, all of which make a passable effort at getting you to the church (or flight) in time.
But nothing rivals the superb service provided by Indy Park Ride & Fly’s off-site ‘valet’ parking service (www.parkrideflyusa.com). I book on-line, then save an hour of time I would have cooled my heals inside the airport by buzzing my way to the IPRF facility as a prebooked client. Within seconds or single-digit minutes of pulling up in my car, I am on a van for the seven-minute drive to the terminal.
The drivers are well-trained and impeccably polite. They ask customers to leave their bags by the van and take a site inside. Minutes later, they pull off the reverse maneouvre, almost always with smile. This is one travel-related tip that it give me no reluctance to fork over.
Upon my return to Indy, I phone before I’m out of the plane. A van quickly picks me up and has me car-side in minutes. In winter, the car is running and warm by the time I slide into its seats.
Indy Park Ride and Fly also provides meticulous detailing of your vehicle while you’re traveling for a substantial but reasonable fee. They also advertise pet boarding services.
I can hardly imagine a more efficient way to get in and out of my local airport. The service is available in many airports, but I have experience only in my hometown facility.
Book. Park. Ride. Fly. You’ll wonder why you spent so much time on the alternatives.
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It is no small thing to have one’s character summarized by the words ‘good and just’. One doesn’t stumble upon such an outcome as the fruit of one day’s jog around the park. It is rather the recognition that a thousand small decisions have leaned cumulatively in the direction of integrity.
The man we know from the gospels as ‘Joseph of Arimathea’ found himself so described. Known in the gospel tradition only through a pair of brief cameos, he is styled ‘a good and just man.’ This adjectival salute is then fleshed out with a bit of narrative:
Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph, who, though a member of the council, had not agreed to their plan and action. He came from the Jewish town of Arimathea, and he was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb where no one had ever been laid.
From both his membership in ‘the council’ and his access to Pilate, we surmise that Joseph was a man with something to lose. Yet he had found the courage not to place his personal seal of approval on the council’s action against Jesus and then complemented this principled non-action by a most courageous maneuver: he asks Pilate for the body of Jesus and buries him in his family’s rock-hewn tomb. Continue Reading »
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The quality of times can be measured by the willingness of their denizens to procreate. Hope for the future emerges out of the textured experience of the present. So does despair. Continue Reading »
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The voice of our wonderful Colombian-born veterinarian was somber when I called her from Frankfurt to inquire on the results of Tucker’s biopsy. The veterinariological technical lingo added up to just one thing: Tucker is not long for this world.
‘Just enjoy him!’, she counseled with the textured, comprehending warmth of a woman who could have been a pastor, a psychologist, a physician, or a veterinarian. She chose the latter, and not for lack of options. Continue Reading »
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The biblical material assiduously undermines the logic of human achievement. When YHWH does his remarkable work, he nearly always uses badly flawed human agents.
The waning days of David’s rule read like an ‘I told you so’ anti-monarchical screed. The aged king commits the atrocity of numbering his people, a violation of the tribal traditions against a standing army and a centralized political-military apparatus. Then, while a beautiful young virgin warms him against the dark night, a palace farce unravels outside his door. Two of his sons line up behind their corresponding priestly advocates in what sounds like a shameless playground exercise of ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ Continue Reading »
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Jesus made plain to those who would follow him that the cost of doing so was everything they owned and everything they were. His was an exclusive claim upon their loyalty and the virtual extinction of their self-determination. Yet in the odd economy of the ‘kingdom of God’ whose imminence and presence he proclaimed, there was to be recompense for such extreme self-surrender:
Then Peter said, ‘Look, we have left our homes and followed you.’ And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.’
To this day, many who declare themselves followers of Jesus, both prosperous and paupered by the economies of their time, declare this guarantee to have been made good in their lives. Indeed, it bears a striking and recurring prominence in Christian testimony. Continue Reading »
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Canter Bridge 