For those of you that were players committed to the Facebook app “Farmville” back in 2010 or 2011 (…or so), we are sad to report that FarmVille shut down last week. Daniel Victor (NYT, 12/31) commented that many technique FarmVille popularized – nagging notifications to friends and encouragements to check back daily to tend to your crops – are now being imitated by everything from Instagram to QAnon. Where FarmVille was the time-eating destination of friends and family – there are many social media apps that are as demanding, nagging, and lead one down the “rabbit hole” of lost time. Where FarmVille feared not to tread, everyone else followed. Alas and aloha.
Aloha FarmVille
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Next Sunday, we celebrate the 
“…the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, on those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death light has arisen.”
Last century (literally) I was researching for my master’s thesis on early Franciscan Missions. One of the really interesting aspects of the early Franciscan missions was the one to China. The friars arrived in China in 1292 and John of Montecorvino was the first bishop of Beijing. But all that is beside the point. In the course of my research, I ran across The Travels of Marco Polo in which he describes his travels in the far east. I was scanning the text to see if he had any mention of contact with the friars or the Christian monasteries that dotted the silk road in those days. While he had no mention of either – he did recount a most interesting rendition of the account of the Three Magi. Marco Polo wrote that he encountered this version in Persia (modern-day Iran). In that account there are three magi – but they are not traveling together. Each is on his own journey following the star to Bethlehem. Melchior is an older man, Balthazar is an adult in his middle years, and Gaspar is a young man just reaching adulthood.
Unless you happen to be like my muse, Calvin, in the comic strip, I suspect you are about to make some New Year’s resolutions. How did you do on last year’s resolutions? About the same as the rest of us? One ad hominem wisdom saying defines “insanity” this way: to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. Perhaps 2021 is a time to consider changing the way resolutions are considered, made, and hopefully, kept. 
One of the great gifts to the Church are the heretics. I use that one-liner in order to grab people’s attention. It mostly generates the question: “what possible good could come from a heretic,” right? The thing about heretics is that they ask great questions, sometimes the critical questions. The problem is they get the wrong answers. They take a road leading away from Truth. And in the beginning it always looks like a promising direction.
friarmusings 