Remembering

Mother’s Day has been a kind of ‘Remembrance Day’ for me, it seems, for most of my adult life. My beloved mother reposed on the 25th of November, 1986, twenty-nine years ago.

It seems a lifetime and a world away. The proof of the resurrection of Christ in me is her faith, in which she now is safely harbored in life eternal, waiting for the rest of us to arrive, her whole life in God now poured out for others as she always wanted, but could not achieve, on this earth. Out of the sound of her accuser's cries, she rests in the paradise of God. Αιωνια σου η μνημη, αξιομακαριστος και αειμνηστος αδελφη ημων. May your memory be eternal, dear sister, for you are worthy of blessedness and everlasting memory. Może pamięć wieczna, droga siostro, bo jesteś godzien szczęścia i wiecznej pamięci.
I post this at the clock time of my mother's repose, just as I marked it in my Jerusalem Bible, after parsing off the psalms for the twenty-fifth day, the day of her birth (on Christmas) and her death (Tuesday of Thanksgiving Week).

Though these wretches have almost done for me,

I have never abandoned Your precepts.

Lovingly intervene, give me life,

and I will observe your decrees.

Lasting to eternity, Your Word,

Yahweh, unchanging in the heavens.

Psalm 119:87-89

corresponding to 7:30 p.m., November 25, 1986

Biography

My mom was the second child of her parents, Pawel Milewski and Maria Kozinska, the eldest of three sisters, and she grew up in inner city Chicago in the 1920's and 30's. The family was Roman Catholic from Warsaw, Poland. Their house was in a Mafia infested neighborhood, and my uncle, her brother, married a Sicilian. The household was very cultural in a Central European bourgeois sort of way, and it didn't change after the war.

As a child staying there in the 1950's, everything was just as it was in the 20's. I always felt it to be a magical place, another world filled with wonderful things I never saw anywhere else… persian rugs in profusion, rare tropical birds uncaged on their perches and other birds, just as rare, in their cages with the little doors often open, so they could exercise their wings at will, plastic covered overstuffed couches, my grandmother's collections of rare dolls, her little family of rare dogs… pekingese, pomeranian, spits, chihuahua… the half-lot garden which I remember now as being a veritable paradise to explore but which was only a strip of ground two and half yards wide that flanked the house on one side, where the lawn swing was.

There too was grandpa's basement hide-out, his workshop, and the little bedroom in the back porch that had a secret connexion back to the kitchen through a high windowlike opening where a large cookie jar was placed on the ledge, reachable from the kitchen or the bedroom. One always hoped to be invited to stay the night, because of those cookies that could be had without asking.
This is where my mother grew up.

I love this old photo from her first holy communion. Mom is the girl on the right. It would have been taken around 1928. The clothes the kids are wearing, and their non-chalant poses, are so cute. It's nice to know that Mom’s crowd was a lot like ‘the Little Rascals’

My mother did not have a happy life, but rather one with a lot of personal tragedy, and as a result she fell away from Christian community from about age 40, and became even more isolated. She and her siblings were a violent bunch, and what could have been a virtue in her, a vibrant and athletic personal energy, gradually decayed into a life of unending vendetta, and a kind of mental illness set in. She made her marriage unendurable, and it ended. Eventually her devotion to her children drove all of them off except me, except that I moved away, first to Canada, then to Oregon, and never to return. So she wrote me often.

From a letter dated January 4, 1974…

I’m always and forever thinking about God, and never—not once—have I blamed God for my unlucky life. Just knowing that God and I know this to be true is what’s keeping me on till God wants me. Even if everyone on the face of the earth ignores me or is angry at me, I don’t care. I have God if no one else, and I’m happy. I can pray and talk to God and I know He hears me. I’m always praying for everyone, but I don’t go telling them, and I ask God to forgive them, because they don’t know any better.

I do not demand from God. I only feel I got what I had coming, and I will get what I deserve. There is only One God, and He only knows. I even thank God for all the bad luck I’ve had. Hard to believe, but it’s the honest truth. And again I say, God and I only know this. I expect to be punished by God, if I need it, but also forgiven, if I deserve it.

I really wish I could be a nun, even at this late age. By God’s standards I am a sinner, but God understands and forgives me, I know. All I ask God is to help me do the right things, to be with me always, there to help me in this way, and to forgive me and give me another chance. All I can do in return is live a life like God wants us to. I never ask God to give me something, only to help me and show me the way to do my best, and never to give up.

You see, I’m not without sin, but I don’t blame God. I ask Him to stand by me and never lose faith in me. I can’t help myself, and maybe I’m taking longer [than I should], but I’ll always keep on trying, because I know God is with me.

I could say more, but I’ll close on this note. We’re all sinners. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And from another letter, written September 2, 1974, these words about her repentance…

I sit and think all the time, how we only have one life, and how people can really waste it, like I did. The only time I feel so good is when I’m trying to go to sleep. I talk to God, and I just can’t explain how I feel and what I see, how it will be when I’m gone. You know, I feel so very happy, and I’m not afraid. God will remember me and forgive me, because I never blamed God for my bad life. I only remember what was good, and how happy I was. The rest that happened was only when I went off [on] the side road, and it took me longer to get back. Remember, it was [when we lived] on Ross Street, you were telling and showing us about that road, and how one can stray. It took me longer [to get back] because the devil was stronger than me. I feel I could have done something sooner and will never forgive myself for straying that long, but I know God will forgive me. So now, all there is for me is the straight ahead road, and I’m sure not turning either way. It’s too close to the end to let the devil win again.

If you’ve read this far, I thank you, brethren, for helping me stop and remember the soul of this dear sister, my mother.

False witness

Truth and falsehood. Telling the truth and telling a lie. ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’ We may sidestep some of the other commandments of the Ten, explain them away, say they don’t apply anymore. But not this one. Everyone knows when they’re lying. ‘I was just fibbing,’ we say, or even excuse ourselves with class, calling it ‘a little white lie.’ Well, then, what’s a big black lie?

Long ago I noticed that, when lies are public, when they are perpetrated for ‘a greater cause,’ or for ‘national security,’ or even to ‘protect the innocent,’ the greater they are, the more believable they become. ‘It MUST be true! No one would lie about THAT!’ maybe because we know we couldn’t, or maybe the person making the statement in question is ‘above suspicion’ for social or political or religious status.

We know, if we look back at history, from recent times to ages past, that the biggest liars are the most successful. On that score, any deviant from an established religion is going to be considered a liar. Many ancient cults built on lies (this is distinctly different from myths, by the way) have disappeared. Their lies weren’t big enough, or perhaps bigger lies replaced them. Thus, the religious history of the world.

In Western civilization dominated by a persistent monotheism, the three big ones (religions, I’m not saying the three biggest lies, or maybe I am) seem to be as inside each other as a stack of nesting dolls. To the Jew, Christianity is a lie, because the apostles lied about the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. To the Christians, Muhammad lied, because he said that Jesus didn’t die on a cross, but only ascended.

There is a flip side to the success of the biggest lies. Truth also can be successful, but it takes far greater effort. It is almost never the work of just one man, but a composite of many lives. True, it sometimes takes an individual to start it, a catalyst so to speak. But then catalysts can also be liars. The world is full of almost nothing else. Lies catch fire more easily than truths. But only truths never go out.

As a Christian, I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected, along with all the other beliefs about Him that are stated in the Symbol of Nicæa. I respect the Jews, even if they think my fathers lied, and lied grandly. I find the Jews, by the way, to be the most truthful people on earth—when they’re being honest! As for Muslims, Mormons, Millennialists, and a host of other M and M’s, I have my reservations.

Not about the believers themselves, mind you. But I’m speaking about lies, big ones, and ones that are successful at finding believers. Even Christianity in many of its forms belongs in the ‘M’ group I just mentioned. Though ‘all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved,’ that’s no guarantee there won’t be repercussions in this world and the next, if you happen to be one of those who let loose a big one.

Another thing I have found out is, people can say a lot of true things without speaking the truth. This happens all the time. I know I even do it, though not until I have had more time for reflection. I know this kind of lie when I hear it from pulpit and pedestal, whether it comes out of black mouth or white, red neck or blue blood. For me as a Christian, it proves the words of Jesus, ‘My sheep know my voice.’

Looking back at secular history, almost every government (those that have succeeded) was built on just such a vague mixture of truths and lies as I describe above (they all sound like true things, of course, but they’re not really the truth). Am I going to except the majestic birth of my own republic, these United States? Um, uh-uh. We’ve been just too successful to be built entirely on truth. Let my stoning begin.

True things, yes, can be preached, taught, written, proclaimed, sung about, even forced on you with the ease and impunity of a hidden rape, but only the truth settles on us with secure, confident meekness, providential in action, needless of everything that goes against our free will and our human nature, and though it may take a lifetime to sink in, it proves to be the twin of what our conscience knows is right.

Truth is what we want, what I want, because we know that’s what we’re made of. Truth is being, however and by whomever it has arisen, and it can be recognized by its chief operation, Love. What is true really works. Lies, on the other hand, especially the big ones, don’t work. They have to cover up their failures with more of their kind. Seeming successful, the price for their success is, in fact, failure.

We hear from the preachers that our country (I mean, these United States) is on the brink of disaster because of our deep, unrepenting moral decay. They point to our crimes against humanity in allowing abortion, our outrageous perfidy in permitting ‘gay’ marriage. No, brothers. We are in far greater trouble than that. We’ve lied to the Holy Spirit worse than Annas and Sapphira. What will become of us?

He is, and ever shall be

Infallible, a dangerous word.
Unchangeable, the same.
What is this ‘unchanging Orthodoxy’ we hear them tell of?

The former, like an idol carried about by the uninformed, as they apply it to popes’ pronouncements, or to divine and sacred scriptures, or as they try to out-ape each other’s flattery of the Church, is easily toppled from its pedestal. Christ does not say anywhere that anyone or anything is infallible. He only says of the Church that Hades shall never prevail against it, and of Peter, that after he recovers from his denial, he must strengthen his brothers.

The latter, as for unchangeable, this requires erudition and discernment, for much that we claim as unchangeable is not, and as for unchanging, on earth only Christ is that, just as He is in heaven.

It would be a difficult debate to decide which of the dangerous words is more lethal, which has distorted the Message of Christ more, but both ideas have led the Church down a world-conquering path far removed from the victory that Christ has won for us when He was lifted up to draw all men to Himself, when He descended to the depths to capture souls to present to His Father, and when He emerged from the bridal chamber of His all-holy tomb.

A new and bright age is always ready to open before us. We are no less at the forefront of Christ’s call and His commands than were His first disciples. He is as present with us as He was with them during the forty days between His resurrection and His ascension. He is constantly with us, among us, though like them we often don’t recognize it is He who comes. We think that the world goes on as it always has, and solace ourselves by what we think infallible or unchanging, and miss Him as He walks by.

For only One is infallible, unchangeable because unchanging, that is Christ, but because He is all in all, because in Him we live and move and have our being, it is not in our thoughts, our ideas, that we must take refuge, but in His, in what He, the living and life-giving God, speaks to us here and now, for beyond all human expectation, He has indeed risen from the dead, and He is in our midst.

He is, and ever shall be.

For the whole human race

It is really almost unbelievable how easy Christianity is, compared with other religions and philosophies. Get past the doctrinal and dogmatic molehills and you arrive quite simply at the mountain of God. The child in you remains childlike: you say your prayers and let faith sustain you, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…’ The man or woman in you is allowed to grow and mature in unhindered freedom: you follow a living God whose power and presence permeate your world, which unlocks a door to the living Word, the Bible, in which you live beyond the tangles of interpretation. What to the world outside seems rigorous and unreasonable, is to you ‘my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ Where others are deluded and demoralized by the dizzying descent of daily bad news, you are simply uplifted, not in theory only, but in reality, by the daily good news, ‘Christ is risen from the dead, trampling death by death…’ His single act of ultimate submission has reversed every downward movement in the universe, of which mortality seems the worst. The Christian knows this inwardly without verbally articulating it.

In the Holy Gospels the mysteries of the universe are disclosed to be nothing other than what a man can do when he allows himself to be what he is by nature—love. Made in the image of God, as revealed in an ancient story that the world mocks and the ignorant try to fit into their puny brains instead of just listening, the God whose Oneness is not compromised by being Three, the Christian knows what is ahead for him when he embarks on the voyage of discipleship, ‘you have only one teacher, the Messiah.’ Turning to those Holy Gospels he finds the pattern on which he was formed, what is invisible to the world becomes visible to him, in the life and death of Jesus Christ. Turning to what follows in the glorious Book, he finds every path clearly marked by the lovers of the Way, and so simply that whether he be a child or a man, he can read, understand, and follow the signs, without argument, without doubt, without trepidation. No matter where the Christian opens the Holy Gospels or the Apostles, their acts and epistles, he can no more miss their message than he can miss his own reflection in a mirror.

This is why we are always refreshed, whenever we open and read. In the sacred pages that have defied time, we are brought near to hear His divine voice, lacking nothing that His first hearers were granted, so that we too can be joined with Him in the life of the Holy Trinity.

God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race, and taught us that what we have to do is to give up everything that does not lead to God, and all our worldly ambitions. We must be self-restrained and live good and religious lives here in this present world while we are waiting for the blessing which will come with the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Christ Jesus. He sacrificed himself for us in order to set us free from all wickedness and to purify a people so that it could be His very own and would have no ambition except to do good.
Titus 2:11-14

Yes, it is really almost unbelievable how easy Christianity is…

For mine eyes have seen

I read recently, that there are about two hundred million galaxies in the observable universe, and that each galaxy is composed of millions of stars like our own sun. The same article made the astonishing claim that this means, there are more stars in the universe than the number of grains of sand on the planet earth. The scientists who discover these things also tell us, that everything in the known universe emerged from a singularity of infinite density and in size very nearly (if not) nothing, and that in the first unimaginably small fraction of the first second of existence, the ‘big bang,’ an event that initiated the expansion of that singularity, had already pushed the limits of all created matter and energy to a circumference far beyond the outermost orbits in our solar system. They did not see it happen. They do not claim to understand what caused the singularity to explode (if that is the right word). It is on the basis of experimentally derived physical ‘laws’ and the logic of (very much) higher mathematics, that they say these things, trying to create models of natural processes that fit human thought patterns.

Now, it has taken scientists about eight thousand years to arrive at this point. Not much progress was made in the first seventy-nine hundred years, but in the last hundred or so, they have finally arrived at the place where they are today. What they tell us about the creation of the universe takes for granted that everything that exists is evolving. People knew this long before Darwin applied the idea to his theories on natural selection, the survival of the fittest, which have come to be known in the aggregate as ‘the theory of evolution.’ Now, I believe in the first kind of evolution, and am even open to the possibility that the second kind (that of living entities, including man) is also true. But my belief is only that—a belief, or even an opinion, based on the best information I find available. It is still only a belief. What creation is, what existence is, neither I nor anyone else can really know, at least not as we now are.

There are other ‘technologies,’ if I may call them that, which have arisen and coexisted with the scientific method, even from antiquity. In a very general way, and for lack of a more precise term, I have called them ‘spiritual technologies.’ Ironically, though, they are not really spiritual, well, not exactly. Scientists use devices which they have made to measure what can be measured, and using logic and mathematics, have developed our knowledge of the physical universe. Spiritual technologs (I have to create a new word—sorry!) use the human being as their only device of discovery, and then proceed to do exactly what scientists do, with the exception of using higher mathematics, they logically organize their discoveries into systems. I said that calling this ‘spiritual technology’ is ironic, and indeed it is, because this body of knowledge is still primarily concerned with nature, with physical realities.

Because the only device or tool of discovery is the human being, in singular and en masse, the body of knowledge is as holistic as a human being is. Not everything about a human being is discoverable by the scientific method. Where that discipline ends, another ancient one begins—theology. Yet even that term is imprecise, because it is one sided. Theology by the meaning of the term should be the body of knowledge about God, but it is actually only about God in His interactions with man, in other words, about nine-tenths about human nature, and one-tenth (if even that much) about Divine Nature. Still, it is what it is. To the scientist God hides Himself absolutely. To the spiritual technolog He reveals Himself—in human flesh!—so amply and pervasively that He can be overlooked. ‘What forest? All I can see are trees!’ But for eight thousand years this other discipline of discovery, call it what you will, has delivered to us moderns at least as much, if not more, information about the universe.

The universe was created out of nothing by ‘X’ in a series of time sequences or ages, except for the last and current age, in which all instantaneous creations has abruptly stopped. We who live in this current age have not ever seen anything like the instantaneous creation that occurred in the previous ages, so we can only conclude that things just don’t work that way. Everything evolves. Just as we have noticed evolution, that is, change, happening all around us and within us for the past eight thousand years, we just assume that’s how it’s always been. The human being as instrument of discovery, though, has given those who thus use it, more information than that which can be measured and weighed externally. Something inside us, if we care to look—which is what we were created to do: we are the eyes, ears and mind of the living universe—something inside us has discovered other realities, even the ultimate Reality by coming into contact with It within our own being.

This is a place where space and time dilate until they become meaningless. Size, or better yet, scale is irrelevant. Zero and infinity are experienced as extremities of the here and now. We go to a lightless field on a cloudless night and look up. Our eyes see, gradually more and more, the visible universe. There are stars beyond all reckoning, and distances unfathomable. Yet something inside us, comforting, says, ‘All that you can see is still contained within the plates of your own skull.’ Like a young Mother who once bore within her womb the Child who is pre-eternal God, we know inwardly that we are ‘wider than the heavens,’ and that the Sign we bear within us is the key to comprehending the whole universe. There is no being at all without meaning, and it is this meaning that makes all life possible, and all endeavors, even encompassing every discovery of science that has ever been or shall be made. Encompassing all, giving meaning to all, revealing that everything is a function of the one we call ‘X.’

Yes, once not long ago, only a few centuries, there was a single pursuit—discovering who or what ‘X’ is, and that pursuit uncovered everything else that exists. This pursuit is the main function of the human mind, an intelligence which inhabits the body organ we call the brain. The brain was created, or evolved—whichever you prefer it doesn’t matter—principally so the universe could discover its reason for being. Anything else that the brain does is ‘thrown in’ as a bonus. Well, almost. Brains can’t live in a vacuum, at least not yet. The mind lives in a brain which lives in a body. We live in houses for the same reason, that same Reason whose pattern is indelibly imprinted on the whole universe, that Reason which wants us to discover It. Yes, I am speaking of that ‘X’ again. Bodies were made for the brains to live in, so that the mind could use everything else in our human nature to do what it was made to do—discover.

Whatever or whoever we call ‘X’ in any particular place or moment of time, it is the same, operates the same, and welcomes all the same, envyless, unprideful, inexhaustibly merciful is its nature, and for what we are, it is the perfect fit. Everything points to it. We only have to look. I termed it ‘X’ to emphasize that I don’t know how it will fit you, and to give you time and space to find it. As for me, I know who, not what, He is, but not why, except that everything He has made calls me by name and welcomes me to His side. Something in me has disclosed the door of the age to come, and to enter that door I want to be ready, as ready as him who said, ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to Thy Word, for mine eyes have seen…’

Finally become human

‘Human beings are creatures of habit.’ I have to put this thought in quotes because the idea is not mine. The whole of humanity is its author, whether verbally or out of experience. This fact of our nature works both to our welfare and our demise, just as everything else about us does. The appearance of civilization, as we call it, came about by the natural selection of habits. Good habits produce good civilizations; bad ones, the reverse, or no civilization at all. It all depends on where you draw the line.

Looking at civilizations and world cultures with this in mind usually makes us think that ours is better than most others, maybe even the best, or, if we are habitual malcontents, will make us dismiss ours as corrupt, bankrupt, or savage. Youth is inexperienced while still laying the foundations of habit, and so does not suffer from pessimism as much as Age does. Age sometimes dismisses optimism because it’s been roofing its life with the leftovers of bad habits yielded to in careless Youth.

This is the human condition.

Now, Christ has appeared, you know, the God-man that we Christians say we believe in. He interrupts our trains of thought and our chain gangs of habit, overturns our money-changer tables, and shoos us out of the confines of make-believe spirituality. We are dragged kicking and screaming as babies to the baptismal bucket, or as pensive, intentional adults to the tank, the former habitless, the latter besmirched with banal sins, and after that initial washing, find ourselves just as habit-formed as ever.

There is a difference.

Christ is not only the Savior of the world—of anyone who listens to His words and does what He commands—but knowing our nature, He has provided us with a new roster of, not laws, but habits, so that we may finally be ‘finished’ beings, not mud-clay spirit-breathed animals kept unfinished by our almost involuntary—and therefore, almost blameless—bad habits. The way He has provided us with this new roster of habits is by His establishment of the Church. Yes, even the institution, maybe, especially.

For the Church—I am here speaking in a special sense, meaning what is called ‘Orthodoxy’, yet without pitting it against other Christian associations—for the Church has very quickly, and from its beginnings in apostolic times, produced a universal and pervasive body of wisdom called ‘the Holy Tradition.’ This is composed of all of its liturgical life—prayer, worship, teaching, customs—a vast array of habit-forming mechanisms for us habit-formed people, so that we can become ‘finished’ humans, if we want to.

When modern people think of the Church, theirs is picture-thinking, much of it conditioned by experiences good or bad, expressed in prejudices for or against. They see it as an institution, whether positively or negatively. Even believers who regularly ‘go to church’ can fail to apprehend that when they enter the temple they are coming to Christ, the Only Teacher of mankind, whose real Presence is conveyed in the liturgical cycle, designed by Him to develop in us the habits that will make us human.

Yes, the Church is an institution. It is a social organism. It connects people. It unites them for mutual welfare and good endeavor. As an institution, it wears all the defects of humanity’s bad habits, though not all at once or all the time. There is still something about it—even most of its detractors admit this—that transcends its failures and keeps it going. What is this ‘something’? It is that divine and holy Liturgy, not just the Sunday service but all of its accumulated liturgical life, and that is ‘Christ in our midst.’

This is why it is unfortunate that people neglect the services of the Church, though at times they do so with good reason. People are not stupid. They know when they are being treated as infants. When those who offer the divine services are themselves only ‘performing’, they ‘prevent others from entering the Kingdom of God without going in themselves’ (Luke 11:52). They speed-speak the psalter. They keep to the Greek, which very few understand. They chant so no one can follow along and sing. Bad, bad habits.

Then, is it any wonder that people, being creatures of habit that we are, find ourselves drifting into ruts of earth-bound profanity instead of being raised by Christ who teaches, heals, upholds and saves us, and delivers us into the heaven-bound way of true humanity? The Church’s most precious mystery is the ‘whole Christ’ who lives in the praises of His people when we worship ‘in spirit and in truth’ which is He. Let us, then, beloved brethren, priests and people, allow ourselves to be formed by good habits, by Christ.

He is the Only Lover and Teacher of mankind,
and it is through listening to Him and doing what He commands
that we finally become human.

And your neighbor as yourself

In debates, if you say a few words about religion you will prevail. Let the person who has a different opinion give free rein to his thoughts and speak as much as he likes. Let him sense that he is addressing himself to a calm and uncontentious person. Influence him through your graciousness and prayer and then speak briefly. You achieve nothing if you speak heatedly and tell him, for example, ‘What you’re saying is untrue, a downright lie!’ What will you achieve? Be as sheep among wolves. What should you do? Show indifference outwardly, but be praying inwardly. Be prepared, know what you are talking about and speak boldly and to the point, but with saintliness, meekness and prayer. But in order to be able to do this, you must become saints.

—Elder Porphyrios, Wounded by Love, p. 188

These words of our beloved elder certainly strike us as true, but let's not make the mistake of thinking they only apply to religious discussions with others of different viewpoints or beliefs. No, brethren. His advice is universally applicable to every exchange we have with others. We have personally known people who follow the way that the elder describes. We consider them to be saints and excuse ourselves for not being able to do likewise. We are too weak, too human, to be able to be so self-effacing. But when we see others acting this way, we know we have seen and experienced a glimpse of true Orthodoxy, that way of life which is gentle though firm, loving though unindulgent, forgiving though not abandoning the truth. We call this 'the Orthodox way,' and are proud that we have such people among us.

Yet, it isn't 'the Orthodox way' though it is in fact what makes Orthodoxy so attractive. Where else can you find an environment where judgment is minimal, mercy abundant, knowledge humble, wisdom silent and profound? Yes, this is 'Orthodoxy at its best' but we cannot claim it as exclusive to ourselves. And this behavior is not universally applicable or always applied. Where would the Christian faith be if the Fathers of the ecumenical councils had exercised such meekness with heretics? Read the transcripts of some of the councils and you will be shocked by the violence of their arguments and personal attacks, as they winnowed for truth upon the threshing-floor of doctrine. They had to do what was indicated by the moment, and God made use of their weaknesses as well as their strengths to safeguard us.

Back to the virtue of which the elder speaks, to be silent out of strength, powerful through prayer, untroubled by opposition because of irreversible certainty, and trusting of the Lord who giving us free choice yet protects, preserves and saves all who turn to Him. Yes, as Christ teaches, 'be as sheep among wolves,' or in another place, 'be as cunning as serpents and as innocent as doves.' What all this is leading us to, ever so gently by the meek Lord Himself, is to make us understand that there really is no 'us and them,' that 'what the Lord has joined together, let no man tear asunder.' We think this phrase applies only to marriage, but then, what is marriage if not a special instance of the unity that underlies all our being? Marriage, and the life of the Church, are both examples of the life of the Holy Trinity, 'one in essence and undivided.'

Christ prays the Father—not just in the gospel according to John, but throughout all time and in every place, unceasingly—'that they all may be one, even as You and I are One.' What He is doing is not asking the Father to bestow upon us something that is alien to our nature—our true and original nature, that is—but to open our eyes to see the Divine Image which we in fact are, the unbroken, undivided, Image of God, that which He became a human being to reveal to us. He says, 'If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father,' but also to see Christ is to see Adam before the Fall. Everything that Jesus teaches us about ourselves leads us to only one conclusion: our neighbor is our brother, is our other self, and no one hates himself, no one considers himself his enemy, but he loves him and seeks his good. This is where the elder's words also take us.

The human race is a single organism, united in essence and undivided, as God sees us. How else can He love each of us as though we were His only creature? The universe's Divine Spouse loves His Bride and in the tunnel of time is perfecting her, preparing her for Himself, making her also Divine. Though the tunnel can pass through deep darkness, at its end is Light, and that Light can be reached by no other way than that which He has revealed to us—the Cross. Let's take up that Cross, brethren, because it's not heavy like His earthly cross was, nor are we mocked and despised on our way as He was, nor do we bear it, nor will we die on it, as He did, and does, for the sins of the world. No, my brethren. He has done the hard part, ours is the easy. 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

And your neighbor as yourself.'

True or false

A pedantic rationalism, nominally subservient to the scriptures, is what we have turned the good news of Jesus Christ into, when we use the Message as a weapon to make the nations submit to us.

It is easier for us to see this perversion of religion when we look at anyone other than ourselves, whether in the historical record, or in the contemporary world: The coerced conversion of the late Roman Empire under Theodosius I and his successors; the Catholic crusades of the Middle Ages under Innocent III and his successors, first against internal heretics like the Albigenses in Provence, then against the Saracens in the Levant; the forced de-Romanisation of northwestern Europe under vigorous Protestant princes, and the subversion of Orthodoxy in the lands of the Polish Commonwealth by sword and fire missionaries; and today, the violent resurgence of fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East and its eating away of Christian Europe in the Muslim diaspora.

We recognize religious bigotry and fanaticism when it comes from others, but ourselves, we are faultless. ‘We’re only promoting the gospel. It’s not our fault if we offend anyone. It’s not we that are offensive. It’s the gospel, which convicts sinners, and so unrepentant despite our preaching, they hate us. We’re the martyrs.’

Fortunately for us, the Lord has provided signs, prophetic in their dastardly rectitude, of fallen men hiding themselves under the rocks of self-righteousness. In America, the most famous is the family of ‘Pastor’ Fred Phelps, recently deceased in a state of excommunication from the ‘church’ he founded, Westboro Baptist Church.

It seems that all the paths of religious extremism lead to this kind of organization, at least, if followed flawlessly. It can be an embarrassment to other, less lethal, expressions of Calvinist fundamentalism, but it’s certainly worth noticing that certain forms of ‘Christianity’ have a tendency to morph into unrecognizable dysangelisms.

It is small comfort that most mainstream forms of contemporary Christianity reject the use of force in the promotion of their doctrinal biases, because the very fact of these biases is the disguised undermining of the Message they claim to present. The churches of today would be just as unrecognizable to Jesus Christ and His holy apostles as would the churches, as institutions, of the past seventeen centuries. Those who tell us that there was a great apostasy of the Church in ancient times that must now or never be righted are almost correct—almost, but in essence not, correct.

Nothing has happened other than what Christ Himself teaches us, that tares have been secretly planted in the wheat field of Holy Church. Not the field nor the wheat are any less what they are, in fact they are even more so, by contrast to the invasive and contaminating weeds, the tares of the parable.

In the same way, the Church of Jesus Christ—the real Church, not just some denomination by that name—has existed from the beginning, is now, and shall continue as it is until the Day of the Lord, and the great winnowing of the threshing floor. She—the Holy Church as Christ’s Bride is spoken of in feminine gender—has lived in the world since the day of Pentecost and is alive now, diversely visible yet one, and though visibly divided.

‘After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands’ (Revelation 7:9).

She is there in the company of Christ and the holy apostles. She is there in the company of the holy martyrs. She is there in the company of the holy fathers in and out of councils. She is there in the saints suffering in the cause of true righteousness, in the face of all oppressions, whether from inside or outside the walls of the Holy Church.

It is she whom holy John the Revelator addresses when he writes, ‘Through our union in Jesus I am your brother and share your sufferings, your kingdom, and all you endure… for having preached God’s word and witnessed for Jesus’ (Revelation 1:9).

Brethren, let us confess ourselves members of her, True Church of True Man, Holy Church of Holy God, for there is no other. And escaping the jaws and jagged fangs of the Beast that tears and consumes both the bodies and the souls of them it devours, let us firmly resist that empty, triumphant rationalism that has sullied the name of Christianity and diluted its power—that is, the might of its only weapon, the Holy Cross—and return in real victory with the Lord ‘who is, who was, who is to come’ who has trampled death by death, and to those in the tombs—yes, that is us!—given life.

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!’

Building on the rock

‘God who becomes one of us precisely to put religion to death...’ [Waiting is]

You know, I feel the idea, but can’t grasp it logically, put it into words. For myself, and more, for sharing/witnessing for others when the time comes. Can you describe the difference between the religion of Christianity and what Christ actually created and wanted us to be? Again, I feel it, but can't formulate my thoughts, put it into words.

It is perhaps too simple to be put into words.

Religion is an attitude of fear of God (not awe, but real fear) coupled with an anxiety to propitiate Him, to buy Him off, so that we can have time to ourselves, so that we can think our thoughts when we’re on our time. We hope He will be satisfied with the moments we give Him, but we’re never sure, and so we stress over it in various ways.

Another kind of religion begins as I have described, but eventually devolves into a pious fraud, when we find out (or think that we’ve found out) that God, if He really is there, couldn’t care less about us and what we do, but we continue going through the motions for a variety of reasons, some of them still related to a kind of anxiety, only this time, fear lest we be thought irreverent by others.

Both of these kinds of religion, as I have written elsewhere, ‘end at the feet of Christ.’

How Christ intends us to be, or rather, what He calls us into, is above all else a close, personal relationship with Himself, mediated through the events and thoughts with which He fills our lives.

Of course we don’t see Him physically, but we can read His acts and His words both in His little book, the Bible, and His big book, the world around us. When we understand this, and then begin to do and say the same things we see Him doing and hear Him saying, we are ‘building on the rock’ not on sand, lives that are infused with paradise even now, both in ourselves and in those around us.

Like the apostles, we no longer think we can earn heaven or salvation as did the righteous among the Jews. That was the basis of their religion.

Instead, learning to live in close friendship and discipleship with Jesus our Lord, Master, Savior and God, and following Him, we begin to get used to heaven, we start forming the kind of spiritual lungs to breathe the air of paradise, and the musculature to climb the mountains of God. Yes, we begin to get used to heaven by imitating it here, by living the life of heaven on earth.

This is so radically different from mere religion and so much better, that we forget all about religion even while we continue to practice it. What we do in church or about it may not look any different from what the religious do and look like, at least within the context of ‘church,’ but not only there, but everywhere we find ourselves, we radiate the gospel, the good news—

Christ risen from the dead,
Christ within us and in our midst,
among us and for us, over, under, around and through us,
Christ the tie that binds us to the Father
and in that binding soothing all our sores
and healing our every sickness.

Ours and, through our witness, everyone else’s, without exception, not limited to or divided from any human being, regardless of what they think or believe or even do. To do as Christ commands, to ‘be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,’ this is no more religion than is Christ’s raising of Lazarus, or His giving sight to the man born blind, or His forgiveness of adulterers and thieves, or His dying tortured, rejected and alone on the Cross.

He tells us, ‘You will do even greater things than I have done, because I am going to the Father.’

These ‘greater things’ He gives us to do—for it is indeed He who gives us them, not we ourselves—cannot possibly be what we see in Christian ‘religion,’ and yet we find that precisely those who have, like Peter and the holy apostles, been given ‘the keys of the Kingdom,’ unlike them do not unlock lives, their own or those of others, but jewel themselves, or bait or threaten others. It’s obvious that they no longer even know what they hold in their hands. The good news is for them ‘a lesson memorised’ and no news at all.

Yes, religion dies at the feet of Christ.
But if you must be religious,
just follow Jesus and do what you see Him doing.
Then you will know for sure
that the veil of the Temple is ripped open,
because you will find yourself following Him
in and out of the Holy of Holies
as He mediates between
God and man.

Waiting is

The phrase ‘waiting is’ is about the only thing that has stayed with me all these years from my reading of the science fiction cult novel Stranger in a Strange Land, by Heinlein. It was a favorite saying of Valentine Michael Smith, the main character in that book, a human who had been raised as an orphaned child on Mars by the inhabitants of that planet. When he is returned to earth, he causes a sensation because his mindset is totally Martian in every respect, as are all of his habits. He ends up becoming a messiah figure who starts a new religion, the Church of All Worlds. I dug up these details from the internet because, as I admit, the only thing that stuck in my mind was the phrase, ‘waiting is.’

Why did the phrase stick? Well, to be blunt, I have spent most of my life waiting for something or someone. Was my intrinsic attitude somehow an unconscious result of reading the novel, or just my heredity expressing itself, the last in a long line of men who have been very, very patient with everyone?

I have had a good apprenticeship at waiting most of my life, but only in these last years has the object of my waiting shifted. Before, I waited only on human beings and their needs; now I wait primarily for Christ. He is the only one worth waiting for, because He brings not only His gifts, He brings Himself.

Books of science fiction, especially from the 1960’s and ’70’s, tend to wander into fantasy about alternative religions, as they are mirrors of the real world in which they arise, where any religion is superior to the simple truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why is that? Because mankind is a religious animal, and we are by nature shocked and offended by a God who becomes one of us precisely to put religion to death.

And so, these novels tend to promote religions, many of which resemble those we already know on earth, especially Buddhism, which seems to be a favorite. But religion is always only man’s best shot at escaping the horrible mess we find ourselves in, because we can’t accept that to escape our predicament—sin—means death to us, death to the world as we know it. So we take our best shot at whatever it is we’re searching for.

Buddhism is man’s best shot at achieving some kind of personal inner peace, if not salvation, given that there is either no God, or He is far too big and busy to deal with us.

Hinduism is man’s best shot at achieving some kind of personal safety, now and possibly in future lives, by satisfying the need for worship of the myriad hypersomatic beings, devas, that invisibly infest the human world.

Islam is man’s best shot at achieving some level of moralistic order in society for the masses, and justification for the immoral excesses of a select few, at the cost of a total denial of human freedom, while promising an otherworldly reward for the surrendered, and threatening thisworldly punishment for the unsurrendered.

Judaism is man’s best shot at achieving some kind of personal salvation, and a sense of righteousness, given that the only God has chosen the people of a certain lineage, to which they belong, to bring everyone to a knowledge of Him, while remaining outside His promises.

Christianity is man’s best shot at achieving some kind of personal salvation, with the least possible commitment to righteous living or self-sacrifice, by formal adherence to or membership in religious associations, while trampling on the call of the one they call Lord.

In the wasteland that is this world, I have waited, and been fortunate to have met a few followers of Jesus who stand firmly on the Word of God, keep their lamps lit, remain vigilant, wait on the voice of Jesus at every moment and desire to do what He commands, and are willing to suffer for the sake of His name.

I didn’t look for them.
I waited, and He sent them.

And I too can only hope to be one of them, by continuing to open my door when He knocks and to welcome Him into my house, which I want to be His.

Help me, Lord, to seek not my own, but Your will alone, and to be willing to accept everything that happens to me at Your hands, for You alone are the lover of mankind, and Your Word is truth.

I bless You, Lord, at the assemblies.
Psalm 26:12

Expect the resurrection of the dead…

Our integration into the Divine Nature is no accident. Neither is it our due. It is not something that will inevitably happen, but it is where our being will lead us if we do not resist it, if we do not resist God.

Yes, God made man for immortality. We are not speaking of some kind of purely spiritual existence, eternal but bodiless. No, man was made, body and soul, for immortality, for deathlessness.

The entire culture, even Christianity, is infected with this idea—that any trans-mortal existence must be purely spiritual, as if we are going to be changed into angels—and it instantly recoils.

The religious recoil subconsciously by fantasizing about it. The irreligious recoil knowingly by rejecting it. Still, it is a fact of human nature: our bodies are made for immortality, and hence, our souls.

But what can it mean, our integration into the Divine Nature? Aren’t we spirits already? Some do indeed teach and believe, ‘I am a spirit, I have a soul, I live in a body.’

Simplistic thinking comforts for a while, but not for long. Although by nature God made us immortal, body and soul, that does not make us spiritual. Only One is Spirit: that is God.

Though we lost our natural immortality through our transgressions, by resisting our human nature as created, God, in becoming a man, Jesus Christ, accomplished more for us than immortality.

He, being One of the Holy Triad and pure Spirit, integrated with the body and soul of a man that He created. God became man, that man might become God, except for our free will, must become God.

St Gregory Nazianzen says in his Funeral oration for St Basil, ‘Man has been commanded to become God.’ He is also the first Church father to use the term ‘théosis’ for that God-charged deification.

So man who, body and soul, was created for immortality in the first Adam but forfeited that life by separation from the Divine Nature, that is, by suicide, in the second Adam is recreated for divinity.

Christ, in defeating death by death, bringing life to those in the tombs, Himself rose from the dead, body and soul, as first-fruits of all who have ever died. Not as a Spirit only, but as a complete man.

Yes, the God-man, who, though standing before His Father who is in heaven interceding for sinners, walks with His disciples on earth, even shares food with them, proving the resurrection of the dead.

Though in this present life our souls are the life of our bodies, in the world to come, the Spirit is the life of both our souls and bodies, our human nature fully integrated with the Divine Nature.

Through Jesus Christ the human race has gained more than it lost. Human nature has been raised to the Divine Nature. Respect your body as much as your soul, and expect the resurrection of the dead.

Come, let us drink of that new river…

The commandments of Jesus, if obeyed, absolutely turn the world ‘as it is’ upside down. We don't have to understand why He gives us these commandments. We just have to fulfill them. They aren't many, either. In fact He Himself reduced them down to just two basics. ‘Love the Lord your God, and your neighbor as yourself.’ These commandments are both the easiest and the hardest, just as the yoke of Jesus is both the easiest (as He tells us) and the hardest. Easiest, when we decide to follow them, and do. Hardest, when we inwardly reject them, but try to do them for whatever other reason; in other words, when we resist.

A specific commandment of Jesus? Pray for those who persecute you and willfully abuse you. In other words, pray for your enemies. Your enemies, mind you, not His. At least, there is no one that He makes His enemy, though people make Him their Enemy. We do too, when we resist Him by holding back from following His commandments. But pray for your enemies. A radical thought, from the perspective of the world. But if followed, that world is brought to its knees. Interesting. We bring ourselves to our knees for the world our enemy that persecutes and abuses us, and that brings the world to its knees.
How so? Because it is vexed. 

Epikránthi! It was vexed! The word we shout at the end of the liturgy of the Resurrection, the night of Pascha, many times, as the sermon of John the Golden-Mouthed is read to us. We shout it at the service after the midnight hour, yet in the daylight, we often cannot see how we are to achieve this vexation of the world that afflicted Hades when Christ descended. Yet, it is only by following Him there in our world day by day, praying for our enemies just as He emptied Hell of His, even after they put Him to death. What we shout in the night, by following the commandments of Jesus, we can live in the day.
‘Come, let us drink of that new river…’

The crown of scripture

                    Turn it this way, turn it that way,
                    everything is in it,
                    keep your eye upon it
                       and from it do not stir.
                   
                    Turn it this way, turn it that way,
                    grow old and aged over it,
                    for you have no better portion,
                       better portion than the Word.

(Folk song based on Pirke Avot, 5:24)

To ‘study’ the bible as one studies a specimen under the microscope, except perhaps for bible scholars (if there really is such a thing), is the wrong way to study it. It's equally wrong to pretend to give people ‘the big picture’ by not making them study it at all, but instead by entertaining them. Both these approaches to the written Word of God are ways to escape the main function of scripture, which is to bring us face to face with our sin, and with our Saviour.

We say we study the bible, but actually the bible is studying us. We may think we are rightly dividing the Word of God, but actually the Word of God is rightly dividing us. That is, if we let Him. (Jesus is the Word of God. The bible is His icon.) Rightly dividing us from our sin, from the world and all its pomp, and from the power of the evil one.

People think we're so blessed to live in an age when there are so many amazing resources available, yet it's precisely this mistaken attitude about technological resources that has changed Christianity from a living faith and close walk with the Lord to a kind of dinner theatre about such a faith and walk.

We have become detached from the Word of God like a doomed fetus becomes detached from the uterus and then dies, which the mother may not discover for days, but which can kill her as well if it is not discovered in time. That mother is the Church, that fetus is the believers who do not live in the Word but only ‘watch a movie’ about it and think they've ‘got it.’

To live in the Word of God is to make the holy and God-breathed scriptures, the bible, our daily bread, our constant companion, our very home.

This means never being without it, physically, when possible, even if it's only a slim New Testament and Psalms tucked into a pocket.

This means rising in the morning with the Word on our lips, praying and thanking the Lord in the words of psalms and prophecies, not just five times a day as Muslims do, but all through the day (and night).

This means turning not to vain and sometimes vile entertainments (making excuses for the profanity in them), but turning to the bible for refreshment, for relaxation, for recreation.

No, you can play sports, go on hikes, collect stamps, read novels, write poetry, play the guitar, have an electric train set, or even a speedboat… but what’s on your mind, really?

I'm no different from the rest. I often have to yank my attention back to where it belongs, visit the mansion that Christ my Lord and Saviour has prepared for me in His Father’s house. What? You thought He was talking about the heavenly mansion? Well, yes, of course, that one too. But the study of and meditation on the inspired words of the divine and holy scriptures, that is like a foyer leading into the heavenly mansion, and a foyer is part of the house, isn't it?

Paradox upon paradox, that the churches that claim most strongly to be centered on the bible have the most trouble cleaving to it, but find ever more numerous by-paths and supposed short-cuts to keep them off the One True Highway to Heaven—the Word of God.

Visit any Christian book store. The bible section, besides being splintered by the proliferation of ‘specialty’ bibles, is often dwarfed by sections devoted to contemporary Christian authors, gimmicks, and games. Why all these Christian authors and their books?

Isn’t the Word of God in the form of the bible enough for us? Isn’t the Holy Spirit here with us to help us understand it? But how can we hope to be disciples of the Lord, if we do not stay constantly at His side? And how do we do this? By ‘never letting the sacred volume out of our hand,’ as Jerome says.

Instead of expanding your facilities and upgrading your film stash and other technological enhancements, get back to the bible, teaching it, studying it, learning it by heart, worshipping with it, praying it, prophesying with it, evangelizing with it, healing with it, feeding on it and living in it.

There is no other divine scripture on earth, no other literature whose sum is greater than the total of its parts, no other book so alive that it doesn’t need to be enhanced with movies and computer games.

And we think that we can do better than the living God who provided this crown for us?

Declaration of independence

Here it is, barely spring of the year of our Lord twenty fifteen, and of these United States (until the fourth day of July) two hundred thirty-nine, and already the maelstrom of pre-presidential (no, I wasn’t stuttering) madness is churning the masses, and it promises to be the worst ever. So, you thought the Civil War was bad, tearing apart families, lovers, friends and neighbors, sometimes uniting personal enemies, in the promotion of this or that ‘great cause’—the union, the abolition of slavery, whatever. No, we are already in the churning inferno, and have been, for months without knowing it, being dizzied so constantly that we didn’t notice, chasing and being chased till we’re no better than pools of butter.

Lips blabbing, non-stop already, about this or that candidate, we like partisans of competing, ancient gods, uncaring whose hearts we trample in our hot pursuit, whose minds we insult with our triumphalist, bullying rhetoric, already infect the air we breathe with our meaningless jargon. This used to be a country—I remember well, I am now sixty-four—of the ‘secret ballot.’ It used to be considered nosey and rude to press a man to find out who he was voting for. Now, it’s expected that one should announce with pride, firmness, and even finality who one is voting for, otherwise one cannot be publickly enrolled in the camp of the Reds or the Blues, and qualified to sling mud, stool, or stones at ‘the enemy.’

Well, like Sir Thomas More who would not answer his pestering opponents regarding the legality of his sovereign, Henry the Eighth’s, infidelities and usurpations, only to be tried and convicted of high treason, and sent to the block, I would rather just shut up, not only my mouth, but everyone else’s if I could, and just let human nature take its course in a well-riveted democracy that delivers its deserved despot to those dumb enough to vote him (or her) into office. Yes, we used to have presidents in these United States, and I trust, we shall have presidents again, someday, but not before we repent and return to the sullen silence that prevails when everyone minds his own business, and secretly votes for the worthy.

The venerable Flag of our commonwealth, the ‘stars and the stripes,’ or ‘the red, white, and blue,’ even till now has survived after two or more generations of bashings and burnings by the untaught, yet the splitters at work dividing the spoil and conquering our people, having nearly killed the national conscience, shred its significance daily as they pit their creations, the ‘Red’ and the ‘Blue’ nations against each other. Well, then there’s the ‘White’ nation too, which they’re happy to let exist, just so long as none of these pseudo-nations suspects that none of them really exists at all, that America the Idea cannot be so divided and subjugated, and that the icon of the venerable Flag cannot be rent asunder either.

This day I detach myself from the forms and functions of this swirling rabble orbiting the black hole of consumptive politicking. I deafen my ears to dope dealers of demagoguery, unplug the tube and earpiece—no, I won’t let them pierce my earlobes anymore with their sham thunder—and studiously wait till it’s time to turn in my ‘privacy envelope’ to whatever machine will tally them all. Not yet do even I know who I will vote for, nor is my party affiliation which I inherited along with the rest of my personal world anyone else’s business except those who administer the primaries. Finally, if you know me, forgive me if I walk away when you tell me, ‘There might be a few good Republicans.’ I know you didn’t mean it.

If anyone has ears

“Already in the Western Council of 371 it is supported that councils without the consent of the Pope are invalid. In the East, St Basil the Great mentions the ‘arrogant papal brow’, while the records of the Ecumenical Councils inform us about the papal claims the papist representatives conveyed until the 8th Ecumenical Council (879/880) under Patriarch Photius. It is internationally confirmed by history that the Orthodox East never recognized the primacy of the bishop of Rome in administrative jurisdiction and authority, neither in theory nor in practice, but only in ‘position of honor.’ This means that he was first among equals… Finally, the Orthodox East’s refusal to submit to the claims of the West concerning a primacy of authority over the whole Church became the reason the papists broke away from the Church in 1054.”

— Dimitrios Tselengidis

Reading such ‘stuff’ as the above, is it any wonder that Christians cannot see eye to eye, let alone get together, be together, and stay together, following the teaching of Jesus? Why aren’t we ashamed to say such things, why don’t we blush to hear them? Instead, it warms our hearts when we hear our Christian adversaries traduced in this way, yes, but the fires of hell will do more than warm our hearts. Christian adversaries? Well, we wouldn’t call them Christians if we didn’t have to. We’re only being ‘nice’ to recognize them at all, as if we did at least give them the shallowest shadow of a doubt that they just might be trying to believe in Christ, something which we’ve got under our belts, perfect to a ‘T’. No one can hold a candle to us. We’re ‘the light of the world’ that Christ mentions in the gospel.

Anyway, if we’re cantankerous and uncooperative, it’s not our fault. The holy fathers have paved our path long before we ever arrived on the scene. If Jesus wanted us to be any different, He would’ve had the holy fathers express themselves differently. I mean, if St Basil the Great points out the obvious and St Photius guards us against their prideful errors, can we do any better or be any worse than our holy fathers? Certainly not. To the Turk we’ve always said, ‘I was born a Christian, and I will die a Christian,’ and they’ve been gladder than hell to oblige us. So, why shouldn’t we keep up our hue and cry against our mortal enemies on the other side of the aisle? After all, we know what they want—to lord it over us. The leopard can’t change its spots. They’re more dangerous than ever, because they seem so friendly.

Yes, it’s Bright Week, something I recently learned from a Catholic priest I know, they don’t have. It really surprised me. Somehow I just assumed everyone knew that Pascha, Easter, is a liturgical day that outlasts the twenty-four hours from sunset to sunset, that it stretches out, leaps across the chasm of one week’s time to become a septuplet of itself. ‘Aw,’ I thought to myself while trying to not look condescending at Father Bill, ‘they don’t have bright week… It’s so sad.’ Pushing back the walls of denominational bias can be difficult, even when we think we’re liberated from it. Just like the Hebes who couldn’t find a way through the Red Sea to escape Pharaoh if God didn’t open it, we have to depend on His help to do the impossible—love our fellow Christians—or perish like proud charioteers when the sea of grace closes.

Back to the passage quoted above, it reminds me of a sad truth that occurred to me recently. The Church has always acted as though it must protect the holiness of God and especially of the sacraments from us. We have to prove ourselves worthy by public confession of our faith and submission to all the teachings of Holy Church. Only then are we allowed to partake of the Lord’s Supper, only after we’ve been shriven and washed in the saving waters of holy baptism. The Church must guard us very stringently and keep outsiders—those who don’t believe as we do—away. The unclean must not be allowed within the sacred precincts. Never mind that Christ invites all to come to Him, to receive Him, without explicit stipulations, ‘Take, eat, this is My Body which is broken for you…’

Why this is so, it seemed to me one day as I watched and heard a priest announce sternly before allowing his deacon to come out with the Holy Gifts that ‘communion is only for the Orthodox’ and ‘only those Orthodox who have prepared themselves by…’ is that the Church operates as a government, as a state. It has laws that must be obeyed. It requires steadfast loyalty and obedience. It expects to be the most important thing in our lives. Although when Christ and the apostles founded the Church, they modeled it on the family, not on the state, the challenges it has had to face have hardened it, so that if it is still a family, it is a very tight one. Though a family can be a place of love and acceptance, when it is dysfunctional it can be the loneliest and harshest place on earth, and more clannish than the Ku Klux.

Sometimes a beautiful family, one that serves God and each other in loving friendship, can devolve, little by little, into something that one must flee from. The kids can’t wait to leave home. Daughters do what they can to escape, even becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Sons escape into gangs or plain debauchery. Somewhere in the devolution the parents get a divorce. In the end, a once beautiful family is everything it cannot be, yet by stretching the imagination and with reluctant patience, forces itself to occasionally get together, but it is an unjoyful reunion, every time a funeral, even when no one has died. It doesn’t have to be this way. Though a family is divided by divorce, the kids can still be friends, still love each other, and together wait for their divorced parents to make peace. Sometimes this actually happens.

Nothing broken by us can be fixed by us, not ourselves though we try, not others because we only break them more in trying. Only Christ can fix what is broken. Only He can unite what we have divided. Only Jesus can call us back who have run away through disobedience, because it is only to Him that we must run. Through all the centuries He has remained who and what He is, and by twos and threes, threes and fours, He has been healing and saving us, all without our help, except that we let Him. Meanwhile the Church has minded its own business, tended the sheep, kept the wolves away, made sure its kingdom was secure and running smoothly, allowing no disturbance, no inspiration or enthusiasm which it could not control. Hearing, but not listening. Praying, but not obeying. Giving, but not let living. Hence, here we are.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.

John 15:9-17

Yes, ‘if anyone has ears to hear, let them hear’ (Mark 4:23).

Growing up

Historically, from early Christian times till now, we read the stories of Christians who are put to various tests of a blasphemous nature to break their resolve. Those that withstood them are usually killed and become martyrs. As a young Christian I wholly approved of and adulated this kind of ‘witness,’ especially because it is ancient, even going back to the apostles themselves (maybe).

Now, as an older (and rather over-tested) Christian, though never made to trample a cross or offer incense to Caesar—what would be the modern equivalent of the latter? Perhaps, treating the President as if he were God?—I hold to a different view, which is either more mature, or maybe just pragmatic.

I believe that the Divine Nature (God) is above blasphemy just as He is above envy. As for jealousy, yes, you can say, following the Bible itself, that God is a jealous God, but still, He is not an unreasonable One. He wants our full attention, our full obedience to His commandments, but He knows us, He knows He can’t get it, and so He accepts such love as we in our weakness can muster. He waits for us.

The Bible says, ‘precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints’ (Psalm 116:15), and so people have put two and two together, and decided that they will die (like the ancient Hebrews) rather than do anything to dishonor their God. Far be it from me to judge them, but for me there is a different imperative.

You see, God cannot be dishonored, and He knows our hearts. If my soul hangs in the balance between life and death depending on whether or not I will commit a blasphemous act, or even renounce verbally my faith, then to do anything that will cause my death is almost a kind of suicide.

Can the ‘death of His saints’ that the Bible speaks of refer to death in another sense, such as death to sin, death to self? I don't pretend that that was the original meaning of the text, but the text grows as we grow. The Bible then becomes not so much a book of literal laws and commandments, but a gauge of human progress.

Progress toward what, or whom? Towards God, of course, who lets the laws be our caretakers during our racial infancy, but who really wants the true law, that of indefectible love, written on our hearts. That concept is found in the same Bible too, and literally
(cf. Jeremiah 31:33).

I think that we as a race are at a critical moment. I think that the Church is at a critical moment.

The Church needs to understand that its mission is much larger than it once thought. Its mission is to incorporate the entire race into the Body of Christ, because that is where the race must go, where it has been evolving to, since it became a conscious, reasoning entity. To accomplish its mission, the Church must grow up in the sort of way I am alluding to, whereby it knows that there is no such thing as ‘blasphemy’ just as there are no such things as ‘gods’
(cf. 1 Corinthians 8:4).

The Church has been christianizing the universe. Now, the universe expects christification.

The human race needs to understand that religion must be left behind in its evolution, but that leaves no other destiny or objective than to become the Bride of Christ. Neither theists nor atheists will find much comfort in this idea, once they understand that the dichotomy between them loses all meaning when confronted with an ultimate reality neither recognized.

Far from losing ‘God’ in the abandonment of the static structures we know as ‘religion,’ we will find ourselves not merely believing, confessing, or worshiping, but actually being wed to the real God of whom all our religions had only images. Finally, we shall, as a race, be able to honestly follow the first of the Ten commandments, ‘I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me,’ which will unleash us to fulfill the other nine as we enter with Him the Bridal Chamber.

‘The time is near’ (Revelation 1:3), which has been repeated generation after generation in anticipation, at long last will be pronounced with finality. The critical moment—κρίσις (KREE-sees), ‘judgment’—of the race’s stepping up, or falling down, ‘to be, or not to be,’ has arrived, as Christ Himself proclaims, ‘The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1:15)