The Phantom Scribbler

 (Note: I am neither dying nor planning to die.  This is a just-in-case notification.  Also, I wrote this ... like ... 15 years ago or so.  I'm mostly going to leave it as originally written with some updates.  I'll color and bold the updates.) There's been a lot of death around me of late.  I don't know if it's just coincidental or if, because I'm getting older, people that I know seem to be dying more frequently.  In the school where I teach, there's been at least four deaths of close family members within the last three months.  In the time since I originally wrote this, my mother has died and an increasingly disturbing amount of family members.  I'm now 50 so ... yeah. Recently, I sang at the funeral for a stillborn baby. It was ... surreal. There were pictures of the family with the baby and the baby himself. It reminded me of the once popular practice of  "Death Portraits" or "Post-mortem Photography."  The funeral was pretty ...

I've been thinking about this hymn a lot.  I think it should be the standard for Christians who are against Christian Nationalism and the current state of the country.  It was originally a poem titled This Present Crisis written by James Russel Lowell in 1845 in protest of the Mexican-American War.  The poem inspired the name of the NAACP magazine, "The Crisis."  Excellent credentials already, right?   Here is a lovely rendering of the song and the lyrics are below.  The last verse, in particular, is potent.   Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side; some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight, and the choice goes by forever, 'twixt that darkness and that light. Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust, ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; then it is the brave man chooses w...

My brother is flying out to Kuwait for a 2 year stint as head chaplain for the Middle East.  He'll get to come back stateside twice.  He just called me and asked me to please pray St. Patrick's Lorica for him while he is flying.  I told him I would do so every day while he is gone.  I'd like for others to joine me.  If you skip to the bottom, you'll find several versions you can easily sing.  But first ....  First, St. Patrick is, indeed, a real person.  If you'd like a short, surprisingly accurate and highly entertaining telling of his life, Veggie Tales has you covered .  In short, and with the understanding that parts of this can be contested, he was born in the late 4th century in Wales, was stolen by the Irish and was a slave/pig shepherd for most of his young life, escaped and went to France where he became a Bishop, received a dream of the Irish calling him back to preach to them, came back and was largely responsible for Christianity ...

I had to euthanize my cat, Murdoch, on January 9th.  There's really only one other person (my wife) who gets how amazing he was.  But trying to explain it would be frustrating to me (because I would fail) and oppressive to others (because it would be the equivalent of subjecting them to a slideshow of a vacation with the added bonus of feeling compelled to listen because it's about a dead cat).  So, imma write about it here and then if you want to read it ... well ... that's on you.  I won't know either way.   Context first.  I moved to NY in 2021 to help my sister open a vet clinic.  I cashed out my entire life in NC and came up alone, the first time I'd been truly alone in probably three decades.  My sister lived down the road, but ... still.  It's hard to convey exactly how much of an uprooting it was for me at almost 50 years old.  We opened the clinic in early 2022.  Up until this point, while I'd always liked cats, I defi...