Glog (contraction of G-Blog)

It’s getting to that time of year again, when 5 men of the cloth ring in the Christmas joy with song.  After the Gregorian chant books have closed.  I may or may not be in a cover band. The disclaimer is that it’s named in honor of some of the greatest ascetic saints in the glorious history of the Church… So the story goes that when a whole province of religious priests get together, there’s always a few musically minded ones that don’t do dominoes, and ask those other birds of a feather: “wanna jam?” It grew from back-room rhythms to playing for the other hundred padres gathered, so we needed a name to be official. “The Prophets” sounded too generic, too O.T. And then someone said: “The Desert Fathers.” I promise our adopted icon is not inspired by ZZ Top ; can’t speak for whoever designed it, though: Cover bands  are thoroughly American artifacts that include everything from the doppelgängers that perpetuate the legacy of great rock groups (like  The Fab Four ), to just crazy-talent

Interpretation  is a beautifully human activity, because it's so much more than Google Translate. It's more than saying what emotions well up inside while looking at a famous painting; homicide detectives seek to cobble together a narrative+motive from the traces of a crime scene, while husbands and wives observe each other's gestures and intentions in order to interpret them (note the increasing difficulty). But all of these acts of interpreting are aimed at one thing:  finding the meaning within . “Meaning” presupposes there's another person out there who  means , and that implies communication – usually vocal or visual, involving language. But is it even possible to really get 100% of what the communicator ever  meant ? That brings us into to where the art of interpretation is at its best –as well as its most complex and hair-brained– the understanding of ancient texts like, you guessed it, like the Bible. So much so that there's an entire branch of philosophy

Among the historically minded, the title "defender of the faith" can hardly be separated from the irony of Henry VIII. For a long time this sort of "defender" was supposed to be a person able to engage skillfully in the art of apologetics : laying out the reasons to believe what the Catholic Church believes and teaches, more often than not against Protestants. In the 21st century, few things could be less interesting than equipping oneself to duke it out with Evangelicals: that’s not where the action’s at. At the same time few things are more urgent than giving a cynical, self-destructing world the lifeline of hope that’s faith in Christ. Are we in a bind or what? Giving reasons to believe has to take a new tack.  There is a certain way, however, that Catholics have viewed the world and lived in it that has stood the test of time and proved to be the recipe for…sanity (who’d suspect that would ever be in short supply?) But we don't usually talk about worldviews,

It's barely a couple of hours after the Emmaus episode, Luke 24:35. The scene: 10 Upper Room Avenue, Jerusalem. Enter stage right nearly a dozen disoriented disciples. Jesus appears and the reaction is most definitely not the joyful recognition culminating from an experience of hearing the Word of God like Cleopas and his pal just did. Rather, upon seeing him, the Eleven "were startled and terrified." Not least because the one they abandoned, betrayed and left for dead is back—likely for revenge. And all this after they admitted He had appeared to Peter. Once again the Gospel looks like a poorly concocted story - there's negative progress happening with this resurrection thing. The apostles are getting worse. Somebody help. Why the setback? I mean, how'd a couple of second-tier disciples get faith that dwarfs the faith of Jesus' favorites? I'd say because the framework of their encounter with the risen Christ was different. Can I get bold? The structure

" That  was spiritual: they wanted to die with their boots on."   They , of course, refers those to gritty cowboys in clichéd western movies  –  the unwitting inspirations for a landmark  hippie generation "gotta-find-a-friend-in-Jesus" song:  Spirit in the Sky . Never mind that the one-hit-wonder songwriter Norman Greenbaum is an orthodox Jew, Boston College dropout: "I had to use Christianity because I had to use something; I wanted to die with my boots on [too]." Rodger that!     Randomness aside,  Spirit in the Sky  achieved the archetypal status precious few other songs ever did: it captured the American self-understanding of an entire epoch: from like, '69 to '99. That larger-than-life, finger-snapping, rhythmic swag created by Norm's howling fuzz-box-effected guitar encapsulated the entire post-Woodstock worldview: don't take me too seriously, but I'm goin' places.  No wonder it makes Vietnam footage look good. It injects dee