St. Antony’s Cave

Is it Not Kicking the Dog or is it Rising Above Them?

Posted on June 24, 2024 by Paul Harris

This blog was written years ago just after the Covid dust began to settle. Now, 2024, I’m reading King Cholera, a 1966 “biography” of the disease that consumed England beginning in the early 1830s and lasted to the 1860s. O how I wish I had read this prior to Covid. The exact same sides, arguments, accusations, conspiracies, and vilifying of positions was done then, and I now suspect is done in every pandemic, plague, or epidemic. Continue reading →

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Draft Our Daugthers

Posted on June 17, 2024 by Paul Harris

Continue reading →

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Dig This

Posted on June 10, 2024 by Paul Harris

“You’ve been thinking about dying? Dig this” is a great line from a great song from a great R&B group. Their answer to the posed question of thinking about dying not so much. It is to remind yourself “Everybody plays the fool sometime/ There’s no exception to the rule.” Continue reading →

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How’s This for Cold?

Posted on June 3, 2024 by Paul Harris

In the bygone years of pre-internet, you only knew something if you read it or someone in authority told you it. I knew the expression “cold as a witch’s tit” and “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey”; growing up in Michigan everyone did. I thought they had some vague but real reference to sexuality. Continue reading →

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“Have You Ever Helped Split a Church?”

Posted on May 27, 2024 by Paul Harris

That’s the first line of Joel Belz’s op-ed piece in the July 17, 2021, WORLD Magazine (“Menders or splitters?”, 8). You might not have before, but it’s highly likely you’re about to. And it will be over the equivalent of meat sacrificed to idols. Continue reading →

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The Song May Remember When but the Internet NEVER Forgets

Posted on May 20, 2024 by Paul Harris

Trisha Yearwood’s 1993 song referenced above is deserving of an extended quote and better still a listen. I figured out how to add musical media so give it a listen. If not, these are the opening two stanzas. Continue reading →

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The Brother’s Grimm Couldn’t do Better

Posted on May 13, 2024 by Paul Harris

In the Brother’s Grimm oft told tale, The wolf knows he’s a wolf; Red Riding Hood knows he’s a wolf, and grandma does too, but the latter two are swallowed whole by the first in no time. And if you don’t see the wolf of women’s ordination is fast closing, you too will be swallowed. The Brother’s Grimm couldn’t set this up any ‘better’ Continue reading →

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Close(d) Communion Across Three States

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Paul Harris

At the 2006, Texas District Convention, my congregation submitted the following resolution: Subject: To Clarify Synod’s Reaffirmation of Close(d) Communion Continue reading →

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Obergefell v Hodges – Nine Years In

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Paul Harris

You have to read the below carefully. It’s about the 2015 ruling that redefined marriage, as if that could be done. You might as well “redefine” gravity. That ruling recognized the right to oppose gay marriage for religious reasons. But see what two judges, on the dissent side, thought of this recognition. Continue reading →

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Just a Tool?

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Paul Harris

But is it? Are smartphones, social media, tablets, smart watches, and more just tools? They can be used for good or bad. Sure they can be abused, but the ancient dictum applies abuse doesn’t destroy use.

Executives in charge of Big Tech sure don’t see it as an inert tool. Continue reading →