You know my path

PSALM 142

Prayer of a hunted man

Poem of David, when he was in the cave, psalm.

To Yahweh, my cry! I plead.

To Yahweh, my cry! I entreat.

I pour out my supplications,

I unfold all my troubles;

my spirit fails me,

but You, You know my path.

On the path I follow

they have concealed a trap.

Look on my right and see,

there is no one to befriend me.

All help is denied me,

no one cares about me.

I invoke You, Yahweh,

I affirm that You are my refuge,

my heritage in the land of the living.

Listen to my cries for help,

I can hardly be crushed lower.

Rescue me from persecutors

stronger than I am!

Free me from this imprisonment,

and I will thank Your name once more

in the Assembly of the virtuous,

for the goodness You show me.

Running, or fast asleep

Some labor and struggle hard to earn forgiveness, but better than these is the man who forgets the wrongs done to him. Forgive quickly and you will be abundantly forgiven. To forget wrongs is to prove oneself truly repentant, but to brood on them and at the same time to imagine one is practicing repentance is to act like the man who is convinced he is running when, in fact, he is fast asleep.

John Climacus

A new gospel

There is a new gospel, a fresh gospel, that is preached to every person, in every circumstance, and that gospel is going to always be slightly different from the gospel preached to the next guy. That is the strength of the gospel, not its weakness: that it can be all things to all men.

Paul was not saying something astonishing or scandalous when he says he is all things to all men: he was only saying of himself (since he was the servant of that gospel) what is true of the gospel itself, fitting itself into the ears of each one, for ‘faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.’

Isn't that what is so good about the good news? That Christ who is Himself one person of the Divine and Holy Triad, sheds the might of His divinity, coming down to our level, to live among us, to speak our language, not just to feel our pain and endure the temptations we suffer.

If He must die on the Cross for our salvation, that cannot be conveyed to us, placed within our reach, without it being sized and fitted to the broken hearts of each of us. Yes, the Man of Sorrows, but also, the God of Joys. The latter doesn’t balance the former; it engulfs it like the sea engulfs a pebble, leaving no trace.

Hence, the gospel, always new, always fresh, containing all, supporting all, adapted to all, welcoming all, transforming all, but one by one, even as one by one we each receive the call, and one by one are seated at our places in the banquet of the Divine Nature, the wedding feast of the Lamb.

Mitzvot

Originally, the Torah, the Law, comprised only two commandments. The first commandment that the Lord gave to our first parents Adam and Eve was in fact not even spoken to them as a commandment, but said over them as a blessing. “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground”
(Genesis 1:28). The first of God’s commandments to us was a positive commandment, and contained within it abundant blessings.

The second commandment was different. It was a negative commandment, the first of the ‘Thou shalt nots,’ and moreover, it was spoken only to the Man. Why is this? Well, Woman had not yet been pulled out of Man; she was still hidden within him. The mystery of the Two becoming One had not yet been revealed. In this first example of the Great Reversal that seems to meet us everywhere we look, the second commandment now becomes the first, according to time, and the Man and the Woman he bore within him must learn obedience before blessing.

But at the beginning there were only these two commandments:
“You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:17), a negative commandment, God’s naked will revealed for Man, so he could know God’s mind as a child knows the mind of its father. And then, “Be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) and the rest of the commandment and blessing that is carried within it, when faithfully carried out: ownership, lordship, and mastery, of the outer world but, yes, of the inner world as well.

Following the two commandments, Man is created free.

This is not what happened. Before the second commandment could even take effect, the first was broken and, as scripture says, to break one commandment is to break them all. At the time, there was only one other commandment that also fell by Man’s disobedience: What should have been mankind’s glory thus became his shame, and the water of life in him became a poisonous spring, that everyone who has ever drunk from it has come to know and, against his will, fallen sick, irremediably sick, with sin and death. Thus the Physician of souls appeared, to save us.

Breaking two commandments, then ten were revealed to replace them and hold back, as much as possible, the flood of sin and death, but even these were broken, and could not effect the cure. Within themselves, within the Torah, the Law, was prophesied the coming of the Physician who would cure this sickness, death. But those who read the words overlooked Him, and instead they planted a hedge around the Torah to protect it: the Ten Words that God gave at Sinai were multiplied into six hundred thirteen mitzvot, commandments that no one could keep.

Finally, our last Parent was born of His Mother without a father, begotten by His Father without a mother, and the overlooked Physician became the rejected Messiah. A new Adam came seeking His lost Bride, a new Eve, though when He found the first of them—for they would be multitudes—she was His own Mother, who now became the new Mother of all living, whom He gave to His own beloved disciple as Mother, revealing for all time who He is, who She is, and who We are. And the Torah which He wraps around Him as a cloak because He is the only one who ever fulfilled all of it, He wears worthily as He stands before His Father and Our Father, interceding for us.

Having broken first two, then ten, then six hundred commandments, we have been delivered from our disobedience, and again, just two commandments have been laid upon us, this time both comprising blessing. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great 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 22:37-40).

Glory to You, O God! Glory to You!

All we know

There are those who, like myself, have many spiritual fathers and mothers but not in a structured or formal way, with saints who like us realise that there is only One teacher, the Messiah (cf. Matthew 23:8-12), and would not allow us to pedestalize them. I am the same way. I sometimes am spiritual father to someone, and then we switch places the next moment. How is this? Because Christ who is alive and among us at this very moment is, as He says, the only Teacher. We only say what we hear Him saying.

My dear people, we are already the children of God

but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed;

all we know is, that when it is revealed

we shall be like Him

because we shall see Him as He really is.

1 John 3:2

I take the verse quite literally. Seeing Christ at His glorious coming will perfect us into the image of His holiness and His eternity, and that, whether we were hard on ourselves or easy, as long as we believe in Him. The part about trying to purify oneself, as He is pure, is just the work that He has given us to do, while we await His return. He knows that we cannot finish the job. He knows that even with His grace, our old man will not be completely burned up until we see the light of His face. He knows who is fooling Him, even though they are mighty in works and self-discipline. He knows who is following Him, even though their performance may not be spectacular. He knows everything about us, and He doesn't judge those whom He has redeemed, because everyone is judged by the Word He has spoken to each. Will our consciences condemn us before the Lord? That is the question.

Surely, everyone who entertains this hope

must purify himself, must try to be as pure as Christ.

1 John 3:3

Try to be pure as He is pure? What else is there to do? Be changed into His likeness at His second and glorious coming? How can we not be, if we have confessed Him before men?

That one is you

The Orthodox fathers use the sun as an analogy to the Holy and Divine Triad. The sun itself is the Heavenly Father. The light of the sun is the Divine Word and Son of God. The heat of the sun is the Holy Spirit.

No one can see the sun, except by the light, which enters our eyes and shows it to us. We have no other way to be in contact with the sun or even know for sure that it is there, but for the light (and the heat). If you approached the sun to touch it, you would be incinerated long before you reached it. The Father, thus, is ever intangible and unreachable to us, in His essence.

The light of the sun, though, both shows us what the sun looks like and tells us that it is there. ‘Who sees Me sees the Father,’ says Jesus, the Son and Word of God. In Jesus the Father is both visible and reachable. We make our prayers known to the Father through the Son. Moreover, light itself has two natures. It is both particles (photons) and waves (pure energy), and in the same way, Jesus the Son of God is both human and Divine. Yes, and He is the Phos ek Photós, ‘Light from Light.’

The heat of the sun would be evidence, even to a blind man, that the sun, or at least some source of heat, is out there, because he can feel its effect on him. In a similar way, even if a man is spiritually blind, he can still feel the warmth of the Holy Spirit falling on him, telling him that there is a Father in heaven, yet he can still move out of that sunlight and into the shadows. It is his choice.

There was never a sun without light and heat, yet the light is not the sun, nor is the heat the sun; each is distinct, yet inseparable from the source. In the same way, the Orthodox fathers teach that the Father is the source and principle of the Godhead, of the Divine Nature. The Son (only one of Him) is begotten eternally from the Father as light emanates eternally from the sun. As heat proceeds from the sun by means of the light that emanates from it, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, but by means of the Son of God, who said, ‘I will ask the Father and He will send you another Advocate.’

Co-eternal, consubstantial—these are words that seem overpowering and mystery-laden, making the Holy Triad seem to be unthinkable and unexperienceable by man. But the Orthodox fathers show us that the mystery is not that God should be three yet one, but that we could have ever imagined a God who is only one.

The unity of the Divine Nature, ‘Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is One’, is not diminished by His being a Triad. His Oneness is so One without second, so beyond numerical oneness, that even His triadic nature does not take away from it.

God is changeless, and yet He is One. God is changeless, and yet He is love. There can be no love except ‘between’ and no pure love, impartial and selfless love, except between ‘three.’ Hence, the Divine Nature says, ‘Let us make man in Our image.’

No one has ever seen God, only the Son of God, Jesus Christ, has made Him known and shown Him to us, being Himself God and yet not the Father. And the Holy Spirit, that third member of the One God in Triad, is our own membership in that Society of Persons which we call the Holy Trinity. Through Him, through the Spirit, we take our places at the banquet of the Divine Nature, becoming by genuine adoption what Christ is by nature, sons and daughters of the Most-High.

Théosis (divinization) is what we were made for, sotiría (salvation) is the process of our transfiguration.

Christ ‘was, is, and is to come.’
We were saved, are being saved, and are to be saved, that is, to be one with the Divine and Holy Triad, as Christ prays, ‘that they may be One, even as You, Father, and I are One.’

See the Orthodox ikon of the Holy Trinity, the original written by Andrei Rublev, posted above. There you will see the three ‘angels’ seated around a table, with one place left open for another.

That one is you.

Things human, and things divine

There is a persistent problem in encounters between two kinds of religions. Those that are based on reliable historical testimony, and those which depend on fabrications based on, but not consistent with, historical testimony. In the first group are to be placed: Most varieties of Judaism and Christianity. In the second group: Islam and Mormonism, and a host of insignificant cults derived primarily from all four religions.

Scholars continue to study the historical sources of Judaic and Christian scriptures, because they have left a physical trail. Scholars study Islamic scriptures only within the closed context of these scriptures themselves, since historical and fictional elements are intermixed. No serious scholars study the Mormon scriptures, which are acknowledged by all impartial authorities to be entirely fabricated.

There can never be serious dialog between the members of the first group of religions and the second, because it always resolves itself into accusations of lying on both sides: The first group asserts that the scriptures of the second group are fabrications; the second group asserts that those of the first group have been corrupted and are therefore inadequate. In plain language, the other group is lying.

Between Judaism and Christianity, something similar happens in such encounters, because these two religions are essentially the same, yet different, based on a single fact asserted by Christians but denied by Jews: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. His historicity is rarely doubted by Jews, only the content of the historic record challenged. On the Christian side, nothing can be asserted against Judaism, except its denial of Christ.

This is why we think, 'They must be joking' at best, when we encounter the pronouncements of the ayatollahs and other Islamic teachers, or hear about Muslim beliefs about Jesus, for example. We are here meeting a fabrication of something we consider fundamentally true and incontestable. The boldness of the Muslim (and Mormon) assertions is designed to unnerve and destabilise us.

But God is God, and though we mock each other, He cannot be mocked. Aside from all religions true or false, He is; and all those who have had experience of Him, whether Christian or not, know more about Him than the belief systems of all religions combined. Only those who have had this experience are in a position to distinguish 'the stale from the fresh' in things human, and things divine.

O Lord, my strength

My elders taught me, when I was a youth,
to cling to heaven and earth, lest I stumble.
For a long time I remained a child,
and for a long time I used to lean on the crutch that they gave me.

But once eternity flooded through me
and I felt like a stranger in the world,
heaven and earth snapped in two in my hands like a frail reed.

O Lord, my strength, how frail are heaven and earth!
They look like palaces built of lead,
but they evaporate like water
in the palm of the hand in Your presence.
Only by their bristling do they conceal their frailty,
and frighten uneducated children.

Get out of my sight, suns and stars.
Sunder yourselves from the earth.
Do not entice me, women and friends.
What help can I receive from you,
who are helplessly growing old and sinking into the grave?

All your gifts are an apple with a worm in its core.
All your potions have passed through someone's entrails many times.
Your garments are a cobweb that my nakedness mocks.
Your smiles are a proclamation of sorrow,
in which your feebleness is screaming to mine for help.

O Lord, my strength,
how feeble heaven and earth are!
And all the evil that men do under heaven
is an admission of feebleness and infirmity.

Only someone strong dares to do good.
Only someone who is nourished and watered with You,
my strength, is filled with strength for goodness.

Only someone who sleeps in Your heart knows rest.
Only someone who plows before Your feet
will enjoy the fruit of his labors.

My childhood, nourished with fear and ignorance,
came to an end; and my hope in heaven and earth vanished.

Now I only gaze at You and cling to Your gaze in return,
O my cradle and my resurrection.

—Prayers by the Lake, IV - Nikolaj Velimirović, bishop of Ohrid

The gates of repentance

Open to me the gates of repentance, O Giver of Life,
For my spirit rises early to pray towards Your holy temple.
Bearing the temple of my body all defiled;
But in Your compassion, purify me by the lovingkindness
of Your mercy.

Lead me on the paths of salvation, O Mother of God,
For I have profaned my soul with shameful sins,
and have wasted my life in laziness.
But by your intercessions, deliver me from all impurity.

When I think of the many evil things I have done, wretch that I am,
I tremble at the fearful day of judgement.
But trusting in Your lovingkindness, like David I cry to You:
Have mercy on me, O God, according to Your great mercy!

Today we are at the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, not yet Lent, but it's never too soon to pursue repentance, as the hymn quoted above testifies. This Lord's day we met these images once again, spoken by the Word of God in human form, our Lord Jesus Christ. Nor is it ever too soon to yearn for true discipleship, for the grace of God who alone bestows it upon us, praying in the words of Ephraim of Syria…

O Lord and Master of my life,
take away from me the will to be lazy and to be sad,
the desire to get ahead of other people and to boast and brag.
Give me instead a pure and humble spirit,
the will to be patient with other people, and to love them.
Let me realize my own mistakes,
and keep me from judging the things other people do,
for You are blessed now and for evermore.

This prayer is associated with the time of Sarakostí, Great Lent, the forty-plus days of fasting before the feast of the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Pascha, the ‘Passover of God’, the Lamb without spot, slain before the foundation of the world.

Yet the fast is not a program of ascetic discipline designed for our pride. As the fathers teach, ‘Eat what you please, anything, but not the flesh of your brothers.’ To remember this prayer and say it faithfully and with all our heart, even if only once in this fast, with prostrations or without, it doesn't matter. God knows our hearts. He knows our lives. All we have to do is bring our burdens to Him, and lay them down before His Cross, and receive from Him what we do not deserve but what He longs to grant us, great mercy.

Prayer. Speaking to God. He speaks to us, we speak to Him. In our own words, or in words that we make our own, partaking of the mind of the Church, when we read aloud or inwardly what we find in our prayer books. Do you think it is really any different, whether we speak to Him out of our private treasury, or out of the treasury that the saints have bequeathed us? Maybe to some of us, but not to Him. Again, He is listening to our hearts, and our hearts are listening to Him. ‘Remembering our most-holy, most blessed…’ and praying with her and all the saints, as we join them in the heavenlies, ‘a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb… wearing white robes… holding palm branches in their hands,’ there we are, together, one in faith, one in hope, one in charity:
There is the Church, and there is no other.

Prayer is the language of welcome between heaven and earth.

Two brothers

Luckily I’m not a priest. If I were, I’d be obliged to preach on the gospel and the epistle of the day. The first Sunday of the Triodion, the Holy Church reads the gospel of the Publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18:10-14), and the epistle is from holy apostle Paul’s second letter to Timothy (3:10-15), which really spoke to me, strengthening me for the battle that lies ahead. Since I’m not a priest, just an ordinary Christian, and I don’t preach, but blog, I can write on whatever topic I like. I read somewhere that ‘Christian blogs are not catechisms,’ which is good to keep in mind, both for the writer and the reader. They’re just open journals that some people like to keep. Writing often helps you see your thoughts and experiences ‘from the outside.’ That’s probably one reason why I started writing as a teenager and why I still blog.

What’s always on my mind is the mystery of obedience, as Christ speaks about it in his parable of the two sons, one obedient in word but not in deed, the other disobedient in word but not in deed.

“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”
Matthew 21:28-32

We’ve heard this parable so many times, and we think we know what it means, that we’ve almost stopped thinking about it at all. ‘Right, tax collectors and prostitutes get into the kingdom of God before religious hypocrites. Sure, of course they do. We know that!’ Then we forget the parable as quickly as we heard it. Why? Because it simply doesn’t have anything to do with us. We’re not tax collectors or prostitutes, and we’re not religious hypocrites. We’re just ordinary folks, whatever that means, and so obviously since we’ve listened to the story at all, it must mean we’re Christians, and nice people, so we’ve got nothing to worry about.

This reading ourselves always in the favorable position and somebody else in the unfavorable, well, what can I say? It’s natural and we all do it, but being a follower of Jesus is supposed to be, by definition, supernatural. We begin to suspect that the two groups of people may not always coincide.

Think of it in modern terms, in personal terms even. Forget the tax collector and prostitute. Think about the son who has dropped out of church. He thinks it’s just too dumb for words. He finds ordinary life more exciting. You’ve tried your hardest to show him by teaching and by example that life in Christ is worth living, that it too can be exciting, not mere religious drudgery. He sees through your explanations and even your examples when you’re putting them on for show. He keeps you honest, but he still doesn’t ‘accept the Lord.’ Instead, he seems indifferent, yet you notice strange things about him as he is growing up.

He has a ‘religious brother’ who wears a cross and involves himself in churchly activities, with great gusto even, but who taunts him and makes him feel like he’s the dumb one, the reject, the retard, the one who’s too dumb to know how cool it is to be an ‘Orthodox youth.’ As they’re growing up together (and he’s the younger), they fight as brothers often do. The ‘good’ brother fights to kill and even breaks the arm of this ‘bad’ brother, because the ‘bad’ brother knows when to stop, he instinctively knows right from wrong, and without making a big deal of it, he chooses the right. (The ‘good’ brother, however, doesn’t.)

Gradually a split develops between them and grows worse year by year. The ‘good’ brother has kept up his church attendance and activities while the ‘bad’ brother has gone off and found new friends. He only shows up on Christmas and Pascha to please his parents, but he has a quiet respect for the religion that he outwardly rejects. He won’t speak against the Church even though he won’t be caught dead there anymore. The animosity between the two brothers persists. The ‘bad’ brother wants to be friends, but the ‘good’ brother continues to put him down, insult and mock him… and goes to church.

We haven’t seen the end of this story, because it’s still happening, but it’s a good example in real life of what Christ was talking about in the parable. You don’t have to be a tax collector or a prostitute to be considered bad. All you have to do is stay away from church, for whatever reasons. The irony is exactly the irony of the two brothers in the parable. The ‘good’ brother pretends to be obedient, but he doesn’t do what the father asks him to; the ‘bad’ brother, though he is disobedient to his father, goes and does his bidding on his own. This truly is a great mystery.

How is this possible? Why is it possible? Yet we see this again and again. Christ knows we would, and so He tells us all about it, and asks us to stand up for what’s right, not just for appearances. Does this mean that the ‘bad’ brother isn’t wrong to have abandoned church and religion, even though he is led by reason and perhaps by a hidden seeking for righteousness to choose the right as he does? No, it doesn’t mean that at all, but Christ’s own words have removed him forever from our competence to judge him, for when we presume to do so, we fall into the role of the ‘good’ brother who appears obedient but actually is not.

It is impossible to trick the living God! He knows our every move and motive, and yet we continue to say ‘Yes’ to Him formally, and then, when we think He’s not looking, we do what we want, not what He wants. As the psalmist declares,

To Yahweh you say, ‘My Lord,
You are my fortune, nothing else but You,’
yet to those pagan deities in the land,
‘My princes, all my pleasure is in you.’
Psalm 16

Lord, have mercy on us, since we do not know ourselves, we do not know whether or not we are obedient or only pretending, since sin blinds us to its presence in us, and we are often mistaken and led astray, judging our brother when in fact, it is we who have lost our way. Grant us to meekly bow down before You in Your Holy Church, side by side with sinners just as bad as ourselves, and not to presume to cast out by our unthinking words and actions those for whom Your Son has given His life; and bring us all, the good and the bad, to repentance, so that we may be found worthy of Your eternal Kingdom. Glory to You, O Lord! Glory to You!

One of us must go

The characters and the scenery may change, but the plot and the story line is always the same: this world is too small for man and God to both be here.

Adam and Eve are still just as alive as they ever were, and so is the serpent.

The Bible is, if it were nothing else, the greatest and longest dramatic masterpiece of all time: man writing his own judgment and sentence on himself, or is it God?

It seems too complete and too honest to have been written just by man. No man or men could bring such a body of evidence, or write such an invincible judgment, or be so generous and merciful in the sentence, to have written this Book.
Is that why some of us think it is inspired?

Though we can’t stand the sight of Him, and wish He would go away, He is written all over our flesh and spirit, and we know that He is the Truth about us.

This is the mystery of our very existence, and we know it. We are drawn to the light as the moth is to the flame, attracted to Him, unable to go back to the darkness, yet we know somehow that what we now are will suddenly end, with no turning back, once He draws us to Himself. Yes, for is it not Him drawing us that we experience as this attraction?

Yes, this world is too small for man and God to both be here.
One of us must go, and we know who that one is.

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.