What will you hear in church this weekend?

Chit chat? Opinions? An interesting lecture? Bylaws, buidlings and budgets? Self-improvement therapy? Spend < 4 minutes with this little video. Passed along by Lt. Matt Perkins, MD, aka Northwest Anglican.

Costly Grace: America's Great Denial

While we fight over temporal things, there is a great denial of ultimate things. Fr. Hall of St. Paul's, Brookings (pictured) shares his thoughts,

Costly Grace: America's Great Denial

You need to pay attention to him. He recently asserted that his ankle had declared autumn, and lo our temps have cooled.

But seriously, his thoughts are deep yet accessible. Churches spend too much time seeking bandwagons to ride - Fr. Hall is in the sanctuary caring for the treasures God gave us to steward.

"I was in a liturgy class in Britain a few years ago when I was at Westcott House, and the topic of funerals came up. The professor asked point blank who in the class had actually ever seen a dead body. This was a fairly large group of mostly Anglicans. Most of whom were in the 21 to 50 age range. An Irish guy and myself were the only two people in the class that raised our hands. Ireland still has a wake tradition, and America still sometimes has an open casket at the receiving of friends or visitation at the funeral home.

I was astounded by that, particularly coming from a group of Anglican church mice. One would think that they would have seen a body somewhere, sometime, if they had grown up around the church and gone to funeral masses at some point. But in Britain, it turns out that no one ever sees a dead body unless they stumble upon it by accident.

Westerners just seem to have an aversion to anything having to do with death. I think America is quickly going down the path that Britain and other places in Europe have already tread. The trend in secular circles is to not even call them funerals anymore. They are referred to as "Celebrations of Life" or such as that. Even in Church circles, liturgical black is no longer permitted for funerals unless specifically requested. The liturgical color is white. I still have a black chasuble for requiem masses, if requested, but I'm a hold out. Even the Catholic priest in town has to come borrow mine if someone requests a requiem mass."

South Dakota Capitol's covered mural: flyover country's lesson for Ground Zero mosque?

The South Dakota State Capitol Building

An historic mural by an artist with works on display "in libraries in Detroit, Kansas City, the New York City College (now C.C.N.Y.), M.I.T., Grove Academy of Athens (Georgia), Baltimore and Cleveland court houses... the obverse of the 1896 Two Dollar Bill... the dome in the Jefferson building of the Library of Congress..." was covered up by order of Governor Bill Janklow in 1997.

Spirit of the West is the artist's tribute to "Manifest Destiny," the American civil religious idea by which Western civilization spread across the continent and also destroyed the existing Native culture.

Sensitivity to Native American pain resulted in the painting's removal from public view, despite earlier efforts to recast it as a reminder and warning of historic misdeeds.

Go to the link and read the whole account. Sometimes, people of good will decline to assert a right (in the mural's case, free speech) in order to show respect for a neighbor.

This is all that is being asked of the Cordoba Mosque developers in NYC. Just build it at another location.

Chaplain with S.D. ties KIA in Afghanistan

Chaplain with S.D. ties dies in attack | argusleader.com | Argus Leader

The article at the link has a side bar listing South Dakotans killed in action since 2003.

War is a chronic condition in a fallen world.

There is blessing for those who labor to spare others the pain and loss, and who, like Cpt. Goetz, bear witness to a better kingdom.

Weather, we got weather...

Bit of thunder & lightning here in Sioux Falls. There was tornado action NW of us earlier and, as you see in this radar image, a line of heavy stuff is passing through this part of the country.



image from KELOLAND