Merry Christmas from a Protestant minister convert to Catholicism

And to all a farewell.  At least for a time.  Still using a borrowed computer.  It seems as though mine does need a new hard drive.  As with most things nowadays, it had the life expectancy of a fruit fly.  There were no real power crashes or catastrophic events that caused the hard drive to quit.  Just the general 'soon to fall apart' quality of modern production.  As a result, I've been cut off from regular posting, and my readership shows.  Just as I was breaking records, getting folks to come back regularly, once again technology has hamstrung my blog.  Just as it did back in the day when I first started.

At this point, life is beckoning.  I'll get the computer back up when I can.  I'll hopefully be able to restart the blog on a regular basis.  But for now, just living will do.  We're looking for some miracle that will allow my wife to get a job while also being able to continue homeschool.  We've been told that my dreams of continuing my ministry are pretty much done.  If there was a time when the Church thrust open its arms to accommodate Protestant clergy, that time has past.  Some, from some denominations may still do well.  But the general, at least in these parts, has passed.

So it's time to roll up the sleeves and get going with life.  My library will be packed up and room made for living.  It's somewhat sad, and my wife is not altogether sold on giving up.  Several of our non-Catholic family and friends are making with the 'told you so' line.  After all, it couldn't have been God's will for us to be Catholic, and this just proves it.  Right not, we just want to avoid economic collapse, for at that point, I fear the witness to those who know our story will be all but unsalvageable.  At least if we get our life going and are at least able to stay afloat, we can point to something.  But as it is, following years of having almost every picnic rained on, and having the doors of ministry opportunity firmly but lovingly closed, proclaiming to those around us that it was God's glorious will for us to lose everything and be shut out of ministering in the Church is a hard sell.  A life well lived might go down better and prove that there really was more to it all than people had seen, and that the Catholic Faith and ill fortune do not need to be synonymous.

So that's the big focus over the next months.  Once we have the time and ability to get the computer up, I'll hopefully be back on a regular basis.  And once again, have to rebuild my readership. Until then, when I can.  In the meantime, here are a few links to Christmas posts of old, when visions of ministry still danced in my head, and Christmas was that time for future hope.  Have a very merry Christmas, those who are still visiting.

A 2012 reflection on the Joy of Christmas
Some musings on A Charlie Brown Christmas, the best Christmas special ever.
My own thoughts on the War on Christmas, from the blog's first Christmas season, 2010
Last year's Christmas, before the boys homeschooled and hope for ministry futures was in the air
And a quippy little post aimed at the growing impatience that our corporate structure has for that pesky religious holiday it annually exploits.

The family at the Nutcracker, 2013. 

I'm back

For a time.  It's a borrowed computer.  Not my broken one.  But I couldn't let this go.  It's that day of Infamy, quickly being forgotten.  Don't know if the news has mentioned it.  Still busy talking about Kennedy perhaps.  But it's worth remembering.  As America slips into the shadows, a time which Americans used to remember fondly.  Now, more often than not, it's the time of remembering racism, sexism, internment camps, and of course the atom bombs.  For me, I remember it differently.  I've learned that if I must focus on the worst of things, then I must focus on the worst of all things.  And that leaves the Catholic Church and its 2000 year history in a lurch.  Instead, I concede that bad can happen even in the best.  But instead of dwelling on it, I will try to remember the best.  That's not just regarding the Catholic Church by the way. But on this day, it is remembering the best of what this country was able to do in the wake of an unprovoked, and let's face it, dastardly attack.