[This is something I have used for Palm Sunday/Good Friday off and on for years. With retirement looming June 1, I’m not sure I’ll have the opportunity to use this again. So I’m sharing it here. Permission is given to use this, but only if I’m given credit as the author.]
After dinner, you and your friends go for a walk, and stop in the park. You ask them to wait for you, while you go away by yourself and think about what’s coming down.
It’s not a pretty picture. It fills you with dread. Your soul is so filled with sorrow that it almost leads you into despair. If only there were some other way … “Father, take this cup from me … But no, this is why I’m here: to do your will.”
In your distress, you return to your friends, seeking some comfort from them, from their presence — there is so little time. And they’re sleeping for God’s sake. Couldn’t they be there for you this once? (more…)
Today, in the calendar of the Episcopal Church, is the day we commemorate Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1109. He was born in Aosta, in northern Italy, around 1033 CE. He left home as a young man, traveling north, until he reached the Abbey of Bec in Normandy, where at Lanfranc’s urging, he embraced monastic life and took his vows in 1060 — succeeding Lanfranc as Prior in 1063 and later as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. So he was roughly 27 years old when he finally settled down.
Anselm is probably best known for his ontological argument for the existence of God — which I studied way back in college. Basically it says that since God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, and since we have the idea of God (as unconditional being) in our mind, such a being has to exist (or there would be something greater) and we could not even talk about such a being if it did not exist outside of our mind.
I’m probably not doing a fair summary of the argument, possibly because it has always seemed a circular and unconvincing argument. (more…)
The Sunset Juggler (formerly The Dragon's Mouth) 