Last Night and Happy Festivus

Last night the little boy and I went to church, forgetting that the service had been cancelled for lack of a priest. But we had a nice drive up to SF. I took a different exit off of the freeway than I normally take, so instead of driving through the civic center, I drove by PacBell Park, Union Square, and the Theater District.

Going through Union Square reminded me of this passage from "Of Water and the Spirit" by Fr. Alexander Schmemann:

"The Fall of Man is the rejection by him of this priestly calling, his refusal to be a priest. The original sin consists in man's choice of a non-priestly relationship with God and the world. And perhaps no word better expresses the essence of this new, fallen, non-priestly way of life than the one in which our own time has had an amazingly successful career, has truley become the very symbol of our culture. It is the word consumer. After having glorified himself as homo faber, then as homo sapiens, man seems to have found his ultimate vocation as consumer. And there are people today who see in the defense of "consumer's rights" a bright and heroical vocation! Do we have to prove thjat this "ideal" is simply excludes the very idea of sacrifice, the priestly vocation of man? It is indeed the sad achievement of our age - quite honest in this - that it proudly affirms what preceeding civilizations tried, however hypocritically, to conceal. But the truth is, of course, that the "consumer" was not born in the 20th century. The first consumer was Adam himself. "

In addition to that, today is Festivus. So get your greivences ready. Feats of Strength start at 7:00 p.m.