Wit & Whim

I do not believe I have ever publicly expressed my thoughts on this program. I think I'll say something brief tonight. Ablaze is a parasite, leeching off the potential for missionary work by the LCMS. It is a budget black hole. It reads like an ill conceived corporate scheme, and I daresay that any corporate scheme this ambiguous, poorly structured, poorly managed, and unrealistic would end in bankruptcy...wait. Worse than the fact that this sounds like some loony business craze, it is pillaging the coffers that should be used to spread the Word of God where it cannot be found in its truth and purity. Instead, we are spending it on the aforementioned hair-brained scheme. To find a Lutheran pastor in the United States is no great task. There are lots of us here and we have the ability to receive the sacraments just about anywhere. The church is here; God will provide the faithful. How many places in the world are there no missions? In how many places are the peoples cut off from the...

The Cat--the mean one--and I are sort of like Palestinians and Israelis. Every so often the cat comes to try and slash my shapely leg to ribbons, and I respond by poking the cat with a cane or umbrella every time it tries to get to me. The cat never says exactly why she is going after me, but she makes a bunch of loud noises and tries to blame me for the incident; I have my sneaking suspicions that it is over territory. The cat is by no means my equal in combat, but she is sneaky and uses rocket fast attacks from behind. Moreover, it is very difficult to hunt the cat down in the many hidden places of the house. The rest of the household sits around and waits for me to land the final blow on that cat; they all know the cat will work it out of me eventually, and I expect to be condemned in the strongest language possible, but sanctions are unrealistic. Oh well.

Video games are a perennial issue, and a favourite citation for armchair philosophers who pontificate on just what is wrong with the world. Video games and violence is one of the more overstressed pairings of recent parental and academic concern. O'Reilly tells us that we have to protect the children. Never mind that his childhood memoirs contain more instances of combat than many of us will ever know; kids are just more violent these days. Are they really more violent, or is it just the omnipresence of video recording devices? In the last year it is not the children who have been bringing the guns to school. I would contend that we react more violently to their violence. From my reading of older American lit, and in hearing older people talk about their childhood, I would be lead to believe that a brief fistfight between school children was more acceptable then than it is now; still frowned on, but not likely to lead to immediate expulsion. Bullying, which is tied to most school v...

Early this afternoon I finished with my final regular class of this semester, and that fact does not come without a certain relief. There is a mingled sadness that goes with it. Some of my classes seemed like--and were!--pointless drudgery, but I have a couple classes I am really going to miss. Bartky is incredible, and though I do not agree with everything that he says, at least he makes me think about my every political position. I leave his class feeling like a much more educated human being, and a better citizen for it. I have gained invaluable arguments and defenses for my political beliefs and a much greater understanding of the thought which shaped my beliefs. I will definitely be taking future classes with him. The other class that I will miss is German. Again, this class always leaves me with the feeling that I know more than when I came in. I can feel and measure my progress. I can actually understand most of the lyrics when I listen to Revolverheld, and that is in itself gra...

Acolyting in the Divine Service is incredibly fulfilling. No matter how hard you try to hold it down, you are always in grave danger of a gentle warming of the heart. It is good. It is the closest we get to perfection on earth. Young men who join the Corp are being introduced to the service of Our Lord. They have the opportunity, should they so desire, to continue on to preforming a greater service in the Office of the Holy Ministry. Every single one of my guys will have that choice. Winston--my dear friend and predecessor as Captain of Acolytes--is going to be a pastor, which is no great surprise. I believe my middle brother is also intending to be a pastor. Once you become accustomed to the Service...it is not so easy to leave it. Even when I sit out for a month or so--allowing the younger guys to get more practice--when I next serve there is a sense of return, of things being in their right place. It is right. At this time, I am afraid that I do not intend to become a pastor. I have...

What is it to be an acolyte? Any acolyte worth his salt--any of my guys--could tell you that it is a servant, not an "altar boy" or a "candle lighter." Well what does that mean? We all look the same don't we? The truth is that it means nothing outside of the context of the Divine Service. Have you ever noticed the waiters at a really nice restaurant? They aren't chummy like most waiters, but they are immaculately dressed and have absolutely rhadamanthine discipline. The immaculate dress is always the same; they have a uniform. The waiter is not important; he serves to make sure that the service in the restaurant goes smoothly and lend to the dignity of the environment. The best waiter are almost unnoticeable as they preform their duties. An acolyte has a uniform; it covers over his individuality, physique, and personality. It is the same as every other acolyte around him. We are all the same, and it is not we that matter, but that which we serve. We are ther...

Cold War era American politicians sound like baptists. They had to mention God 8-9 times a paragraph; they sound like holy warriors on a crusade. We ridicule them for this. We say to ourselves, "If only we had been there with our reason and modern sensibilities; the cold war could have lasted just a few months." We see how they blew things out of proportion. What should have been a conversation became a deathmatch. If only they could have benefited from our sophistication. They also sound like a bunch of nationalistic lunatics. "Freedom this," and, "Freedom that." Lines and lines about the superiority of our idea of freedom, our brand of freedom, and our acting out of freedom. They sound like Tea-baggers and maniacs. If only they could have benefited from our sophistication. What has our sophistication brought? To understand later problems we must first examine the way our views of freedom changed. The progressive era saw many changes, but the only one I a...

*Journal of Patrick--Captain of Acolytes by the Grace of God--for April 16th in the Year of Our LORD 2010* Woke up early. Clouds build on the horizon. Have been tasked to reinforce seminarian moving division. Coffee not strong enough. Heading for church to make rendezvous with the Holy Father. Arrive at church; Holiness arrives shortly thereafter. Heading up to temporary encampment. Arrive at temporary base, assist with pack-up. Glenn Beck and Gandalf present for work. Making way with Glen and subordinates to drop off supplies at Fort Redeemer. So far no resistance. Finished massive supply unload, have received messenger from main unit: Horses have been unshod and lamed, send immediate reinforcement with replacements. I am closest to nearest stable, taking small task force to requisition the necessary goods. Arrive at Petersen Stable. All is quiet. Bad feeling about this.... Sitting within the walls of my fortress, I will now take time to put to paper the earlier events that followed m...

Today started in a valley that I like to call "waking up." It is a very tiresome place to be; for it is very hard to see anything and there always seems to be a cat under your feet. We moved along until reaching a slow ascent to this neat little peak called "time with friends." This peak started with breakfast with Theo and Pippin, and moved on to coffee with Brian, Joe, and John. This time was very good for my delicate psyche and included plenty of laughter and butchered German words. The good times extended right through German and all the way up to walking back to Kettler with Winston. Things get ugly after that. I returned to the library to meet with my Com classmates. I stayed in the place where we were supposed to meet and stayed there for fifteen minutes. I then made arrangements for extraction. After those arrangements were made I spent the next half hour waiting for my Com mates/scouring the library to make sure they hadn't situated themselves elsewhere...

This is the third straight meeting where at least half of my com group has skipped. It is no surprise that it is the same people who are skipping over and over. The anger stems mostly from the fact that they guarantee their presence when I speak with them after class, only to ignore all attempts to get a hold of them outside class (text, email, etc). I wrote the previous blog post while talking to the one member of the group who has deemed our meetings worth attending, and she is but a high-school student with limited time to devote to college pursuits. I do not know what to do. I could have the presentation done in two days if it was left in my hands, but no; it has to be cooperative. Since we need to do it in some form other than just having each member give their spiel, it is impossible for me to write it for the whole group. The others wanted to do it as a skit. Do they realize that the preparation for a twenty-five to thirty minute skit takes time? If that little Aryan mentions dr...

Re-reading some of his works through much more mature eyes, I am of the opinion that Machiavelli gets a very bum rap. Machiavellian is a term for that which is self-serving in a particularly evil way and I don't think it fits. Something more concerned with result than substance. This comes partially from the fact that his work The Prince was used by the protestant French as an evidence of the evils of Catholicism. The Prince, when seen in the absence of his other work, would certainly not speak well of Machiavelli. It is a work commissioned by the Borgias and deals with how to gain and keep power. He has, however, a theme that repeats throughout this and his art of war is the idea--in order for Italy to maintain itself as a power in the world--that the princes need to allow the populace armaments and to have a unity amongst the Italian states. What is that supposed to mean? Taken with his voluntary and un-commissioned discourses, we realize that his goal is an Italian democratic re...

Tonight is the Easter Vigil. Tomorrow we will process in to the strong strain of Jesus Christ is Risen Today. Both of these services will be well attended and absolutely gorgeous. I, however, will feel a little sorry for many of those who attend these services because this is just the rejoicing that follows the climax. Yesterday, Holy Friday--the best Friday--saw our victory. The end of the Holy Thursday leaves the church dark, mournful, and eerily silent. The altar is bare and the crucifix is gone. Our lord is departed from our sight and only he knows what the morning brings. The sight of the dark and empty chancel is a reminder like unto the removal of the Glorias, only to a much greater degree. Something is missing and it is unsettling. The Service of Catechumens begins with pleading and lamentations. The hymns to this point are dirges, terribly beautiful and poetic dirges, but dirges none the less. Our Lord is dead and it is our own hands which have done this. The Service of Holy C...