Rumblings at the borders

Once again we are caught up in the news of unbridled power politics and the playing of trump cards and the rolling of more than dice in the latest showdown between East and West.

For the Cold War, like the fabled White Witch, is rumored by its believers to be somehow still alive, ‘whoever heard of a witch that really died? You can always get them back!’ And the ‘spectre of Communism’ that Marx prophesied was haunting Europe in 1848, taking on any one of its numerous disguises to conceal its true nature—the sin of the world—has recollected itself from its recent repose to resurrect as what looks to be a revitalized Russian imperialism.

Hammer and sickle, not plough and pruning hook, have been beaten back into weapons of war, threatened or just imagined, as we watch voraciously and with mock compassion the first bite of the beast on the body of ancient Rus, now known as Ukraine.

I wonder, do we ever actually know what we are looking at in the flow of human history, whether in the past or in the making? Without understanding either nation, the ‘great’ or the ‘little’ Russians, the manhandling, commiserating West, seeing its latest pet and hopeful political prodigy seemingly becoming the target of a powerful, alien neighbor, one with a history of large geopolitical appetite, is quick on the draw, to challenge its arch-rival, the mysterious East, to a fateful duel.

Without looking back too far, we can see this is another point on the path of confrontation that has tainted the relations of East and West centuries before we ever heard of Communism. Byzantium is still the butt of our sarcasm (I am speaking of the West, not of myself or any others who fall with me through the cracks between history’s floorboards), and our distrust, while we pride ourselves on our pretended liberalism.

On a very superficial level, some see this antagonism as the manifestation of the Catholic world’s hatred of the Orthodox. Protestants are included as Catholics, of course. They point at least as far back as the First World War where Serbia, an Orthodox nation, was made the culprit, yet forget that Germany was harshly punished with unreasonable reparations, that Austria was drawn and more than quartered, and that Serbia was, in the end, rewarded with historically Catholic lands—Croatia and Slovenia—as well as Muslim territories, like Bosnia.

The rape and pillage of Kosovo under the watchful eye of the West does, however, seem to indicate a persistent antipathy to the Orthodox, or at least to the Serbs. Yet I wonder if this antagonism really has other roots and reasons, deeper than the religious divide, which may be more a symptom than the disease itself. What that disease might be, I think I have an intimation.

The deviant individualism of the West, and the insistent collectivism of the East—forget the rationalism of the one and the mysticism of the other—seem destined to tear the human race apart, each trying to make ‘one world’ in its chosen image. The European Union, to save face, must expand in a 21st century version of ‘Drang nach Osten’ whitewashing the same ancient urge which purged Great Moravia of its Byzantine faith, and mowed down more recently more than six millions of sub-human Poles and Jews, to coax the modern princes of Kiev into the Western fold. They make it look so wonderful, but what would any level of material prosperity look like to a people who within living memory were nearly starved out of existence in Stalin’s planned famines? Even if the ‘great’ and ‘little’ Russians, as they were called during the reigns of the Czars, are one and the same nation, who would turn to a controlling, abusive spouse, when a new suitor of forgotten atrocities, comes a-courting?

The West, the culture I was born into but do not choose, has a missionary urge, now stripped of Christianity, ‘to make things better for you,’ whether you want it or not. Listening to what they think their consciences, they ‘plant evergreens while trampling on a flower.’ What they really want is to make things better for themselves, as any student of unbent history can discover.

If the West thinks that a people is a nation, then they must have a nation state. It doesn’t matter whether it is real or not, as long as it fits in with the West’s agenda. Czechs are a nation, undisputably. Tack on some extra territory manned by Slovaks—they’re almost Czechs, or vise versa—and voilà, Czechoslovakia. Never mind if the two nations don’t really get along and never formed a nation state before. But it gets worse. They created another nation state, Yugoslavia, out of an ethnic mess that was bound to explode sooner or later. And it did.

So now, we champion Ukraine against Russia, unknowing or ignoring the fact that it was never a nation state before modern times. If the Ukrainians (formerly, the ‘little Russians’) are in fact a nation distinct from the Russians (formerly, the ‘great Russians’) and not merely a regional variation speaking their own dialect as the Boarisch-speaking Bavarians are still essentially Germans and part of that nation state, then yes, of course they ought to have their own nation state. But is there really a ‘Ukraine’ in the same sense as there is a Poland or a Germany? Or is the West following a line of reasoning based on the Cold War compromise that let the Soviet Union have three votes in the United Nations—one for Russia, one for Belarus, and one for Ukraine, an artificial division of ‘old Russia’ that the Soviets found convenient, ignoring as inconvenient, for example, the Baltic nation states they had illegally grabbed during the war?

Now that the West has ‘let the cat out of the bag’ with the fall of Communism and its disintegration into a complex community of aspiring democracies and burgeoningly corrupt oligarchies, we feel we have to stand up for our fledglings and protégés—selectively, of course.

Ukraine’s first taste of nation statehood since the days of Kievan Rus before the Mongol invasions is certainly a heady and hopeful experiment. But it still is just an experiment, just as is any newly founded state, just as the United States once was, and just as the European Community still is. The West is continuing to test its paramount humanistic tenet, individualism, from the single person to the multitude, and it has lots of people and lots of nations to experiment with. Ukraine is one of them. The tragedy is that the West simply does not understand the real life of its specimens, nor does it respect them.

Let’s hope the Ukrainian people will be allowed to find their own way.

By faith, not by sight

δια πίστεως γαρ περιπατουμεν, ου δια ειδους·

for we walk by faith, not by sight
2 Corinthians 5:7

The struggle seems to be, between what is,
and what rather should be.

We see ourselves, the world around us—if we are Christians, we see the Church—as we are, as it is, and we are dissatisfied, we are moved to crisis, we feel abandoned, we feel we must do something, and inwardly become crusaders, we must right wrongs.

When it is within ourselves, we do well, knowing ourselves to be under conviction, knowing that the Cross rises in awful majesty before us, inviting us: what will we do? just stand and watch, or lay down our burdens, allow ourselves to be stripped and mocked, our flesh nailed to the wood? find our lives by losing them?

When it is outside our selves, we must take another path.

Are other people, other things, really as we see them? Is the struggle really to be pressed home, between what is and what should be? between the reality and our ideal? And if so, whence this ideal? and what is it? Is the ideal something that really is out there, in past, in future, our only in our minds, in our seats of judgment?

By faith, not by sight—do we ever see other people as they are, or do we only perceive them? We see an image, as flat as the man we see on the television screen, speaking the news. This is what he looks like, sounds like, the surface of the moment to a living being who is years deep and miles wide, whose height is beyond the range of our vision, whose feet have trod what paths we may have never found. Yet we think we see him, we say we know him. He is as hidden from us as if we were blind.

The same is true of things, of events, of historical movements, we do not see them, understand them, either, only what we perceive, only what our minds tell us. The natural man walks by sight, judges by sight, struggles by what he thinks right, and carries on a fight—as if he could—to save the world, even when he says to himself, ‘I only want things to be as they should be; that's all I want.’ But Christ says, ‘If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains’ (John 9:41).

By faith, not by sight: faith is the substance of things unseen, and so the spiritual man does not walk by sight, but by faith. There is no ‘is’ and ‘should be’ in his thoughts, for he knows, by faith, that God is sovereign, that He is working His purpose out, and he trusts, he trusts in Him. This is not the ‘faith’ of mere religious profession that can find fault with and fight ‘the infidel’, that makes him an anointed crusader, a defender of God Most-High. Is a god that must be defended any better than the kitchen gods broken to pieces by Abraham?

Look deep, if you must look at all, or else avert your eyes from anyone, anything, but yourself. We cannot see very far beyond ourselves, so if we must walk—and walk we must—let's walk behind Him who is worthy of our trust, and take the path He treads. Yes, avert your eyes from anyone but yourself, but only to make sure you're still right behind Him. Otherwise, keep your eyes straight ahead, let Him, if anyone or anything, block your view of your destination, because this is where you want to be: ‘If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also’ (John 12:26).

Yes, Lord, by faith, not by sight.

Even now as we wait

It is the day of Resurrection, let us be radiant for the feast, and let us embrace one another. Let us say: ‘Brethren,’ even to them that hate us, let us forgive all things in the Resurrection, and thus let us cry out…

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life.

Yes, I know it is not Pascha yet. It is still Lent. In fact, we have just entered on the forty-day road to the Paradise of the New Adam, where there is no prohibition against reaching out to the Tree of Life, that is, the Cross, and plucking the First-fruit of Salvation hanging there, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I know we have just begun. We are not there yet. But our longing for the End that is the Beginning of all things simply overwhelms me.

‘To forgive all things in the Resurrection,’ how sweet this sounds, yet how impossible to perform. To say ‘Brothers’ to those that hate us, how unthinkable to us who have never succeeded in understanding how deep is the hatred within us that puts to death, every day, those around us (whom we simply want to hate), and even the Son of God, whose last prayer to His Father was, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’

Unlike the sinner who knows he is a sinner and is ashamed to even draw near to ask forgiveness, we sin, and we sin boldly, and go to confess what trifles we deem our ‘sins’ while leaving covered and festering the putrid secrets of our inner deformities. He who is forgiven much, loves much, but the forgiveness we ‘humbly’ apply for is no medicine for those sicknesses and no antidote for those poisons we partake of, and hence we love little.

This is the time, the acceptable time, not to crouch behind our mirrors and fight on, shattering the world around us into splintered fragments, but instead to break those mirrors through which we love to see so dimly, and to come out into the light, yes, into the Light of Christ, which shines perpetually, even in this forty-day sojourn, to show us who and what we are, for though we divide time’s flow into seasons, the Resurrection is always now.

Let us be radiant (as we prepare ourselves) for the feast, and let us embrace one another (putting away our divisions). Let us say: ‘Brethren,’ even to them that hate us (and to them whom we hate), let us forgive all things in the Resurrection (because it has already unsealed the gates of Paradise), and thus let us cry out (even now, as we wait)…

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tombs bestowing life.

I confess

I confess the ancient faith of the Church, that is, the faith of the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the law-giving God of Moses, the royal God of kings who alone makes kings of men, the all-lauded God of David, the all-wise God of Solomon, the truth-telling God of Elijah, Isaiah, and all the holy prophets, the fatherly God of Jesus of Nazareth; and I confess the last named as the living Son of the living God, who was born in time of a human mother of no earthly father, though begotten beyond time of the heavenly Father of no human mother; and I confess the ancient Church, that is, the community of all faithful people, faithful in following the holy apostles who follow faithfully the Christ of God. This tri-luminous path I walk through a very dark world, bearing within me and overshadowing me the Light of lights, that divine and life-creating Spirit, that unearthly Fire unknown to Prometheus that enlightens those who love, but consumes those who hate, the uncreated God who dwells in His created image mankind.

And I witness to that very dark world, both speaking and silent, of the God without name or number whose Oneness is not diminished by His being Three, nor His Majesty dishonored by His being named, for Father, Son, and Spirit, unearthly Triad, was, is, and shall be revealed in human flesh, first by the First-born from the dead, the New Adam, and then till the end of the age by everyone who follows Him who opened Paradise once to the good thief, and forever to all who consent to be hung at His side. And as by my life I confess Him before men, though I speak or am silent, the dark world that thinks it is bright is revealed to itself dark in their eyes to those who, destined to be saved, are drawn by the Father to the Son; and that beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased receives these souls from the darkness and presents them again to His Father enthroned in unapproachable Light, confessing their names before Him and the angels; thereby witnessing to the unbelieving world where the true Church lives.

O my soul, let us purchase this time for God with the gold of our spirits, the silver of our minds, and the bronze of our deeds, not wallowing in laziness and sinful distraction, but persevering with all our might in prayer, fasting and sincere brotherly love, to cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, that our confession be proven true on the battlefield of the our body, and that we become capable of receiving the rich mercy that God has saved up for those who love Him. For He tells us every moment of every day, ‘To him who has more will be given, but from him who has not, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away.’ Yes, let us purchase this time and store up for ourselves treasures that thieves cannot break in and steal, for again as He tells us, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your hearts be also.’ Confess Him, O my soul, as they confessed Him to whom He shall say, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…’

The triumph of Orthodoxy

...is not what we so boldly play it up to be on the Sunday dedicated to this name. Yes, they fought hard battles and long, the victors now becoming the victims later, then exchanging places as readily as dancers, as imperial and sacerdotal whims gave way to one another, and crowds of old men, some saints and others mere savants, dissecting each other's brains to an atomic level, and straining each other's syllables spoken, sung or scribed through sieves of partiality so clogged with flesh and blood, that it's a wonder anything came through.

It's not really about whether we make ikons or break them, whether we fellowship with saints above or only with those below. Nor is it about whether we can name a faithful virgin of Israel the mother of the ineffable God or only of the God-Man she bore, or whether Himself He had at all times an unobstructed and single will, nature, and being, or only appeared so.

It's not really about whether the Spirit can come on whomsoever He wishes with the anointing that teaches everything infallibly, or on all who call upon Him, or only on those upon whom human hands have been laid, over whom human tongues have prayed, generation after generation, unbroken, from the beginning.

The triumph of Orthodoxy is to be put on trial, tested by every antagonist, human and inhuman, visible and invisible, rational and irrational, using every temptation, to glory, to humiliation, to wealth, to poverty, to power, to weakness, to joy, to sorrow, to health, to sickness, to life, and to death, and thus tried, to come forth as a Bride made beautiful for her Bridegroom, without any flaw, dressed in spotless white, with a heart purged of all malice, forgetful of all injury, seeking only to love, to love all without measure, without exception, unaware of her exaltation, her eyes fixed forever on her Beloved.

Unless we are put on trial in this way, we will never triumph.
Today we are one day closer to it than we were yesterday.
Are we ready?

Originally posted on Cost of Discipleship on July 30, 2009.
This weekend we observe the Sunday of [the Triumph] of Orthodoxy.
We are always learning what it means
to be Orthodox Christians.
Lord, have mercy!

Patterns

Factual and actual

Scientists study the factual patterns observable in the natural universe, and the results are called ‘science.’ Theologians study the actual patterns observable in the human universe, and the results are called ‘theology.’ Until relatively recently, one could be both a scientist and a theologian without being forced to be one or the other. The experience of reality was not yet an either/or proposition. One knew instinctively that One was behind all the observable phenomena in all universes. Science was the growing body of knowledge about what God makes (the facts). Theology was the growing body of knowledge about what God does (the acts). The patterns discovered and rationally organized in both disciplines were found to be so consistent and reliable, that if one were a scientist or a theologian of some experience, one could instantly tell when a hoax or fable were being foisted on you. Even though science and religion have now officially parted ways, the real scientists know when pseudo-science is happening (homeopathic ‘medicine’ for example), and the real theologians know when pseudo-theology is happening (Mormon ‘revelation’ for example). In the case of the agnostic scientist, ‘Nature just doesn’t work that way.’ In the case of the theologian, ‘God just doesn’t act that way.’

Observable patterns

There are many patterns observable in the human universe. All of them stem from human nature itself. Theology, then, is as much the study of man as it is the study of God. You might also say, theology as a discipline is the study of God in man, and of man in God. Whereas the scientist uses a lot of apparatus and all the materials and forces of the natural universe to discover the patterns and understand them, the theologian’s tool kit is much simpler: the apparatus is a human life—his own—and the raw ‘materials’ to be analyzed are the events of his life, and what is observable in the life, that is, the history, of the human race. Both the scientist and the theologian start small, and work toward the large, first microcosm, then macrocosm. Even the way both carry out their respective labors is an observable pattern, and very much alike.

‘Change’ and ‘squeeze’

Now, having laid out in brief the frames of reference that I use in defining science and theology, I want to apply them to just one of the patterns inherent in both science and theology. I don’t know exactly what to call this pattern, and the choice of terms is really quite arbitrary and depends on the angle from which one is observing the pattern. The word that comes to mind most often is ‘squeeze.’ This pattern is a subset of a larger pattern that can be called ‘change.’ It seems to be one of the ways in which change occurs. I may uncover a few other patterns along the way.

Origins, of a human, and of a universe

Let’s start with the human being, the individual. Where do we come from? Well, we all know we start out not as a single entity but as two, originating from separate and different beings. We don’t exist just prior to our origin on the physical level. There is an egg, and there is a sperm cell, a physical pattern replicating a metaphysical one, there is matter, and there is spirit. We don’t exist until the two ‘seed halves’ are united, at which point we come into being as a singularity, without personality, consciousness, or sensation. Yet, we are at that instant ‘human.’ A process begins and a new universe unfolds, just as real and potentially infinite as the natural universe, the cosmos, which resulted from a singularity that was jump-started in ‘the Big Bang.’ This change from two living cells into a singularity which is now a human being may be a first example of the pattern I call ‘squeeze’ or it may not. I can’t tell because I can’t see that small.

Expansion from a singularity

Staying with that singularity, a human being in the first stage of metamorphosis, the fertilized egg, soon to be renamed an embryo, we find patterns of change—we can specify them as ‘development’—cascading faster than we can see, as the embryo becomes a fetus full of organs and systems of increasing complexity and interdependence. Turning our view for a moment to the cosmos, the scientist starts telling us all the wonders of the early universe, how stars and galaxies and planets were formed, and how the size of the creation grows exponentially. Back to the patterns of human gestation, the ‘being knitted together in the limbo of the womb’ as the psalmist sings it, we are not to the pattern I call ‘squeeze’ yet. No, we’re in a pattern of rest, of growth, of comfort really. A baby is being formed and is gradually becoming more than a living cell city. It already has functioning organs, a heart, a brain, eyes, and those tiny fingers and toes. It has sensations. It can feel but doesn’t know itself. Sensation—that is mostly what it ‘knows’ itself to be. Yes, by this time it is already a ‘he’ or a ‘she’ physically, but it won’t recognize that till much later, not until it has undergone many ‘squeezes,’ and it hasn’t even undergone the first one yet.

The initial squeeze

After about nine months, a physically fully formed human is now ready to be ‘decanted,’ and the comfortable, safe, anonymous existence of the egg-sperm, embryo, fetus, baby has to come to an end. There is no choice at this point. Once existence of any kind has begun, there is no turning back without shedding existence itself. The forward movement into the flow of time must continue. Through a physical construct known as ‘the birth canal’ the baby must now be ‘squeezed.’ If it had a vocabulary of words its thoughts could be verbal, but just because it still doesn’t know what language is doesn’t mean it has not got a personality or thoughts and feelings. No, it has all three. Where and when did these come from? Well, there’s still too many patterns to analyze for even the scientists to know the answers to most of these questions, and to the theologian, those patterns simply provide the basis for further, more meaningful patterns.

Pre-verbal script

Putting words to the thought-feelings of the baby who has just noticed that his warm, watery berth has just vanished, ‘Yikes! What’s happening? Ow! Stop pushing me! Stop squeezing me! Why is everything feeling so tight? Help! I can’t move my flippers! Where am I going? I can’t take this pressure much longer! I can’t sleep! Why can’t I move anymore? Ow! Something rough just grabbed me! It hurts! Ow! Oh my gosh! This must be the end! I can’t take it anymore! Oh, oh, oh! Oh… oh, wah, waaah! Where am I? But it feels so wide! Hey, what’s that weird sensation coming through? Hey, what am I doing? In and out, in and out! Ouch! Something cut me! Oh, why was I ever born? What did I just say? What is the meaning of all this?’

‘Squeeze’ as a gateway not to death but to life

The squeeze was terrifying and harsh to the little creature. He had been comfortable and satisfied to stay that way forever. Then, ‘something moved,’ and he found himself being carried along in the flow into a crevasse that just kept getting narrower, and he knew he couldn’t take it much longer, though he didn’t know what the alternative would be. We know, of course: he might’ve died, as many infants do in child birth. But his chances were pretty good in most cases. After enduring the unendurable ‘squeeze’ which he’d rather die (if he knew what death was) than have to go through, he was ‘out,’ and very quickly and unself-consciously began making adjustments to his new environment. All this, without thinking, without reasoning. Again, not that he has no thoughts—he has plenty—but language hasn’t revealed itself to him. He is only just becoming aware of a new reality—himself. Without choosing it, he has been born and is becoming a personality. All this involuntarily and, for some time to come, irrationally. The ‘squeeze’ has come and gone. He has passed from one world to another, and though his body is a continuous experience, his soul is now at the threshold of spiritual life.

‘Squeeze’ as a basic pattern of life

The pattern I’ve chosen to call ‘squeeze’ is one that occurs over and over again as we humans (as well as other life forms) live and grow. In both individual experience and social, we feel the squeeze, making us uncomfortable and ‘forcing us out’ from wherever we found ourselves ‘finally happy and comfortable.’ From a Christian’s point of view, sometimes it may seem that God is on the lookout to make sure none of us ever has a rest or time to just get comfy and have a little fun. We work so hard to please Him and then before we can look back with justifiable pride, He squeezes us out, gets us all disoriented again. How often have we asked ourselves in desperation, ‘Why me?’

Squeezed is the way to go

Squeezed out of kindergarten (no more nap time!). Squeezed out of sixth grade (how I hated middle school at first!). Squeezed out of the circle of my childhood friends (why did we have to move?). Squeezed out of High School (that, I must say, actually felt good!). Squeezed out of college (who needs a degree anyway?). Squeezed out of my first real job (I wasn’t meant to build steel office chairs!). Squeezed out of my first and only commune (I was tired of vegetarianism anyway!). Squeezed out of my life as a dairy farmer’s only hired man (free milk is all I missed). Squeezed out of living in Canada’s subarctic (yes, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!). Squeezed out of being a cabinetmaker (upstairs to be a designer, or there’s the door!). Squeezed out of being a general manager (no explanation, we just don’t want you!). Yes, the squeezes just keep coming in my life, but as I get closer to the present, I’d rather not recount them. I’m still smarting a bit from the last few. They seem to have gotten worse, but after being dumped, I must admit, I do feel a lot better!

The pattern written everywhere

Not only this pattern of ‘squeeze’ which I’ve taken such pains to explore with you, but all of the patterns we find giving structure, form and meaning to our individual and social lives, and to the natural world, are so pervasive and so reliable, that we take them for granted, and often, because we fail to recognize them, we suffer unnecessarily. Hence the twin pursuits of science and theology, both of which are open to the seeking mind. All these words I used to explain these realities to myself in your hearing pale in significance and are shamed into obscurity by the light that still shines in the Great Book and the Little Book, in the Universe God made, and in the Book of His mighty deeds. The same eternal and divine Logos, the Son of the Father in Holy Triad with the Spirit, has imprinted Himself on everything and everyone whether great or small, seen or unseen, animate or inanimate, for every mind to perceive.

Though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.

John 10:38

Follow me

The greatest truths, maybe even the most essential truth, about human life on this planet, the way for us to find our way out of this mess we call a world, is expressed in the briefest possible way. Jesus says, Ἀκολούθει μοι, ‘Follow me,’ and in two words He gives Matthew, and us, the way out of our endless misery. The similarity between the tax collector’s name, מַתִּתְיָהוּ (Matithyahu) in Hebrew, transliterated into Greek as Ματταθίας (Mattathias), and later shortened to Ματθαῖος (Matthaios), and the Greek word for disciple, μαθητής (mathitís), always felt like a clue to me, even an invitation, to place myself where Matthew was when he heard that audacious command, Ἀκολούθει μοι (akolúthi mi), ‘Follow me.’

Nobody but Christ has ever been able to say those words with complete and perfect authority, and yet we do, every day of the year, in season and out of season, we all say in one way or another, ‘Follow me,’ to others, and as always, the results are less than stunning. In fact, it is precisely because we follow anyone but Christ that the world is the way it is, even why the Church is the way it is. The truth is so simple and so obvious that we miss it in our daily lives, so busy building other kingdoms than Christ’s, even though if we only followed His command, ‘Follow me,’ we would find the gates of paradise open to us. We give ourselves pause for forty days before the bright feast of Resurrection to do nothing else.

Therefore, let us run after Him when He says to us, ‘Follow me.’

Clean Monday

                    The sound of the tide
                    woke me.

                    Any day
                    can be clean Monday.

                    Any day
                    not too early
                    nor too late,
                    I follow You, Lord,
                    as You walk along the sea.

                    Your foot steps leave no trace,
                    but mine,
                    heavy with the weight of sins,
                    mar the smoothness
                    of the sand of time.

                    Cannot erase them,
                    cannot hide them,
                    the path they trace,
                    where I walked without You,

                    but Your mercy, Lord,
                    Your mercy,
                    blows them away.
                    They vanish
                    in Your wind.
                    Following You,
                    like You
                    I leave no trace.

                    The sea washes away,
                    the wind clears the sand,
                    the wind carries them away,
                    the sun shines softly,
                    lights the beach
                    invisibly through the mists,
                    the roar of the waves
                    carries them away,
                    far as east is
                    from the west.

                    Alone with You,
                    I walk with You
                    along the sea, Lord,
                    and in silence
                    You unburden me.

                    You release me, Lord,
                    and so
                    I follow You.

— Romanós

Cast out

Today was the last Lord's Day before the beginning of the Great Fast (Sarakostí, ‘Lent’), beginning tomorrow, Monday (Kathará Dheftéra, ‘Clean Monday’). As the day begins at sundown according to the scriptures, the first service of Sunday (Kyriakí, ‘the Lord's [day]’) was the vesper service on Saturday night. I want to invite my readers and visitors to join us on the journey to Pascha. To start on this pilgrim way, I would like to share with you some of the spiritual poetry that comprised our worship for this day.

The Lord, my Creator, took me as dust from the earth,
and with the breath of life He gave me a soul
and made me a living creature.
He honoured me as ruler on earth over all things visible

and as a companion of the Angels.

But Satan the deceiver, using the serpent as his instrument,
enticed me by food,
separated me from the glory of God and gave me over to the earth
and to the lowest depths of death.

But as Master and compassionate, call me back again.

Wretch that I am, I have cast off the robe woven by God,
disobeying Your divine command, Lord, at the counsel of the enemy,
and I am clothed now in fig leaves and in garments of skin.

I am condemned to eat the bread of toil in the sweat of my brow,
and the earth has been cursed
so that it bears thorns and thistles for me.

But, Lord, who in the last times were made flesh of a Virgin,
call me back and bring me into Paradise again.

O precious Paradise, unsurpassed beauty,
tabernacle built by God, unending gladness and delight,
glory of the just, joy of prophets, and dwelling place of saints,
with the sound of your leaves implore to the Maker of all
to open for me the gates which I closed by my transgression,
and may count me worthy to partake of the Tree of Life,
and of the joy in which I delighted when I dwelt in you
before Adam was banished from Paradise through disobedience
and cast out from delight, beguiled by the words of a woman.

Naked he sat opposite the place,
lamenting, Woe is me!

Therefore let us all make haste
to accept the season of the Fast
and obey the traditions of the Gospel,
that through them we may become
well-pleasing to Christ
and once more receive Paradise as our dwelling.

Adam sat opposite Paradise and, lamenting his nakedness, he wept,

Woe is me! By evil deceit was I persuaded and robbed,
and exiled far from glory.

Woe is me! Once naked in my simplicity, now I am in want.

But, Paradise, no longer shall I enjoy your delight;
no more shall I look upon the Lord my God and Maker,
for I shall return to the earth whence I was taken.

Merciful and compassionate Lord, I cry to you,
Have mercy on me who am fallen.

Through eating Adam was cast out of Paradise.

And so, as he sat in front of it, he wept,
lamenting with a pitiful voice and saying,

Woe is me, what have I suffered, wretch that I am!

I transgressed one commandment of the Master,
and now I am deprived of every good thing.

Most holy Paradise, planted because of me
and shut because of Eve,
pray to him who made you and fashioned me,
that once more I be filled with your flowers.

Then the Saviour said to him,

I do not want the creature which I fashioned to perish,
but to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth,
because the one who comes to me
I will in no way cast out. 
(John 6:37)

‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’
John 11:25-26 NIV

Hidden in a field

Most of us want to be certain that once we plight our troth to a strange religion, that we shall not later become liable to believe things that were hidden from us before our mystical marriage. We do not like surprises, as if we could say to Jesus, ‘Enough now! Let’s not go there!’ but fortunately for us if we really want to follow Him, we are willing to go with Him, anywhere. Still, we feel it is unfair that we must transfer this kind of loyalty to the Lord to a mere institution. At least, that is how our minds make us look at it. But our hearts shall thrill to hear such things as this: ‘Everything begins to speak with strange dogmas, strange words and the strange teachings of the Holy Trinity’ (Verses at Orthros and Sunday Vespers of Pentecost). With the mind in the heart, we welcome this strangeness.

There is a lot of evidence—why do we not accept it?—personal evidence, testimony that we are familiar with through our reading or by encountering real persons who have before us taken the flying leap into the ‘cloud of unknowing’ and embraced Holy Orthodoxy. Yes, now I am calling Orthodoxy ‘Holy’ even though every Lord’s Day I sing with the choir at the Divine Liturgy, ‘One is Holy, One is Lord, Jesus Christ…’ We sometimes have known people whose Christian life and witness have impressed us as being genuine and at least as real as our own, who like us were not born to the faith, and yet despite mental or even moral dilemmas, seem to have effortlessly entered. If they could do it, what about us? Is it really more like boarding a ship bound for safety, than reading a legal contract and making sure you agree with everything?

So there is this faith that seems to be walking on marbles. They call Jesus, ‘Christ God’ and ‘Saviour’ and then turn around and say ‘Most Holy Theotokos, save us!’ (Theotokos, the ‘God-bearer,’ is Mary the mother of Jesus.) They claim that they have seen the true Light, received the heavenly Spirit, and found the true Faith. Why then are they not consigning everyone else to damnation? If their ikons are supposed to be historical, why is there a dragon in some of them? And they believe some of the most wild things about people they call ‘the Saints’ with a capital ‘S’ (though some of them seem to be more evangelical than the most fervent bible thumpers, and call everyone ‘saints’). How can anyone feel safe on solid ground when all this is going on all around them, all the time? Bottom line is, just who do they trust?

Safe? Yes, as one who has dived into that unknown lake, not even knowing how to swim, I was not injured. I did not break my neck on a hidden rock at the bottom, but I did find the Rock hidden from the world in that lucid pool. I can stand on that Rock, my head above the waters, because He who loves me is always with me. He does not ask me what I believe or doubt, does not require anything from me, except that I do what I see Him doing, say what I hear Him saying, and go where He goes. He gives me permission to go in and out through a Door that, when I open it none can close, and when I close it none can open. ‘Agree’ and ‘disagree’ belong to the world of those who measure, count, weigh, buy and sell. There is no loss with Jesus, even though everything we think we own is taken away. That is what Orthodoxy is.

It is not a religion, unless you want it to be. The ikon wall does not separate us from the Divine Nature tabernacled behind it, but hides what must not be seen for the sake of Him who is, was, and shall be seen. The ceremony celebrates the Divine Presence with us, who has pitched His tent among us, so that we can learn how we shall be dwellers with Him in the presence of His Father and the angels. The ancient tales, neither true nor false as men judge, are not to divide us, but to join us to the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ whose acts have filled the earth unnoticed by the arrogant and worldly wise, but we have noticed. We do not ask ‘Who said that?’ but we pay attention to everything that is said. Now, we see this treasure hidden by others who came before us. Orthodoxy we name it, the faith of saints we claim it, but till we own it, it is nothing.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. A man found it, hid it again, then in great joy went and sold everything he owned, and bought that field.
Matthew 13:44

The thinking part

The human being is not only a part of the created Universe; he is also the thinking part. Human thought is the only place where the Cosmos is conscious, critical, and self-reflective. It is the sole forum where Creation can examine itself, render an assessment, and even make cognitive adjustments as they are required.

The human being is also the only part of the created Universe where thoughts—both interpretive ideas and thoughts of resolve—are deliberately chosen. Man’s mind is conscious of being free; indeed, cognitive freedom and critical self-reflection are so bound together that man may experience them as identical. For this reason, man is the sole portion of the Universe where ‘effects’ cannot be adequately explained by purely physical causes. Man is innately aware of this freedom, nor does it take him very long to infer that this freedom imposes moral responsibility upon him. Adam was—and knew himself to be—the head of the Universe, its sole deliberative agent.

Consequently, the human being is the only place where the Cosmos itself can deliberately, intentionally change its mind. Man’s organic and formal cohesion to the rest of Creation is the reason Adam, when he fell, took the Universe down with him. For all of its brevity Genesis 3:6—‘she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband who did eat’—describes the metaphysical mix-up of Creation itself. When the Universe fell, it fell ‘head first.’

Saint Paul is explicit on this point. ‘Through one man,’ he wrote, ‘η αμαρτια εις τον κοσμον εισηλθεν, και δια της αμαρτιας ο θανατος, sin entered into the Cosmos, and, by sin, death’ (Romans 5:12). In Adam everything—τα παντα—succumbed to mortality and metaphysical bondage, and the very Universe became a medium of confusion and corruption. From that point on, ‘death reigned’ (5:14).

And why did God, with a view to redeeming that hopeless situation, ‘give his only begotten Son’? Very simply, says Saint John, because He ‘so loved the Cosmos’—ουτως γαρ ηγαπησεν ο θεος τον κοσμον (John 3:16). This is the reason Saints Paul and Irenaeus argued that the Universe had to be ‘re-headed’ by Christ, the incarnate Logos.

From Cosmology we may go on to speak of History. But to speak of History, we must first speak of language; there is no separating the two. None of the foregoing activity—freedom of thought, reflection, consciousness, choice—is possible without language, and language, in its turn, is inherited from History.

It is through language that Cosmology and History converge in human consciousness. There is an obvious corollary to this observation: History, as an object of man’s knowledge, must actually precede Cosmology. Israel certainly regarded reality in this sequence. In the New Testament, likewise, the thinking of the Church worked from her historical experience of the Man Jesus to her contemplation of the eternally begotten Word, in whom ‘all things came to be—παντα εγενετο.’

The ability to assess one’s consciousness with respect to the ongoing sequence of time and the incorporation of memory into interpretive narrative is among the most distinguishing features of the human being. It is arguably the feature most indicative of the metaphysical difference between human language and the emotive, communicative sounds used by animals.

The importance of these considerations is apparent if we bear in mind that a major underlying assumption of Christian Theology is—and here we come to the nub—the historical nature of Revelation and Redemption. Indeed, this assumption has the quality of a principle.

When I speak of the ‘historical quality’ of Revelation and Redemption, I do not mean simply that certain facts and events actually happened and were significant. Using this term I mean to include, more particularly, the awareness and knowledge of specific human beings (patriarchs, prophets, sages, apostles, and, above all, the Savior) whose living experience incorporated and transmitted this Revelation and Redemption. That incorporation and transmission pertain in a special way to the composition of the Holy Scriptures, which both record Salvation History and embody the Spirit-filled dynamism of Holy Tradition.

In the biblical faith man neither seeks nor receives ‘deliverance’ (redemption, salvation, deification, reconciliation—pick your favorite) by escaping from history and time. The biblical believer will insist, on the contrary, that ‘deliverance’ comes only through a specific historical process.

— Fr Patrick Henry Reardon

“Remember who your teachers were…”
2 Timothy 3:14

What to do?

Ain't gonna need this house no longer
I'm getting ready to meet the saints
—This Ole House

What a strange world we live in! What a shape-shifter! We think we’ve finally figured it out, and devised a strategy to get through it, wearing our lives out (and wearing them in) like an old pair of shoes, and suddenly, we’re not walking on solid ground at all, but on a thin sheet of ice, and we can hear it as it starts cracking, and then… we’ve fallen through! Colder than Russian hell! Lord, have mercy!

We’ve found ourselves to have bought a piece of real estate. We got it for cheap. We knew it was ‘a fixer.’ (No, this is not going to be about my current search for a house to buy.) We knew it needed more than cosmetic upgrades. But holy cow! When it rains, we need a boat to get to the front door. And in the humid heat of the hot summer, the smell of old, dry-rotted timbers suffocates us.

This world is that kind of house. Brother Giles of Assisi once said, speaking of the world, ‘he who has the biggest part, has the worst part.’ I tend to agree with him. Why I metaphored the world as a house that we get as a fixer and then discover it’d be better to just bulldoze it and start over is, that’s how the world is. We try to fix it, to make it more pleasant, more livable, but we can’t.
Then, what to do?

There’s a gate somewhere in India that has a Persian proverb carved around it in beautiful calligraphy, “Isa [Jesus], son of Mary said: ‘The world is a bridge, pass over it, but build no houses upon it. He who hopes for a day, may hope for eternity; but the world endures but an hour. Spend it in prayer for the rest is unseen.’” Whether or not the real Jesus said this, it still rings true. Yet, what to do?

We can spend our time in prayer, but do we know what prayer is? Is it really just sitting quietly alone with God, speaking or unspeaking? Well, yes, it can be that, but sometimes prayer can be work that we do. I tend to fall into the latter rather than the former mode of ‘prayer,’ hoping all the while that God will finish what I cannot complete, and that is, frankly, nearly everything. Yes, what to do?

Though we cannot save the world, still, mustn’t we try? A quiet young man I work with, confronted with a chatty female co-worker who, as she was leaving, melodramatically complained about how it was finally the weekend and that she’d try to enjoy it, and then rhetorically added, ‘it’s not our job to save the world, is it?’ softly spoke, ‘Yes, it is,’ and only he and I, I think, heard him. Now, what to do?

We sometimes think, yes, me too, that the world is getting better. At other times, we sometimes think, yes, me too, that the world is getting worse. All around us we see fantastic progress in some areas of life, technology for example, or human rights, coupled with social ills and natural depredations that boggle the imagination. I listen to co-workers having ‘panel discussions’ about both extremes all day long.

What comes out of their mouths causes me to blush, for the ignorance crowned with the laurels of false learning they display, often knocking to pieces people and things that are really life-affirming and good, in their self-agnostic scramble to make a goal in the games they play in place of producing what they are paid to do. The goal is, of course, to put everyone and everything they feel superior to, down.

What impresses me most about this world we live in is, that no matter how hard we struggle to maintain the right—what that ‘right’ is will differ, I know, from person to person, but all people in their deepest nature, do want what is good, don’t they?—no matter how constant and faithful we are, our efforts are never good enough. There is as much good in the world as ever, and as much evil, in equal portions.

This has to tell us something. We see bits of the truth here and there, in the Bible of course, but also in the stories, myths, and proverbs of various peoples. Human beings are not stupid, unless they train themselves to be by devotion to consumption. The Jews say, “Rabbi Jacob says, ‘This world is like a foyer leading the world to come. Prepare yourself in the foyer, so that you may enter into the inner chamber.’”

I’ve always been drawn to this saying, and to the Jews generally, because the wisdom that possesses them I want to possess me too. As a follower of Jesus, I follow Him not only as Lord but as Rabbi, ‘the only Teacher of mankind’ and hope to learn from Him both by sitting and by serving, as Mary and as Martha, sisters, did. We find ourselves in this strange world, and bewildered, ask, ‘What to do?’

I think I have found the answer, but it is in the unlikeliest of places. ‘Do not keep the prophecies in this Book a secret, because the Time is close. Meanwhile let the sinner go on sinning, and the unclean continue to be unclean; let those who do good go on doing good, and those who are holy continue to be holy. Very soon now, I shall be with you again, bringing the reward to be given to every man according to what he deserves.

‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Happy are those who will have washed their robes clean, so that they will have the right to feed on the Tree of Life and can come through the gates into the City. These others must stay outside: dogs, fortunetellers, and fornicators, and murderers, and idolators, and everyone of false speech and false life.’

Revelation 22:10-15 Jerusalem Bible

Papal magnanimity

We’ve been prepared for over forty years by populist but really quite ignorant uniphobes, warning us of the coming ‘one world religion’ in which the antichrist and the false prophet will establish the worship of the beast, and other such nonsense. I blush to remember that I too was once taken in by these goof balls. Their other pronouncements, just as imposing to the ear but just as ridiculous now that most of them have fallen flatter than pancakes, are evidence I hope we won’t forget, as they take one more shot at the movement toward Christian unity.

So here we have a pope who, I just found out today, has reached out, not only to the Eastern Orthodox (my confession), the Anglicans, and other historic Protestant churches which are still rather close to Catholicism, but even to the pariahs of modern Christianity, the Pentecostals, namely to Kenneth Copeland ministries, calling Copeland ‘brother’ and asking for him and his followers to pray for him. This has really gotten out of hand, hasn’t it? Has His Holiness no shame? Has he forgotten who he is? He’s the pope for Pete’s sake! Yet he acts and talks as if he’s nothing more than the bridge builder and the shepherd of souls!

I’ve been writing about Christian unity for as long as I can remember, and at the same time confessing that I do not believe in ecumenism, at least not in the movement that takes this name. That’s because I don’t see anything much but talk at the top, and the occasional joint effort at disaster relief. The kind of unity I write about, that I believe has never been lost but only gone unrecognized, is exactly what it looks like Pope Francis is preaching, and seeking as well. Instead of making ex cathedra pronouncements and dogmatizing in a way that would only perpetuate anti-Catholic feeling, he’s ‘coming out’ and treating other Christians as if they and he were already one.

Amazing! I can’t help but laugh at those ‘one world religion’ guys, because they’ve missed the point completely and are on the verge of losing their very lucrative business, that of dividing Christians and sowing seeds of fear and distrust to keep them that way. The Pope is not hiding behind a battlement of Roman Papal infallibility but neither is he abandoning Catholic (and therefore Orthodox) tradition and doctrine as he goes forth to announce the end of the Great Schism. No, not the one we call ‘great’ and date to A.D. 1054. That was nothing compared to the one that has pulverized the Body of Christ these last five hundred years till we are no longer recognized as standing on the Rock, but appear to be sinking in the sands, our own.

This pope (I can’t decide whether or not to capitalize this word) seems to have forgotten all protocol, and though I am small enough to still have issues with some of the people he is extending the hand of fellowship to (the Copelands, for example), I somehow sense that the magnanimity of which he is capable, through his position in the Body of Christ, just might be the leverage against the devil that we need to move the mountains (and yes, even the molehills) we have let divide us for centuries. There is only One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism, and therefore according to the promise of Christ, only One Church. It has never been divided and never can be, which is what ‘the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it’ means.

And as I have said till I was hoarse, if you think it’s divided, then you have a problem.

Blind faith

Blind faith, good or bad? Even faith unqualified puts a person at risk. You must accept that something is, or will be, on trust. Reasoned faith seems to me to be no faith at all, because faith doesn’t wait, it simply obeys, and moves, following the Lord’s command. Reasoned faith is just another name for reason, riskless, not reckless, and follows one’s own views as to what is, or will be.

I don’t think that Christ expects what most people think of as blind faith, but He’s the only one who can ever really be trusted blindly. That is, of course, if you believe, or know, that He is God. Impossible for the natural man, no fault of his, that’s just how we are. To know that another human being, now or in ages past, is somehow God, is not possible for human nature. We know too much.

Still, the Christ calls us into regions of action, thought, and perception (what else can I call the movement of the spirit?) that are completely uncharted, unexpected, out of sync with everything we take for granted as a part of ordinary daily life. He calls us out, and we must follow, and that blindly, and immediately, or not at all, because when He commands, Christ doesn’t wait.

When we accept the claims of Jesus Christ, we place ourselves immediately at risk, though most of think we are now in a safe place and bound for glory. Well, yes, glory it is, but not what we naively imagine. The strange thing is, there is no compulsion with Christ. He simply states the facts, and then He acts, and expects us to follow Him, now or, in some cases, never. Choose Christ or comfort.

The disciples thin out now as they did when He told them they had to eat His flesh and drink His blood. Today we clamor to eat His flesh and drink His blood, and we surge forward in a mob to commune, mindlessly as well as blindly, and call this ‘faith.’ I wonder what the disciples who left Him were thinking, and where did they go after they abandoned Him. Did they sink back into the safety of tradition?

When Christ went to Bethany to raise His beloved friend Lazaros from the dead and declared to Martha, ‘I am the resurrection and the life, do you believe this?’ was He expecting her to accept this on blind faith? I don’t think so. Martha, along with the other disciples knew Jesus personally, followed Him, heard His teaching, and witnessed His miracles. He wanted to test and deepen her faith.

As He told the unbelieving Jews, ‘If you don’t believe in me, at least believe in the works that I do.’ That is a strange thing for Him to say if He were expecting blind faith. There is a danger in blind faith that even the Son of God wanted to avert and save His disciples from. Blind faith yields in turn to blind obedience, and the only authority to whom man owes such faith and obedience is God.

Though the Church is the Body of Christ as well as His mystical Bride, and though He has given it, given us, the power to forgive and remit sins in His name, the evil one has planted in this divine field seed of a different kind, which has sprouted and sought to command and exact undeserved obedience through all the ages. Yet we know when it is the Master’s voice speaking in the Church, and when not.

Yes, the disciples thin out, and considerably, as we follow more closely behind Jesus, moving as He moves, when, where, and how. Yet the Church remains full, the recipients of His mercy. For though He calls and commands us, and does not wait for us to follow, He nevertheless doesn’t cease to call, and that grace stretches out time, giving everyone, fast or slow, the chance to be saved.

For salvation is not the fruit of blind faith, but of love, and love that obeys, that keeps close watch on the Master’s every move, that does not sleep but watches, to miss nothing and no one that is sent, that is placed in its path. That is what kept the disciples close to the Lord when the others took their leave, and what brought the disciples back after they had abandoned Him and fled.

I am the resurrection and the life, do you believe this?

Crying out

Last Judgment, by James Janknegt

The Lord said, “When the Son of man comes in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

The Gospel of Matthew 25:31-46

Today is the Lord’s Day of the Last Judgment. We are getting very close now to the Forty Days (Sarakostí) of what we like to call the Great Fast, or ‘Great and Holy Lent,’ a time period when we are encouraged to fast, pray, and give alms. To the followers of Jesus, this ‘special’ season is hardly more than a speed bump on the street they’re already driving down towards their destination. To the devout churchables, this is the season we’ve all been waiting for, when we can quietly concentrate on self-purification through our austerities and acts of charity, and get ourselves ready to meet the Lord when He resurrects at Holy Pascha, or Easter, if you don’t mind calling it by its ordinary name.

Today, we eat our last hamburger or steak, and look forward to a week of cheese pizza, macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches. Yes, eat up all that yogurt in the fridge, drink all that milk, butter your toast on both sides, and don’t forget to gobble up the rest of that ice cream in the freezer. Stomach, get ready for rice and beans, rice and lentils, rice and veggies. And, unless you’re already on a tofu diet like me (because I just like tofu), you may be getting very acquainted with that meat and milk substitute in many of its forms. Ah, how good a bowl of cheerios tastes with vanilla soy milk!

Today we hear a gospel message straight from Messiah’s mouth that, had he never said another word, would still put us all to shame, make us forget our doctrinal disputes and dogmatic wars, eschew our schisms for fear that we might separate ourselves ahead of time and find ourselves with the goats instead of the sheep—that is, if we really listened to it. We’ve certainly had enough chances to hear it, understand it, and change our beliefs and behaviors to conform to it. We give it the amount of attention we think it deserves, and then go off to do the really important stuff on our lists.

Proving myself humble rather than proud, I ask the prayers of the brethren, that my sinful soul may nevertheless be saved. I quote the Desert Fathers to bolster my self-image of pious, though ignorant Christian country bumpkin, ‘Who the sheep are, God knows, but the goats are such as I.’ Meanwhile, hidden like a nest of earwigs incubating under a damp rock, my little kingdom of self still serves me, not God, who gave me that rock to stand on, not hide under. I hear these gospel words of the only True Man that ever lived, and still lives, even in me if I would only abandon all and follow Him, crying out,

Stay with me awhile, Lord. Give me some time to repent. Teach me how to unclothe myself so I can wear Your skin. Gently steer me into the road not taken by the multitude and, most importantly, by me. Show me the secret of unhousing myself, so I may dwell in Your house, in that mansion You made for me in the House of Your Father. ‘Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. Speak but the word, and my servant shall be healed,’ yes, Lord, that my servant self should be free of its mortal wounds, and in Your immortal wounds, find peace and safety. Lord, have mercy, and save me.

Telling the truth in love

‘Almira Gulch, just because you own half the county doesn't mean that you have the power to run the rest of us. For twenty-three years, I've been dying to tell you what I thought of you! And now... well, being a Christian woman, I can't say it!’

To tell the truth in love—what does this really mean? It gets complicated because, from all outward appearances and most of human history, telling the truth in love can have some very adverse effects. We look back and shudder in horror, if we think long enough about it, but the burnings at the stake of those considered to be heretics was just a different expression of ‘telling the truth in love.’ After being tortured and made to confess, they were ‘forgiven’ but still had to endure death by fire as a sort of penance and purification, vaguely referenced to the apostle Paul’s teaching, ‘If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames’ (1 Corinthians 3:14-15). Strange that the Church thought it could administer salvation by fire as well as water.

Sorrowfully, we have not really made much progress. Most murders, as much as other ‘crimes against nature’—for that is what murder is—are committed ‘spiritually,’ not physically. I think we have all had this experience. Slander, for example, is a ‘spiritual’ form of murder—the modern name for this is ‘character assassination’—and its effects are almost always more painful, damaging, and long lasting, than a bullet to the head would be. When we are caught in the act of speaking our mind and telling somebody off who certainly deserves to be put in their place, we excuse ourselves, ‘I was only trying to help. There’s nothing wrong with telling the truth in love, is there?’

There was a time when Christians actually knew when what they might say would be abusive, and restrained themselves. They didn’t try to excuse themselves with, ‘Well, he deserved it!’ or ‘If I don’t tell them, who will?’ There’s a difference between telling a person the strange berries they just picked and are about to eat will make them very sick, and telling a man who is about to smoke another cigarette as he pulls one out of a package fairly covered with health warnings, that he shouldn’t smoke. The first is an instance of advising ignorance, the second an example of chastising informed choice. Both can be called ‘telling the truth in love,’ but the former really does this, while the latter merely heckles.

In a famous scene from The Wizard of Oz, a mean, old spinster brings an official writ to seize Dorothy’s little dog Toto because she claims it’s dangerous. Dorothy lashes out at her, ‘You go away or I… I'll bite you myself!’ before she is told to go to her room. Auntie Em, almost loses it too, ‘Almira Gulch, just because you own half the county doesn't mean that you have the power to run the rest of us. For twenty-three years, I've been dying to tell you what I thought of you! And now... well, being a Christian woman, I can't say it!’ and she too leaves the room in tears. Only the uncle stays on, and when Ms Gulch tries to justify her position, he just looks at her, sighs and says nothing. There’s a Christian man for you.

There’s a type of Christian who feels ‘the white man’s burden’ to go and tell the heathen (these being not people of color any more than he might be a white man, racially) how wrong they are about everything—their life style and beliefs, how sinful they are in their ‘natural’ state—and what to do ‘to get right with God.’ This may have worked in times and places where people really were backward and illiterate, but it doesn’t work here and now, nor is it appropriate. People can read. Whether they go to church or not, read the Bible or not, they’ve been exposed to ‘the Western heritage of faith and reason’ sufficiently to know when they’re doing immoral acts, or at least falling under Judaeo-Christian censure.

It must be a gift to know when to speak, and when to keep silent, because not many people have it. I know I don’t. But not having that gift is no excuse for not trying to speak well, that is, to know when a word well spoken will avert disaster, and when a word wrongly spoken might create one. This, of course, applies to acts as well as words. I have been hurt too many times to even count by those who, trying to correct me, have failed in their attempt, and driven the knife deeper. And I have done the same to others, more than I can count. This seems to be the human condition, and one of the chief defects of the natural man. I can only hope that I will be forgiven, but I know for sure I will not be unless I have forgiven others.

In the short time that lies before us, brethren, let us love, and forgive, one another, and in peace let us pray to the Lord, ‘Lord, have mercy!’

The Great Illusion

‘…We do not appear to travel well. [My wife] comes up with migraine headaches with air pressure changes. I have my own phobias about the U.S. so I tend to make an emotional mess of any visits south of here. I am appalled at what the U.S. has become. The Nazis have nothing on what the U.S. is becoming and what it is yet to become. That is likely a longer story than I care to discuss right now…’

A friend from my college days with whom I have come back into contact after a period of literally forty years wrote me the above in response to my question about whether he and his wife have traveled much. They, along with a handful of other friends and myself, migrated to Canada in the early 1970’s with the intention of setting up an intentional community, a commune. They also migrated to avoid the Vietnam War draft. My number in the draft lottery was too high, and I was never called. We were all student radicals, at least we thought we were, and also spiritual seekers. As it turned out, my career as a student radical was a shallow copying of others, what we have since learned to call being ‘a poser.’ All of us, after an initial tangle with ‘New Age’ religions, turned to Christ and became Christians. Me, at first an Episcopalian and then, after twelve years, a Greek Orthodox. My friends, various denominations ranging from Pentecostal to Roman Catholic, and anything in between.

The onset of old age brings with it a clarity of vision unknown to the years of youth or even middle age to some, and to others, the confirmation of ‘truths they always knew.’ It has been my observation, now that I am here at the threshold of my ‘golden years,’ that people really don’t change. It seems that we remain in some sense till our life’s end what we always were, and the end of our lives proves our beginning. This is expressed in a different way in the Bible, something like ‘by how a man ends we can know what he was,’ though I cannot at the moment cite a particular verse or book. This flies in the face of the current wisdom of Christianity which states that when one accepts Christ, one becomes a new creature. One changes. By this is usually meant, all of one’s former life is cast aside and gradually replaced with the ‘Christ life’ because now Christ lives in him. All this has the support of scripture, and of course, it is true, though not for all of us, maybe not even for most. The object of Christianity for many people thus becomes, whether consciously or unconsciously, the acquisition of virtues and—I hate to say it—material increase. Once these ends are sufficiently achieved, one either ‘rests on his laurels’ or leaves Christianity altogether. This is what I call ‘the Great Illusion.’

Where I stand now in my relationship to Jesus Christ is the same place I stood when He found and chose me as a disciple, at the age of twenty-four. In one year’s time it will have been forty years. It seems to me that I have the same joy, and wonder, and enthusiasm for the Lord that I was given at the moment of my ‘epiphany’ experience. That may or may not be true. Like everyone else who has ever been born, I am a great actor, and I also like to believe my own tales. My life will be revealed more and more for what and who I am or was as I move closer to my own bodily death. This does not bother me, because I see that it is how ‘Judgment Day’ comes upon us, and if that’s how God wants it, I am content. In fact, I want what I am to be revealed, because I am confident that He who made me, called me, and sent me, will in the end redeem me. ‘I was saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved.’ This is what I mean when I say ‘in God I trust.’

For me, Christianity is not a program of self-help or moral improvement. It isn’t a regimen of discipline that will make me worthy to ‘acquire the Holy Spirit.’ It doesn’t depend on church membership, on my personal confession of faith, or on the good deeds I do. It’s not God’s stamp of approval on all my petty prejudices, phobias, and preferences. It doesn’t give me the right or authority to command, direct, or worst of all, judge those whom I may consider inferior to me (though they may only be different).

Christianity is to sit at the feet of Jesus, to listen to, no, to hang on His every word. It is to leave my water jar at the well of negativity and go to Him who is the well of positivity, that is, of indefatigable goodness, of life, temporal and eternal, and having received that which only He can offer, to give away, to distribute, to all others, that same goodness He has given me.

Light and life, it all amounts to this. If I am a Christian, is that what others experience from me? Is my life a bushel that has hidden the lamp, or is it a city set on a hill that cannot be hid? We want to defend and excuse ourselves when we fail to be ‘the light of the world’ that Jesus tells us we are. Something always gets in the way, but ‘our heart is in the right place,’ and in a pinch, when pressed, we will ‘give our testimony’ and confess before men that ‘Jesus is Lord’ verbally, come what may. Yes, we are convinced that one sentence of religious jargon, especially if it comes straight out of ‘God’s Word,’ will make up for all the negativity, judgmentalism, prejudice, and uncritical self-justification that we pride ourselves in, calling it our ‘Christian walk.’

Small wonder, then, that the ‘unsaved’ world prays to the God it doesn’t believe in but instinctively and regretfully knows is there, ‘Lord, save us from your people.’ The Great Illusion instead of the Great Commission. How can it be that the world understands better what the Truth is than we do? We, the Christian people, like the Ninevites, not knowing our right hand from our left, numbering in our millions, not to mention all our cattle.