my daughters obediently not smiling (almost).

Cutest kangaroo outside of texas

St. Brendan the Navigator

St. Brendan the Navigator

“Fear not, brothers, for our God will be unto us a helper, a mariner, and a pilot; take in the oars and helm, keep the sails set, and may God do unto us, His servants and His little vessel, as He willeth.” St. Brendan The Navigatio

The Roman World (which was the whole world in AD 500) had fallen apart. Christians throughout Europe, who were just trying to survive the collapse of the governing system all around them, began turning in on themselves instead of continuing the aggressive evangelistic missions of an earlier age. Many people were afraid that they must be living at the end of all things. If Rome could fall, what could possibly be safe?

During this socio-political upheaval, there was a man whose life inspired Prince Madok, Columbus[1], Captain John Smith and many other explorers, the Sons of Liberty, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison (Grant). There was a man that looked into the face of the unknown horizon and saw a place to which the paradise of the gospel needed to go. That man was Brendan, son of Finnlug Ua Alta, of the race of Eoghan. He was born in Tralee Ireland around the year 489 (O’Meara ix) and lived a long life dedicated to the service of God. He was the child of Christian parents who gave him over to the local monastery, for the service of the kingdom at age one. He grew to love learning, community, and Christ. Brendan spent his early years studying and planting monastic communities in Kerry, Galaway, and on the islands of the river Shannon (O’Meara ix), but when, already past 70 years old (Morison 15), he learned that there were lands with people beyond the horizon, he and fourteen companions built a boat and set sail for a trip across the Atlantic Ocean. On his voyage he met sea monsters, isolated island monks, giant icebergs, whales the size of small islands, and fog too thick to navigate through. After the many adventures he returned home to die among his people.

Brendan was not alone in his voyage. The Christian Celts of Brendan’s day were travellers. Brendan lived in the age of Peregrinatio Pro Christo, the pilgrimage for Christ. Christians would leave their world behind and journey as far as they could to serve Christ in the remotest areas of the world. And with them they brought the gospel of the resurrection and kingship of Christ. We know that Christian Celts made it as far as the Ohio Valley, but it is hard to imagine that missionaries who evangelized so broadly and so manfully did not make it further. As the spirit of the age waned throughout Europe, the spirited Christianity of these missionaries etched these words in the mountains of West Virginia in the Celtic language

At the Time of Sunrise, a ray grazes the notch on the left side, tis Christmas Day, a feast day of the Church, the first season of the Christian year, the season of the blessed advent of the Savior, Lord Christ. Salvatoris Domini Christi, behold he is born of Mary, a woman. Hallelujah. (Quoted in Grant)

Though the oldest know version of the story of Brendan’s voyage is from the seventh century (O’Meara x), perhaps less than 100 years after the voyage, many moderns doubted the historicity of Brendan and the Celts claims. No one believed that any band sailing in a curragh, the ancient Celtic boat of leather stretched across a wooden frame, described in accurate detail (Morison 16) in The Navigatio, could make the Atlantic trek. No one believed until Tim Severin and his crew built a curragh by the specifications laid out by The Navigatio, and sailed Brendan’s route. He even recounts tales of sea creatures that make The Navigatio’s tales look probable (Severin 140-148). There is a fair amount of circumstantial evidence that the Celts had accomplished what they claimed to accomplish. There is enough evidence of a presence of Celts in America for some to postulate substantial Celtic civilizations existing in America. “Gloria Farley, an ardent archeologist and explorer, has found countless examples of what seem to be Keltic ogamic inscriptions along the Cimarron River in Arkansas and more in Kentucky, leading her to believe Kelts were exploring the Mississippi River valley and leaving their inscriptions along the way 1,000 years and more ago” (Angel). Though giant celtic civilizations might be pressing the imagination, the archeological evidence of an early Celtic presence in America, Iceland, and Greenland cries out for explanation. The archeology alone is inconclusive but there are also many accounts of Irish monks spread throughout the Northern Island of the new world. “Three centuries after Brendan’s death, the raiding Vikings found Irish Monks in Iceland, the Faroes, the Shetlands, and the Orkneys” (Morison 25).

Whether St. Brendan and the Celts were the first Europeans to come to America or not, they looked at the world around them and saw a world owned by Christ, a world that needed to know its Lord. As the story of Brendan’s voyage, The Navigatio, puts it, as Brendan and his crew of monks entered their boat, “all the birds sung in concert: Hear us, O God Our Saviour, the hope of all the ends of the earth, and in the sea afar off” (Navigatio). These Christians would travel the globe and when they found a tribe or kingdom, they would go straight to the king to inform him of the King of kings. They feared no sea, no monster, and no man because “our God is the Lord Jesus Christ, who can bring to nought all living things” (Navigatio). We need men like Brendan to come along side us in our modern malaise and misanthropy the way he came along side the crew of his. “Soldiers of Christ, be strong in faith unfeigned and in the armor of the Spirit, for we are now on the confines of hell; watch, therefore, and act manfully” (Navigatio). We sit, much like Brendan did, on the edge of a fallen world which is being consumed by the death, destruction and the despair that always follows idolatrous statism. Oh, that the Lord would grant us the courage and faith of Brendan that sees the horizon as an opportunity to carry the Kingdom of Christ into the unknown.

While the rest of the church retreats into defeatists ghettos and evangelical and fundamentalist bunkers, we need to advance with the faith that says ‘if God be for us, then who can be against us.’ In one of the greatest scenes in The Navigatio, Brendan is celebrating the festival of St. Peter on the ship and large fish and sea monsters begin to circle the boat. “The brethren entreated the man of God to say Mass in a low voice, lest those monsters of the deep, hearing the strange voice, may be stirred up to attack them.” But Brendan responded, “I wonder much at your folly. Why do you dread those monsters? . . . For our God is the Lord Jesus Christ . . .’ Having thus spoken, he proceeded to sing the Mass in a louder voice.” As long as the church fears the wrath of man, we sit paralyzed like the men in Brendan’s Boat asking him to please sing the Mass a little quieter. But God calls us to fulfill Brendan’s desire for his men, to be soldiers of Christ who, though they be on the confines of hell, act manfully.

Bibliography

Angel, Paul Tudor. "Who Built New England’s Megalithic Monuments?" The Barnes Review November 1997. 15 March 2006

Grant, Dr. George. "St. Brendan." Saints and Scoundrels: Canon Press Annual History Conference, Moscow, 2001.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages AD 500-1600. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. Trans. Denis O’Donoghue 1893. Celtic Christianity e-library. 29 March. 2006 <>.

Severin, Tim. The Brendan Voyage. New York: Mcgraw-Hill Book Company, 1978.

The Voyage of St. Brendan: Journey to the Promised Land. Trans. And Intro. John J. O’Meara. New York: Ittegaps, 1999.

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[1] Columbus references Brendan the Navigator in the Journal of his first voyage.

Saint Brendan’s Prayer

Saint Brendan’s Prayer

Shall I abandon, O King of mysteries, the soft comforts of home?
Shall I turn my back on my native land, and turn my face towards the sea?

Shall I put myself wholly at your mercy,
without silver, without a horse,
without fame, without honor?
Shall I throw myself wholly upon You,
without sword and shield, without food and drink,
without a bed to lie on?
Shall I say farewell to my beautiful land, placing myself under Your yoke?

Shall I pour out my heart to You, confessing my manifold sins and begging forgiveness,
tears streaming down my cheeks?
Shall I leave the prints of my knees on the sandy beach,
a record of my final prayer in my native land?

Shall I then suffer every kind of wound that the sea can inflict?
Shall I take my tiny boat across the wide sparkling ocean?
O King of the Glorious Heaven, shall I go of my own choice upon the sea?

O Christ, will You help me on the wild waves?

Saint Boniface

St. Boniface and Thor’s Oak

Boniface was a Bishop and a missionary in Saxony, in the early eighth century. In the area of Hessia there had once been a thriving Christian community, but when Boniface arrived all of the converts were gone and only the worshipers of Thor remained. Boniface was having little success in the area and could not convince any of the people to stop visiting Thor’s oak tree, an ancient Oak tree that was deep in the forest in which the people believed Thor lived. He decided to take care of it once and for all. He took an ax and had his monks and the people of Thor’s tribe follow him through the under brush and into the forest until the stood before Thor’s oak at which point he took off his shirt and, without a word, chopped down the six-foot wide wooden god. The people were thoroughly frightened because they believed that Boniface would be punished for even wielding an ax in the direction of the tree, but after the tree had fallen he stood on the stump and cried, “How stands your mighty god? My God is stronger than he.” He took the wood of the oak and made a chapel. Some people converted on the spot, other were upset with him, but over time the tribe became Christians and worshiped the True God in the chapel built of the wood of the giant felled Oak of Thor.

Quotes from St. Boniface

In her voyage across the ocean of this world, the Church is like a great ship being pounded by the waves of life's different stresses. Our duty is not to abandons ship but to keep her on her course.

Let us stand fast in what is right, and prepare our souls for trial. Let us wait upon God's strengthening aid and say to him: "O Lord, you have been our refuge in all generations."

Let us trust in him who has placed this burden upon us. What we ourselves cannot bear let us bear with the help of Christ. For he is all-powerful, and he tells us: "My yoke is easy, and my burden light."

Let us continue the fight on the day of the Lord. The days of anguish and of tribulation have overtaken us; if God so wills, "let us die for the holy laws of our fathers," so that we may deserve to obtain an eternal inheritance with them.

from a letter by Saint Boniface

What fundamentalists and liberal have in common

R.R. Reno, in “The Ruins of the Church” points out that modern fundamentalists and liberal have this in common, they are both modern in the sense that they both believe that history has taken “turned the corner in some decisive sense” and that we must “separate ourselves from a dying past in order to receive the redemptive future.” He goes on to say that “the very essence of modernity is this embrace of liberating distance, this will to separation for the sake of the ‘not yet.’ For the modern, the past is a burden, the task of spiritual life is to throw of its debilitating weight.” Pretty cool. I never thought of that. That modernity is at root a revolt against history. No wonder moderns hate the middle ages and reformation. That is when Christianity tried to be the religion of history.

a collection of proverbs

surfing the internet is a huge waste of time,
unless you've got
nothing better to do

A soul full of meaning sees meaning in the world.
An empty soul will empty the world
and not be satisfied.

You don't realize how right-handed you are
until you lose your hand is a one
of those tragic "bull-riding
on houseboat" accidents.

Tetotaling is a diet.

cheaters never prosper,
but they most assuredly win games

a one eyed midget standing on his head
might have a different view of the
grass, but he can't see over the hedge.

Helping people is like washing the dishes. 
Sometimes you have to use the
sprayer, sometimes you have to let them
soak in soapy hot water, and
sometimes you have to grab the sos pad
and get in up to your elbows.

beating a dead horse won't make him run any faster,
but it sure makes you
feel better.

There isn't much difference between an open mind
and a whole in the head.

live your life for you dreams,
unless you are a member of Hamas.

Don’t stick
your head under the car until
after you put the emergency brake on,
you don’t want to be the guy that ran over your own head.

God digs the well of Joy with pain and tribulation

surfing the internet is a huge waste of time,
unless you've got nothing better to do