Several weeks ago there were massive flight cancellations on Southwest Airlines and then a while later American Airlines experienced similar widespread cancellations. Immediately people began to speculate if this was a reaction to corporate decisions for mandatory vaccinations – a “blue flu” epidemic as people began to call in sick. Cancellations and very long delays were the norm of two different holiday weekend. And why were only two airlines so largely affected? It is not as though this was the first weather event these two airlines had experienced.
Let’s return to one topic that always fascinates me: chaos. As mentioned in many other posts, mathematical chaos is not the randomness of a butterfly in China who flutters all the time, but on one occasion, the flutters give way to a tornado in Kansas – how random one might think. Such an event depends on the initial conditions in which the butterfly flutters (…. and why aren’t they called flutterbys?). Given the same initial conditions, the same tornado will predictably appear in Kansas. Continue reading
Part of the blessing being a parish priest is that you are invited into some of the most intimate moments of a family’s life. There is perhaps none more intimate and intense than the moments when illness passes through uncertain diagnosis, to one which blurs into the final days of a life. It is part of a life of ministry to be into a family whose loved one’s days are numbered. It is a privilege to journey with the family are they prepare for the loss that surely and steadily this way comes. In those times, Hope can seem more tentative, more distant; perhaps hovering on the edge of disappointment. 
During the first 300 year of the Christian church, the people of God endured periods of peace, but also extended periods of persecution. Especially in the local churches, each generation remembered the martyrs and the leaders who exemplified the faith. By the fourth century these women and men were honored in liturgies that commemorated their passing into God’s bright glory. In time, churches were named to honor their memory, sometimes even built on their tombs. And in time relics were collected and honored. 
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