Both must die

The Publican and the Pharisee
Christian Dare

Today is the first Sunday of what is called the Triodion in the Orthodox Church. The Triodion, ‘the three odes,’ is simply the name of the hefty volume that holds all the texts and rubrics of the services between today and the end of Great and Holy Lent, which I prefer to call by its Greek name, Sarakostí, not to be elite or mysterious, but because ‘forty days’ is implied in Sarakostí, and that holds a lot more meaning for me than the pious words I wrote down at first. For as we consciously turn from the celebration of the birth of Christ to the commemoration and experience of His death, a struggle begins at once for our attention and ultimately our souls.

A real war, though invisible to most of us because we’re already in the thick of it and don’t realize it, is taking place, between religion and reality. Piety, not the godly fear born of our encounter with the Living God, but the hand-me-downs of generations forcing us by a process of subtle mimicry, robbed of understanding, to imitate and finally become attached to everything that is opposed to life with Him who alone grants life. There is a church that was once alive in the Spirit, following Jesus and imitating Him not only in daily life but in worship, making the liturgy truly divine, truly ‘in spirit and truth,’ but as it seeks to protect itself and exalt itself, the living God visibly departs from it.

Ichabod. ‘The glory has departed.’ So, how is this possible? How can such a thing happen to a Christian people? I go to church. I hear a sermon preached on ‘the publican and the Pharisee,’ and though I pay attention and listen closely, I hear nothing. Only rhetoric, only philosophy couched once again the terms of piety, of religion. What sticks with me even now, hours later, is the announcement that fasting is forbidden this week. Eat whatever you want. Meat, meat and more meat. And there’s a luncheon to which we’re all invited after the service, yes, chicken will be served, and a vegetarian entrée as well if I heard correctly, but I’m not quite sure. It was tacked on almost in a whisper.

I’ve heard plenty of good sermons on the publican and the Pharisee in this church. I noticed just now that ‘publican’ isn’t capitalized, only ‘Pharisee.’ I guess that’s because only organized religion gets recognized. The preacher confessed that both men praying in the parable had worthy prayers. The Pharisee did as he was told, was a good boy from his religion’s point of view. What was his downfall? Comparing himself to the publican. Yes, I admit I did hear the preacher say that, and it stuck with me too. The emphasis, though, was on the righteousness of the Pharisee. Yes, somebody just like us, doing all the right things, following rules and traditions. Too bad he looked down on little ‘p’.

The righteousness of the Pharisee really made him the better man. The emphasis was subtle but unmistakable. It almost excused him for his transgression, at least that’s what was heard between the lines. Yes, well, let’s forget about the fact that his repentance was, well, imperfect. Let’s not even mention that it wasn’t accepted by God, in Christ’s parable. After all, it’s just a parable. And as for the publican, well, yes, his repentance was heard, even though he was everything but a good, upstanding member of society. Christ doesn’t go on to say what the ultimate fate of either the publican or the Pharisee was, but we can guess. Let’s just look at ourselves, at each other.
We’re saved.

The big question of ‘which one are we, the publican or the Pharisee?’ hardly needs asking. We already know that we are the publican even though every bit of evidence about us shows us to be the Pharisee, and we’re even proud of it. We have learned how to put on piety as a garment, our best somber face for church just like we put on our Sunday best. I look around me during the service. Actually, I have to move to a different seat. A family I know well fills the pew in front of me, and two teenage girls dressed up in their seductive best keep chatting and giggling. Meanwhile their parents seem to have fallen asleep standing. I find another place a few rows back on the other side of the aisle.

As I was saying before my Pharisee side came out and caused me to move to where I could repent in quieter surroundings, I look around me during the service, well, not exactly around. Just to either side and in front of me is enough. Pierced by scowls and saddened by socializing, I barely see anyone who looks as though they are really standing in the presence of the living God. The religiosity of some is evident, but it seems like they are crushed, or angry, or bored, or all three. Those who are gabbing and grappling with one another seem merrier, somehow, than one would expect when confronted by the Being who once commanded Moses, ‘Take off your sandals. This is Holy ground.’

Once again I am baffled by the mystery of the Church, how it seems to fade in and out, how it seems to open doors and then close them, how the Kingdom of Heaven can be manifested in a single service, and then next week everything speaks the flesh. We push religion and suppress reality, yet the Church is still the Church, no matter what we do. The Holy Spirit can and does come and go, staying when we are obedient and rightly pious, departing for a spell when we grieve Him, even if out of ignorance. What is constant, though, is the mercy of God, which does not depend on humans showing it. Sometimes those ordained to be merciful, simply look the other way. Perhaps that’s just how it is.

Have we ever considered that not just individuals, but perhaps churches themselves, can be publicans and Pharisees? I’m not now speaking of the Church, the Bride of Christ, but of those human congregations, whatever they call themselves, that claim to be what the Church is. Like the words spelled with a capital letter or not, churches can be publican or Pharisee without ever noticing what they’re doing. No church or congregation would admit that they are Pharisee, but what are we to make of the pronouncements we hear from some of them? Or of their attitudes toward other churches, which some of them don’t even recognize as churches, the big ‘P’ versus the little ‘p’ in action?

It’s a beautiful, spring day here at the beginning of the road on the way to Pascha, which begins at a signpost marked ‘Triodion’ at which we are told we must now leave behind all our baggage, all our wistful piety, false appearances, spiritual racism, our jeweled turbans and tiaras, yes, even our self-inflicted religion, and let ourselves be clothed in the rags of our filthy righteousness. Yes, clothed in what we’ve been wearing like concealed undergarments all these years, of which we are so proud. Clothed in them so that we can be unclothed, undressed, disrobed as we enter the road of no returning, no turning back, the road to the cross, to our own deaths, to meet Him we claim to believe in.

Both the publican and the Pharisee must die for their sins, even though the repentance of only one of them was found worthy, the other wanting. They must die so that the new man, nameless but for the secret Name bestowed by Christ at the meeting, can emerge at His command like Lazarus from his four-day burial. They must die and disappear, never to be brought again to mind, because their Redeemer has forgotten all their sin, separating them from it as far as the East is from the West. They must die because the age of publicans and Pharisees is drawing to a close, typically in this time, this year, and ‘in spirit and truth’ for each one who really enters this road, now and ever, and to the ages of ages.

A man-loving God

Ο Μόνος Φιλάνθρωπος, o Mónos Philánthropos, the only lover of mankind, the only loving God. However you translate His name, it comes out the same, giving the lie to all who rely on His fierce anger to incinerate the unbeliever and the unrepentant. Aside from the ample hints throughout the scriptures that there will be a reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked, we have no details, except what our imaginations supply, clouds and songs of praise and light for the one, fiery lake and demons and darkness for the other. Our imaginations supply us with these images of eternal blessedness and eternal damnation whether we are Christians or not, whether we believe in the Bible or not: these images are the common domain of all humanity. That's what makes them suspect. We cannot, or we should not, second guess God, especially those of us who believe a God who becomes Man and tells us, 'If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.'

I am no universal salvationist, but stay close as I can to the words of holy and divine scripture, yet I do not live in a religious world where God is roasting the unrepentant forever on the points of pitch forks. I don't know what punishments await the wicked or what joys are in store for the righteous, except what He reveals to me about myself here and now, nor who the wicked or the righteous be: I hope I will be numbered among the righteous, though I cannot see how that can possibly be, except only if the righteousness of Christ is covering me. Yet, I still believe in God who is Ο Μόνος Φιλάνθρωπος, o Mónos Philánthropos, the only lover of mankind, the only loving God. If it weren't plain enough in scripture, we have the testimony of the Church, which from the very beginnings has believed in this man-befriending God. How can anyone come away from reading the gospels or the epistles of the New Covenant without coming to this startling conclusion: God is love? Hear what an early father, a desert father, says,

The Lord, indeed, is the Lover of mankind so full of tender compassion whenever we turn completely toward Him and are freed from all things contrary. Even though we, in our supreme ignorance, childishness, and tendency toward evil, turn away from true life and place many impediments along our own path because we really do not like to repent, nevertheless, He has great mercy on us. He patiently waits for us until we will be converted and return to Him and be enlightened in our inner selves that our faces may not be ashamed in the Day of Judgment.

If that seems difficult and troublesome to us because practicing virtue is hard, but, more so, because of the insidious suggesting of the adversary, still He is very full of compassion, long-suffering and patient as He waits for our conversion. And when we do sin, He is ready to lift us up for He desires our repentance. And when we fall, He is not ashamed to take us back, as the Prophet says, “When men fall, do they not rise again? Or if one turns away, does he not return?” (Jeremiah 8:4) We only have to have a sincere heart and live in vigilance and be converted immediately after seeking His help and He Himself is most ready to save us. For He looks for our ardent will, as best we can, to turn toward Him. When we show good faith and promptness glowing from our desiring, then He works in us a true conversion.

Abba Makarios, 4th century

Come home to reason, running

Sometimes we have to go off on a tangent for a very, very long time before we find we have lost touch with our origin altogether. We may wear our cross. We may even sport a komboskini on our wrists—and that’s more than a mere ‘friendship bracelet’—and still carry on with a lifestyle that is light years away from what we learned in Sunday School. All this we think worth it, in pursuit of a career or a reputation, items that will mean very little on the day we give back the talents to the Lord who gave them to us.

Friends get attracted to us, and we get attracted to friends. Again, pursuing our own desires, ambitions, we hurl ourselves forward to hit our target, to make our mark. Without thinking, really, we just aim and shoot. Sometimes we stretch the bowstring, sometimes others do, but it’s we ourselves who like arrows are shot. The speed of the moment makes us lose all sense of direction. We no longer even know if the target we find ourselves hitting is the right one. Did we ever know? I mean, who chooses the target?

Youth is a very dangerous time. Dangerous because in a sole season we are determining the trajectory of our life path. Dangerous because we are assailed on all sides by hawkers of wares and cares, a mad mixture of friends and enemies, and we haven’t learned yet to tell which is which. Dangerous because we don’t realize that the time of beginnings is brief and that after it passes we may find that we have begun precisely nothing, that though ‘life’ continues we have not begun to live at all. Yes, dangerous.

Years ago, I too was a youth. That short spell remains with me forty years later, shining in my memory as a golden age. Such it is for people and nations. The time of beginnings seems always bright, even when we have wasted it, and in fact, in retrospect, who hasn’t wasted it? Who has made best use of it, wisely taking aim in that moment so that they have hit the target? Very few, I think. Then, we spend the rest of our lives trying to correct, or cover up, or talk ourselves into believing that all is well, all as it must be.

As always, the scriptures speak now as on the day they first appeared, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. ‘Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them’ (Ecclesiastes 12:1 KJV), and we have no taste for them because we know that from the beginning they always spoke the truth, but we wanted to do things our way. Worse than a nagging parent is a God who, unnagging, is still always there.

Always there, waiting. Always there, patient. Always ready to receive. The source of hope because He hopes for us to be with Him, and His hopes are far larger than ours, not in order of magnitude but of degree. He wants us more than we want Him. That’s why He made us. That’s why He created us, not from clay as He did the first man, nor from a bone extracted in slumber as He did the first woman, but from a father and a mother, His right and left hands, who cherished us as He cherishes us, loves us.

Now that the smoke has cleared after a night of fire, pick through the charred ruins for that cross that fell from your neck. Its silver has not tarnished. It still gleams. There is still a little time left. Find your way back. Pick up your cross and return to the path. Youth has not yet abandoned you. Your feet have not yet been fettered, you are still free. Choose the right, choose well. You have only spent a few of the talents entrusted to you. There are more, hidden. Come home to reason, running. I will see you there.

Into the terrifying Light

It’s fortunate that the mere animals that we call humans evolved on this planet, and to the point that they can finally replace God, whom they never needed in the first place. Fortunate, indeed, for scientist Stephen Hawkings, whose brilliant computer-like mind has been kept alive along with his dysfunctional body for 49 years beyond the age at which medical science (at the time) said he should cease living. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the benefit of that mind to unravel for us the mysteries of the universe, of space and time, and yes, even of God, who probably doesn’t exist, since there’s nothing the universe needs from Him. Not only human life, but the universe itself, and probably all possible universes, have come into being through random quantum fluctuations.

‘I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,’ says the great scientist through his speech synthesizer (he cannot speak without it). When asked how we should live he says, ‘We should seek the greatest value of our action.’

Yes, the greatest value of our action. But where have I heard this before? The brain as computer, heaven and afterlife a mere fairy story, fear of the dark, I’ve heard all of these ideas before. Yes, Dr Hawkings, I am a Christian and along with you I also do not fear death, and I don’t believe in fairy stories, and yes, I also agree that the brain is (in relative terms) a kind of computer. But what can you possibly mean by ‘the greatest value’?

Everything has value relative to something else, just as you can’t say a body is in motion except relative to a fixed point. The ancient Greeks even knew this, and they had to have something solid and immovable about which the universe revolved and from which all motion could be sensed and measured. They made that the earth, for physical realities, and the human mind, for metaphysical. They weren’t correct who made the earth that fixed point in the world of nature, nor were they correct who made the fixed point the sun, except for the local universe, as we now know, there is no fixed point. All motion is relative.

So after many centuries of trial and error on the part of the human spirit, as noble and as high as we have evolved our thought and our behaviors, the fixed point of what is beyond nature, which we used to think (and some still do) was the human mind, that idea can now only be supported by mental acrobatics and sleight of hand worse than Ptolemy’s epicycles, that tried to support the path of the wanderers, the planets. They should travel in the perfect path, in circles, but they seem to retrogress in a way that only epicycles could explain—if the earth were indeed the fixed point to the physical universe.

Finding out later that the sun was the actual center and that the movement of the earth around it caused the illusion of retrogression in the planets still didn’t solve a host of other problems in our observation of the world. Like it or not, our science had to keep moving forward, leaving behind all the false securities of human thought that make the universe livable. That universe terrifies us now more than ever, but that hasn’t stopped us from gazing at it in wonder. The same is true of the metaphysical science, which had to give up the idea that the human mind was the center and fixed point of all supernatural motion. In plain language, philosophy has its limitations.

Just as the introduction of a force outside of the physical universe, a missing sefirah, is necessary to explain that world, so the invasion of a Being outside the metaphysical universe, was necessary to explain, and I should add, order that world. This is, from a Christian view, and even from the view of many other religions, exactly what has happened. But this fact cannot be allowed by Dr Hawkings and many others who are just as stuck in their ‘scientific’ beliefs as primitive religionists are stuck in theirs. In fact, all through history, it seems to me, the two groups produce each other, regardless of the level of intellectual or scientific sophistication. What passes for science and what passes for religion seem to be always at odds, and it seems they always will be.

But when we emerge from the safety of our tombs,
into the terrifying Light,
what, Dr Hawkings, will there be left to say about
‘heaven’ and ‘afterlife’?

First Light in Bali

The title of this post is also the title of the latest post in my new blog, Yndonesia, which is a memoir of my recent trip to Indonesia. The image above is a screen shot of the blog masthead. Yndonesia is still ‘under construction,’ and I hope the best is yet to come. Read the blog chronologically by starting with the earliest post, and at the end of each you will be linked to its sequel.

What do I mean by ‘first Light in Bali’? Well, the double entendre is intentional, I assure you. In the post at Yndonesia, it refers to waking up at dawn on my first day in Bali, to the cacophony of a crowing cock, but even there, allusion is made to the fact that we were guests of the first Orthodox Balinese Christian and her family. In this post I want to share some the photographs we took of Ibu Anna and her family, and the church within her family compound, which is still used for daily prayer and occasional divine liturgies, as well as the reservoir in which the first seventy Orthodox Balinese were baptised—all this within the walls of Ibu's family home in Singaraja, the old Dutch capital of Bali and the Lesser Sunda Islands. This is what I mean by ‘first Light,’ as scripture says of Christ, ‘a Light to enlighten the nations,’ and as Christ says of us, ‘You are the Light of the world.’

The Indonesian Orthodox Church in Bali has grown and now has its own temple nearby capable of holding a large congregation. Fr Stephanos Boik Nino, the priest of this church, received us warmly and with great hospitality. Unfortunately he was pressed for time, as we visited on a day when he was getting ready for a pan-Christian feast in honor of Christmas, and we did not take his photograph. Yes, the Balinese Orthodox presbyter is the chosen leader of the Christians in Singaraja, regardless of their denomination. After I post photos of the first church, I will post a couple of the new Singaraja Orthodox church.

Ibu Anna Ketoet Moertini, the first Balinese Orthodox, seated between her daughter Titi (left) and her granddaughter, in front of the entrance door to the first Balinese Orthodox church, in Singaraja.

Ibu Anna, with Yudhie Kristanto, standing before the curtain of the temple.

The curtain of the temple (corresponding to the Royal Doors) open to show the altar.

Ikons on the south wall of the temple.

Ikons next to the sacristy doorway.

Yudhie and Ibu inside the entrance.

The reservoir in the courtyard behind the first church in which the first seventy Balinese were baptised into Christ in the Orthodox Church.

Yudhie Kristanto holding palms together
in the Balinese gesture of veneration.

Detail of the baptismal reservoir
in the courtyard.

The first Balinese Orthodox church, Singaraja.

The following two photos were taken inside the new Orthodox church in Singaraja.

The interior of the new Orthodox church in Singaraja, Bali.

Another view of the interior of the new church, showing the bishop's seat.

It is the Lord!

It’s hard to believe that life can go on after the end of something glorious: the death of a beloved child or spouse, the loss of an irreplaceable friendship, or, for the disciples of Jesus, no longer having Him among them, daily walking with Him, eating with Him, sleeping with Him out in the wilds as they journeyed together, hearing His words and seeing His divine acts hidden from the world. ‘Of all men You are the most handsome, Your lips are moist with grace, for God has blessed you forever’ (Psalm 45). The most wonderful Man they had ever known was no longer with them.

Yes, they had not forgotten that the impossible had happened. Not just one impossible, but a whole string of them, all events that never should’ve happened, never could have happened, unless this Man really were who He said He was, who they were beginning to understand, gradually, that He is: How could they have arrested Him, who had never done anything wrong? How could they have stripped and beaten Him, who had healed their sick and filled their hungry with good things, literally feeding multitudes?

How could they have put Him to death, and ignominiously, mocking Him, deriding Him, who had brought the only life worth living among them? How could they have rejected Him, who was so obviously Moshiach, the Savior of Israel who had appeared to tell them that God had not rejected them, but had come to them, in Him, to end their exile from the Father? For the greatest of all impossibles had happened, He had risen from the dead, not as He raised Lazarus His beloved friend, but forever.

The winter and the midnight
Could not hold him,
The fire could not burn him
Nor earth enfold him.
Rise up Lazarus,
Sweet and salty!
Brother soldiers,
Stop your gambling and talk to me.
The thieves were stealers,
But reason condemned him,
And the grave was empty
Where they had laid him.

And how did they know this? Was it just through the ravings of some hysterical women? Some of the brothers had murmured in their hurt and doubt, even against their sisters. But no, not just through their testimony, for Peter and John had run as quick as they could to the tomb: John, the youngest, stopping at its gaping mouth, but Peter, older, braver perhaps, but no wiser, plunging into its depths to see for himself: Yes, the tomb was empty. Now, greater fear than ever: What had happened?

They didn’t have to wait long to find out, but it must have seemed long. They were still hiding out behind locked doors when the Truth came to them: Jesus suddenly stood in their midst, almost as He always had, stood among them and once again told them as He had when He walked on the waters of the turbulent lake: ‘It is I; don’t be afraid.’ Stood among them almost, but not exactly, as He had been with them before. This time it was different. He embraced them with His pierced hands, but His face which came close to theirs in a kiss, was free of blood, grime and pain.

Yes, it was different then, and now. He would come among them, but it was always a surprise, and He didn’t stay with them very long, and He would appear when they were not expecting Him. Why couldn’t it be like it was before? Why couldn’t He stay with them always, so they could walk the roads of the land of Israel again, joyfully doing whatever He asked of them, following Him everywhere? They were never sad, hungry or tired when He was with them. Nothing was too difficult for them. Nothing was impossible. Why? Because Love never tires, and Love was walking with them as a Man.
And they followed Him.

But now, it was different. He hadn’t appeared to them for a long time. How many days had it been? They waited excitedly, anticipating they would meet Him again around the next corner of time, but the Lord didn’t appear. Peter got angry with himself for being so impatient and he crossly said out loud, ‘I’m going fishing!’ Well, yes, a man has to eat, and the disciples had suddenly found themselves sent home, back to their relatives, crabby, selfish, contrary and back-biting as some of them were. They had all reluctantly gone back to their former work. You can’t wait for Jesus forever, can you?

So, some of the brothers, sympathizing with Peter, dropped whatever they were doing and joined him in his old fishing boat on the lake. They fished all night, not talking much, as each of them had a night in his own soul to deal with, an emptiness that could only be filled with Jesus, a darkness that only the Light of the world could dispel. They fished all night but caught nothing. It was already getting light, the sun had even come up and was hanging just above the horizon, shining vermilion between two long banks of slate clouds. A man was walking down to the shore from somewhere.

They were now close enough to see him, but not clearly. Suddenly a voice rang out, ‘Caught anything, friends?’ One of them called back, ‘Nothing!’ The man was probably hoping to buy a few fish from them for his breakfast. He cried out to them, ‘Throw the net out to starboard and you’ll find something!’ Almost before those words had died on the morning breeze, John’s heart leapt, and without thinking, something made him cry out to the others with him in the boat,
‘It is the Lord!’

Peter, quickly tying his wrap around his naked torso, dove into the lake and started swimming for shore. John and the others stayed and followed the man’s instructions, only he and Peter knowing for sure who it was whose words they had believed. Sure enough, the net filled with fish, one for every nation in the known universe, it seemed. Hauling the net in, they too made for shore in the boat. There they found Peter standing a little ways off from the man who spoke the word that saved their night’s efforts.

The man had bread, and there were already some fish roasting over a charcoal camp fire, but the man said to Peter, smiling, ‘Looks like we’ll need some of your fish if we’re going to feed this crew!’ Nobody dared to speak, while Peter ran to where the boat was beached and dragged the whole haul to them. They started counting and sorting the fish, but the man said, ‘Come now and have breakfast! We can start with the ones I brought, and have some more later if we’re still hungry.’ This is how it always was, and is, for the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, not just in those significant forty days, but for always. With Him the impossible always happens, and by this we can know for sure, that ‘it is the Lord.’

Peter turned and saw the disciple Jesus loved following them… Seeing him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘What about him, Lord?’ Jesus answered, ‘If I want him to stay behind till I come, what does it matter to you? You are to follow Me.’
John 21:20-22 Jerusalem Bible

Gates of Eden

Just felt like I needed to hear this song right now. Hope you don't mind. Here are the lyrics. (I don't know what the song means any more than you do. But it somehow feels true.)

Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull it glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when ’neath the trees of Eden

The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs ’neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden

The savage soldier sticks his head in sand
And then complains
Unto the shoeless hunter who’s gone deaf
But still remains
Upon the beach where hound dogs bay
At ships with tattooed sails
Heading for the Gates of Eden

With a time-rusted compass blade
Aladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Sidesaddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden

Relationships of ownership
They whisper in the wings
To those condemned to act accordingly
And wait for succeeding kings
And I try to harmonize with songs
The lonesome sparrow sings
There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden

The motorcycle black madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden

The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious winds they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden

The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly, totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden

At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden

— Bob Dylan

Free me again today

‘Twee twee twee twa twer twee. Twee twee twee twa twer twee. Twee twee twee twa twer twee.’ Outside my window, out of the moist, grey-blue pre-dawn twilight, repeatedly, unvarying, patiently and with a count of one-two between each iteration, the sweet bird speech alights on my just awakened ears, reminding me of the constant, quiet, unheard by mankind utterances of the devout heart, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.’

Just when I think there will be no other sound at all in this lonely but unlonesome, almost silent world, no other arrangement of the bird’s monotony, he changes his tune, ever so slightly, skipping a twee, now crying with regular rhythm, ‘Twee twee twa twer twee,’ again and again, until, just as I was getting used to the change, he returns to his original thought, ‘Twee twee twee twa twer twee.’ For a moment I have been the privileged overhearer of what he twispered to his Lord this pre-dawn.

I move away from my east-facing lavatory window and return to my futon room with its west-facing eyes still closed to songs I can just barely make out through the glass panes, and I throw up the sash. What are they singingly saying in the garden from their tree-tops? A few, far-away irregular chirps to the west, actual conversations with each other, perhaps. The voice of the praying bird to the east, solitary and calm, is inaudible to me over my roof top, only these other distant chatterers.

Will the sun come up today? The cloud cover seems impierceable, yet the sky keeps brightening, and through the dense foliage of the trees I can make out to westward variations, shallow horizontal bands in the heavens where the sun went down last evening, unseen through the Oregon mist. Time to return, to pause, to prepare, to pray. Not unlike the birds whose cares are provided for by their Lord, the same is the necessity of my human heart, that regularly beats with unvaried rhythm, His praise.

Lam’natzeach, al mut labben, mizmor l’David.
Odeh Adonay b’khol libbi, asapp’rah kol nifl’oteikha.
Esm’chah v’e‘eltzah vakh, azam’rah shimkha Elyon.

For the choirmaster, for oboe and harp, psalm of David.
א, I thank You, Yahweh, with all my heart;
I recite Your marvels one by one,
I rejoice and exult in You, I sing praise to Your name, Most High.

(Psalms for the 2nd Day: Mizmor Tet, Psalm 9)

Like Your birds, Lord and Morning Star, I sing praise to Your name, Most High, I rejoice and exult in You, though my heart be weighed down by the plight of this world, You leave me untouched by calamity, though others die, I live. By Your grace, Lord, by Your grace, all by Your grace. Let me see Your will fulfilled, let me see mercy fall on Your children, on this poor world, laboring for it knows not what nor why, suffering morning by morning instead of rejoicing in Your love, instead of receiving You.

Like Your birds, Lord, like Your birds who toil not nor gather into barns, though I still with the world am forced to earn my bread, turning my back on the Bread freely offered by Your heavenly hand, let me return, let me pause, prepare, pray to You the Father of all, the loving, the waiting, the patient Lord, in the name of Your only-begotten who only-born of all men reveals to us the Man by whom all worlds were made, let me receive that Spirit holy whom my daily unfaithfulness grieves, have mercy.

I thank You, Lord, with all my heart. Let me recite Your marvels one by one. For You are faithful, and true. Let my prayer be as the birds, simple, constant, unfettered. Let me return to You, Lord.
Free me again today.

9th Century on Heaven

Tissot, Presentation of Christ in the Temple

‘Remember who your teachers were,’ writes holy apostle Paul to his young partner Timothy. There isn’t a single thing that I know, or have thought or written, that hasn’t been the result of receiving gladly what was ‘handed over’ to me. How many expressions that I use daily in speaking or writing are really my own? Very few, I’m afraid. No, rather I’m happy to admit it. I want to be known as one who followed in the footsteps of those who followed Jesus, and not as one who blazed new trails of my own. Like the bride in the Song of Solomon, I receive and obey the words spoken to me, ‘Follow the tracks of the flock, and take your kids to graze close by the shepherds’ tents’ (Song of Songs 1:8 Jerusalem Bible).

A modern Church father who had a profound effect on me as I was growing up was Fr Louis Evely. I have distilled the text of Chapter 9: Heaven from his book That Man Is You into a ‘Century,’ that is, following the classical spiritual authors, a collection of one hundred ‘sayings.’ The following, posted in its entirety, is for me a foundational Christian text, and I am offering it to you, brethren, in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ’s forty day blessing, Ypapandí, when He was brought to the Temple as an infant by His mother Mary. May it bless you as it blesses me to read it, understand it, and live it.

Download a PDF booklet of the following text

Ninth Century on Heaven

adapted from Fr Louis Evely

1 Some people have never met God in His written Word, or in forgiveness, or in faith, or in their neighbor, or in their own lives, yet they vainly hope to meet Him in heaven. We must discourage this expectation, correct this misconception, before it leads to utter ruin. If we have not found God on earth, we will not find Him in heaven.
2 Heaven is not another world where we go to escape. The kingdom of heaven is already in us [Luke 10.9], and we are called to build it up with the grace God gives us.
3 God wants people who will work with Him, not just sit around and dream. If we are content to only wait for the kingdom of God to come, it will never arrive.
4 The gifts of God in us are efficacious. They are meant to produce results. They only retain their true character as gifts when we give them away.
5 This is eternal life: To know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. [John 17.3] Those who have not started living this eternal life on earth, who have not already been illuminated by the presence and light of God which are offered to every man who comes into the world [John 1.9], and who have found nothing to eternalize, those people will never get to heaven.
6 Earth is a place where we build our heaven. God does not invite us simply to pass over into another world. Rather, He has invited Himself into this world. He has redeemed it and released into it infinite forces which He has entrusted to us, so that we might transform it. Finally, He will crown His work and ours by making it eternal.
7 We are in this world forever, so let us accept it and our place in it. Heaven is the establishment and fruition of what we will achieve with the gifts God gave us.
8 Too many Christians are spiritualists. They believe in the immortality of the soul but not in the resurrection of the body. To the contrary, God takes on a body and deems human flesh a good conductor of divine power.
9 God reveals Himself through creation, for the universe fashioned in His image is God made visible.
10 God becomes incarnate and acquires a human nature. He communicates His grace through the mysteries and will make all creation share in the glorious freedom of the sons of God. [Romans 8.21]
11 The joy of heaven does not consist in having our human faculties suspended but in finally being able to live human life to the full. God has already given Himself to us so completely, that He can be contemplated not only in Himself but also in the whole of creation. The presence of the Giver does not make us scorn His gifts. Rather, it sheds brighter light on them.
12 We are not to choose between God and the natural world. We are to discover Him in the world and reveal Him to it. Though we cannot yet imagine what the ultimate face-to-face vision of God means, its repercussions on man concern us even now. The resurrection of the body teaches us to expect that our heavenly bliss will also be a human bliss.
13 God is not enthroned in some other world. He came into this world and has never left it. Christ has not left the human world. He remains with us, day in, day out. At His ascension, He did not go away. He disappeared.
14 It makes no sense to celebrate the ascension of Christ unless we understand the difference between departure and disappearance. Departure results in absence. Disappearance inaugurates a hidden presence.
15 At His ascension Christ became invisible, was fully glorified in His humanity, and began sharing the infinite power of the Father as Theánthropos, God-Man. Because of this, He is closer to us than He ever was before. Far from abandoning us and leaving us orphans [John 14.18], He acquired the very influence and boundless efficacy that enables Him to fill everything with His presence. [Ephesians 4.10]
16 We must not restrict Christ either to heaven or to earth. His ascension is not a going up in spatial terms that would only separate us from Him, but a going up in power that intensifies His presence.
17 Jesus Christ is still the most active Person in the history of the world. The Evangelist Mark demonstrates this beyond a doubt in his narrative of the ascension which begins, Jesus was taken up into heaven, where He sits at the right hand of God. The apostles went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them, confirming their message by the miracles that followed. [Mark 16.20]
18 Think about it. Christ is here on earth with us and will never leave us, because His spiritual presence is more intensive and extensive than His physical presence ever could have been. For our own good He disappeared visibly, so we could find Him present invisibly, any time, anywhere.
19 Do we really believe in the communion of saints? Do we really believe Christ wants to gather heaven and earth into a single entity beyond which there is simply nothing? [Ephesians 1.10]
20 We must fervently hope for a world where people love one another, are united, and all enjoy God together. We must desire to see this world other than it is, and not try to run away to some other world.
21 Jesus Christ commands, Go teach all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and show them how to practice everything I have commanded you. And you will see that I am with you every single day till the end of time. [Matthew 28.20]
22 Where is the Father? Up in heaven? Not if that means away from us, somewhere up there. He is here with us on earth, permanently. How can that be? Jesus Christ says, If anyone loves Me, My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him. [John 14.23]
23 Where is the Holy Spirit? He is with us and in us forever. [John 14.17]
24 Where are the saints? They are alive in that same Holy Spirit in whom all who live are alive, in communion and close fellowship with us. The saints spend all their time in heaven doing good on earth. Where would they be, if not with Christ? What would they be doing, if not what He does? When we welcome Christ, we welcome the saints, and in furthering His work, we collaborate with them.
25 What of death? To die means to find ourselves in the most favorable conditions to assist in spreading of the kingdom of God on earth.
26 To die means to be cured of our weakness, our inadequacy, to be made perfectly adaptable, perpetually active, and always available to continue our work with those who are still on earth.
27 This is the communion of the saints, all of us, under the leadership of Jesus Christ, working together toward one goal, day after day, till the end of time.
28 The redemption always depends on the incarnation, on the invasion of the world by God. The incarnation of Christ is also permanent. Christ is risen in a mystical body. His glorified human nature has become the head of a vast organism. His risen body is distinct, yet shareable, communicable, capable of subjecting and incorporating into itself all who do not resist Him.
29 The abiding presence of Christ on earth, made universal and accessible to all, is called the Church.
30 Heaven signifies starting to believe in His presence and detect it, starting to get used to it and work to extend it.
31 Faith is already the beginning of vision, and love is a theological virtue, whether we show it to God or neighbor.
32 What is new about the commandment of Jesus Christ? Is it, loving one another? This precept already existed in the Old Testament. Christ merely summarized and quoted it. His real innovation was making the second commandment identical with the first. You shall love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. [Matthew 22.36-40]
33 Since the Word has become flesh, brotherly love is theological. If we love God, we must love our brother. If we say we love God whom we do not see, but refuse to love our brother whom we do see, then we are liars. [1 John 4.20]
34 Our behavior toward our neighbor reveals our real attitude toward God. To love our brother sincerely is to love God, and this is a foretaste of heaven, right now, here on earth.
35 As a matter of fact, the earthly world is bound to become heaven, since we pray for the will of God to be done on earth as in heaven. If it seems our plea is not heard, can it be because we are spiritually lazy, unbelieving, or faint-hearted?
36 The object of our prayer should also be the object of our faith and hope. Instead of running away from this world to reach heaven, we should make it our business to see that the will of God is done here on earth as it is in heaven. Do we secretly think, That will never happen? Well, then, why bother praying? So God will do it? He wants it with all His might. The only obstacle is ourselves!
37 Because the redemption of the world depends partly on us, it is not absolutely certain. The world could end with something less than total redemption, but only because it is blocked by our refusal to believe in the power of God, to serve and magnify it.
38 Do we love God up in heaven? Do we look up at the starry sky when we speak to Him? We need to look a little closer. He is here, somewhere, beside us, perhaps gazing at the stars like us because they are beautiful, or perhaps so hungry, cold, and sick, He cannot even raise His head, unless we feed, warm, and comfort Him. Will we be the ones to ask, But Lord, when did we see You like that? [Matthew 25.44]
39 According to our belief, God has become man. We cannot be sure we are in line with God unless we are in line with our neighbor.
40 At the Judgment, we will understand that mere religious instruction was not enough to convince us. At that moment of decision, the so-called good and so-called bad will get the shock of their lives. The incarnation of God really happened! God was their neighbor, and the first and second commandments were really the same! The first was fulfilled in the second, and heaven had begun on earth!
41 If anyone says, I love God, do not be impressed. Perhaps he is just going through a pious phase. But if he says, I love my neighbor, then perhaps consider him an extraordinary being. Perhaps you have met someone, at last, who can put up with God!
42 Do we really love God up in heaven? That means we love nothing, just a figment of our imagination. It would be all too easy to earn heaven if we had nothing to do but spend an hour and a half a week bowing and crossing ourselves in some church where, luckily, we do not really know a soul.
43 No one feeds on the Holy Gifts of the precious body and blood of Jesus Christ, and no one is a naturalized citizen of heaven until, along with the communion, he can swallow all his neighbors. It is easy to see from this example, how the Eucharist can be both a banquet and a sacrifice.
44 Communion means community of persons in perfect agreement, a foretaste of life in the Holy Triad. The surest way to test the validity of our mystical experiences is to adopt as our companions in heaven all our neighbors at the Divine Liturgy, along with everything they have shown us so far.
45 We must be reconciled to the faces around us. That is how we know we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. [1 John 3.14] That is also how we know the real heaven from its dark double.
46 The Christian faith actually gives brotherly love a higher priority than love of God. If you are in church, about to present your gift at the altar, and you remember your brother has a grievance against you, leave your offering there and go make peace with him. [Matthew 5.23-24] If we find it in our heart to love him again, we will also find heaven, Christ in our midst, once more.
47 God and our neighbor are indissolubly linked, but what trouble we have believing that! If God were only enthroned high above, far above us, hidden behind clouds of incense, we would not have to worry, we could detest our neighbors without fear!
48 Christian contemplation differs profoundly from New Age spirituality on this point. Christians become contemplatives not to escape from this world, or to feel religion, or to enjoy ecstasies, but to consider an incarnate God, a crucified Savior.
49 It is impossible to know and love God without beginning to resemble Him. It is impossible to remain a contemplative without becoming a missionary.
50 We do not have to invent God. We must just accept Him as He reveals Himself.
51 We do not have to retreat to another world to discover Him. We must just recognize Him in this world, where He reveals Himself to those who love Him.
52 All who have recognized God He has immediately sent back to their neighbors, fashioning them after His own heart. To everyone who saw and recognized the risen Christ, to Mary Magdalene, to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, to Peter, He commanded, Go to My brothers, [Matthew 28.7] and, Feed My lambs. [John 21.15]
53 God has loved the world so much. [John 3.16] We do not really share His thoughts unless we also love this earth and everything in it, unless we are sorry we cannot keep on praying and working here until it is wholly stirred up, consecrated, and ablaze with love and joy.
54 When Christ refused to pray for the world, He did not mean the earth as a whole, but only those forces in it that resist the activity of God.
55 The world that Christ condemned is the one that satan rules over, the domain of egocentrics that cut themselves off from God and their neighbor. The boundary between that world and the one God has loved so much passes through each of us. It is up to us to push it back and claim all we can for the kingdom of God.
56 Everything we rescue from this world will be eternalized in heaven.
57 The Divine Liturgy is a daily Pascha, a passing over from the profane to the sacred, from earth to heaven.
58 We must not allow anyone to be lost or anything to be desecrated.
59 The universe eagerly longs to see the sons of God, hoping to be liberated like them from its slavery to corruption, so as to share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. For we know that all creation groans with the pangs of birth. [Romans 8.19-22] Are we burning to satisfy this expectation?
60 Many Christians give up the world with regards to its salvation. After getting all they can out of it, they doom it to apocalyptic destruction. They should read the Word as it is. The Apostle Paul asserts that heaven is to be brought forth here on earth.
61 The apocalypse will reveal to everyone once and for all what was always really there, but hidden, as behind a veil.
62 The birth of a child is an apocalypse, the manifestation of a being who was already present, but hidden. There is nothing catastrophic about it. The labor pains are forgotten for joy that a man is born into the world. [John 16.21]
63 Harvest time is the apocalypse of the grain of wheat, primarily a festive season, even if it is also mowing time.
64 So too, heaven will end up being the joyous revelation of all that the love of God and His saints has brought to perfection in this world forever.
65 Everything we have really loved will be saved. Our redemptive power is in proportion to our capacity for love. It is all a matter of loving something so much that we will not let it be lost. With Christ, we must say, I have watched over them and not one is lost, except the one who chose to be lost. [John 17.12]
66 Those who think they want to die as soon as possible, to be with the Lord, will not participate in the salvation of anyone or anything.
67 Creation will be transfigured by sharing in the glorious freedom of the sons of God. To the extent that the falsely pious ignore it to save their own souls, they hinder the rebirth of the world.
68 God desires and needs us. He wants us not merely to wait and hope for heaven, but to build it now, by starting to make this earth a place where justice rules, and where we love one another.
69 We must not imagine that God will impose a prefabricated heaven of His own to replace the one we are working on. We could not validly choose our eternal destiny unless we had already had a foretaste of it even in this life.
70 Test yourselves, urges the Apostle Paul, Make sure Christ is in you. [2 Corinthians 13.5] Have we never sensed the kingdom of heaven within us? Have we never noticed the miracle that, selfish, mean, and sarcastic as we can be, the grace of God has taught us to love, to trust others, to forget wrongs we have suffered, to give generously, to be moved to pity even over an enemy, to be touched if he repents, and to be overjoyed if he changes his ways?
71 Heaven is the only place where there is more happiness over one sinner who repents than over a thousand who do not need to. [Luke 15.17] If we have ever felt the same way, it is because we were in heaven at that moment. It is because there really is a heaven, and we have access to it.
72 As for hell, we have a preview of that, too. The unbearable heaviness that comes over us when disagreements and grudges cut us off from the world where people love one another, share, believe, and tolerate anything.
73 The gloom of our occasional eclipses bears painful witness to the habitual existence of a light that must eventually shine through us, unobstructed. If we are so chilled and so uncomfortable when we turn back into our natural selves, individualistic and aloof, conceited, independent, and desperate, we should conclude that it has become necessary for us to be supernatural, that we were made for another kind of life, the life of heaven.
74 Heaven is not a exactly place, but a state of being. Passing from this world to heaven does not mean moving from one location to another, but turning towards God, opening our hearts to the things He keeps wanting to do in us and through us.
75 Because of sin, the kingdoms of God and of man became two different worlds, but in Christ they have reestablished contact and set up ceaseless relations. All our efforts should go to bringing them closer, bit by bit, till they finally merge into one.
76 Ever since His conversations with Adam in paradise, God has not stopped frequenting mankind and living on earth. He speaks reassuringly, I will be at your side, to all those who want to draw near Him and walk in His presence [Genesis 17.1], from Abraham through all the prophets, down to the last human being at the end of the world, His name will be Emmanuel. [Isaiah 7.14] He will be with them as their God. [Revelation 21.3]
77 There is a continual theophany inherent in our world, a constant manifestation. Man has been made capable of God, and the earth susceptible of consecration and sacrifice.
78 Our earth has access to heaven whenever there is loving, sharing, communion. That is why the expression, gaining heaven, becomes not only false but absurd, and the charge of being mercenary refutes itself.
79 We do not gain heaven, we get used to it. We train for it as spiritual athletes, we build it and are built into it, as living stones, all of us, together.
80 Heaven is the home of a Reality we most often see only the back side of. [Exodus 33.18-23] It is the long-sought coincidence between what we wanted to be and what we are.
81 Heaven is finally being able to take our place in the procession we could never quite keep up with. It is a family where we love each other, where we laugh and forever leap with joy, because we are together.
82 It is in our power to be in heaven with Christ right now, to be happy with Him at this very moment. But being happy with Him means being happy with His happiness, and that, in turn, means loving, helping, sharing, rescuing, and redeeming.
83 We were not made to be in bondage, submerged in hatred and thoughts of revenge, in self-seeking and indifference, in peace and security that we make for ourselves. We were made for something else, for a totally different kind of life. Some have gotten so accustomed to puttering around down here, submerged, that they do not think of coming up anymore, they do not even want to.
84 What about us? Do we want to come back up and live once again in a world where people converse, know and love one another, and are interested in what happens to everyone? Where they are all bound together in fellowship and stay close to the One source of their fatherhood and brotherhood? Where they throw themselves, body and soul, into all the work and all the joy that awaits them?
85 The Apostle Peter reminds us, we are strangers and pilgrims here. [1 Peter 2.11] Those who believe that God still has work for them farther on keep themselves ready, willing, and able.
86 Saints are more vibrantly alive than anyone else, more adaptable to any situation, because they have detached themselves from everything and so are free to embrace anything.
87 Those who do not feel perfectly content anywhere are the only ones who can be happy everywhere, the only ones who can do any work assigned them with the same prompt enthusiasm.
88 Because saints are not rooted to any one place, they never look transplanted. Because they do not see enough love anywhere, their grief compels them to love with all their might.
89 The Lord says, Your sorrow will be changed to joy. [John 16.20] When you find a want, you try to fill it, and you give more and more till you eventually give yourselves. You become a gift. You become love, joy, and heirs of heaven.
90 Our earthly life will be radiant, full, harmonious and happy, insofar as we believe that what it announces and signifies is infinitely more beautiful than what meets the eye, that what visibly failed today is an invisible promise for tomorrow, because of our hope in it, because we know ours is a hidden life with Christ in God. [Colossians 3.1-4]
91 We all have seen that our deepest joys always slip away before we realize it, or do not measure up to what we expected, and yet in retrospect, they prove richer than we were able to appreciate. The worship services that sickness, worrying, and various kinds of troubles keep us from fully participating in, those that weary our fickle hearts, those that we are inclined to judge as too long, that we dread before they begin and wish were over while they are still going on, those very services, we understand later, are filled with the presence of God. How can we be so blind to our supreme good?
92 We sometimes rush out of the services, inhale the first breath of fresh air with relief, and then in a flash we realize what we are missing, what we are turning our backs on. Then we know, we were never happier than the whole time we felt so bored, or thought we did not understand what was going on in there. We doze off like Patriarch Jacob, who lay down in the darkness of night, his head on a rock, and when he awoke he recalled what happened, how he had seen angels and the Lord who manifested Himself through them.
93 We are so rarely the persons we want to be. The fact is, we cannot be our real selves except through grace. It takes a state of grace for our faculties to work without hindrance, for us to be free to use what is most truly ours.
94 Everything is grace. We come upon the Truth only by surprise. We speak it aptly only because we hit on the right words. We discover ourselves only when we give ourselves. Nothing short of death can definitely unlock to us the full expanse of our soul, can place us in the only position where we can see ourselves as we really are.
95 Heaven is the re-experiencing in a blaze of light the wonderful moments of our earthly existence. At each step along the way, we are astounded by the philanthropy of God and ashamed of our past heedlessness. The greatest surprise about heaven is that there is nothing new there. When we wake up from this long sleep and all its nightmares, we shall find ourselves clasped in the same arms that have always held us. The glorious face that will beam down on us will be the one we always sensed was watching over us in our trials and sorrows, though we refused to wholly believe. At long last we will recognize the elusive but faithful Friend whose mysterious presence puzzled us.
96 If heaven is not exactly a place, the earthly world is not a very well-defined place either. If we choose earth for our final home instead of heaven, we will soon notice it has always been hell. If we situate it just below heaven, we will discover that ever since our first day here, it has been part of heaven itself.
97 If we are willing to work on earth for heaven, with an insatiable desire for love and progress, we are already in heaven. We must not long for some other world but desire to make this world other than it is. We must not stop working or hoping. Through our activity, a redemption is effected that transcends us.
98 At the moment of His ascension, when the Apostles watched Jesus rise before them, perfectly naturally and with every right, they grew aware of the true identity of their mysterious Companion. They started to understand who Jesus is, what He had done for them, and how they had received Him.

99 For three years, God had lived with them, God had eaten at their table, God had slept in their homes, God had told them all about Himself, and they had never even thanked Him. And they stood there, gazing into heaven. [Acts 1.10] Heaven had begun thirty-three years before, and they had not even noticed.

100 But angels came to shake them, to rouse them from their nostalgia and send them into the world where their Master was waiting for them. They realized, it was not too late.
Now they could do for men all that they were sorry they had not done for Christ. Together, they would renew the great adventure without end.
They were going to live the life of heaven on earth.

Tissot, Ascension of Christ

Always

The air is cool and the evening dark. Only an hour after sunset the sky is indigo black, laced with high cumulus clouds faintly glowing with light from a waxing gibbous moon bright in the zenith above. I walk my rent money over to the office of ‘The Binfords’ where I live, an old fashioned neighborhood of ivy-covered white stucco row houses built about the year I was born, sixty-one years ago. Calm is the night, the air faintly tinged with the smell of suppers cooking in kitchens as I pass, the pale lamplight contrasting with the deeply textured trunks of giant evergreens lining the path. Up a stair here, down another there, as my walk meanders over roots that insist on having the right of way, and have been obligingly paved over. In these shadows, if I didn’t know my way, I might have tripped.

Ranging in the western heavens, brightly shining, astonishingly luminous and clear, Venus, looking so close it makes the vast universe seem small, a homey place, an astrological garden planted for His wayward and wandering children by the great God and gardener, Jesus Christ. I feel little but protected, His love not being doled out grudgingly as by a measuring and weighing deity, but by the Lord of all, to whom size is of no consequence, nor renown, nor accomplishments, nor wealth, nor even manly wisdom, only that we exist, only that we live, facing Him with trust and thanksgiving, willing to receive all that He generously gives, happy to see Him when He appears, shining in the stars like tonight, or in the eyes of our brothers and sisters, creatures like us, each infinitely different.

The eight psalms of the first day of the month, the ones I know best, even by heart, unravel themselves in no particular order as I trace my path homewards, and pacify my soul. My life is simple, adheres to stillness, and finds refuge like the hidden inhabitants of forest trees, unheard and unseen, and free. The care of the Creator God envelopes me like the strong yet gentle arms of the Bridegroom that open to receive His Bride, doting on her as His one and only, both of them unaware of anything or anyone outside themselves, because their love contains multitudes, includes all. There is nothing and nowhere outside this House that the Lord has made, no roads long and weary laden with the remorse of parting, only His way, always arriving, always leading Home where, always welcome, I live forever.