Today and tomorrow, I’m doing something I’ve done many times over the years, but there never used to be a name for it –“Stay-cation.” Tomorrow morning I’m supposed to be interviewed by Stacy Harp over at Active Christian Media, so I figured that, since I’d certainly take that morning off rather than do it on the job, I might as well take Monday too and make it a long weekend.



Yesterday was the 150th anniversary celebration of my home congregation, Hauge Lutheran in Kenyon, Minnesota. This was a special edition of the annual service held at the Old Stone Church, our original building out in the country. This is how it looked.

Continue reading Weekend report, sesquicentennial edition →

The Vatican has made public the oldest known portrait of the Apostle Paul. It’s Fourth Century, so it’s not exactly contemporary, but it does conform to the traditional description.

Vatican archaeologists have uncovered what they say is the oldest known portrait of St Paul. The portrait, which was found two weeks ago but has been made public only after restoration, shows St Paul with a high domed forehead, deep-set eyes and a long pointed beard, confirming the image familiar from later depictions.

As I understand it, we do have (unlike in the case of Christ) a physical description of Paul which is very probably authentic. Not a photogenic fellow. Short, bow-legged, bald, with a prominent nose and thick lips.



Update: It must be St. Paul week in Rome. They have also announced authenticating bones found under the Vatican as being Paul’s.

Tip for both stories: Archaeology in Europe.

Frederick Buechner on “The Stewardship of Pain.”

Pain can become a treasure if we treasure it to the point where it can become compassion and healing, not just for ourselves, but also for other people. If you want to see that sort of thing in operation, the treasuring of pain, the using of pain to the healing of yourself and others, someday attend an open meeting of AA or any of the related groups. That is exactly what those people are doing, sharing their hurts, their experiences and their joys.

And remember the cross. It seems to me that the cross of Christ in a way speaks somewhat like this same word, saying that out of that greatest pain endured in love and faithfulness, comes the greatest beauty and our greatest hope.

David Marcoe at Modern Conservative has a few words for feminists, about men:

Women are not men. Men are not women. Each half supports the other, having interdependent strengths that balance the whole. If you think you could replace them, keep dreaming, because you can’t be men, just as we can’t be women. No matter how hard you rage and storm, no matter how badly you wish it, you can’t change that, nor should you, for attempts to do so have created man-children without virtue, who use women as objects, and women who’ve become ugly caricatures of men and allow themselves to be used and cheapened; the sexes alienated from one another in discord and hostility. In this attempt to deprive this world of a harmonious variety of form, it reduces everything to a tyrannical homogeneity and stamps upon the beauty and adventure of romance that has quickened us since the dawn of the human race.

Chad “The Elder” Dowdy over at Fraters Libertas (a proud Minnesota blog) says the words I was groping for about the Mark Sanford scandal:

The other thing that bothered me about Sanford’s commitment to “get my heart right” is that this isn’t all about his heart. Sanford is a Christian (Episcopal) and I know that he talked about his faith during the press conference. However, I’m surprised that a bigger part of his contrition wasn’t focused on the sins he committed against God. It’s great that you’re going to work on getting your heart right Gov, but how about getting right with God? When you blindly follow your heart (or other parts of the anatomy) you easily can stray from God’s path.

Today is Sissel Kyrkjebo’s birthday.

Here’s a video of her doing a lovely Swedish hymn, “Bred Dina Vida Vingar,” (Spread Wide Thy Wings) during a concert tour in the Faeroe Islands. This was back in 1991, before she was spoiled by success and cut her hair short.

Michael Riedel writes on two politically conservative plays working the ropes to get produced in New York.

But wouldn’t it be novel if, every once in a while, a show did more than reaffirm what theater people know to be the absolute truth? . . .

“Reagan” is a one-man play that doesn’t portray the 40th president as a fascist. It’s by Lionel Chetwynd, whose scripts for television and film include “The Hanoi Hilton,” “Color of Justice,” “Kissinger and Nixon” and “DC 9/11: Time of Crisis.”

The other play is “Girls in Trouble (Formerly Three Abortions)” by Jonathan Reynolds, one of the few openly conservative members of the Dramatists Guild.

His play “Stonewall Jackson’s House,” a sharp attack on political correctness, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1998.

(via ArtsJournal)

It was a quiet weekend, highlighted by a little shopping and housecleaning, as well as church as usual. Today it’s good and stinking hot—the first day this year I’d characterize by that precise and objective characterization. Nearly 100 degrees, at least on my back porch. I like it. I’m a summer baby, never really comfortable until I’m uncomfortably warm.

I recently wrote a paper for the Georg Sverdup Society (for the benefit of newcomers, that’s the scholarly society for which I serve as Journal editor. We’re mostly devoted to translating the works of Prof. Georg Sverdrup of Augsburg College, one of the founders of my branch [or “perversion,” some of our Lutheran readers are thinking] of Lutheranism—a sort of congregational Lutheranism).

My premise was that the roots of our peculiarity (or “perversion,” as above) may partly be found in Norwegian social tradition going back to the Viking Age. (Norwegian Lutherans in America were remarkable in that they split up into a number of competing Lutheran fellowships, unlike most of the other Scandinavian-Americans, who founded purely ethnic, one-size-fits-all church bodies). I suggest (I don’t think it’s provable one way or another) that this contentiousness (dare I say “diversity?”) may spring—in part—from the old Viking-Age political system, which Prof. Torgrim Titlestad calls “confederative,” and for which Erling Skjalgsson (hero of West Oversea, of which you may have heard) lived and died.

I sent the article to my friend and blurb-writer Dr. John Eidsmoe, because it occurred to me that this would be red meat to him. And indeed he responded quickly, correcting a couple of points of fact, but also very interested in my premise. He said, “You might say that Erling Skjalgsson was the Robert E. Lee of Norway.” That struck me odd at first, but on consideration there’s a lot to be said for it.

He also suggested that I might be the world’s greatest expert on Erling. Very flattering, but not true. Prof. Titlestad knows rings around me. Maybe I’m the greatest expert in America. But I’d bet there’s some hungry professor in some obscure Midwestern history department whom I’ve never heard of, who did a brilliant (and neglected) doctoral thesis on Erling. And who is very bitter about it, and will probably hunt me down and shoot me if my novel’s a success.

Still, it’s nice to be flattered. Flatter me all you like. I’ll make mordant, self-deprecatory jokes, but secretly I’ll like it, and don’t let me tell you otherwise.

“I’m ready (to die), but I’m going to wait for the movie,” said a 10-year-old cancer patient, waiting to see Pixar’s latest movie. The girl, Colby Curtin, was too sick to go to a theater, so a family friend called Pixar and Disney to ask if they would help her watch the movie before she died.

A Pixar employee brought a DVD to the Curtin family along with movie-related toys and stayed while the family watched. Colby couldn’t open her eyes to see the film. Her mother described the scenes to her. The family didn’t know “Up” focuses on an old man holding on to the dreams he had with his departed wife. They knew primarily that the story had lots of balloons and that Colby wanted to see it.

She died that evening.

It amused me today, for some reason, to recall that I know where to find a washroom at the fish market in Bergen, Norway. Oddly, I experienced almost as much pleasure in remembering that accomplishment as in the thought of being published (which just goes to show you there’s something very, very wrong with me).

Mark you, it’s not the greatest washroom you’ve ever used. For one thing, you have to pay to get into a stall. You pay an attendant, who—although I used the Men’s Room—was a woman, at least the last time I was there.

See, that’s what comes of Socialism. Verily I say unto you, if Pres. Obama (peace be upon him) and the Democrats have their way, soon all our washrooms will be pay toilets, and all the men’s rooms will have female attendants.

And it’ll do you no good staying home, because private washrooms will be outlawed. THIS WAY TO THE PEOPLE’S FACILITIES. YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK. PLEASE TAKE A NUMBER.

OK, I think I’ve taken this train of thought far enough down the track.