Καθαρά δευτέρα

As for me, the first day of the Great Fast finds me working away at my technical writing job, today translating a machine manual into French. I feel pretty empty, really. Drinking a thermos of some kind of smoky Asian tea, probably Lapsang Souchong, that I found in a cupboard in the company lunch room, and having eaten the second of my two bread rolls, I went to look at some of my favorite blogs. I know I shouldn't do this two days in a row, but I am going to quote a passage from today's poem by my friend and brother, David Dickens. Please go ahead and read the whole poem by clicking the link after his name, but these few verses spoke to me strongly. Our best intentions are always being eroded. If that's not proof that we are living in a body of sin in a fallen world, I don't know what is. But our good and loving God, He knows us through and through, and He is strong to save…

What mockery made us believe
We could bribe the king of heaven
Or hide in myrrh’s thick smoke?

Light candle, say a prayer rote
Sing the appointed hymn loudly
Bow and scrape, kiss the cross

What are these to a dark heart?
Empty delusions, death by lies
Futile efforts He will not endure

But if we wash one another
Returning again with thanksgiving
Learn and grow, give and love


— David Dickens, First Hour of Turning, Nothing Hypothetical

Σαρακοστή

At the threshold of the gates of repentance we stand, unlike Jesus at the start of His forty days, fully fed. It was only after “having exhausted all these ways of tempting Him [that] the devil left Him, to return at the appointed time” (Luke 4:13 JB).

Now the devil is ready for the chase with us, his teeth clenched in eternal anxiety, his cloven feet entrenched at the starting line, his bodiless form eternally bent as if poised to plunge into the lake of fire—on your mark, get set, go!

But we, unlike Jesus at the start of His forty days, fully fed, receive now, as in advance, what He did only when “the devil left Him, and angels appeared and looked after Him” (Matthew 4:11 JB).

We are already with Him at the finish line, feeding on such food as He is and has, gazing backwards over our shoulders, gazing back to the future, feeding on what His angels bring. Here is a morsel of that manna to be consumed now.

Take it, my brothers, take it to heart, and eat of it, and “let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1b NIV)...

Wheat, Water, Wine and Oil

by David Dickens

Praise the Lord dwelling in Zion

Who acquits His in their guilt

He does not abandon them to shame

In Judah, in Jerusalem

He has made His house

All else left to desert

Brought low by locust

Chewing, Consuming, Crawling

His great army against the world

But on His, wine pours down

And milk is supped before

Of those dying of thirst

They are dry in the memory

The recall of their violence

Against His innocent blood

Awake, know the Lord God

And His home on the mountain

Approach and be made holy

Wild hearts, do not be afraid

A far green country arises

Where great fruit is plenty

The Judge sits ready

But the nations have no counsel

Pray them to rend their hearts

But the time is ending

Immigration closing

Soon foreigners will be expelled

The faithful forebears welcomed

But their wayward children driven

Through barren lands into the sea

Hear the Lion of Judah

His voice shakes the nations

A roar filling the heavens

Weep priests before the altar

Your false words make false flocks

With no hope found in their idols

Hearts of the world fall

Like dust of the stars

More than all the grains of sand

And winepress full of the dying

Crushed spilling out

To the ends of rebellion

But His hand raises men

From their own blood

Though the presses overflow

Elders assemble your children

Gather the people for the bridegroom

Ready them for the feast

Many are the endless throng

All the sheaves full

The bales heavy with life

Blow the trumpet

The fast is ended

Call them to order

And be glad all citizens

For His faithful rain falls

In joy it descends from heaven

So the Lord says, “I am

Wheat, water, wine and oil

And I will satisfy.”

Open doors

Last week, on Thursday, my day off, one of my sons visited me with a very special friend of his who just gave birth to a beautiful baby girl on January 30. It has been many years since I have had an infant in the house or even held one.

I placed the car seat with baby Daniella on the end of the dining room table, so I could get a good look at her, while Johnny and Kelley unpacked the lunch they had brought to share with me. I hadn’t seen Kelley in more than a year. She looked the same as always, calm and beautiful, even though she’s a mommy now. Daniella was awake and squirming a little in the car seat, still strapped in and looking like she’d rather be out of it. I marveled at what a beautiful baby girl she was, perfectly formed, though tiny, so tiny that her little wrists were only as thick as my thumb, reminding me of the fairy tale baby Thumbelina.

While Daniella lay there looking up at the Torah scroll that I have mounted on the wall above the table as a scriptural ikon, with its silver oil lamp glowing, the three of us grownups had our lunch—Vietnamese baguette sandwiches from a new sandwich shop nearby, a delicious departure from the usual. Now that we’re entering Lent, I’ll have to wait till the day of Resurrection to have another one, but no matter. Another good thing to look forward to, although “man does not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4).

After lunch, Johnny released Daniella from her captivity, picked her up and carried her for a few moments, and then asked me what I was hoping he would, “Would you like to hold her?” “Of course, that’s what I was waiting for!” I responded, and he transferred the precious burden into my arms. I walked with her around the living room and dining room, looking at her in the different light as I moved from the table to the wall of windows and then over to the inner wall where my prayer ‘corner’ is, with its ikons, oil lamp and censers.

I held the little girl up to the ikons.
“Look, Daniella! Here’s your name day saint, prophet Daniel!” I said, as I took the ikon off the nail and brought it up close to her so she could get a better look. She peered at the picture mounted to a wooden board, humoring me. I placed the ikon back on the wall it shares with an ikon of prophet Moses the Law-giver, and my favorite picture of Jesus in a little frame I carved myself years ago. At least I got to introduce her to my ikons. She’ll no doubt see more of them in the future.

The rest of the time I spent holding and gently rocking her, sitting on a chair next to Kelley as she finished her lunch, and we talked, and I continued admiring Daniella and thanking God for this little miracle. What changes this little ambassador of Christ will bring into her mother’s life! Ambassador of Christ? She’s just a baby! Well, that’s true, but if we believe the Savior’s words, “to such as these the Kingdom of Heaven belongs” and “in heaven their angels are always in the presence of my heavenly Father” (Luke 18:16, Matthew 18:10), babies are, like Jesus, an open door, for themselves and for us. Could that be why we have ikons of baby Jesus? I wonder.

On our side, the door to our lives is closed, often locked, so much so that the Lord says, “I stand at the door and knock” (Revelation 3:20). How strange this is, to turn the tables on Him thus. On His side, the doors are open, and they are many. Though He bids us “knock, and the door will be open to you” (Matthew 7:7), indicating that our action is required, the truth from experience is, that He is opening doors for us every day. That is His nature, His divine nature.

Therefore Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. … I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. … I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
John 10:7, 9, 10b NIV

Holding a baby like Daniella is like holding the Word of God in your hands. Just as the Word tells you about God and also about yourself, because it is Alive, so an infant, newly created by the Lord, and sent by the Lord, is alive with a Life newly lit from the flame of the Holy One of Israel, as scripture says “the Light of Israel will become a fire, their Holy One a flame” (Isaiah 10:17).

Holding a precious infant is standing in a door way that He has opened, a door way between this world and His, reminding us once again of where we came from, and where we are going, when we say ‘Yes’… into a land we have never seen, but because we know the Lord has gone there before us, it is home.

And as I held her for a few more moments, I asked inwardly, “Κυριε, να σας ζηση”… “Lord, give her life.”

All these things

The following post was inspired by some passages of Charles Spurgeon posted by Andrew Kenny on his blog Marks of Authentic Mission, where I left it as a comment.

The Jews pray, “Lord, don’t let me be so poor that I don’t bless You because I have so little, and don’t let me be so rich that I forget you because I have so much.” Psalm 37 declares, “Man in his prosperity forfeits intelligence. He is one with the cattle doomed to slaughter.” (Psalm 49:20 Jerusalem Bible)

When identifying with the poor I have used this verse like the repenting Pharisee, “Thank you, Lord, that I am not like other men, like that tax collector, for instance …”

The truth is, we are all rich if only we could remember God’s presence with us at all times, yet we are all poor in the eyes of the Lord, who hastens to enrich us—our weakness with His strength, our poverty with His abundance.

Sadly, a large part of the Church has gone over to the world and made worldly success, prosperity and security the declared or undeclared goal. No wonder when people go through the process of becoming a “Christian” and have achieved middle class status, they feel they’ve “graduated,” and now church attendance seems to them only as obligatory as going to an alumni reunion.

However, the Church was never intended to operate at a surplus, amassing wealth and property. Instead, the 5,000 men who were fed by only 5 loaves and 2 fish are in fact a type of the Church with regard to how it is to operate in the world (cf. Matthew 14:13–21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15). Without concentrating on trying to be poor and simple (reading poverty into Christ's commandments, as if ‘impoverish each other’ were His word to us rather than ‘love each other’), without enticing each other to be rich and boastful (pretending that their boasting is of the Lord, when clearly it is not), the true life of the follower of Jesus in the Church, and indeed, the true life of the Church as a body, is simply to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added …” (Matthew 6:33 ESV).

“All these things?” Yes, whatever it is you think you want, well, you’ll come to see that you never knew what you really wanted until seeking the kingdom first and then, seeing what great blessing is in that kingdom, you come to know that there was nothing more that you ever wanted but that.

Now, how many of us who call ourselves “Christians” have that kind of abundant life? And how many of us are chasing after the same fleeting, fleshly majesty in possessions as does the world?

So do not worry; do not say, “What are we to eat? What are we to drink? How are we to be clothed?” It is the pagans who set their hearts on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. Set your hearts on His Kingdom first, and on His righteousness, and all these other things will be given you as well. Matthew 6:31-33 Jerusalem Bible

We are changed into the image we reflect

"Purified Lips" by Grace Carol Bomer

The following is the tail end of a post entitled Formal… but here to party by Andrew Mills at his blog Metanoia. I recommend that you take a look at his post in its entirety, but I'm warning you, it starts out differently than you might have guessed, it tears off a few false faces, but it ends up here, with these closing paragraphs...

So what does it mean to be “real”? From the Christian perspective we have to look at what Jesus said. And what Jesus said is telling. The last thing he said to the apostles before ascending into heaven is a powerful clue as to what he thought it meant to be a fully realized human. He said, “By this will all men know that you are mine, and that I was sent by the Father; if you have love for one another.” And likewise, when he was asked the most important law for humans to follow he summed it all up with “Love God, and love each other.”

Some of us see God as angry, powerful, and distant. Some see him as an ooey gooey spirit that hasn’t got a personality, and is there when I want to be thankful, but doesn’t care when I want to be a bit shady. Some see Jesus as a “warrior with a sword in hand and a tattoo down his leg.” I tend to see Jesus as a subversive hippie prophet, teaching Love and “smash the state.”

Some like to think of Jesus in a tuxedo t-shirt. That says, “I’m formal, but I’m here to party.”

But maybe if we’re missing God in our real life, it’s because we’re looking for the wrong things. Maybe we miss God because he’s got dirt under his nails. Maybe we miss him because he’s sitting down and hugging the neck of someone we find repulsive.

Do I miss part of God because he’s sitting down with a conservative business man in a freshly pressed suit?

Do some miss part of God because he’s whispering their name from a moss covered tree in the middle of the woods?

Maybe if we miss him, we miss him because we keep reaching up trying to grasp someone who has come down here among us. You find what you look for. Seek and keep seeking and you will find. But I guarantee you that what you find will surprise you.

— Andrew Mills

That very word which I spoke

Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day. For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say."

John 12:44-50 NIV

God is truth and light. God’s judgment is nothing else than our coming into contact with truth and light. In the day of the Great Judgment all men will appear naked before this penetrating light of truth. The ‘books’ will be opened. What are these ‘books’? They are our hearts. Our hearts will be opened by the penetrating light of God, and what is in these hearts will be revealed. If in those hearts there is love for God, those hearts will rejoice in seeing God’s light. If, on the contrary, there is hatred for God in those hearts, these men will suffer by receiving on their opened hearts this penetrating light of truth which they detested all their life.

So that which will differentiate between one man and another will not be a decision of God, a reward or a punishment from Him, but that which was in each one’s heart; what was there during all our life will be revealed in the Day of Judgment. If there is a reward and a punishment in this revelation – and there really is – it does not come from God but from the love or hate which reigns in our heart. Love has bliss in it, hatred has despair, bitterness, grief, affliction, wickedness, agitation, confusion, darkness, and all the other interior conditions which compose hell (cf. 1 Corinthians 4:6).

In the future life the Christian is not examined if he has renounced the whole world for Christ’s love, or if he has distributed his riches to the poor or if he fasted or kept vigil or prayed, or if he wept and lamented for his sins, or if he has done any other good in this life, but he is examined attentively if he has any similitude with Christ, as a son does with his father.

St. Symeon the New Theologian
The quote of Saint Symeon is from Fr Milovan's excellent blog, Again and Again.

How precious, God, Your love!

Psalms for the 7th Day
35 36 37

Psalm 36:5-9
…Your love, Yahweh,
reaches to the heavens,
Your faithfulness to the clouds;
Your righteousness is like
the mountains of God,
Your judgments like the mighty deep.

Yahweh, protector of man and beast,
how precious, God, Your love!
Hence the sons of men
take shelter in the shadow of Your wings.

They feast on the bounty of Your house,
You give them drink from Your river of pleasure;
yes, with You is the fountain of life,
by Your light we see the light.
Do not stop loving those who know You…

…óti pará Si pighí zo’ís,
en tó photí Sou opsómetha phós…
paráteinon to eleós Sou
tis ghinóskousi Se…

Kαι δώσω αυτω τον αστέρα τον πρωϊνόν

I awakened in the dark, the last scenes of a strange dream still ebbing through my mind. I was traveling, and at a stopping point had gone to a temple to worship at vespers. I returned to where I had left my belongings. Where were they? Where was my coat, my blanket? Where was my satchel full of tools? The blanket, I found. The jacket and the satchel were gone and the tools scattered all over the room, tiny nails that I used in my work, strewn in their hundreds all over the floor. Who would help me gather them up, and where would I put them, since my bag was gone?

In my room with uncovered windows, not a hint of light—it was still pre-dawn. I lay there as always when He awakens me, and I began to talk to Him, to thank Him for all that He has done for me. I stopped almost before I began. Something was different. The darkness was warm and calm, His presence filled every minute of space and time. I was enfolded, and it was my turn to listen, His to speak. “My will is your certainty. My good will your protection.” Nothing is more certain than the future, nothing more certain than the past. “I was there at your beginning. I am here with you now. I will be there at your end.”

I started again to thank Him and praise Him, but the smoke of His presence filled the temple, and I was driven back. In the silence He spoke what words cannot repeat. I listened while I recalled the days of old. How I wanted to find Him but did not know what He would be for me when I found Him. How I did not find Him, but He found me. How I wanted to choose Him, how I wanted to dedicate my life to Him. How I did not choose Him, but He chose me. How He said to me, “Not this offering,” pointing at my vegetables, “but This,” pointing at His Lamb.

“You were with Me when I laid the earth’s foundations, and you will be with Me when I close the door on this icy age.” Did I do something to deserve this? Was it my choice, my free will that did this? How was it that in the flow of time I appeared and did something that could raise me out of that flow? “You would not have called to Me, if I had not been calling to you. You will never understand this, never grasp this, until you shed the skin from your eye and see Me as I see you. It is enough that your eye should be single and your body full of light.”

I took pause, selah. The darkness surrounded me, and the silence. My thoughts and deeds, apt for their time, my friends and loved ones I will never see again on earth, my current circumstances provided for, what will happen, who will yet come, all unknown to me but as certain, as apt, as providential as the past, as this moment. He set me on my feet and bade me walk in His ways, shielding me from harm, entrusting me to His commandments. Nothing different will ever happen to me, because on me His day has already dawned, the day without end. Rest in that, my soul, selah.

Grave light began to mix with the darkness. I could see my hand before my face. I reached over and took up my psalm book, opened it randomly to the 57th psalm. Lamenatzéach al tashchét, leDavíd mikhtám, kevarchó mipnéy Sha’úl bam‘aráh… “For the Conductor, a plea to be spared from destruction, by David, a Michtam, when he fled from Saul, in the cave…” Chanéyni, Elohím, chanéyni… “Favor me, O God, favor me…” My eyes could barely make out the letters on the page, and they closed by themselves, my spirit contemplating the rest of the psalm without reading it. Then I rested, and fell back to speaking to the Lord.

So it was He that chose me of His free will, just as He chose to ascend the Cross of His free will, for me. So it was He from the beginning who had me in His sights, not I who was looking for Him. So it was He saved me and called me ‘Brother’ before I came to the place of meeting He had arranged for me, to that holy rendezvous.
“I waited until you noticed the signs I had been sending, and then by the signs I sent you, you understood that I was standing behind your wall. I spoke to you when you believed not in Me, but in the signs. When you believed in the signs, you were ready to hear My voice.”

So it was He who kept me from wandering in the past to the lands from which there is no escape. It was He who kept me out of the prison from which there is no release. When I asked Him to keep me from the sin that kills eternally, because in me is no strength to resist it, He had already placed His seal on my heart, on my arm, to prevent me, and I, not noticing, asked Him for what He already bestowed. “Glory to You, O God. Glory to You, O God. Glory to You, O God.” And the hymn of the 1st Tone started up in my mind,
“Though the tomb was sealed by a stone and soldiers guarded Your pure body, You arose, O Savior, on the third day, giving life unto the world…”

The morning is now full. When dawn really came, and the sun rose a little to the southeast of the mountain and started pouring its light into my room, I took up my psalm book, which I had been clasping to my chest, and prayed parts of several psalms, whatever verses my eyes fell on. I was still held in suspense by what I heard in the pre-dawn darkness, even as I am now. So the future is as certain as the past. It is finished. The words I use to say these things, though, I have said, read or heard before, without knowing what they meant.

High praise, Yahweh, I give You,
for You have helped me up…
Psalm 30:1 Jerusalem Bible

Psalms for the 6th Day
30 31 32 33 34 (English)
35 36 37 38 (Hebrew)

Your mercies, Lord, Your mercies

…are what fill me with dread. You are not a God who is pleased with wickedness. Boasters collapse under Your scrutiny. But I, so great is Your love, may come to Your House, and before Your holy Temple bow down, in reverence to You.

Your love, Father, upholds all the world. You are not a God who like a watchmaker designs and builds a clock, winds it up, and then leaves it to tick out its time moment by moment while You go away to live Your real life.

You hold us and everything that is, suspended as thoughts in Your mind. You never cease thinking of us, You never cease loving us whom You call the apple of Your eye, You never give up on these thoughts of Yours whom You have endowed with freedom.

The whole world is bathed in Your blazing light, yet we still wander through it unseeing as blind men, thinking and doing deeds of darkness, while You follow us with Your eyes, waiting and watching to catch us when we fall.

Your mercies, Lord, Your mercies are so great, and so great your patience, Your long-suffering love, maintaining and renewing the world by the Word of Your command, that we do not notice, Your mercy is too great for us of small mercy.

I cross myself to confess that I am the reason You ascended the Cross of Your own free will, and I bend down to touch the earth before You to acknowledge that I am but dust, but You raise me up, You raise me up and straighten me when I am most afraid.

Come into Your own, Lord, come among us visibly, reveal Your power, grant pardon to us sinners by Your saving Presence, anoint us with the myrrh of gladness, Saviour of fugitives, for to You, to You alone, do we run, O God our God, hope of all the earth.

Glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Spirit Holy, Triad One in essence, Eternal, YHWH, the only lover of mankind. Glory to You.

Let your light shine

Here is a snippet or teaser of a post entitled Let Your Light Shine that I found on the blog Metanoia…

…if we believe that we are created in God’s image. If we believe that love is better than hate. If we believe that mercy is better than condemnation. If we believe that helping is better than hurting. Where does our logic break down? See, I believe that these things are true. I believe that it is closer to the reality of the “is-ness” of life to say that we should love each other. But often I take a backward leap of faith and I don’t do it. I act in small selfish ways. I take the resources I’ve been blessed with and I squander them and refuse to share with people around me who are hurting. I believe that it is my job to help bring heaven to earth, but then I ignore all the hells on earth (and all too often I help create them).

So I encourage anyone who believes in the chance plus time version of life to continue to look at the logic of the position, but to continue to make that leap of faith to work towards love and justice. Even if you don’t believe in God, when you work for love, you are working for God. And I encourage Christians to follow the logic of your faith. If we believe what we claim to believe then it will change the way we act towards those around us. Christianity can’t just be a social club for people who “get it.” If the Gospel is good news, then it has to be good news for everyone. It should be good news to the person you’ve been hateful to that you are being changed by the Spirit. It should be good news to the downtrodden, the poor, the orphans, the immigrants, that you are being made new.

If Christianity is just about you getting right with God, then you are missing the point. Re-birth is the starting line, not the finish line. Let your light shine.

— Andrew Mills

Personality cult

Not by us, Yahweh, not by us,
by You alone is glory deserved,
by Your love and Your faithfulness.
Psalm 115 Jerusalem Bible

By the very nature of a thing, its meaning, its use or function, is implicit.

God Himself, who is beyond all being and is therefore no thing, still fits into this idea. This is the test of greatness: that the very large can enter the very small, the very high can have commerce with the very low, the beyond being can indwell the being, and the Creator can become a creature. And so, God’s meaning, use or function (though it’s unseemingly to speak thus) is to deserve glory. All that He is (God), all that He does (love), and all that He reveals (faithfulness), makes Him the only One who deserves glory. That is His nature. Our nature is the complementary one: to give glory.

If we grasp this, and then look at the world around us, and especially at ourselves, we are astonished to find that from our perspective, the opposite seems to be true. Somehow, our instincts have been changed. It is we who deserve glory (in our own estimation), even while we are mentally denying it. It is from others, and even from God, that we expect to receive glory. This is so essentially hidden from us that as soon as we do a good deed, or think a good thought, we feel happy and inwardly congratulate ourselves, as we wait for it to be noticed by others. Since God is metaphysical, we just assume that He is up there applauding us, giving us glory. Though we call Him our faithful Friend, our attitude reveals that we actually regard Him as our faithful fan. Even if no one else notices us, at least He does. I am no different. I am just as addicted as you are to this cult of personality.

Last night I was trying to have a Greek bible study with a friend in a coffeehouse. We were reading and learning from the second chapter of Luke’s gospel, the account of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, as yesterday was the feast-day Ypapandí which commemorates it. The wonderful passage which I memorized years ago, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word…” is one of my favorites. What a pleasure to read it in the original language, and to understand it!

At the next table, two men were standing and apparently trying to finish up some business and make their farewells. One man looked like he was earnestly trying to get away, the other as though he were trying to prolong the encounter. That man kept looking over at us reading Greek aloud and discussing it. Finally, the first man got away, the other graciously walking him to the door… or maybe not so graciously. After the first had left, the second man came back to the table and was fumbling with his stuff and fidgeting with a small high-tech digital camera, apparently looking at previews on the screen.

All at once, he looked over at us and called out, “What are you two doing? Is that Latin you’re reading?” I was facing him, so I responded, “No, it’s biblical Greek. We’re studying the New Testament.” Then a conversation ensued in which this gentleman dialogued with me, mostly, asking some questions about Greek, and then making a connexion with “Greek” by announcing that his art teacher was a young Greek girl, “no, actually she is half Lithuanian,” and that she was also a chanter in the Greek church.

“Oh, you know Martha?” I gasped, surprised. Then, gradually the conversation turned in a direction that I had hardly anticipated. This 55 year old, twice-married, left-handed, very talented graphic artist, who had totally designed his beautiful first home and then lost it in litigation with his ex-wife, and then even had the hard luck of his second wife being deported to Fiji (he didn’t explain why) without his being able to follow her there (because the Fiji government restricts the immigration of white people to keep the nation ethnically native), showed us a couple of photos of Martha on his digital camera, to prove to us that he knew her.

Before I noticed where he was going, our new ‘best friend’ had moved closer to us and was standing at the edge of our table, locating photos of all his best paintings and showing them to us. He also knew my son Andrew and had heard him play at an art exhibit (probably that Martha had managed). “Wait a minute!” he said, “I have a video of Andrew playing! Here, let me show it to you…” he said, as he passed the camera first to me and then my fellow bible student. “Very nice,” I said. “I used to listen to him practicing all night sometimes, as his bedroom was next to mine.”

Then another surprise, for me anyway. Mentioning the Greek church where my son and Martha are both cantors, I realized (too late) that I had just opened another chance for him to do a take-off on his knowledge and experience of the Greek church. “That young priest, he’s so handsome, and his pretty little wife, she’s a beauty really…” he began, as he now boasted of having met our new presbyter Fr Dimos and his presvytera. More than that my poor memory cannot recall but, trying to find some gracious closure to this ‘visit’ I asked him a rather pointed question, “Hey, why aren’t you Orthodox anyway, since you know all these people and all this stuff?”

“When I was eight or nine, I got this nifty little telescope. It was my most prized possession. I even still have it in mint condition in the original box. I was raised Catholic. You know, rosaries and statues and confession and communion and Hail Mary’s a hundred and fifty times. Well, when I used my telescope to see the wonders of the night sky, I realized that if there was a God, I could relate to him better by looking at planets and stars than by going to church. I let my parents know how I felt and they let me off the hook. They were very understanding…”

Now it made sense why all his paintings were close-ups in incredible detail of the lunar disk and surface, some of them augmented by images of fetuses in detached wombs dotted about the night sky like other planets, modern art for sure. I got quiet, realizing that if I said anything more, he would use it as an invitation to explore another facet of his personal universe and reveal it to us. That didn’t stop him. He started on a new, rather opinionated political topic, waiting for me to react.

I looked over at my fellow bible student and then waited for a pause. “What did you say your name was? …oh, that’s right. Well, I hope you won’t take offense, but we were really trying to study the bible tonight. Would you mind if we got back to it?” This was at least a half hour since he first came over to us. Without visibly being taken aback, he graciously withdrew, thanked us for the chat, gathered his things, and left.

“Now, where were we…? Ah yes, νυν απολυεις τον δουλον σου δεσποτα κατα το ρημα σου εν ειρηνη… Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace…”

Apocalypse

I hope now to stir your minds to remember
Things others have taught you
I am merely repeating
That which you were mocked for believing
“What sort of light is cast from devouring hope?”
Not in this dissipated world
But a vision more substantial

Consider the light then given from life
Ever present, now made immanent
Ended in their polluted water
But clean water still carries the life it always did
Filth must forget to survive
Remembering makes for fresh rain
Or better, fire

Everyone is hung up about waiting
But time is an easy thing to waste
There is no time for evil
All the time in the world for good
This is not because what you do does not matter
But because it does
Only death should die!

There is a fire we have not yet known
But will sooner than dawn breaks from night
We call it vengeance in our ignorance
But the maiden knew no hate
Rather burned brightly
The sun still envies the mercy seat
Stepping before us on to the new day

So, be quickened and run
Chase the stars across their crystal spheres
Refresh your brother
Carry your sister
In all things give thanks to your father
Know your neighbor
Open your mouth in faith and love

Spotless, blameless, peaceful even in suffering
Just as with him we can be
Even if it is hard to understand
But you need not twist
Or be crushed by weight beyond your strength
Even a strong man knows to use a lever
So a cross is given to move the world

Keep the memory close at hand
How they were lost to their own trickery
Their hearts slept the watch
What fools the wise who know not the hour
The far country has been brought near
This land stands conquered
And will end before our labors are done

The doors of the house
Built from the wood of the fig tree
They will not stand the four winds
Nor will the clouds of glory be kept out
Great the thunder, mighty the quake
Mountains cast into churning seas
The unapproachable approaches!

Please, lest this be counted for evil
And time be lost for me to speak
Do not settle for your delusions
Refuse the devils at the window
Admit the disease receive the cure
The great physician does not disappoint
And you may yet know what you were made for

— David Dickens, Nothing Hypothetical

Of all David's poems, this has to be one of the best. I invite you to visit his blog at the link after his name. What Walt Whitman said of his own poetry, I can confidently say of David Dickens'…

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill’d shelves,
yet needed most, I bring,
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
A book separate, not link’d with the rest
nor felt by the intellect,
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page.

— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Book I - Inscriptions, Shut not your doors

A different kind of Chapter 11

Definition: Chapter 11
A bankruptcy option in which a trustee is appointed to reorganize the bankrupt firm. Although the existing claims of security holders are likely to be reduced or replaced with different claims, it is expected that the firm will continue operating.

What was bankrupt?
The old law and religion.

Were the existing claims of the security holders reduced or replaced?
Both. If they continue to grumble and not accept what the appointed Trustee offers them, their claims are reduced. If they fully accept the reorganization of the firm, their claims are replaced with something better.

What firm is it that is expected to keep operating?
The business of the Trustee's Father, the One who said, "My Father continues working, and so do I."

Who is the Trustee?
The God-Man, Jesus Christ.

Here is His version of Chapter 11...

Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of the realities that at present remain unseen. It was for their faith that our ancestors were commended.

It is by faith that we understand that the world was created by One Word from God, so that no apparent cause can account for the things we can see.

It was because of his faith that Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain, and for that he was declared to be righteous when God made acknowledgment of his offerings. Though he is dead, he still speaks by faith.

It was because of his faith that Enoch was taken up and did not have to experience death: he was not to be found because God had taken him. This was because before his assumption it is attested that he had pleased God. Now it is impossible to please God without faith, since anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who try to find Him.

It was through his faith that Noah, when he had been warned by God of something that had never been seen before, felt a holy fear and built an ark to save his family. By his faith the world was convicted, and he was able to claim the righteousness which is the reward of faith.

It was by faith that Abraham obeyed the call to set out for a country that was the inheritance given to him and his descendants, and that he set out without knowing where he was going. By faith he arrived, as a foreigner, in the Promised Land, and lived there as if in a strange country, with Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. They lived there in tents while he looked forward to a city founded, designed and built by God.

It was equally by faith that Sarah, in spite of being past the age, was made able to conceive, because she believed that He who made the promise would be faithful to it. Because of this, there came from one man, and one who was already as good as dead himself, more descendants than could be counted, as many as the stars of heaven or the grains of sand on the seashore.

All these died in faith, before receiving any of the things that had been promised, but they saw them in the far distance and welcomed them, recognising that they were only strangers and nomads on earth. People who use such terms about themselves make it quite plain that they are in search of their real homeland. They can hardly have meant the country they came from, since they had the opportunity to go back to it; but in fact they were longing for a better homeland, their heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, since He has founded the city for them.

It was by faith that Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He offered to sacrifice his only son even though the promises had been made to him, and he had been told: It is through Isaac that your name will be carried on. He was confident that God had the power even to raise the dead; and so, figuratively speaking, he was given back Isaac from the dead.

It was by faith that this same Isaac gave his blessing to Jacob and Esau for the distant future. By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons, leaning on the end of his stick as though bowing to pray. It was by faith that, when he was about to die, Joseph recalled the Exodus of the Israelites and made the arrangements for his own burial.

It was by faith that Moses, when he was born, was hidden by his parents for three months; they defied the royal edict when they saw he was such a fine child. It was by faith that, when he grew to manhood, Moses refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and chose to be ill-treated in company with God's people rather than to enjoy for a time the pleasures of sin. He considered that the insults offered to the Anointed were something more precious than all the treasures of Egypt, because he had his eyes fixed on the reward. It was by faith that he left Egypt and was not afraid of the king's anger; he held to his purpose like a man who could see the Invisible. It was by faith that he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood to prevent the Destroyer from touching any of the first-born sons of Israel. It was by faith they crossed the Red Sea as easily as dry land, while the Egyptians, trying to do the same, were drowned.

It was through faith that the walls of Jericho fell down when the people had been round them for seven days. It was by faith that Rahab the prostitute welcomed the spies and so was not killed with the unbelievers.

Is there any need to say more? There is not time for me to give an account of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, or of David, Samuel and the prophets. These were men who through faith conquered kingdoms, did what is right and earned the promises. They could keep a lion's mouth shut, put out blazing fires and emerge unscathed from battle. They were weak people who were given strength, to be brave in war and drive back foreign invaders. Some came back to their wives from the dead, by resurrection; and others submitted to torture, refusing release so that they would rise again to a better life. Some had to bear being pilloried and flogged, or even chained up in prison. They were stoned, or sawn in half, or beheaded; they were homeless, and dressed in the skins of sheep and goats; they were penniless and given nothing but ill-treatment. They were too good for the world and they went out to live in deserts and mountains and in caves and ravines. These are all heroes of faith, but they did not receive what was promised, since God had made provision for us to have something better, and they were not to reach perfection except with us.

Hebrews Chapter 11

Miracles aren’t just magic

In the same line of thought as was expressed in my previous post, quoting the Russian bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, I want to post the following, gut-wrenchingly honest homily on the subject of God's miracles in our lives. After all, though God keeps us alive, as far as this earth is concerned, it isn't 'for keeps.' That life 'for keeps' is waiting for those who believe in Jesus in that place which He has gone to prepare for us. This was not written as a ramble of thoughts detached from a real event, but came out of a young man's dealing with the grief of his mother's untimely death. What he writes here is foundational yet simple, so simple that many people miss it, until it catches up with them.

So, in the space between my last post and this one life has taken some strange twists and turns. The most major twist is the subject of this post. My mother died two weeks ago today.

About 7 years ago a doctor told her that she had cancer. Doctors have a way of saying the most vulgar things. They say phrases like, “It is as we feared.” Or they say, “It’s not what we were hoping for.” In this case the doctor used the swear-word, “Ocular Melanoma”. The doctor said that if it spread past her eye that she would have no more than 6 months to live. Again…that was 7 years ago. The cancer spread to her lungs, her liver, and her brain. But she had 7 good years. I never saw my mother “dying.” She lived every day of her life. And up until the last couple of weeks she was able to do whatever she wanted to.

We prayed for miracles. We prayed for healing. And we saw it. We saw it for 7 years. The thing I never considered until recently was the fact that miracles aren’t permanent. And I think that’s why so many people don’t believe that miracles have happened when they do. We expect miracles to be permanent. We want healing that doesn’t end up with us just getting sick again. But miracles aren’t just magic tricks from a god in a box. Miracles are always referred to as “signs.” They point us to something else. People who are healed…even people who are raised from the dead…they get sick and they die. The miracle is not about that person in that situation. The miracle is about a God who is making all things new. It is a glimpse at a future in which the God who created the universe will wipe every tear away, and there will be no more suffering, or pain, or death.

So I can say that my mother was healed miraculously for 7 years. And I can say that on January 5, 2010 at 10:15 in the evening, while family and friends gathered around her singing “Blessed Assurance”, she was healed permanently. The God of the universe reached down and scooped her up in his arms. He wiped her tears away and said, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

In the weeks leading up to her passing there were a lot of beautiful conversations. Hard, painful conversations, but beautiful as well. All of us will one day face the end of our days on earth. I hope that all of us can live a life with as much purpose, and die a death with as much meaning as Wanda Mills. She is not here, but she is not gone.

It is easy to give in to the sadness and the rage. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. But like Job, we can sit in the ashes of our life when things look the most dark and say, “I will put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, I will not speak again.” A friend once said he was jealous of atheists because as a believer in God we have to see meaning in everything. And I agree with him sometimes, but not this time. I love it that I don’t have to be happy about things that happen like this. But I also trust that there is a God who set the Earth on its foundations. Who dug the oceans and filled them with water. Who hung the stars in the sky. Who set the planets spinning in their orbits. Who orders all of existence so that even the bad things fit into the plan. And who put skin on. Who became flesh and blood so that he could scream along side of us in our pain. A God who can look at us no matter what sort of suffering we are in and say, “me too.” And who lived a perfect life, and died the death we deserved. And who now holds the keys to death and hell.

I am eternally grateful for a God who will say, “[I] will wipe every tear from [your] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away…Look! I am making everything new!”

— Andrew Mills, from his blog Metanoia

You keep me alive

God desires and seeks the salvation of all. And He is always saving all who wish to be saved from drowning in the sea of life and sin. But He does not always save in a boat or a convenient, well-equipped harbor. He promised to save the Holy Apostle Paul and all his fellow-travelers, and He did save them. But the Apostle and his fellow-passengers were not saved in the ship, which was wrecked; they were saved with great difficulty, some by swimming and others on boards and various bits of the ship's wreckage.

— Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov

Though I live surrounded by trouble,
You keep my alive—to my enemies’ fury!
You stretch Your hand out and save me,
Your right hand will do everything for me.
Yahweh, Your love is everlasting,
do not abandon us whom you gave made.
Psalm 138:7-8 Jerusalem Bible

Psalms for the 28th Day
132 133 134 135 136 137 138

Torah Or

Light of Torah—ikon of the Word
before He came.

If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true. There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses of Me is true. You have sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. Yet I do not receive testimony from man, but I say these things that you may be saved. He was the burning and shining lamp, and you were willing for a time to rejoice in his light.

But I have a greater witness than John’s; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do—bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me. And the Father Himself, who sent Me, has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form. But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.

I do not receive honor from men. But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that comes from the only God?

Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

John 5:31-47 New KJV (Orthodox Study Bible)

Dreaming of Heaven

No matter where we go, in place or in time, across all cultures, we find that all human beings have one thing in common, without exception. We all have this idea that somehow, things are not as they should be, that there is something flawed about all we do, all we experience, in this world. There is always present this feeling of wanting to be home, but just when we think we’ve found home, it too turns out to be just another way station on the caravan of souls going… somewhere.

This idea, or feeling (because it seems to transcend mere thought and seems to issue from another part of our being, the heart maybe) can almost be described as what defines mankind and sets us off from other creatures. Though there are animals that build and organize, it seems that they always follow the same logic, and their creations never deviate very much from an instinctual standard. Could this idea of ours also be something of the same sort, an instinctual standard that is inseparably part of us, the very thing we were created to do?

In any case, we have this idea, but we cannot fulfill it. We are living in a world that is already perfect, yet somehow we find ourselves unable to be happy here. Some part of us keeps dreaming of heaven.

The one true American fairy tale, The Wizard of Oz, in its film version exceeded the scope and content of the original children’s books, becoming in the process another heavily endowed myth of our dreaming of heaven.

Every religion and philosophy the world over has arisen out of mankind’s dreaming of heaven. It comes even before the discovery of God, and is probably what has pushed us into that search for Him. If there is a heaven, there must be a God. Does that make sense? Well, maybe not to all. Buddhism doesn’t need a God, but in some of its forms, it still wants, looks for, and promises heaven. It’s interesting that a similar experience can provoke at least two different responses.

Once there was a rich and cloistered prince who left the palace and walked through the world. He saw there four things that impressed him: a sick man, a poor man, a beggar and a corpse. All of these are things that he knew were intrinsically wrong, and the books about him say that “he was filled with infinite sorrow.” Ultimately, after much searching and thinking, this man came to the conclusion that none of this was real, and that escape was possible and necessary. This escape, though, was not dreaming of heaven. It was something more like not dreaming at all. Why was this? Because this man considered that what he experienced in the world was itself just a bad dream. He created a path of escape from dreaming. This man was Gautama, called the Buddha.

In another story, there was a poor man who left his workshop and walked through the world. He saw there the brokenness of people, experiencing the rigor and hardship of their lives, joined them in their alternating sorrows and joys, tasted with them the bitterness of their exile from home, their dreaming of heaven. He shared with them this strange, inescapable feeling that things were not right in the world. He was born into a religion that tried its best to give men a system of rules which, if they lived by them, promised to make their lives in this world right, so that they wouldn’t need to dream of heaven. This religion even had a God who gave the rules and tried His best to get the people to follow them. Though they had the rules, and the belief that following them would set the world right, they didn’t follow them just the same. They didn’t, but the poor man did, and by following and fulfilling the rules to the uttermost, he opened a path of escape from dreaming of heaven, by opening a path of entering into heaven. This man was Jesus, called the Christ.

We all have the same experience as these two men, as have all men in all ages and cultures. Every time we think we’ve found home, somewhere to be comfortable, where everything is “as it should be,” something or someone spoils it. In the film The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo, “It’s that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something is wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me.” Morpheus in Greek mythology is the god of dreaming. Dreaming of heaven. The Wachowski brothers sure packed a lot of truth into that first film.

Here, if nowhere else, is the common experience that unites everyone, the knowledge that all is not well with us and with our world. Religions and philosophies offer answers and explanations, hoping to strengthen our dreaming of heaven to the point where maybe the dreaming will be enough for us, and sometimes just trying to get us to not dream at all. But where did the need to dream originate? Who told us that all is not well? And people dream only of things that they have seen and experienced somewhere, even though the dreaming sometimes distorts them beyond recognition.

The answer to all this, does it come from the prince turned enlightened one, or from the carpenter nailed to a tree?

To dream or not to dream, that is the question.

And if we must dream, who will wake us up?

The reward of virtue is to see Your face,
and on waking, to gaze my fill on Your likeness.
Psalm 17:15 Jerusalem Bible

Bad alliances

If you make yourself a friend of the world,
you cannot be God’s friend.

The father of the prodigal son was a pious and God-loving man, because only such a man could have allowed his sons their full freedom and still receive one of them back with love and honor (and unself-conscious forgiveness) after he had abused his freedom and defiled himself.
The boy was ‘brought up right.’

A good marriage and family life does not come about by magic. It begins with mutual faith. It grows and is sustained by mutual faith and faithfulness. And it continues blessed and good right to the end only as long as the first faith and trust is preserved inviolable.

What can destroy it? Wanton breaking of the commandments, adultery, bearing false witness, theft and covetousness—all of which stem from forgetting who is the Lord: “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”

I have passed on to my sons what my dad passed on to me, “If you are looking for a good wife, you don’t go looking for one in bars. You go to church and find one.” Though I did not exactly follow his instructions—he told me this after I was married—I followed a slightly different route, which is maybe even better: Pray to the Lord to send you a wife, and then watch closely whom He sends to you, just as you watch for friends that He sends you, and one of these will be your wife. It goes without saying—or does it?—that you are living a life of discipleship when you make this prayer.

How simple all of life is, especially family life and our circle of relationships, when we follow the commandments! Jesus says, “If you love Me, you will follow my commandments.” That’s what I’m talking about, not some rigorous set of rules whether biblical or self-improvement-minded, neither of which will ever succeed in really making anyone better. “Branch out for a time they may, but when you look for them they will be gone, vanished like their vain hopes.” Christ is at once the source of all righteousness, the way to it, and the achievement of it. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” says Jesus (John 14:6).

Even being raised in a pious family, a son does not become a Christian by magic. As soon as he reaches the age of independent decision, his parents’ faith no longer speaks for him the moment he makes the conscious choice to take the world for his friend, instead of God. Even after making that choice, he can repent, and God our heavenly Father, can and will take him back. But just as the father of the prodigal son did not restrain that son from the choices he made, neither does God, or the parents, restrain him or constrain him. They may advise, they may teach, they certainly must pray for him to turn away from his friendship with the world, but they cannot force him to give it up. He must want a better friendship.

So it is, that a man who has taken the world for his friend no longer thinks of God, except of the punishment that he will receive after everything he does is done and his life is over—if there is a God.

Instead of memories of a youth spent in innocent fun and friendships, he finds memories only of riotous relationships, infidelities, the waste of his virginity and that of one he might have truly loved and been wedded to, and years of profound loss: spoiled friendships, missed opportunities, time and money wasted, and all for what? Now the mercy of God can only drive him to even more miserable states, to where he, like the prodigal son feeding unclean animals (pigs) and not even being given their slop for food, finds himself at another point of decision: To utterly despair, or to return to his Father.

Rather than flee from house to house, or from town to town, to escape his brown girls and their offspring, like John of Puritania this son needs to turn around and start traveling Home, facing East. The road back will look very different than that same road looked when he made the world his friend and followed it to the place of bondage. By making God, in Christ, his Friend, the road will turn into something very, very narrow, but he won’t mind that, because he will hear his Friend going ahead of him, saying, “Follow Me.”

Patriarch Irinej of Serbia, Many Years!

His Holiness Irinej, Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovac and Patriarch of Serbia, was enthroned today at the Cathedral Church in Belgrade.

Christ among us, not an ideology

…the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or—if they think there is not—at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think that God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in them," this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts—that we are His fingers and muscles, the cells of His body. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion. It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution—a biological or super-biological fact. There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 2, What Christians Believe, Chapter 5, The Practical Conclusion