The Week Ahead

"We've got problems, we don't know how to solve them, everywhere we go, we've got some skeletons that follow, we've got baggage, you know we're going to drag it where we go for everyone to see"--Good Charlotte, "Broken Hearts Parade"

You must not think I am as gregarious in person as I might appear in electronic print. Then again, I'm not particularly gregarious in this medium either. Someone asked me today about my week. The highlight of my week was a significant improvement to my novel method of processing tree ring width records from individual trees. But I couldn't think of this (and am unsure whether this was a worth a mention), I'm too consumed with quantifying our general ignorance about Martian dust devils. Whenever I'm too frustrated with this particular problem, I go read a novel. Well, at least on the weekends, when I can afford the time. This afternoon, I read The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard, a sweetly romantic tale written in prose so evanescently descriptive that you can't imagine understanding the characters or perceiving the locales even if you knew them in the flesh. The thrust of the novel was something about the maintenance of humanity in an inhumane world or else how jolly interesting it is to be a misfit in a world very soon to eviscerate the very standards by which your oddity was judged, only to find yourself still an oddity. But if you're odd, you might as well have company. Also, the Antipodes are dull and depressing. I'll say this for the last half-century. Whatever the Antipodes were fifty years ago, they are likely anything but boring now. But the novel was a happy relief from the usual space operas for which my local library has good taste. So I guess I just had a pleasant afternoon.

Two events wait in the wings this week in the Anglican Communion (particularly in the United States). The first is more sure. Next Saturday, God willing and the people consenting, Peter Jasper Akinola, Primate of All Nigeria, will install Martyn Minns as Bishop of CANA. The second is entirely the stuff of which dreams are made of and yet maybe not. Fr. Martins has suggested that this just might be the week when some new sheepfold might be erected to gather the reasserters of five Dioceses. One almost feels compelled to switch into Latin when contemplating a nearby future of denuntiantibus titterulibus ex Cantauria or nova Papa Alexandrina .

Whatever this week brings, I point you to Fr. Knisely's words :

But my concern is less that we behaving badly, it’s more about what our behavior is doing to our souls. The long and protracted arguments, the claims of righteousness and charges of unrighteousness, the glee that is felt when one’s opponents misstep is slowly creating a family system that is addicted to this conflict. And this conflict seems to me to fast becoming an idol that we’re focussing our attention on rather than on serving Christ.

And as you well know, I can be as guilty as this as anyone.