Deus Misereatur

  (I was invited by Mayor Holt to give the invocation at the Oklahoma City Council meeting today. Here is the way it went) This is God's word to us: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil ” (2 Corinthians 5:10).   I invite those who can in good conscience please join me as I pray to Almighty God through the Lord Jesus Christ :   In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.   Knowing, O Lord, that we must all appear before the great Judgment Seat of Christ, it is our aim to be pleasing to you in our actions, thoughts, intentions and words. In this light, please give this City Council your healthy wisdom, charitable patience, resilient energy, and joyful civility in their plannings, ponderings, decisions and deliberations, so that they may see clearly how to best govern this city, to decide on claims, amend master desig...

Tuesday morning (14 August 2012), while out running by Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City, this scene caught up my attention and started my imagination racing: The first place my thoughts flew to was a scene in Flannery O’Connor’s “The Displaced Person.” You would have to have read the whole story to catch the multifaceted point she was making through the peacocks, but the scene is as follows:      “The priest let his eyes wander toward the birds. They had reached the middle of the lawn. The cock stopped suddenly and curving his neck backwards, he raised his tail and spread it with a shimmering timbrous noise. Tiers of small pregnant suns floated in a green-gold haze over his head. The priest stood transfixed, his jaw slack. Mrs. McIntyre wondered where she had ever seen such an idiotic old man. “Christ will come like that!” he said in a loud gay voice and wiped his hand over his mouth and stood, gaping.      Mrs. McIntyre’s face assumed a set purita...