Driving to church today I stopped to buy some newspapers. I also had an old lottery ticket I found last week while cleaning my Jeep (I should note last Sunday I gave the Jeep the most thorough washing since I bought it last year and then we got clobbered by days of heavy rain). While standing in line with my papers my neighbor walked up behind me and struck up a conversation. As I handed the ticket to the clerk he laughed and said, “Just think, you’ll only have to work behind the microphone when you feel like it”. The clerk said something as I stood laughing with him. She was clutching the scanned ticket and I told her she could just toss it in the trash. Then she informed me I hadn’t heard her clearly…

I’ve been playing lotteries periodically for nearly 30 years. I’m not an inveterate gambler but spend the occasional dollar on a ticket. For almost thirty years this has been the story and today I won the largest payout I’ve ever had playing the game. Fifty dollars and on my way to church, where a fellow walks up the aisle and passes a basket not once but usually twice and smiles in an effort to bring forth monetary gifts. This created somewhat of a dilemma for me.

There are churches so disapproving of gambling the money would be refused. Then there are pastors I know who would gladly absolve the money of the sin by telling me turning it over would cleanse my soul. These weren’t the issues for me this Sunday. Last month I publicly vowed I wouldn’t be passing through the doors of a Roman Church for quite some time and I vowed the Church wouldn’t be getting my money. I made these statements on a radio show, which appears to be the most listened to program in its time slot in these parts, after reading the Diocese of Wilmington sought bankruptcy protection in order to better manage the lawsuits it sowed by ignoring internal scandal. In the confessional I’m told to come clean but administrators hold themselves to a different standard.

My pique lasted but for a few days. Then I realized I missed the people I see at mass and I like the local priests. I’ve reached a point in life where I don’t believe my church may be a better church than the one my Methodist neighbor attends and I know some really good Baptists and Wesleyans and would feel comfortable in pews in those churches because of the depth of feeling people have for their faith. Yet I still can’t tear myself from Roman Catholicism, which is and has been for many years the bedrock of my life. It’s the physiological response following communion. The Eucharist remains as unique as to prevent me from cleaving from the faith. It may look the same in Lutheran and Episcopal rites but I don’t believe I would find shared conviction. It’s because I would be looking around those churches and be thinking to myself, “Liberals”. Which isn’t really very nice in church or at least the way I would be thinking about them.

A few years ago I read the comments of a Prince of the Church made during a gathering of the U.S. Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops. The man was an Archbishop and a household name and he told some reporters Roman Catholicism in the United States was much more a Calvinist institution when compared to worldwide counterparts. What surprised me following was no one was in denial about the remark. There were knowing laughs and some folks nodded heads in the affirmative. Certainly Calvin would disagree but in the United States there is a shared cultural conservatism between the two strains.

It’s bigger and longer lasting than any current scandal and it’s the seed for future hope among many old believers. An observation about today’s mass. Our communion hymn was How Great Thou Art, which rarely have I heard in a Roman Church and yet there were people all around me belting out the lyrics to a song with roots deep in Eastern Europe and made popular by modern descendants of the Protestant Reformation. By the time I accepted the host a second hymn was flowing and I can safely say Amazing Grace is universally accepted across the Christian divides.

Today the man with the wicker basket was the same fellow who helped me find a seat when I arrived. When he came around seeking offerings I dug deeply into my wallet with no hesitation and left a substantial deposit.

This is the end of a horrid day. It started so well. I met a friend for breakfast. He’s a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and he’s what I believe America should be and was all about. He served his country well as an Executive Officer with the Thunderbirds and later at the Pentagon liaising with Capitol Hill. He’s from Ohio, the home state of the Wright brothers, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong. The home state of the Taft family and Paul Brown.

I managed to get to the Long Neck Diner early because I didn’t waste the customary time after getting out of bed today. The morning was calm. The sky was clear and just before 8:30 A.M. I stood outside the restaurant and looked skyward and could see the moon still lingering in the blue of the morning sky. The air was still and the temperature in the high 40s and it was the type of morning you admire because you still have your memory and the image will sustain you when the wind blows and it rains and snows.

Following breakfast I went to the bank and then to work. Many friends had gone to Washington today for a demonstration and during the early afternoon I checked some websites and found pictures of the noon event at the Capitol. It was jacket weather but the skies were clear and there were smiling faces in the crowd. Some of them would be calling me after visiting members of the House and Senate and petitioning for a return of the country they long for. Sure enough, they obliged me from buses during the return trip. Folks called me from Route 50 during my show.

It was getting dark outside when I learned about the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. Talk radio is partly about taking a snapshot of a portion of the public’s thoughts during any moment of crisis. There was great speculation about Texas and I was worried about a close friend stationed at the base. It’s 10:00 P.M. and I still haven’t had him reply to a message I sent his way. He’s a man with bedrock convictions. Several years ago he got booted out of graduate school for writing a paper (graded A) in which he suggested multi-cultural education was ripping the country apart. In his words there is just one American culture. It’s the one I remember about the Wright brothers and Robert Taft and the early men in space. I’m a Western New Yorker and as a kid Ohio and its shared Great Lakes culture was just a hop-skip-and-jump away.

Scott eventually was reinstated and graduated with a Masters degree in Education. During his trials he was upbeat and even finagled an invitation to dinner with Michelle Malkin. When his wife had to work late that day, Scott took me along as his guest. During one of his vacations he went home to Tulsa, Oklahoma, which I think is a lot more like Ohio versus Myanmar, Botswana and Paraguay. He spent his vacation at a T.D. Jakes revival meeting. Then Scott went off to a teaching career but he missed his first family, his fellow soldiers. He went back into the U.S. Army and served in Afghanistan. We last spoke 2 weeks ago when he was listening to the show on the web. I don’t remember if I insulted his Dallas Cowboys, which is a sure way to get him to pick up the telephone and call.

It’s too early to consider the ramifications of a Muslim soldier killing his fellow troops. It happened in Kuwait in 2003 and it had nothing to do with an argument about faith.

We live in an “open society”. It’s what the brilliant men we call “Framers” designed, however. In the 1780s the culture was definitely European and Judeo-Christian. Yes, I understand elements from Africa played a major influence and we still hear it in music today but those Africans and their descendents are very much members of the larger American culture. We’ve been sharing the same home for a very long time. The same with the indigenous people who were nothing short of supermen during our nation’s 20^th Century wars.

A guy telephoned me today and praised the troops of Japanese ancestry who fought magnificently for this country in World War Two. They were Americans. Like so many arriving before that desperate time they wanted to be Americans.

I’m never been at all sure about these new folks. In the Southwest they shun English. In Lackawanna, New York they spend vacations at terrorist training camps in Asia. Some folks in our cities live in a parallel universe and shun the traditional bonds of trust and ignore law enforcements offers of protection. Membership in a polyglot culture is always tenuous. It appears we’re headed for 305 million independent countries within one nation. Everybody has a grievance and everybody is a victim.

Then, of course, cooperation can be imposed. Look at history and the man known as “Tito” in Yugoslavia or the man in Spain called Franco. The academics can spin in circles suggesting we can cure ills by enforcing politeness or printing more money to throw in the directions of our problems. I’ve grown old and lost faith in academic institutions as much as I’ve lost faith in churches and government institutions. May God help us, where we’re going?

Frequent readers know the weather is often a metaphor when I write. It was cold and raining when I came home.

I think we’ve swapped out the West Coast for the East Coast. This morning a friend commented weeks have passed since we’ve seen more than two days in a row filled with sunshine.

A Nor’easter came roaring through at one point and gave us 4 consecutive days of deluge. The skies cleared and we settled in expecting some decent weather for cleaning up yards and getting prepared for the winter but then the winds started howling and we found ourselves looking at dark clouds and more rain. A storm this past week dumped 5 inches of water and roads were flooded and some back bay neighbors found themselves living on islands. The water appeared Saturday to be receding and a weather man at Channel 11 in Baltimore said during the 6:00 P.M. newscast there wouldn’t be much heavy rain into Sunday morning.

After sunset my girlfriend came along with dinner and we sat on the deck watching the clouds roll quickly past the moon. There were no trick-or-treaters. The house is at the end of a dead end road. On a windy and partly cloudy evening and hidden among the tall pines it’s an uninviting place, I suppose, for children. It’s where the grumpy old philosopher lives.

Halloween Day was warm and muggy and I propped open skylights and threw open windows but shortly after ten I heard rainfall. As I closed the openings rain began pounding heavily. This morning it was chilly and damp and gray and the leaves falling from the trees are clumped together and wet. Not easy to rake or sweep. The day and many recent days I’ll describe as glum.

It’s also how I’ll describe Halloween for many of the kids in these parts. Working in talk radio offers a window on the community. The window offers a view that a great many parents don’t want their youngsters out on October 31 and not because there may be bullies and tainted candy. It’s because some parents believe putting on a costume greases the slide to Hell. Last night I shared with my significant other a story about a talk show I hosted years ago. People were calling me on-air bemoaning the commercialization of Christmas. One fellow went so far as to say his children received only 3 gifts because it’s what the baby Jesus got from the Wise Men. From a Biblical perspective, what 3 Wise Men? The fable also says among the gifts received by Jesus was gold. Then why didn’t he grow up in a palace with the sudden family wealth? Look, it’s your choice how you celebrate a holiday. Christmas is an arbitrary date set by a clergyman and the way I remember it when I was a kid it was quite joyous. Children and joy and laughter.

As a little boy I recall Halloween as an event filled with joy. One year, when I was 7, I was sick at home on Halloween night. My sister took an extra bucket that night and the resulting sympathy vote put a smile on my face.

Why, in such a sometimes nasty world, filled with recession, floods and famine are some folks looking to steal happiness? Are you trying to prepare young people for the rigors ahead? An alternative would be to make life worthwhile with moments of laughter. The late author and columnist, Jim Bishop, once put this in a perspective I’ve never forgotten. The man was watching from a window on a cold and gray winter day as children were riding sleds down a nearby hill. There were a few seconds of shrieks and laughter and then a long and quiet trudge back atop the snow covered hill. It’s called metaphor and it tells us much about living.

It’s my hope there were children out last night for rare enjoyment. I don’t believe an animal mask, Snickers bars and cavities condemn a 7 year old to the fiery furnace for eternity.