Sunday, very early in the day we met in the Eucharist the mystery of Divine Mercy. Later, I was a slacker. I did only a little homework.
An hour before sunset, DC and I drove the 5 minutes or so it takes to get from our subdivision over to the reservoir (lake, reservoir: here in Colorado, it comes down to a legal definition, not a sensible one). Grebes doing their mating ballet, muskrat love, elegant herons, squawking coots, lots of black-winged blackbirds and a yellow-headed one, too, pelicans aplenty, robins and killdeer, gulls - without consulting my list, this roster of attendance in less than an hour we were at the lake is bound to be incomplete. There's a light visible at left in the bottom photo. Our house is less than a mile SSE of that light.
When you look at the photos, can you possibly see why it could be terribly wrong to let "Heaven Fest", which the sponsors describe as "A Huge Colorado Christian Music Worship and Arts Festival", use Union Reservoir for a day?
Either the city is lying or organizers lied in saying that the expected attendance was 20,000 - 23,000 people. Now the organizers, who are entirely opaque, say that the site will accommodate more than 50,000.
I'll tell you venues in this state that will accommodate 50,000: Invesco. Coors Field (the way they jammed 'em in for the Series, anyway), Folsom. But no. They couldn't "conform to the world" by emulating Woodstock if they took it downtown. If it's a matter of spreading out performance stages, rent a fairground.
I am sickened at the thought of these people demanding a "right" to show up on my doorstep where an encroaching bedroom community sprawl has an already uneasy truce with wildlife. Their conservation ethic -- probably about as rigorously considered as their theology -- consists of little more than picking up after themselves.
After having my comment rights suspended on their fan page, I used an immoderate choice of words in describing how I see their relationship to Christianity, which is heresy. My preconception is that they are not the kinds of folk who would understand that, in calling them heretics (which is actually a fairly moderate criticism), I am not calling them apostates. I don't know for a fact that they're that far gone. But heretics, they certainly are.
I do not think it was accidental that in one stroke my commenting rights were revoked and in the next one of their folks bitched about how hard it is to get Catholic support. Well, folks, guess what? Well-catechized and well-informed Catholic parents are not about to send their kids off to you for the day, where they'll be proselytized about "accepting Jesus as their personal savior" and, oh, by the way - "Did you know there's a youth group in your neighborhood that can help you grow in the Lord?"
To someone who cares about the creatures down the street and about purity of doctrine (you can find yer red hot Catholic doctrine right here), this is an offensive event. One of their supporters suggested that the birds "go somewhere else for the day." I think that just about summarizes their ecological awareness. Their expectation that Catholics jump on their bandwagon, hellbent for election, similarly expresses a theological naivety that, historically, has often run to apostasy.
Heaven for whom? Not the creatures. And, potentially, not for the souls misguided into this event.
