Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-5-26
Janus, the Roman god who had two faces, one looking backward and one looking
forward, was among other things the source of January’s name. We logically are
prompted at this time to review the past year and contemplate the next. (By the
way, it strikes me as appropriate that a false god can be considered two-faced…)
My favorite pied-a-terre outside Bologna (Sasso Marconi) is the ancient villa Torre
di Iano, Tower of Janus. The old guy has been around for a long time, as have
superstitions and traditions like new year’s resolutions.

I will not offer resolutions, nor even suggestions, this week because I likely will
have broken my own before I hit “send” on the keypad. However I will share
observations I have jotted down over this past year. Advice, wisdom, challenges,
irrelevancies, take your pick – ‘tis still the season.

More people search the Scriptures looking for loopholes than for direction.

Contemplating the vast universe makes a lot of folks confess to feeling
insignificant. But shouldn’t we feel, placed on this planet amidst the vastness of
space and was created by God, special? – MORE significant!

We are berated every day to be Politically Correct. It is more important, however,
that we be Spiritually correct.

Pro-abortion forces insist that “blobs,” not lives, grow inside expectant mothers. So
why do they call their prescriptions “BIRTH control pills”?

Christians – in fact all people – are like moths: We are drawn to the Light.

In Life, there is a difference between GIVING and FORGIVING. Specifically,
come to think about it, not much of a difference! Each act blesses you as much as
the recipients.

Be not deceived – God is not mocked. (I had help on that one. Namely Galatians
6:7)

Pastors and priests once were condemned for what they preached. Today, many
pastors and priests should be condemned for what they DON’T preach.

A mathematical certainty: Life without Christ can yield half-successes. But it also
leads to total failures.

Satan tempts; God tests.

We want to cry out that God change our circumstances. God, however, desires to
change US.

Let us all banish from our vocabulary the word “luck.” What we call “bad luck”
we usually bring on ourselves. And what we attribute to “good luck” are insults to
the loving will and care of our Father God.

If your life were made into a movie, could it state truthfully in the opening credits
“Based on a True story”?

America needs a backbone. Instead, it has been looking for a wishbone.

Listen to the debates about Creationism vs Evolution, hotter than ever. For my
part, I care more about the Rock of Ages than the age of rocks.

Why is it that pundits attribute mass church shootings to racial and sexual and
political motivations? These are churches… children and adults praying…
Christians worshipping. Why not discuss our culture’s hatred of Jesus, its
animosity toward faith?

Jesus knocks at the front doors of our lives. Satan climbs in the back window.

The world foists “Pride Month” on us. Dare anyone call it “Shame Month”?

Our coins and public buildings say “In God We Trust.” Oh, really? Where does
He fit on the “truth” meter with favorite politicians, military weapons, “luck,”
guns, insurance policies, unions… Whom do you really trust?

And, from two of my best friends, Penelope Carlevato and Clive Staples Lewis:

We take our children to malls to see the Easter Bunny and to meet Santa Claus.
How many take children to church and meet Jesus?

Jesus claimed to be the Incarnation of God, the Savior of Humankind. By these
claims He was a madman, a liar, or… indeed the Son of God, Savior of your soul;
the only way to eternal life. There is no other choice.

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Click: My Tribute

youtube.com/watch?v=KcE5IlUL_focom/watch?v=KcE5IlUL_fo

1-1-17

Our secular world inherited a lot of things from ancient cultures and societies that have gone before. This is logical, as life is a continuum, not a shoebox of snapshots. History is ongoing. This is also proper, because we learn from history (or should) and, at the other end of the spectrum, it is interesting to learn what trappings have remained of customs, beliefs, names, and traditions.

Even the Christian religion owes much to ancient and pagan religions. The name of Easter; the dates of Christmas and Easter; the veneration or invention of some saints, are among the inspirations or compromises that made Christianity palatable to pagan peoples.

Christ’s Resurrection speaks of New Life; Springtime does too; ancient tribes used to celebrate nature’s regeneration in the Spring and face East, where the sun rises. “Branding” Resurrection observances with the associations of Spring – if not taken too far – does not violate any theological truth, and in fact seems virtuous.

… which is a long way around to invite a consideration of January, this January. The month is named for the Roman god Janus, the representation of endings and beginnings; the past and the future; of gates and doorways; of old and new; of transitions; of changes. Janus is called the Two-Faced god not because he was a hypocrite, but as his representations show, the fellow looked backward and forward. Our modern world has inherited more than a month’s name from him. For instance, understanding his traditional characteristics, we know better why New Year’s Resolutions are made in his month.

He bequeathed much, from special stones at the doors of Roman houses, to all manner of traditions and names. When in Bologna, Italy, I stay at the magnificent ancient villa named Torre di Iano – literally, the Towers of Janus. (Twin emotions, of sorts: I love to go; I hate to leave!

Here we are at another January, as always an invitation to contemplate the Old and New. We will welcome a new administration which, partisanship aside, bids fair to be a momentous and history-making (or -changing) presidency. Janus-like events ahead. An inordinate number of prominent people have died this year. But overall, and in deference to ol’ Janus, the numbers of deaths probably will be the same next year as last year. The more things change, the more they stay the same? Sounds wise and likely is wise, as it reflects Ecclesiastes’ “nothing new under the sun.”

Questions about Old and New invite profound thoughts, or trails toward them. They might mostly be variations on glasses “half empty or half full,” which I have never precisely understood; but I know what people grapple with. In nature, we see Janus-attributions everywhere, every day – and how we regard them says less about nature than ourselves.

Things die: flowers, trees, animals, people, theories, civilizations. If you choose to see death all around you, there are myriad examples.

Yet things live! Plants regenerate; succeeding generations of animals and people arise. Even seedlings fight their way between cracks in ugly urban jungles; after the worst of wildfires, “dead” trees grow buds, little animals appear, seemingly from nowhere; even the driest of deserts occasionally bloom – and with the most colorful flowers imaginable.

A variation of the sameness and dullness of life – to those who choose to be gloomy – is the belief that the world of people and the flora and fauna around us, plod on and on and on. Herds of dumb beasts; the bleakness of winter snow; the dulled masses of people.

Yet, facing the opposite direction, we see – and we serve – a different God. The animal and plant world He has created with infinite variety! No zebra nor giraffe has the same markings. Wild animals are different and sound different, one from another in the most populous of species. A rose is not a rose is not a rose!

And, for good or ill, people are different too. That is not only a cliché: we would not it any other way, would we? Approaching seven billion people on earth, there are doppelgangers – our “doubles” exist only in fiction. We miss loved ones, we regret the passing of favorites celebrities, but time marches on. When a harsh dictator or a brutal terrorist, say, dies, those people are almost instantly succeeded in the mortal coil by a baby whose smiles can make the hardest person feel new too… whose innocence blots out any imputed evil record… who is, again and again and again, a symbol of the Newness in life.

The Newness OF life.

We need to be reminded – from ancient traditions if we see them aright, to the vibrancy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – that things die “unto” life. That for every old and even regrettable thing, there are second chances, U-turns, and life more abundant. That God is a god of New Life.

Happy January!
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Click: St Patrick’s Breastplate