It's been a while since I changed the header of this weblog, mainly because it took me so long to find a good photo of an actual coracle. If you don't know what a coracle is, please scroll below.
However, I made a temporary change because I had become used to the happy face depicted above greeting me every morning. Since that greeting has been missing for the past week, I arranged the next best thing. It'll stay for awhile, mainly because the photo fits so well with the title and the silliness below it.
For the new readers of the weblog, of whom there are now many, I should explain a few things.
1. I once worked as a "stringer", a very free-lance reporter, for a newspaper chain in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. It was the practice of one of the editors to post poorly written sentences, paragraphs, and, in particular, headlines on a bulletin board in the middle of the reporters' room. Usually they were pretty funny and I have been amused by such errors ever since, especially when I make them. With the advent of the Internet, I find more and more examples and share them from time to time, usually on Sunday afternoons or evenings.
2. We really do have an international readership and I regularly correspond with many of those who read the weblog. It's an interesting collection of folks, especially those from Finland. A map may be found on the right side of this page that displays where our readers live.
3. After a decade as a private school chaplain, I became fatigued with parents and their offspring explaining to me that they didn't engage in the practice of common worship [in other words, going to church on Sunday mornings] because they were "spiritual, not religious". That was a convenient way, I thought, to intellectualize Sunday morning indolence, especially since their definition of "spiritual" seemed to be limited to reading the collected works of Shirley Maclaine, sort of knowing that Buddhist monks looked kind of cool, and despairing of those who weren't of their social class.
In a gentle lampoon of that attitude, I understood that meant that those of us who do worship together on a Sunday and other mornings, and do strive to conform to the holy call of the Gospel, were "religious, not spiritual". Hence, my insouciant motto. Really, though, can one be spiritual and not feel the call to common worship and a deeper knowledge of at least one religious tradition, with all of its challenges? Can one be truly spiritual and not be religious?
4. A coracle is a round, rudder-less boat that more or less goes where it wants to go. Rather like this weblog, you see. While useful for moving downstream, a coracle is a near complete botch in open water. However, there is a very important story in Celtic Christianity about three men in a coracle which I will be happy to reveal one Sunday morning. Just not sure when, yet. I guess you'll just have to keep coming Sunday mornings to find out.
