The Bishop Visits

Today the church celebrated the Feast of St. Francis (the official date was yesterday, October 4th). Coincidentally it was also the date of Bishop Austin Rios' biennial visit to our Foster City parish.

After reflecting on Francis' life of service, the Bishop greeted the beloved animals of the parish as they were brought to him for a blessing.

As two-legged and four-legged creatures mingled during an informal lunch, the tribulations of the world were forgotten.

Bargaining Doesn't Work Here

I have a good friend who has been trying to convert me to his form of Christianity for 52 years. In his words, he wants me to repent of my sins and welcome Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal Savior.

During the Sacrament of Holy Communion Episcopalians ask forgiveness of their sins and repeat the tenets of faith in the Nicene Creed. Although these are consistent with his faith, that's not good enough for my friend.

To be fair, he is well aware that he and I each have chronic illnesses that will shorten our lives, and he is anxious for me to use his methods for the sake of my immortal soul. (Pascal's Wager comes to mind, i.e., give your all to saving a soul in this world because the reward of salvation is infinite.)

Leo Tolstoy (Zuma/WSJ)

This line of reasoning makes me increasingly uncomfortable, i.e., perform a set of actions in order to get into heaven. Konstantin Levin, the co-protagonist of Tolstoy's “Anna Karenina,” rejects this transactional philosophy. [bold added]

Levin realizes that our fundamental knowledge of right and wrong isn’t derived from theory but is simply “given.” “I and all men have one firm, incontestable knowledge, and that knowledge cannot be explained by reason—it is outside it, and has no causes and can have no effects.”

In saying goodness has no causes, Levin means that why we have come to think certain things are good—say, the way some evolutionary biologists explain altruism as good for group survival—is a different question. What is good is good regardless of why we’re able to think so. By the same token, “effects” are beside the point because to do something good to be rewarded, in this life or the next, would simply be an economic bargain, like saving for retirement.

Do good as much as you can when you can, and expect nothing in return.

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.----Matthew 16:25

Don Peter

Don Peter (1938-2025)

Donald Gene Peter was a bear of a man. 87 when he died last month, he still looked the part of the offensive lineman who pushed aside linebackers for Stanford. We were on the Farm in different decades--he in the '50's and I in the '70's--but they may as well have been in different centuries. When Don played, Stanford's mascot was an Indian, the school was part of the Pacific Coast Conference (one of the predecessors to the Pac-8), and face masks on helmets were not required.

High school and college football was just the start of a lifelong devotion to sports:

Along with teaching history, Don coached football at Downey, Mills, and Burlingame High Schools. He also founded and coached the Burlingame Rugby Club that won the national championship.

It's cliché, but up until the very end Don was giving to his extended family, to his church, to his community, and public education:

Don's parents instilled in him the importance of contributing to his community. In the 1970s, he oversaw the conception and building of two creative playgrounds at Herbert Hoover Elementary in Burlingame with his first wife, Sally. He organized dozens of reunions and hosted backyard parties with his second wife, Elizabeth.

At the memorial service on Saturday we arrived a few minutes early but had to park at the shopping center across the street. The church was filled, and we sat in the overflow room in the back. His children said how much they loved him and will miss him. I will, too.

A Golden Year

Your humble blogger has had a number of health scares over the past year, to the extent that it was problematic whether I would see this day. Well, I, we, are still here.

We commemorated our anniversary by asking the lady minister to bless our union. After she did so, some members of the congregation, which had supported us during our time of trial, applauded.

I spoke to them during coffee hour and let them know how much I appreciated their prayers and being part of a community that believed in the primacy of the Word, before which concerns of the world are secondary.

The recessional hymn was "Be Not Afraid," which has comforted many who are facing the unknown. We who are in the winter of our lives are asking questions whose answers are all-important and don't come with guarantees that satisfy the scientific mind. In the end we are forced to trust the One who said "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."

Legal Protections Aren't Just for One Side

Although there have been a number of religious-freedom disputes regarding Islam, the more highly publicized state vs. religion cases have involved conservative Christians. In Masterpiece Cakeshop the U.S. Supreme Court supported the bakery when it declined to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple when the bakery was ordered to do so by the State of Colorado. More recently we've posted about Washington State's efforts to break the seal of the confessional and the U.S. Postal Service's refusal to accommodate an employee when he didn't want to work on Sundays for religious reasons.

Christ Episcopal Church members demonstrate against the Toms River eminent domain action (ENS)

Christ Episcopal Church of Toms River, NJ wanted to build a homeless shelter, after which town officials, who opposed construction, sought to seize the property "by eminent domain if necessary, to create new public parkland."

Christ Episcopal Church has two strong lines of defense. The first is that Toms River may be abusing the power of eminent domain. (Fifth Amendment: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.")

The town’s proposal is “clearly an abusive use of eminent domain,” Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, told ENS, though it would be up to the courts to decide whether such a move would be illegal. He thinks the church has a strong argument that the officials’ actions really were intended to thwart the congregation’s interest in creating a homeless shelter on the property.

The second line is that the town is infringing upon the church's First Amendment rights ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.") Saner heads in the Toms River government appear to have prevailed for now, as the eminent domain action has been postponed.

After an initial outcry, the vote on the plan was postponed until July 30. More recently, Mayor Dan Rodrick postponed the vote indefinitely, likely because of growing public opposition. He now says the town will go through with the vote only if a poll of town residents he plans to conduct on the subject reveals majority support for it.

This story is also noteworthy because Mayor Rodrick and six of the seven Township Council members are Republicans, the party which generally takes the side of Christian churches in battles with government. To Republicans this is a reminder that the First Amendment protects everyone, friend and foe alike.

AI: Filling a Need for Seniors

(Pinterest image)

On Saturday we posted concerns about out-of-control artificial intelligence. Today we note how AI can make a big difference in the mental health of seniors: [bold added]

Research shows that phone calls with an empathetic listener can help reduce loneliness among older adults, leading to improved mental health. In-person interactions are even more effective. But nursing-home residents don’t always get many visits or calls.

The first Meela test phase, involving 23 RiverSpring Living residents, produced promising results, giving hope to the idea that AI can be used for a lot more than workplace efficiency and homework help.

Meela was founded by Josh Sach, a former tech product manager who was inspired to create a solution to the loneliness epidemic after seeing his late father-in-law experience isolation. The name of his companion bot comes from the Hebrew word “mila,” meaning “word.” He and his team listened to more than 2,000 voices before choosing a soothing-sounding, middle-aged voice actress.

Sach declined to say which tech company’s AI model powers Meela, but he said it already had strong safeguards and that his team added additional guardrails to ensure Meela doesn’t give medical, legal or financial advice. While it isn’t intended for clinical mental-health treatment, Meela is designed to deliver cognitive behavioral therapy—validating residents’ feelings and suggesting solutions to problems.

Meela remembers prior conversations with residents, who have to consent to their conversations being recorded and transcribed. Sach says the transcripts are retained for the duration of the account, unless someone requests their deletion. They aren’t available for users or their families. And where applicable, the recordings and transcripts are handled in accordance with HIPAA, a federal patient-protection law, and the care facility’s instructions.

In the first phase, participants’ depression and anxiety levels were measured before talking to Meela and 30 days after. Those with moderate to severe depression or anxiety were found to have demonstrated notable improvements after speaking with Meela at least once a week.

Participants spoke to Meela for an average of 10 minutes at a time, but some talked for more than an hour. Staffers also noticed that study participants were engaging in more social activities after talking to the bot, says Dr. Zachary Palace, medical director of RiverSpring Living’s nursing home.

Part of our church's ministry is to visit nursing homes and engage with residents. Many do not have any visitors and are happy to converse with complete strangers, even for just an hour. AI doesn't get tired, and it's clear that carefully tailored AI can provide regular mental health benefits to our senior citizens.

Trinity Sunday 2025

On Trinity Sunday, 2025, I reflected on the changes in my life since Trinity Sunday, 2017. Both my parents were still alive, I had not been diagnosed with any chronic diseases, and I was making travel plans to visit places on my bucket list. Our rector was three years from retirement and gave a sermon about the DC superhero trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. It was a simpler, more frivolous, pre-pandemic time. Below is the post from eight years ago.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Trinity Sunday the minister sermonized about the big Three of DC Comics---Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman---whom he followed, er, religiously as a child. (He also rhapsodized about Wonder Woman, which by all accounts is the first great movie of the new "DC Universe.") Well, when we talk about abstract concepts like the Trinity we grab any metaphors that people can relate to.

The minister didn't dwell too long on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit---in the modern world if you can't explain it in 144 characters or less, why even try---but did say that it was a mystery over which scholars had debated for centuries. Yes, your humble blogger remembers the Sunday School lessons about Trinity--three aspects of the same God, none greater than the other--but that's about the extent of it.

I stopped trying to understand when all references to "Holy Ghost" were changed to "Holy Spirit" throughout the Liturgy in the 1970's. From the comics (see how I brought that full circle) I knew that there was a big difference between a ghost and a spirit; if the church can make such a word change so blithely, I knew deep theology wasn't my forte.

At least they didn't change the great hymn of Trinity Sunday.

Pentecost, 2025

The liturgical color of Pentecost is red,
symbolic of the Holy Spirit's "tongues of fire"

Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2:

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Pentecost is often called the church's birthday, when the Holy Spirit came to Earth.

Will the church be around for its 4,000th birthday? Will humanity even exist? I like to think that by then we'll not only have survived but will inhabit other planets and that Christianity will have adapted its theology to accommodate that reality. Deo volente.

Diane Robertson

Diane Robertson and her signature roast pork,
with Jerry Brooks of Hope Lutheran, San Mateo

My friend Diane Robertson passed away on Thursday after a short illness.

I was the coordinator for the church outreach program, and for 20 years Diane cheerfully gave her money and time to the dozen or so activities we supported. She manned the church's booth for the Foster City summer fair, made sandwiches for Sandwiches on Sunday, and bought Christmas presents for immigrant families.

She was one of the stalwarts for Home and Hope, a consortium of Peninsula churches and synagogues that provided emergency housing at their facilities. Diane liked to roast a pork shoulder or ham for the Home and Hope families, and I always went back for seconds of her dish.

She was a retired stewardess (don't call me a flight attendant, she said) for United Airlines, and she was fond of recounting the glory of air travel as it used to be.

Though we grew up thousands of miles apart---me in Hawaii and she in Canada--we found common ground in our humble origins and marveled how good our lives had turned out to be. We also shared a deep gratitude that prompted us to give something back.

Goodbye, my friend, till we meet again.

Happy Easter

Unable to attend my church's regular Easter service at 10, I went hunting for an Episcopal sunrise service. The nearest was the Church of the Epiphany in San Carlos, where we had once been members from 1988 to 2003. The outdoor mass began at 6:30 a.m. and finished in under an hour. Music was furnished by a parishioner with a guitar.

I recognized a few old timers, but none of them recognized me. Well, it has been 22 years and we've all changed a bit.

Besides, if you show up to see and be seen, you're in the wrong place. Easter Sunday is a day to give thanks and praise for the gift of eternal life, regardless of whether two, three, or hundreds are gathered together.

Good Friday, 2025

The Good Friday service is a meditation on Jesus' death and sacrifice. This evening the chaplain's homily emphasized a topic that I had not heard before: that Jesus taught us how to die.

In this world as his death was coming, Jesus reacted with serenity, truth, courage, and compassion. We are taught a great many things when we are growing up, but many of us are not taught how to respond to pain and suffering, the deaths of our loved ones and how to approach our own deaths.

I see many people in the hospital on their deathbeds. Some are tormented and cannot be comforted unless someone is with them at all times, and even then sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes nothing helps.

And then there are those who know how to self-soothe and are mindful and are serene in accepting while in great pain and tragic, traumatic circumstances and even if isolated and forgotten by loved ones.

Jesus knew pain, but he also knew how to care for his soul while he was in the middle of it. He practiced self-soothing in a deep spiritual embodied way. He cared for his own heart so that he could continue to give of himself. He did this in many ways. Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. When the pressure grew too much, when the crowds kept coming to see him, when he was low in spirits, Jesus stepped away. He didn’t numb or distract himself. He got quiet and still. Jesus didn’t escape to avoid the world. He withdrew to be refilled with the presence of God.

He was honest when he prayed… In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus doesn’t fake it. He lets them fear the weight of his circumstances. He cries, he sweats blood. When he prays, he speaks truth to the father. He opens his heart completely…

Jesus trusted the bigger picture. He was able to accept and surrender, not using avoidance or distraction. In Isaiah’s vision of the Messiah the servant is not frantic. He is not reactive. He is silent and aware and surrendered, not from fear but from focused concentration. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb that went to the slaughter he had inner clarity in the middle of chaos. “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Jesus is in control.

Circumstances allow many of us to come to the realization that our death is imminent and that there's nothing we can do about it. It's a seeming paradox: everything is out of our control when are most helpless, yet we can still be in control. Jesus is the Son of God and part of the Holy Trinity, but in the end he was also a great Teacher

Palm Sunday, 2025

In her homily the lady minister meditated on the highs and lows of Holy Week--Jesus' triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the betrayals and despair of the Crucifixion, and the joy of the Resurrection, the foundational event of Christianity.

Don't just skip to the happy ending; the journey, not just the destination, is important.

The church's worship area looks especially beautiful. The purple of Lent has given way to Palm Sunday's red, and the green palms and blue-white stained glass festooned the sanctuary with color. Enjoy the journey this week.

Green Shoots

Passing the peace

Your humble blogger is an inveterate optimist. Young families are starting to come (back) to church, and I wonder if a decades-long declining-attendance trend has finally been reversed. Could this be another Great Awakening? America experiences a religious revival every century or so.

I'm also confident that the stock market will rebound, though it's likely not going to happen this week. We underestimate the resilience and adaptabiity of American companies, who will be able to ride out this storm until tariffs are reduced, either through negotiation or pressure from the President's own supporters.

It's been less than one week that the new tariff policy has been in effect, and if someone had said that a Presidential announcement of a non-military nature had erased $6.6 trillion in stock market value in two trading days I wouldn't have believed him.

Tariffs have been called a self-inflicted wound; well, if it could be done by one man then it could be undone by him if the pain becomes unbearable.

Speaking of self-inflicted wounds, I am glad to see that Americans are coming to their senses about decarbonization. The need for energy has escalated dramatically because of the artificial-intelligence boom, and it's futile to decommission clean-burning natural gas turbines while China is bringing on stream two coal-fired plants per week. We'll need the electricity so that our AI and robots can overcome China and other countries' advantages in labor costs.

Amidst the stock market "wreckage" (still above the levels in 2022) I see green shoots.

Mom's Memorial Service

Yesterday was the Memorial Service for my mother, Doreen Yuen, who passed away at the age of 95 in December.

As with my father's ceremony in 2019, the sacrament of Holy Communion was held at Honolulu's St. Peter's Episcopal, the church she had attended all her life. Mom's service was livestreamed on YouTube, with relatives tuning in from Australia and the U.S. Mainland.

My brothers and I forsook a lengthy eulogy, and several speakers told stories about Mom. The length of the service was about an hour, and the crowd retired to the Parish Hall for lunch and fellowship while our family placed her urn next to Dad. Everyone seemed to enjoy the celebration of her life.

Her obituary is after the break.

Facing Life's Tests

Janis Horne reads the NT lesson.

Today's New Testament reading was from 1 Corinthians 10. Here's the excerpt that has given comfort to Christians over the centuries:

God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

Sometimes our problems seem to be overwhelming--last year various family members and friends had serious health issues--and everyone followed all the doctors' instructions in addition to praying regularly. A number of congregations also put us on their prayer lists. We were able to get through the dark times by referring to Paul's words that we could endure the most trying tests.

The science is inconclusive about whether prayer really works to heal illness directly--and not everyone got the health outcome we hoped for--but most of us ended the year in reasonably good shape and good spirits. From where we were a year ago, it's a win and I'll take it.

Lent: No More Happy Talk

It's the first Sunday in Lent, so Christians know what that means: no more happy talk.

The Gospel was from Luke 4, which describes how Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, where the devil tempted Him to use His power to feed Himself, seize authority over all the kingdoms of the world, and show that the angels will guard Him from harm. Jesus, of course, turned down the devil. On the latter temptation the lady minister said:

And then there’s what I see as a temptation to see God as the cosmic protector. If we believe all will be well, our lives will run smoothly. We’re going to be sheltered from all those bad things that happened to other people, people who don’t believe like we do, right? We won’t even dash our foot against the stone-- that’s what scripture says, right?

But God doesn’t prevent bad things from happening to us. That’s not how it works. Some people are miraculously healed. Others aren’t. Some might lose their home in a flood or a fire. Others don’t. Some people die at the hands of others, or in plane crashes or natural disasters, and some people seem to live lives of ease while others endure great suffering. I don’t know why. Things happen and at times it seems that there is no rhyme or reason.

Lent is a time of reflection, and of the testing of the faith with age-old questions of why bad things happen to good people and innocent babies, and why a just God would allow a terrible thing to happen. The usual words of comfort seem hollow, and we are in the wilderness.

Supersessionism, and the Reaction to It

Children helped to collect the offering

Today's New Testament reading was from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor:3):

Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed

(Note: the referenced "veil" is the one Moses wears in Exodus 34:29 when he speaks to the Israelites, who were "afraid to come near him" because his face shone brightly after speaking with God.)

The 2 Corinthians passage is another reference to the Israelites' hardened hearts against God and Jesus in the Old and New Testaments, respectively.

However, Christians throughout history have gone further, saying that the refusal of the Jews to accept Jesus as Messiah means that the Jews are no longer God's Chosen people. This belief is one of the tenets of supersessionism: [bold added]

Supersessionism is the traditional Christian belief that Christianity is the fulfillment of Biblical Judaism, and therefore that Jews who deny that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah fall short of their calling as God's Chosen people.

Supersessionism, in its more radical form, maintains that the Jews are no longer considered to be God's Chosen people in any sense. This understanding is generally termed "replacement theology."

The traditional form of supersessionism does not theorize a replacement; instead it argues that Israel has been superseded only in the sense that the Church has been entrusted with the fulfillment of the promises of which Jewish Israel is the trustee...

In recent times, the doctrine of supersessionism has been blamed for mistreatment of the Jews in the past. Some liberal Protestant groups have therefore formally renounced supersessionism, affirming that Jews and other non-Christians have a valid way to find God within their own faith, which breaks from historic Protestant teaching.

Without elaboration, the lady minister introduced supersessionism to the congregation and pronounced it wrong.

The coming of Jesus wasn’t meant to nullify the Jewish traditions of that time, and certainly not in our time to imply that Judaism is somehow incomplete without faith in Jesus. That understanding can lead to something called supersessionism, or the idea that Christianity is somehow superior and supersedes Judaism.

I wish that she had not dismissed supersessionism so quickly. We are Christians presumably because we believe that our understanding of God, man, and the universe is better explained by our faith than by others. If we didn't believe that--let's not use the trigger word "superior," which smacks of abhorrent colonialism--then why are we in the pews? Why recite the Creed or repent or be baptized?

For over a decade I have believed our church leadership takes positions nearly indistinguishable from the far left wing of the Democratic Party. More fundamental than any specific policy position on Palestine, inequality, racism, etc., I think now that the rot started with the postmodern belief that there is no objective truth, i.e., that my truth, your truth, and the truth of the guy sitting under the tree are all equally valid. The only reality is power, whereby one group's truth is forced upon others.

A Christianity that celebrates the Humble Servant who lays down His life for others has no place in the power- and "social justice"-focused Episcopal Church, and that is one of the reasons the church is dying.

The Beam in her Eye

Mariann Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, DC, has attracted controversy over her sermon at the national prayer service last Tuesday.

As homilies go, your humble blogger found it to be well within mainstream Episcopal thought. She called for unity and its "foundations": dignity, honesty/truth, and humility. She had completed her sermon on Monday but felt that she had to add something more:

"I found myself thinking, there’s a fourth thing we need for unity in this country — we need mercy," she told RNS in an interview on Wednesday. "We need mercy. We need compassion. We need empathy. And after listening to the president on Monday, I thought, I wasn’t going to just speak of it in general terms."

The result was a sermon, delivered from the cathedral’s pulpit on Tuesday morning as President Trump and Vice President JD Vance sat quietly just a few feet away, that pleaded with the president to have "mercy" on people who stand to be disproportionately impacted by his administration’s policies — namely, LGBTQ people and immigrant families.

"In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now," Budde said. "There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in both Democratic, Republican and independent families who fear for their lives."

She also made a plea for immigrants and refugees, a reference to Trump’s promise to enact sweeping deportations and his executive order stopping almost all refugees from entering the country starting Jan. 27. The majority of immigrants, Budde said, are not criminals, but "people who pay taxes, and are good neighbors."

I have two problems with the final section of Bishop Budde's sermon:

1) in a call for "mercy" she is really asking the President not to enforce the law. Perhaps she had become so accustomed to the Biden Administration's selective approach to enforcement (open borders for favored groups, lawfare against Republicans) that she thought that President Trump could do the same. The President said that he would not politicize the administration of Justice, and until he demonstrates otherwise should be given the benefit of the doubt. The right place to change minds is Congress, and the Bishop should have faith in the strength of her arguments to change the hearts of the nation's lawmakers.

2) President Trump's opponents almost all think that he is an emotional, impulsive narcissist. If Bishop Budde really believed that of the President, the wrong way to influence such a man is to berate him in public. The more effective method to get help for "transgender children" and immigrants who lack "proper documentation" is to show respect to the President in public, then approach him quietly for assistance after the prayer service. It's hard to believe that the Bishop would rather show off her antipathy to Donald Trump (on display in June, 2020) than help the people who need it. I hope I'm wrong about her motivation.

After the break is the text of Bishop Budde's sermon from the Guardian.

Who Gets the Credit?

The lady minister preached about one of Jesus' most well-known miracles, the conversion of water to wine:

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come."

His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward." So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now." Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.---John 2:1-11

The lady minister said that Jesus did not perform this and other miracles to "dazzle" or prove that Jesus is the Son of God but "to show forth the light and the love of God."

We are now in that period in late January when football players who perform spectacularly sometimes give thanks to God or Jesus first, then talk about the details of the game. Most viewers initially listen through secular filters and think that real credit should be given to thousands of hours of practice and coaching, but a game "hero" has traditionally earned the right to say what he really feels, as long as he's not too preachy. The interview quickly moves on to football.

If one thinks about how to apply today's Gospel, the teaching is not really about the football player's talent, the game's outcome, the players and coaches who contributed, or even his gratitude to God for the above, although that was undoubtedly his intent.

The real story is about how God's glory is revealed in the events that have just occurred, a philosophical attitude that is often derided in fiction ("The surgeons saved his life." It's a miracle! Thank the Lord!)

The 12th Day of Christmas (Reprise)

Now that Congress has certified the election of Donald Trump, normalcy has begun to return to January 6th. Perhaps in a decade or so, the events of four years ago will have receded to history's dustbin, where they belong. Knowing that the events of that day will pass, I wrote this on January 6, 2021.

Da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi (unfinished)

Brittanica: [bold added]

Epiphany, also called Feast of the Epiphany, Theophany, or Three Kings’ Day, (from Greek epiphaneia, “manifestation”), Christian holiday commemorating the first manifestation of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, represented by the Magi, and the manifestation of his divinity, as it occurred at his baptism in the Jordan River and at his first miracle, at Cana in Galilee.

Epiphany is one of the three principal and oldest festival days of the Christian church (the other two are Easter and Christmas). Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and other Western churches observe the feast on January 6, while some Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate Epiphany on January 19, since their Christmas Eve falls on January 6.

A half-century ago churches held services on January 6th no matter what day of the week it was. It was on the Feast of the Epiphany, not Christmas, that the pageant was held when the kids dressed up as angels, kings, shepherds and, of course, Joseph and Mary.

I've played most of the parts, but never Joseph. Joseph was not a desirable role to us kids--everyone else had better costumes or appurtenances like a shepherd's crook. As we got older we began to understand Joseph's honorable decisions when he found that his virgin bride was pregnant.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. ---Matthew 1:18-19

An angel told Joseph in a dream that Mary was bearing the Son of God, Joseph went ahead with his marriage to Mary, and the rest is history.

On a day when too many people have acted ignobly, give a thought to Joseph, without whom there probably wouldn't be any Christmas--or Epiphany--to celebrate.