I suspect that a good percent of active East Valley church-goers are “in debt” to their congregations. They have pledged to their churches for building and expansion campaigns — campaigns with eminently lofty titles like Building for Faith Tomorrow or Building for the Harvest or On the Wings of Faithful Vision.” They could just call it. “We Need Big Money Again.”You can’t be around very long in a faith community and not be part of a fund-raising campaign to buy land or build or renovate. Of course, a building campaign is no longer an undertaking a congregation wants to necessarily try itself. It takes big-time logistics and following some strategies of making the asks that amateurs should not risk doing by themselves. So call in the consultants with the trolling for dollars expertise, folks who can show you can, in fact, get blood from turnips.

The fund-raising science requires that a small army of church members be recruited for all sorts of duties — some logical and some a bit stiff but surely created to create the team spirit and the notion that everyone has a hand in the campaign. There are things like prayer teams to pray for the campaign. People to contact (and recontact) everyone in the congregation and get them to informational meetings, people to take care of the hospitality for events, those who mine for big pre-kickoff campaign money, others to prepare the promotional materials like hand-out videos and colorful brochures. People to involved the youth. People to keep the pledgers reminded they pledged and should be periodically paying it off.

Key people takes the whole membership rosters and determine which families have the means to make the big gifts, where the family trusts are, where “friends” of the church are lurking.

So I was astonished to see the news out of Dallas on Thursday that RSI Church Stewardship — the largest professional capital campaign consultants helping congregations raise money — helped the Calvary Chapel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., raise $105 million to expand a campus that already has about 20,000 weekly worshipers at three locations. It went way over its $80 goal. My church enlisted RSI a couple times, but we were trying only to get less than 1 percent of that amount. The RSI staff showed their stuff to us, and the Florida church must feel the same.

The $105 million is believed to be the largest amount ever raised in pledges by a U.S. church. It eclipsed the the $80 million reached in 2000 at famed Willow Creek Creek in the Chicago suburbs, another RSI client.

RSI boasts that in its 34-year history, it has worked with more than 7,000 churches and raised $8 billion. Until Calvary Chapel’s feat, the previous fund-raising record by a local church was $84.8 million.

RSI has got its process down to an art. It can get congregations to pledge 2 to 3 times more than their annual budgets to special campaigns. In some churches it has got final tallies up to 10 times a budget. And the land flows with milk and money.

I read recently how standardized and uniform Catholic funerals can be, that they can be true cookie-cutter rites. Just plug in the name and keep the Mass to a prescribed time. I was reminded of my sheer disappointment some years back attending the funeral Mass of a Tempe friend who had some prominence and who had lived a fulfilled, dynamic, significant life.But it could have been just about anybody’s funeral. The substance of his rich life was omitted. I knew people who had intended to speak to exalt him, but were told no. I wrote the church and complained. No response. Others told me that it is just the Catholic way. Dust to dust. All the dead are to be viewed in the same light. The deceased are not to be celebrated. All glory to God.

James Hitchcock, a Catholic author and a history professor at St. Louis University, has written about the appropriateness of eulogies at Catholic funerals.

“When I was growing up,” he said, I attended hundreds of funerals, as a server and a choir boy. All them were in the same church, most of them conducted by the same priest, who year after year preached the same sermon, which was to remind the mourners that they, too, would die and should be prepared to do so, and to urge them to pray for the soul of the deceased. What more needed to be said?

Hitchcock quoted an archbishop who believed eulogies detract from the Mass itself and are often seen as the real center of the liturgy. In the process the Christian meaning of death is obscured.

I couldnt disagree more.

Hitchcock lamented that so many non-practicing Catholics don’t grasp the mystery of the funeral and just want a memory-lane hour for the dead. The funeral is no longer a divine mystery but is merely a ceremony to remember the deceased and help the living cope with their loss, he said. It ceases to have any supernatural meaning, except in the purely sentimental insistence that the deceased is in heaven.

Recently my church made a big push for its members to fill out paperwork for the files to spell out end-of-life wishes. Matters included where we wanted our funerals (mortuary or church, casket or memorial service, etc.), scriptures to be read, preferred hymns to be sung and other matters related to the funeral. Members were asked to cite their organizational affiliations and provide a reasonable summary on their lives to be used by pastors in eulogies and tributes. I got the project done by deadline, but my “life’s story” is unfinished in the computer. But I expect to live past age 90 and funerals may then not even resemble todays rites.

Still, let me go to funerals where we survivors and friends come to intimately know more, where stories are freely told and memories shared. Those services that dwells entirely on scripture and religious homily and the usual formality leave me unsatisfied and cold.

As mostly a non-fiction book reader, I was in no big hurry to read The Da Vinci Code. I made time in recent weeks to get it read, as a professional duty. My wife read it in a couple days between everything else. Now we are trying to make time to go see the film. We are not particularly discriminating and critical film-goers, so I suspect well enjoy it.As mystery thrillers go, I found the book a great read. But I could never get out of my head that, realistically, Langdon and Sofie could never have maintained the fast-paced events that are seemingly all pressed into one long night In Paris and London.

Da Vinci fatigue is upon on the land already. I think many are tuning out the discussion. The fact that it is pure fiction should be constantly remembered. Oddly, a whole industry has grown up around debunking or capitalizing on the top bestseller worldwide. Networks have done their specials, a host of educational CD are being distributed, websites galore discuss it and the presses have cranked out countless related books and newspaper and magazine articles on the “Code. Congregations are holding their own discussion groups or seminars, in part to discredit any suggestion that Jesus may have married or was less than divine.

There are more side-stories to this phenomenon than anyone can keep track of.

Here at the Tribune, Ive had hundreds of unsolicited Da Vinci-related e-mails, the vast majority from parachurch organizations and faith groups. Some of the headlines on these press releases read, Code Creates Crisis in Christianity: Christian and Jewish Organizations Align Against ‘The Da Vinci Code; Book Which Counters Errors in The Da Vinci Code Receives Official Approval from the Catholic Church; and 1,000 Prayer Vigils Against The Da Vinci Code.

The latest issue of The Catholic Sun declares All Eyes on Da Vinci: With Da Vinci Code film near, Catholic leaders urge caution.

Over and over again, Catholics and other faithful are encouraged to think “fiction, fiction, fiction.

Catholic leader across the nation were telling followers to absorb the book and film with caution and skepticism, separate the fact from the fiction and use it as a teaching moment. The Catholic News Service diligently elicited national comment from leaders. One Delaware bishop concluded The Da Vinci Code had been found entertaining and offensive, but the worst concern is that some have found it believable and it could inflame prejudice or precipitate a crisis of faith because an impressionable person “could conclude that everything the church has taught about Christ is true.

Surely, the book and movie have given license to Catholic critics to more safely level their complaints about reputed malevolence and corruption in the church.

One group, The True Jesus (www.TheTrueJesus.org), argues Jesus and Mary Magdalene had three children and it has methods to use DNA to trace descendants to that bloodline. We created a ‘Jesus and Mary Gene Test’ that is a unique state of the art DNA-testing method to help us locate other descendants by giving people their Jesus and Mary DNA test results on-line in four minutes using sound, it asserts.

That group says of the Da Vinci debate, We understand the fundamentalists fear. It must be terrifying to be challenged to a debate of their own scriptures…

There are healthy debates, and it is helpful to have ones faith put to the test. Because a work of fiction is behind it all, I suspect few minds will be changed.

High school graduations are this week, and many schools are holding their final classes. By this weekend, the Closed for Summer Vacation” signs will be up. There will be a few weeks of summer school for remedial help, but for schools and houses of worship, the summer is here. Sigh of relief.While there are some congregations with the tenacity, plus volunteers and staff willing to keep going, most gladly welcome going into lower gear. Choirs thin out after Easter and choir lofts often go empty all summer. The weekend worship bulletin is growing sparse with planned programs, and meeting rooms and classrooms are apt to stand empty. College students and faculty are conspicuously missing in the pews.

These weekends, Sunday school teachers are getting their thank-you presents and being recognized at worship services. They’re cleaning their rooms and taking down bulletin boards. Graduating seniors are being recognized and told good-bye by the congregation, and confirmation classes are wnding down in anticipation of Pentecost and receipt into membership — if that is their denominations tradition.

While faith never takes a vacations, the faithful do. And dont try to stop them.

In Arizona especially, faith communities know all to well the challenges from late May to early September.

“I’m gonna be gone from ….” are the first words out of the mouths of committee members in the best organized committees. July is usually a meeting write-off. Excused absences are routine for major boards for meetings in the summer months.

Where churches have more than one pastor, the clergy map out their weeks gone and whos got the weekends and the visitations covered. Where there is one pastor, theres creative scheduling to trade with pastors in other churches or arrange for retired pastors or lay members to fill the pulpits. The search goes on, as well, for musicians and organists and lay leaders to fill the key roles in services. Substitutes for ushers and refreshments folks are needed. Finding volunteers can be a challenge. A lot of compromising goes on.

Some church members themselves fall into an all-summer vacation mindset and aren’t seen until September.

Churches that still have vacation Bible schools manage to agree on a week for their activities. But they know that whatever week they choose, there will be key families who can’t participate in VBS because of a sister’s wedding that week in Missouri, the time-share is only available that week, or it is the only week open for vacation between summer swim lessons and baseball.

Church camps and distant work projects give some folks religious adventure. Youth groups will have summer swim parties. Back-to-school drives for the needy will stir some congregational energy.

As the oppressing heat torments church roofs, as office hours are cut for the summer, as volunteers call church members and get only answering machines, may everyone know that, holy cow, its summer and everyone needs a break.

His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is proclaiming a bright new fortune is dawning but didnt we hear that a dozen years ago with the harmonic convergence?Over the years, I have grown more and more skeptical, and even cynical, by upbeat religionists saying good times for humankind are just about here, that there is a transformation in human events at hand

It reminds me of my days almost four decades ago as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay. We P.C. volunteers naively believed we Americans in foreign lands were on the march to bring democracy through teaching the natives new ways of making a living. We “superior” Americans who had shown the world what success was all about were there to help them replicate our rosy world in the U.S.

Back there in the 1960s, I never grasped the sheer inertia that world politics have on cultures and countries. In my assignment in Paraguay, which was under a dictator at the time, we were not privy to all the machinations of governments. Aid for International Development, or AID, was pouring billions into development and construction, but now years later we learn how much American money was making both the wealthy “haves” in such countries wealthier and the American companies even filthier rich. John Perkins tells about that so eloquently in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions.

But back to the Maharishi. He says a coherence-creating group of 400 Yogic Flyers were established in Holland and are raising the nation to invincibility. More European nations will follow.

The darkness of the night is coming to an end, and a bright new sun is rising, Maharishi said. Its not going to be the same old problem-ridden world anymore. The world is awake. We are ringing the Bell of Invincibility for every nation.

He spoke at one of his satellite news conferences on Wednesday and shared the message. The Maharishi once answered a question I posed to him while I sat in Phoenix in on one of his organization’s global news conferences. Those sessions are so structured, stiff and labored.

The Maharishi, founder of Transcendental Meditation, believes Holland is already reporting concrete signs of decreasing negativity and problems and the good news of rising harmony, positivity and invincibility in the life of the nation.

What does that mean? Sounds like blue sky. How can that be measured? And it is supposedly enhanced by yogic flyers.

The “yogic flyers” are said to rise off the floor in meditation, but media observers say they only see “awkward hopping” from a cross-legged position, sort of odd lunging.

The yogi, however, insists yogic flying enlivens bliss in individual consciousness and creates coherence in collective consciousness.”

He insists the “global transformation” taking place can be credited to the “glorious tradition of Vedic masers” and the custodians of the constitution of the universe.

What does that mean?

Let me know if you can spot this new harmony, bliss and “bright fortune dawning.”

I’ll be watching keenly for it myself.

Most of us should be able to sympathize with Mormons who must be irked and fatiqued by the media coverage of Warren Jeffs, the fugitive leader of the Fundamenalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.First of all, with as much national coverage as the polygamous sect (the Fundamentalists) has gotten and with those in some parts of the country less familiar with the distinctions between them and the Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder-day Saints, there will be incorrect and misleading reporting. CNN, for example, superimposed Jeffs’ photo over an image of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. Invariably, too, the background reporting includes a rehashing of the outlawing of polygamy by the Mormon Church in 1890 leading to statehood for Utah. Mormons must get tired of hearing that.

The fact that the two groups share so much in common, including the Book of Mormon, comparable organizational structure and common roots keeps the two disparate groups being thought of together. So the Mormon Church last weekend appealed to the media to keep things straight and stop using phrases like Mormon sect for the fundamentalists.

Alas, since Jeffs name was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, the Mormon Church has found itself having to field a lot of media calls. He’s not our guy, don’t you understand, the Mormon media staff has to remind callers.

A few years ago, church leaders in Salt Lake City, as I recall, urged us in the media to simply call them The Church of Jesus Christ. Many us in the media wished the Associated Press and the Tribune would adopt a style change that would allow us to use Latter-day Saints and/or LDS routinely, as do the papers in Salt Lake City and elsewhere. The term Mormon is both embraced and avoided by members of the church, as I talk to them. I have come to use LDS routinely in conversation, though the editors won’t let me use it in news stories. Some years ago, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who broke away from the Mormon Church in 1852, adopted the strikingly different name: The Community of Christ. About six years later, it is still not commonly known.

Early in my religion writing career, I remember identifying the Reorganized folks Mormons and was sternly corrected by readers. It’s all about keeping the cousins straight.

Some voters in various East Valley cities on Tuesday will be going to houses of worship to vote. It may be unsettling to have to cast their votes on religious property. For others, it has become so routine, they hardly think about it.But some cannot accept church spaces as neutral ground to perform their public duty to vote. They may even be on the alert for anything that seemingly is “in their face and religiously obtrusive.

In the spirit of sensitivity, poll workers often work with staffs on church and temple campuses to put aside some of accoutrements of religion. If classrooms are used, Bibles are put away and the latest kids Easter resurrection in the voting room are taken down. Classroom are chosen over chapels or sanctuaries.

More than a few pastors have thought about putting something special in their signs’ marquees to catch the neighborhood voters passing through campuses on election day. Maybe “Vote today. Come back Sunday.”

Like it or not, houses of worship are nicely spread across the landscape, freely available on Tuesdays, with plenty of parking and easily accessible. Schools, likewise, are conveniently distributed but unused schools space can be an issue.

No doubt about it, strangers having to go to church campuses and navigate distinctly religious digs to get to a voting booth might be offended.

Last November, the Lehigh Valley County (Pennsylvania) election board used 58 religious spaces for polling places. Voters in Whitehall Township and the 12th District were assigned to vote at the Islamic Center of Lehigh Valley. Some voters said they were offended to have to do so, the Christian News Service reported.

About a half dozen people called and said they werent happy about it, but we were really lucky to be able to use the space, said Betty Hillwig, chief clerk of the county’s election board. She applauded the mosque leaders for generously offering its pace for voting and the center has agreed to allow its use more in the future. A Lehigh newspaper reported that a full third of the voters to the mosque expressed concern about voting there.

They would probably say the same about a Hindu ashram or maybe a Gospel Hall of the Jehovahs Witnesses.

In the final analysis, mature voters shouldn’t have a fuss. As they say, going into a Catholic church doesnt make you any more a Catholic than going into a garage makes you a car.

Whatever your talents or skills, invariably you are asked to employ those abilities in some way for the organizations and congregation you belong to. Whether it is computer technology, cuisine, art, flooring, teaching, retail, marketing or carpentry, there always seems to be a calling in your house of worship for expert, free labor.As a journalist, I have long been the person groups recruit for their newsletters or to be the scribe and secretary for the meeting minutes, producing brochures and editing materials. For a church early in my newspaper career, I was editor and writer of the monthly church newsletter — not to mention doing newsletters weekly for my service club, for the service club district, for my neighborhood association and the local Friends of the Library. I was doing a sixth regular newsletter at that time for my newspaper correspondents scattered around an area of Northeast Iowa. Every night, I’d go home from work to labor on another newsletter. It was mostly the pre-word processor era.

Monday will mark my 20th anniversary as a member of the Kiwanis Club of Tempe. It was a Tempe Congregational church pastor who sponsored me as a member. A year later, they tapped me to be their next president, for 1988-89. (They even chose me Kiwanian of the Year three times). I am now in my 17th year of writing and producing the club’s weekly newsletter, or bulletin, as it is called. It ties me up every Thursday night so I can put it into the mail on Friday mornings.

For about 18 years, I have been the Kiwanian charged with giving the invocation to start the formal luncheon meetings. I estimate that I have given about 900 invocations to my club. I rarely do them off the top of my head. I write them beforehand. Trying to be original is a daunting challenge.

Before I became the permanent prayer-offerer for that Kiwanis club, the job of invocation was assigned automatically to members on a rotation basis, going right down the Club roster. Some members dreaded the assignment. Some used packaged prayers, some tried to be clever, some made them creatively short. Most invocations were a mix of standard prayer words plus a Kiwanis call to serve others faithfully.

Clearly I got recruited for the assignments because I was the religion editor over at the newspaper.

By the same reasoning, I have been tapped to be secretary and the minute-taker for the hundreds of meetings I have attended for organizations.

In 43 years of writing for publication, I have a massive body of printed and published works, not to mention so many now all over the Internet on so many web sites. My attic contains many boxes of yellowed newspaper clippings from the 1970s, and my wife hopes they aren’t just fodder for a fire some day. Long gone is the massive number of meeting minutes, invocations and correspondence.

Writing is just about the only way I have made myself useful over the years.

While some of us don’t welcome being recruited to do that “same job all over again for charity (”Give me a different job,” they say), we are wise to willingly serve others with the best that’s in us, even if we are just a one-trick pony.

The Rev. Chris Carpenter, former pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church in Mesa, now living in southern California, recently sent the Valley media a lengthy letter that he titled, Something Died. It is a long lament to mark the period two years ago when Bishop Thomas Olmsted instructed nine priests to remove their names from a statement that was sympathetic to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgenderd people. He was one of eight who begrudgingly did so.Carpenter, a priest since 1995 and known as “Father Flick” for his review of films for the Catholic Sun biweekly newspaper, wrote a pointed letter about that fateful month of May 2004 when they were told to take their names off the Phoenix Declaration. Its a rather well-crafted statement drawn up in 2003 by No Longer Silent Clergy for Justice, a widely ecumenical group of pastors calling for the religious community to get past its mindset about and treatment of LGBT people and make them full participants in all that is church in the 21st century.

Wrote Carpenter, now engaged in fund development in theater in Long Beach, Calif., Something died as a result of the personal and public showdown over the Phoenix Declaration. A chilling effect has been experienced throughout all Catholic parishes and institutions concerned about outreach and ministry to LGBT persons. He said the work that he and other priests and pastors had done over the years to welcome back into the church those who felt alienated came to naught when they submitted to the bishop.

Recently a Protestant pastor who signed the letter and had read Carpenters recent letter told me that Olmsteds crackdown indeed was a crushing blow to the No Longer Silent movement, and it has not recovered now two years later. Carpenter put it this way: “Being essentially forced to remove our names from the Phoenix Declaration wounded some of the positive but sensitive relationships with other Christian leaders that has been forged. In the rest of the letter, Carpenter said the climate toward LGBT people in the diocese compels previously faithful parishioners to look elsewhere in their desire for relevance, not to mention intelligibility.”

Carpenter boldly noted that he refuses to serve as a priest in a church environment that is increasingly sending a false and destructive message that my LGBT brothers and sisters and I are little more than immature, defective sex addicts.

Pretty passionate comments from the native Valley priest.

If you want to see the full contents of that May 1 letter, it follows:

SOMETHING DIED

by Rev. Chris Carpenter

It has been two years since I and eight other priests of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix were ordered by our new bishop to rescind our support of the No Longer Silent Phoenix Declaration, a landmark, ecumenical statement of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people. The declaration had been publicized over a year prior, and none of our superiors

raised objections to it until that fateful month of May 2004. Indeed, the statement contains nothing explicitly contrary to official Catholic Church teaching.

I say “fateful” because among the eight of of us who subsequently withdrew our names in light of our promise of obedience to our bishop, only three are still serving as priests. Three of us former signers have resigned at least temporarily from ministry, another was suspended for unrelated reasons, and another has since passed away. The ninth priest refused to remove his name and consequently had his sacramental faculties suspended. Other priests, gay and straight, have resigned from ministry in the diocese since then as well. While they did not endorse the Phoenix Declaration, most of them share our concerns about the treatment of LGBT people by the Church and society at large.

Something died as a result of the personal and public showdown over the Phoenix Declaration. A chilling effect has been experienced throughout all Catholic parishes and institutions concerned about outreach and ministry to LGBT persons. The hard work that many of us priests and other ministers had done over the years in welcoming back those who had felt alienated by the

Church came to naught, as many of those who had returned left once again in anger. Being essentially forced to remove our names from the Phoenix Declaration wounded some of the positive but sensitive relationships with other Christian leaders that had been forged. More internally, it irrevocably damaged hopes for open dialogue and a truly collaborative relationship with our new bishop.

The sole ministry to LGBT persons now approved for use in the Phoenix Diocese is Courage, which was acclaimed in a recent issue of “The Catholic Sun.” Founded by a priest in New York City and blessed by the late Pope John Paul II, Courage is controversial for its predominant emphasis on chaste living, as if LGBT persons have no other spiritual or personal concerns. The ministry employs antiquated clinical language, preferring the terms “same-sex attraction” and “homosexual inclinations” over “sexual orientation.” It thus treats homosexuality as an addiction or compulsion not unlike alcoholism. Also, Courage’s literature includes a subtle but

nonetheless psychologically dubious encouragement of LGBT people to work to change their sexual orientation. Thankfully, Courage has gained only a small number of adherents in the Diocese of Phoenix thus far.

By contrast, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where I now reside on a self-imposed leave of absence, will be celebrating 20 years of ministry to and with its homosexual community with great fanfare on May 6. The L.A. Archdiocese’s Ministry with Lesbian & Gay Catholics (MLGC) is cardinal-approved and diocese-supervised, but doesn’t demand chastity as the price of admission. Official Church teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts isn’t swept under the rug, but it also isn’t wielded as a club to beat people into submission. An individual’s life experience and conscience are respected. LGBT people are encouraged to live their lives openly, not in the closet. As a result, MLGC has a vibrant presence in multiple parishes throughout greater Los Angeles.

Yes, something died in the Diocese of Phoenix two years ago. While more conservative Catholics may applaud the fact that the majority of us who originally endorsed the Phoenix Declaration are no longer in active ministry, the trade-off has been fewer native priests and a growing influx of foreign-born priests with little to no knowledge of the local language or culture. This is in turn compelling previously faithful parishioners to seek out other parishes and even other denominations and breakaway Catholic

communities in their desire for relevance, not to mention intelligibility.

I love the Church of Phoenix, which until recently was my life-long home. But sadly, part of me died there. I love ministry and being a priest, and I’m feeling the stirrings of new life in that regard. But I refuse to serve as a priest in a church environment that is increasingly sending a false and destructive message that my LGBT brothers and sisters and I are little more than immature, defective sex addicts. Where I will ultimately end up, only God knows. I believe God is calling the people of Phoenix to new life as

well, but difficult and courageous choices may yet have to be made. Which do you prefer: death or new life?

Demands on our lives preclude us from so much that’s out there. I fantasize about being given a life sentence — confined to a large, well-stocked public library. What could be better than wiling away the rest of the hours of one’s life immersed in the best ideas recorded throughout human history? Oh, the amazing works that wait for the time and the opportunity to be devoured.I fret that KTAR (620 AM) airs its wonderful program, The God Show, with host Pat McMahon at 7 a.m. on Sunday mornings. That’s not only when NBC-TV’s Meet the Press comes on, but it about the time I am headed for church to handle an hour’s worth of campus chores and duties before heading to choir practice. So I miss The God Show.

I know, I could wear a Sony Walkman and hear it all. Some years ago, I mail-ordered a radio that could be programmed to come on at a certain time to record a couple hours of a radio program. I think I got it to work only once. After repeated tries to get that to happen again, I gave up. The radio is stuck on a shelf somewhere.

So I catch only a portion of “The God Show,” an incredible hour featuring some of the most thoughtful, bright minds in religion locally and nationally. McMahon, the dean of Valley radio-TV personalities and ever-so-eclectic in what he deals with in his various shows, has a remarkable talent for provocative questions. Thus, he elicits great answers from theologians, esteemed authors and scholars and activists from the trench of faith reform. McMahon needs to write his own book on religion.

The God Show is a fine hour of radio.

When I can get home from church on Sundays by 12:30 p.m., I watch the 30-minute PBS weekly program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. The newsmagazine, whose host and executive editor is Bob Abernathy, a one-time major network newsman, does a magnificent job covering cutting-edge issues about faith today. Last Sunday, it featured remarks from author-preacher Frederick Buechner, just turned 80. Buechner noted how little he goes to church these days because he is completely bored by shallow, insipid preaching. He said pastors need to do more to listen to your life and draw from those experiences the richness that lies there for imparting thoughts and ideas.

Buechner has tried all his life to pay attention to the occasional, fleeting glimpses that he has had of the holy. The novelist said that message of faith and hope is supreme even in the face of constant suffering on the planet. Whats lost is nothing to whats found. And all the death that ever was set next to life would scarcely fill a cup.

Oh, ideas. Wonderful ideas. Engage in them. Read them. Go beyond what you believe and know even if it make you change.

With whatever of life there is left for you, there is still time to come to know more of the important unknown.