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Daylight And Other Things Saved
An almost-spring rain has been falling most of the day, and the birds have been very busy at the feeders and in the birdbath. The daffodils are up, along with the grape hyacinth. The Virginia bluebells are getting ready to bud out, the forsythia is daubed with yellow up and down its slender branches, and the peach trees are blossoming out as well. A near neighbor’s pear tree is a perfect pink lollypop in the distance, and all the colors are set off by the silvery mist in the hollers. And tonight we move the clocks forward into Daylight Savings Time, and the tone and tenor of the days will…
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Patient Whispers Of A Noble Mind
Bruce Charlton has become one of my regular daily stops, ever since I realized that the good doctor can be relied upon to provide original and provocative observations on a number of topics. It’s about time I added his blog to my blogroll. Recently, I’ve been reading and thinking quite a bit about Bruce’s musings on Mormonism. This came about rather indirectly, after Bookslinger, a regular commenter at the Charlton blog recommended to me an LDS video about spiritual migration. After watching this video several times and subsequently watching/listening to several talks by Dieter Uchtdorf, I delved into Bruce’s archives and began reading some of his older writings on the…
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Faith In Exile, Part III – Conclusion
The Lenten season is upon us, and I am adrift. From what I understand, the majority of people who join the Catholic church are received into her arms during the Easter Vigil. Because of complications in my past life including divorce, along with complete uncertainty about which version of Catholicism I should be following, I have resigned myself to probably never being a real, official Catholic. Yet hope remains. I realized some time ago — gradually, like the sunrise, not an immediate clap of thunder — that I had come to believe the Catholic church is the one, true faith…that the Church truly is the pillar and bulwark of the…
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Faith In Exile, Part II
To continue… I began searching out and reading Catholic blogs and websites, and was soon dismayed at what I read. Well, let me clarify that. I was dismayed at what the articles pointed me towards. All the time I had been circling Catholicism, thinking in terms of doctrine and authority and salvation, I had managed to somehow ignore the fact that I was contemplating the Catholic church during a time of great upheaval. I found myself confronted with scism and sexual scandal and allegations of cover-ups and Vatican II this and sedevacantist that and vacant seats and impious popes and illicit popes and illegitimate popes and angry laypeople and apathetic…
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Faith In Exile, Part I
I’ve never until this moment written the following words down, and I’ve only spoken them aloud to my wife. I consider myself a Catholic. I was raised in a non-religious home, although my mother taught us to believe in the God of the Bible, and in His son, Jesus. She allowed us to attend church with friends if we wished, and she prayed with me at my bedside when I was a little fellow. The doctrines — if they can be called doctrines — that I was taught were standard but elusive. The Ten Commandments, and the Sinner’s Prayer, and Jesus waits to be invited into our hearts. But even…