But not the risen Christ

I must be a dullard, or a country bumpkin, or a simpleton. I’ve suspected it, but I wasn’t sure till this morning. I used to take it for granted that Christians, whatever their doctrinal slant, believed that Christ died on the Cross to save us and literally rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and so on. I knew some who believe in Jesus go so far as to deny His deity (Jehovah’s Witnesses), but even they know that the rest of the story is true—or maybe not, don’t they celebrate the death of Jesus instead of His resurrection, and say the ‘rising from the dead’ was spiritual, or something like that? I guess even the ‘learned’ can have mistaken ideas. It all depends on who you hang around with.

This morning, my confidence in other Christians (at least that’s what they call themselves) slipped down another notch. In commenting on a harmless article about Mary Magdalene (now, popularly called ‘Mary of Magdala’—I guess that sounds better) an educated ‘Christian’ man wrote,

I have no idea what the “Paschal Mystery” is and what the “Risen Christ” is. But I am very certain that whether Jesus` bones remained in his grave or not does not make a difference to my faith. I am also pretty sure that Mary of Magdala was married to Jesus. At the time, a man who was not married did not have credibility. You simply had to be married. Why have the Christian churches been so intent on propagating the myth that Jesus was single? I have no idea. It probably has something to do with the sexism that is so all pervasive in all the institutional churches.

Gulp! I thought this kind of thinking was hiding out in covens of believers in things like The Gospel of Judas, who don’t know any better. Thank God, I am now an elderly man and know for sure that I know next to nothing about anything, and so it’s not worth the bother to try to correct or teach anyone! But this guy (also looks elderly from his profile picture) seems never to have grown up. In my college days over forty years ago I entertained such thoughts, but it didn’t take me very long to see through them all. One thing I noticed was that he has an ax or two to grind, and everyone’s the enemy.

A woman just as simple as me responded to his comment briefly.

If Jesus hadn't died for us, we'd still be living in sin. It is precisely because He died for us that we can believe in a life after death.

Apparently what he wrote went over her head, as her response didn’t address any of his concerns, just restated a (what to her and me is) simple truth. He didn’t miss another opportunity to give her and the rest of us boobs more of his enlightened bombasm. (I had to edit out her name.)

[Your view] is old and medieval thinking. It does more harm than good. It opens up religions to ridicule and sets it against all reason. Young folks cannot relate to this kind of view. To stick to the old thinking creates divides and separates us. We need to move on, find a new language, find new ways. Let's put the old pictures of holy looking people with halos around their head into the museum. Forget about what you've been taught.

Yes, brother, ours ‘is old and medieval thinking,’ maybe. Old, yes, medieval, well, now I can see that you don’t know what you’re talking about, because though I may be an infant when it comes to knowing about God, I do know my (human) history lessons. You might say, that’s my specialty. The rest of his comment doesn’t elicit any response from me. You see, I’m not about arguing points. I don’t even want to argue his main criticisms or assertions about Christ and the Magdalene. As for the resurrection…

I also ‘have no idea what the “Paschal Mystery” is and what the “Risen Christ” is,’ on two counts. First, I can’t have an idea what the Paschal mystery is because even if I did, it wouldn’t help me much. Second, the same goes for ‘what’ the risen Christ is, again, no idea is really helpful. And besides, it’s not ‘what’ but ‘Who.’ Ideas can’t really help us here, only experience can. That’s something not I or anyone can give to another human being. It’s true. Salvation can’t be bought, isn’t transferable, but once received is like the ‘forever’ postage stamp, always enough, always good, yes, forever and ever.

Again I ponder. The ‘hole’ in this man’s or anyone’s arguments about this or that in the Church or even about Christ, His nature and how ‘He does it’ comes down to ‘what the Paschal mystery is’ and Who is the risen Christ. It doesn’t help that the first can often be shrouded in terms and ceremonies delightfully obscure and the second flaunted from flapping lips attached to flabby souls. How glibly people speak of ‘the risen Christ’ who, if they only knew, I mean, had they the experience of that ‘risen Christ’ as some do, might find it difficult to find the words. The latter live as though the resurrection were a fact, because it is a fact, and an act, of God. It didn’t take place long ago and far away. That was only where it started, and where I am standing at this very moment is the leading edge of the wave it has created that will soon engulf everything in creation. Talk about tsunamis! No, talk about d‎‎ýnamis!

Yes, for touching this, experiencing this, the Paschal mystery is no mystery, ‘it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile’ (Romans 1:16). Yes, the power—δύναμις (DHEE-nah-meess)—is what’s missing when all you have is abstract thinking. You can think yourself into hell, but not into heaven. We draw closer to it as we follow ‘the risen Christ,’ we get used to it as we get used to Him. The arguments that deafen the world and bore it to disgust whether they are won or lost are swallowed up in the stillness of the Divine Nature, Who await us with Their welcoming eyes and outstretched arms, God as Man, and Man as God.

Yes, religion as some conceive it can be ‘old and medieval thinking,’ but not the risen Christ.

And that’s no miracle

Can anyone deny that the canonization of saints is a function of the political apparatus of the Church? I am not here declaring anything to oppose or ridicule her, simply stating a fact. The saints who get noticed, who are glorified, whose little ‘s’ is elevated to big ‘S’, are in fact those whom the Church wants to hold up to our view, whom she wants us to emulate, who promote her product, whom she can use as bait, as inexhaustible supply, and as reward.

I find the method of choosing who will be canonized to be trivializing. Myself, I am bored by the search for documentable miracles and am not impressed when they are found. The Roman Church needs two indisputable miracles. I’m not sure how many the Orthodox Church requires, but I’ve noticed that once a reposed elder has been publicly slated for the fast track to sainthood, dozens if not hundreds of miracle stories surface to support them.

From my experience and from my reading, I have found that behind the Church of Christ there shadows what Sergey Fudel calls ‘the dark double of the Church.’ This is persons within the Church who do the works of darkness, rarely openly, usually disguised as light. These are not often laypeople, who may be (and certainly are told that they are) sinners, open or concealed, for we are not important enough to be noticed, or numerous enough to do the Church any damage.

While the Church hums along in its daily life, baptizing, marrying and burying people, and, if it has time and resources, helps some of them through the crises of existence and faith, guardians are quietly at work—and I’m not speaking of angels—making sure that the Church will continue to propagate itself, and to manage the herd it is responsible for, though not always in a responsible way. I mean, it follows the Gospel when it can, but when push comes to shove, well, you know the rest.

Back to sainthood, and to the miracles that prove someone is a Saint, I have already said enough for you to know that I am not going to be impressed by myrrh-gushing relics, or cures caught by drinking holy water. The avid and persistent search for such miracles only deadens the Church—her members, not the institution—to the actual miracles that really do happen all around us, every day. Mention this to anyone and their eyes glaze over while they silently smile.

But if my ten-year struggle with depression, drunkenness, drug abuse, or all three is suddenly ended by praying to a reposed elder or by touching something that once belonged to him and is now on public display—it’s a miracle! Would to God I had tried a little harder to find strength for self-control the ordinary way—I couldn’t! life was so hard!—but that’s alright and, praise God, the elder’s prayers have saved me. Life may be ‘all miracle’ as some say, but I need something more real, right now, and I found it!

In the book Saint Arsenios of Cappadocia (Convent of the Evangelist John, Thessaloniki, Greece) the author describes the political mechanisms at work in the canonization of saints. The author, and others, spent a lot of time and effort collecting stories of miracles performed by the Farasiote priest known as Hatzefendis. I do not for a moment doubt these miracles. What he says, though, is that others were promoting another candidate for sainthood, as if God has a quota system for admission into glory.

I, too, had met Father Theodoros personally in Aigaleo, as I had some others from our part of the world in Moschato in 1962. It is a fact that I had noticed great indifference toward Father Arsenios on the part of their Association, and I was unable to account for this at the time. In particular, I asked the Association Chairman for whatever information he could give me about Father Arsenios, and he replied: “Father Paisios, we oughtn’t to refer to Father Arsenios at all, so that we can better promote Paisios II, who was a fellow-countryman of ours, and Metropolitan of Kaisareia besides, and then the standing of the Association will be enhanced.” When I heard this I was appalled at the very worldly way those people think!
(Saint Arsenios of Cappadocia, p. 30)

No, the association and its members that the author refers to was not ‘the Church’ per se, only part of it, and that is exactly what I have noticed. It is not the Church—that is, the lovers and imitators of Jesus—that do these kinds of things, but ‘special interest groups’ within her. The Church is no different than secular society in this regard, though we might wish it otherwise. I am no conspiracy theorist, but I do have eyes and ears. Christ tells us of hirelings. I know what to watch out for.

We see in the Roman Church how saints are canonized, at least what the media shows us. If one reads and understands history, it is obvious what the Church is doing. The Church, both East and West, shares the same roster of political Saints starting with Sts Constantine and Helen. Far be it from me to traduce the Saints. The Church has exercised the prerogatives bestowed upon the holy apostles (who at the time were the whole Church) in canonizing them, but the criteria are still open to all, and we are free to decide for ourselves who are and who are not Saints.

When I find myself having to use double-think, I feel threatened, and I ask myself, why must I? The life of faith, the life in the Lord Jesus Christ, is one. There is never a need to dissimulate, only to cover the offenses of others, to cover them and to excuse them, out of love, which is the prime directive. This is not the same thing as believing one thing inwardly, and outwardly confessing another. I may, and must, overlook, forgive, and pray for the healing of the sins of others. That is my belief, inner and outer.

How pitiful, how wretched, to be in the Church and, acting the part to the letter, to have nothing of the spirit at all, to believe that to support and promote the Church we must deny Christ Himself. That must, indeed, take great faith, or no faith at all. May it be the former for those who find themselves in such a place, but either way, those who do not serve one Master, but who love the one and despise the other, run the risk of hearing, ‘How did you get in here? Take him, and cast him into the outer darkness…’

My Saints? Yes, there are many, though they don’t always wear the halos of ecclesiastical glorification, nor are all of them ‘dead’ yet. In fact, none of them are dead, though some, like Jesus, can already say, ‘I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore’ (Revelation 1:18). All of them have performed, do perform, and keep performing miracles throughout the triple manifold of time, because that is what Jesus does, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty’ (Revelation 1:8).

Yes, He gives life to everyone who calls upon His name, and makes them saints, a kingdom of priests and kings. And that’s no miracle.

Nothing is enough

He has given me all, everything I have, all I am. There is nothing I have that He has not given, nothing of my being that He has not created. All is from Him, nothing real from myself. Nothing.

And what do I give Him in return? What can I give Him who has given me all and who Himself has all and is all? We are not separated from each other as a rich man is from a poor man. No, the contrast is much greater. We are separated from each other as being is separated from non-being. I only am because He wills it. I cannot even say ‘I am’ as He can say ‘I am.’ When I say it, it is only a confession that He is. When He says it, it is His very Name.

I try at least to thank Him, as dust thanks the light for revealing it to itself. But even in the open mouth of my thanksgiving ‘He fills the hungry with good things’ (Luke 1:53), or as the psalmist declares of the Lord Yahweh, ‘you have only to open your mouth for Me to fill it’ (Psalm 81:10). As Francesco di Bernardone says, ‘We are all poor in the eyes of our Lord,’ and it is our poverty, our very nothingness, that attracts His grace and draws down His unbounded mercy. As General Löwenhielm asserted in his testimony at Babette’s feast, ‘we come to realize that mercy is infinite. We need only await it with confidence and receive it with gratitude.’

God is good. What else can we say of Him?
Nothing is enough, yet He accepts all.

Time to reign

I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in Me will do the same works as I do Myself, he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father.
John 14:12 Jerusalem Bible

It seems very, very strange to me, to say the least, that Christianity in this contemporary world should be perceived by nearly everyone, even by the Christians themselves, as anti-progressive. I wonder if we can pinpoint in historical time approximately when the great divide happened, you know, the one where Christianity once was the motive force behind progressive attitudes and accomplishments, and then, somehow turned around to face the other way, throwing up obstacles and barriers to progress.

How can I ask such a silly question? Of course, the Church has always been against progress, has always been ‘anti-,’ that is, ‘anything but,’ progressive! Look how it bullied the renaissance scientists into hushing up some of their greatest discoveries. Look how it kept women in abject submission to men, even supporting violent means to keep them in subjection. Look how even today it discourages such progressive practices as contraception and euthanasia, demanding unreasonable self-control and unnatural masochism instead.

No, but it isn’t a silly question. It was Christianity, at least in the English-speaking world, which unleashed the rampant inventiveness of the industrial revolution, and then aggressively championed the rights, welfare and literacy of laborers in the workplace. It was Christianity which sought with all its might to end the trade in human flesh called slavery. It was Christianity that curbed the addictive, self-defeating intemperance that was destroying society, and taught people how to live sanitarily and sanely. It was Christianity that founded the American republic.

And Britain’s moral leadership. Victoria as a young woman, uncrowned but destined for the throne, before her marriage a frivolous and undisciplined school girl, could never have named an entire century. But she wed a prince, Albert, whose Christian piety in concert with its fruits—ingenuity, sobriety, philanthropy—transformed his Queen and her people into a woman brave and a nation dauntless, to carry the torch he had lit for her, for England, and for the world—the Victorian age.

My mind is overwhelmed as the hoarded memories of thousands of Christian progressives bombard me, and my sensibilities are pushed beyond their limits as I ponder the irony of history: That they who transformed the world for good, beginning with those who ‘knew Christ in the flesh’ and not excluding those who ‘believed without seeing Him’ up to the present time should be so travestied by opinion as to appear grotesque caricatures of who they really were, their accomplishments twisted out of recognition.

For as we have been squeezed out of social action by those forces that now name themselves ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive,’ the very fabric of society that our faithful forbears established has been visibly retracted, forcibly curtailed, its structures weakened, its glory faded. We have schools in abundance that do not teach, hospitals that do not heal, governments that do not serve, yes, even ‘churches’ that do not save. We eat and drink, but are never filled. We lie through our teeth, so never come at truth.

Yet Christianity—the visible evidence of a faith unseen—is liberal. It is progressive. Why? Because of all the sons of men, no one has ever been found who can free like this Man, whose words are so powerful they can sever the strongest chains. Of all who have ever lived, He is endowed with not only the will but also the power to transform, and to perfect, everyone who comes to Him, everyone who believes, all who follow Him. He makes them, like Himself, ‘sons and daughters of God,’ and gives them ‘all power and authority’ that goes with it.

So, who says Christianity is not progressive? The world? The Christians themselves? Who?

Perhaps they labor under the illusion that Christianity is that ‘thing’ they have captured, tamed and imprisoned in their ‘liberal’ minds, making of it a trinket to be played with, a pet to be patronized, something they can idiotically ice their cakes with. It doesn’t help, or do us any favors, when we let ourselves be handcuffed and jailed on suspicion of being what we are, or perhaps should be—people who ‘turn the world upside-down’ any chance we get. Brothers, it’s time to take it all back.

Take what all back? Why, take back your names, for starters. Let them know who are the progressives, who the liberals, but don’t stop there, except to hear someone shout, ‘Wait, there is more!’ Do the works that define what the names mean. Be progressive. Be liberal. Do those ‘greater works’ for man and for God that Christ tells us we are to do. Lead the world, don’t follow. Imitate Christ. Imitate the holy apostles. Imitate the fathers. Show the world those ‘greater works’ that it cannot conceive or accomplish in and for itself.

Not only the people, but something greater, nature itself is ‘waiting for the sons of God to appear.’ This may sound like religious jargon, but believe me, it’s not. Not everything in the Bible is written to turn us into compliant, complaisant, cooperative cogs, no matter who or what claims to be running the machine. In fact, nothing in the Bible is written to robotize us—quite the contrary!

It is all about freedom, and it’s time to reign.

At His great mercy

I have said that doctrines don't matter at all when it comes right down to the salvation of the human race, giving some the impression that I have given up all notion of correct belief. This is not the case, otherwise I would not be an Orthodox Christian.

Of course, it is better to be correct than incorrect, and yes, the correct answers are to be found in scripture, but that is exactly where sectarians and makers of religions go to bolster their mistaken ideologies. If we are of the ancient faith, for us the orthodoxy of the historic Christian Church will keep us from wandering into lands from which there may be no return. I am not suggesting that doctrine doesn't matter, in spite of my use of rather strong language and what appear to be categorical imperatives. No, I am not speaking out of both corners of my mouth either. It's just that doctrinal belief or misbelief can in fact affect our relationship to God and our ultimate destiny with Him or without Him, and yet, His mercy can cover all offenses and in fact does, even taking to Himself those whose ideas about Him are either non-existent or very mistaken.

Our God is greater than anything we can say about Him, even greater than anything the Bible says about Him, and how can He not be? He is the author of all, and having written the only story that there is, He can direct its course, and ours, beyond anything we can do. Yes, we can be damned and separated from Him for ever, but only from our side. From His side, we are never out of His sight.

This is a very strange story He has written, our God, and we see neither the beginning or the end as we now are, mere characters on a page. But when the Lamb's book of life is finally open, we will find out whose names were written there from before the foundation of the world, and we will have cause to wonder at His great mercy, both to the saved, and to the lost.

Freedom is a question

Some people define ‘freedom’ as the ability to do whatever one wants. People who excel others in becoming enslaved to sins, passions, and defilements appear as zealots in the cause of external freedom, and work to broaden the laws as much as possible. Such people use external freedom only to more severely burden themselves with internal slavery. True freedom is the ability of a man not enslaved to sin, not pricked by a condemning conscience, to choose what is best in the light of God’s truth, to act, and to actualize everything with the help of the gracious power of God. This is freedom which neither heaven nor earth restrict.

— Philaret of Moscow

What kind of freedom do you struggle for, or do you struggle at all? It seems to me, in the light of the saint’s words, that struggling for ‘a free society’ involves exactly what is opposite to true freedom. I think I already knew that, but I still think that struggling for ‘external freedom,’ as he calls it, is a good thing, and worthwhile.

Why? Because social, economic, informational and political freedom, all of which are ‘external,’ still prepare the ground for authentic, for real ‘internal’ freedom, which is ultimately the goal, which is the freedom that Christ Himself proclaims in the Gospel. What I find, though, is that when religious people quote the saints in sayings like the above, they are somehow and subtly trying to discredit and derail the struggle for personal liberty, by making it seem that external and internal freedom are opposites.

The freedom of the Christian, as defined by Christ, is a perfect freedom, internal and external, and a Christian society is not one in which an external authority or power, whether Church or State, restricts people to ‘make’ them law-abiding and religiously conforming, but one in which laws are at a minimum, restricting only what is irrefutably unlawful, and where freedom is at a maximum, allowing people (singular and plural) to make their own choices.

I don’t think we have seen that kind of society yet. We’ve been dumbed down for so long by oligarchies governmental, ecclesiastical, ‘educational’, and economic, kept at the level of ‘women and children,’ both classically categorized as ‘idiots,’ that a truly free society is not yet possible, anywhere on earth. This is why it is not a question of democracy versus autocracy (monarchy) at all, as we have been led to believe. Both can, and do, operate in exactly the same way.

Instead, it is a question of knowledge versus ignorance, not accidental, but planned.

Information and, hence, education were once completely under the thumb of intellectual elites who controlled and selectively limited access through systems of education and book publishing. The ‘information age’ only just begun and as of today still ‘free,’ has finally opened the door to the freedom that Christ, yes, that Christ is talking about, even ‘behind the backs’ of those who ‘represent’ Him.

Yes, freedom is ‘a question of knowledge versus ignorance’ before all else, and self-control and social harmony are both functions of it in a truly free person and society. Let us, brethren, see our way past ‘spiritual materialism’ as well as hedonistic individualism, to where ‘the salvation of mankind’ issues from the life-giving spring of the Holy Triad, whose life is our life, whose freedom is our freedom, else we have no life at all, nor freedom, that with the saints we may cry, ‘Blessed are You, O Lord, teach me Your statutes!’

Between the lines

Fully Alive, by Danny Setiawan

The problem many people have with Orthodoxy, even when they are in favor of it, is not the anomalies, inconsistencies or downright absurdities they find in it, but rather the way they are trying to approach it, understand it, and classify it. In other words, our cultural mind set did not arise from it—we are far more different from it than we suppose and do not have a starting point within it, but only within ourselves—and we are examining it, by study, observation, and even experimentation, and trying to fit it into the only world view we know. That world view may be mainstream in the culture we live in, or it might be incredibly personal, but either way, we are approaching it much as we approach anything else in the world. But Orthodoxy, as a presence in the world, really is outside of the world, at least, outside of this world.

Whether we think of Orthodox Christianity as a religion, a philosophy, a way of life, or all three, we have no choice but to analyze it from the outside. We are told, you can only know what our faith is by accepting it as it is, in toto, and let it be what it claims to be, the true faith, something that will necessarily take a lifetime to sink in. We are told, ‘We are all becoming Orthodox,’ and other such things. The strange thing is, once you are inside, though you may find people who still jabber about Orthodoxy as if it were the cat’s pajamas, if you are sincere in your faith and following of Christ—without whom there can be no such thing as the Church, let alone ‘Orthodoxy’—you find that you are still primarily a disciple of Jesus, but that you have acquired a very large family, and now know ‘for sure’ where the road leads.

You see, Orthodoxy is not ‘the Church’ that any of us who came to it from outside ever thought it was. At first, we take it for granted that the Church is an institution, that it has rules, that it requires intellectual agreement with certain ideas, and that we are expected to participate regularly in at least some of its activities. We think that joining it necessarily separates us, even isolates us, from the non-Orthodox. We have heard as much from ‘authorities’ who seem to know what they’re talking about. There are books to read, even handbooks of correct ceremonial protocol—women wear skirts in church, no one crosses their legs, gum chewing is not allowed, and other such things which we see disregarded with impunity—and then there all all those dietary rules, what to eat or not eat during the fasts, and who knows what else.

Our intellect may be pushed out of shape, scandalized or even offended by things we think or we know are ‘wrong,’ at least by our upbringing. We want the Church to be perfect in every way, doctrinally especially, but even socially. We want to escape to it from whatever we have found disagreeable in the world we inhabit, and our approach to it often remains, unknown to ourselves, that of a consumer intent on getting the best deal. The truth about Orthodoxy, though, as a Church, is that it is the menagerie of the Most-High God, who collects every kind of human being as Noah collected animals for the ark. This menagerie was there before we arrived, and will still be there, if we leave it. We cannot buy it, it is not for sale. It is the pan-human reality, the visible part of the great Tree that God has planted in paradise.

All of the incidentals, even such things as beliefs and practices, which we want to take much too seriously, are really only that—incidentals. The Orthodox Church is what salvation looks like, wearing these incidentals, while the human race undergoes the most radical step in evolution we can possibly imagine. Far more people are included in this radical step than even the Church itself is aware of. Hence, the ubiquitous saying, ‘We know where the Church is; we do not know where it is not.’ When we offer to join this spiritual monstrosity, we think we are doing someone a favor, and like a swimmer contemplating a dive into a strange body of water, we want some assurance that we won’t be injured, that there are no dangerous creatures in the lake, and that we can get out of the water if and when we want to.

Back to our mind set, most of us are—at least at the beginning—unable to think ‘outside the box.’ We think we are doing precisely that already, just by considering Orthodoxy at all, but we are still trapped by a whole series of dualities upon which we feel we must opine, judge, and agree or disagree with. At the very least, we think that we must confess an exact belief and that we must, in detail, agree with everything the Orthodox Church teaches. We feel that to do anything less would be both dishonest and dangerous. All this is why the safest and easiest way to become an Orthodox Christian is to be born into it, forty-day blessed, triple-dunk baptized and slickly holy oiled, regularly spoon-fed with bread and wine pablum, and prayed over often, at length, and repeatedly, until we are so used to being loved, that we like it.

Back to assurance, 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

I think continually of those who were truly great

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

— Stephen Spender (1909-1995)

All was great light

It surprises me how reportedly ultra-intelligent scientists (and scientific theorists) can make statements such as these—‘It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. Mankind has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. We also happen to be sociable creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.’ In an odd sort of way, this is very like the attitude that motivates the speculative spiritual seeker. ‘There’s no help for us, but we’re going to look for evidences of a God, or of spirits, or of angels, any way we can. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.’

The boyishness of one other attitude that I saw today coming from a ‘top scientist’ also astounded me—‘A civilisation reading one of our messages could be billions of years ahead of us. If so they will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.’ He was cautioning that we should only ‘listen for messages’ coming from advanced, alien civilizations, and not send them. In an entirely Godless, even purposeless, cosmos there is no morality—at least, we can’t expect anyone else ‘out there’ to behave any better than we do—and so, we’d better be careful. Don’t open a can of worms.

So it’s true! Scientists (and scientific theorists) are just as susceptible to picture-thinking and falling for self-generated entertainments as the rest of us! I mean, we’ve all read the same science fiction novels from childhood to adulthood, watched the same flicks, been mesmerized, wowed, and captured by the same imaginary ‘forces’ that have created, sustain, and eventually will destroy us, our world-view, and yes, even our world. Since there is obviously no God to ‘get us’ (as any child of ten can tell you), the aliens probably will—or would, if we didn’t keep ourselves from being noticed. We’re sitting ducks.

As I sit here ruminating after a quiet bowl of muesli and a Turkish coffee on a cool, cloudy morning, in my little house on the edge of a cliff in the Cascadia subduction zone state of Oregon, waiting for ‘the Big One’ to liquefy my volcano-laced city of Portlandia, deep down I somehow ‘know’ that the Universe is good. It is moral. Or rather, that even human beings, as bacterial and vulnerable as we may seem to ‘scientific’ minds, can expect more from ‘whatever or Whoever is out there’ than our fears threaten. Left to itself, nature, though sometimes inconvenient to us, is not ‘out to get us’, nor is God. But we are.

Yes, left to ourselves, we are ‘out to get us,’ even in a harmless universe. We are the very people whom our parents warned us about when we were little, ‘Be careful! Watch out for them!’ Again, the inescapable truth in camouflage attire stands as always before us. We are so much a part of that good, moral universe that we can’t see it, can’t seem to stay in step with it, mesh with it, integrate with it, that we fall out, or fall off, and in our mindless scramble to ‘manage things’ make the universe a bogey, or a wildness we must tame, an enemy to be subdued, or a menagerie of material resources to be plundered.

The whole world was shining with brilliant light and, unhindered, went on with its work; over them alone there spread a heavy darkness, image of the dark that would receive them. But heavier than the darkness, the burden they were to themselves. But for Your holy ones all was great light…
Wisdom of Solomon 17:19-20, 18:1 Jerusalem Bible

If Heaven doesn't do it first

Interesting! Today appeared a transcript of an address delivered by the junior United States Senator from Oklahoma, James Lankford, regarding Planned Parenthood and abortion. The subject is very brittle in almost everyone’s mind. Either they are ‘for abortion’, or for ‘a woman’s right to choose’, or something like that, or they are against it, being labeled ‘pro-Life’ or other equivalent terms.

I haven’t seen anything from the ‘pro-Life’ group that calls those on the other side of the fence ‘murderers’ or other emotionally charged names, but I’m sure such epithets have been vaulted over the net. As for those who support abortion on demand (within current legal limitations, of course), well, what can I say? After commenting on the Senator’s address in a public forum, it wasn’t long before I read myself being called a whole series of expletives starting with the mild one ‘red neck’ and culminating in the names of body parts not normally exposed to the public, strengthened by generous use of the ‘f’ word.

Naturally, I rejoiced in being thus vilified, and so I gave the comment that trashed me a ‘+1’ as a way of showing my detractor how much I appreciated his abuse. Unfortunately, the moderator deleted both his comment and my +1, leaving me quite crestfallen. Why can’t people just let me suffer the insults and outrages I deserve?

Seriously, I do not broadcast or readily admit to my position on moral and political questions, unless asked directly and unpolemically. I don’t see any reason to involve myself in arguments, since people are rarely converted to their opponent’s views by this method. I don’t correct others either, or at least try not to, but ‘nobody’s perfect,’ and when I apply this saying to myself, I couldn’t be more certain of its truth. I also don’t join the bandwagon or the crusade to ‘rid America’ of social evils.

I know my opinions don’t matter, and since I’m unwilling to lay my life on the line in a battle that I don’t believe can be won that way, and since I’m a stay-at-home, ‘armchair’ philosopher, I don’t feel qualified to waste time on mere banter, even though I am originally from Chicago.

Also, I am not a woman and can’t have babies (though I helped ‘make’ four sons), so I don’t criticize or judge women whether they keep them or lose them, but I do think morality has absolutes, even though I cannot apply them to anyone but myself. Hence my comment on the issue which drew down upon me the wrath of John Doe (not his real name) defending his Daisy’s right to flush out her uterus because baby-making is so inconvenient. Here’s what I wrote.

The greatest ‘legal’ calamity to befall this nation (USA) is not the recent ‘marriage equality’ ruling, but the continued holocaust of the unborn, whose civil rights as human beings (not to mention their lives) are sacrificed to ‘woman’s reproductive rights.’ There is no such thing as ‘woman’s reproductive rights’, only a woman’s choice to submit to sexual intercourse or not. Once she gives herself in this way, if another life begins inside her, she has temporarily forfeited her rights to her own body, just as she did when she engaged in the sex act, only for nine months instead of for fifteen minutes.

Reason itself, let alone morality (the human conscience burns when it submits to child-murder) condemns infanticide, whether in the womb or outside of it. Our society could stop it in a week by simply shutting down in massive civil disobedience. If even a quarter of our people simply stayed home and refused to go to their jobs or school or whatever until an executive order either has eighty million people of all ages arrested and jailed, or delivers our objective—banning all abortions not directly related to the life of either mother or child—the national crime could be stopped in a week to ten days.

No amount of talking is going to purge us of this sin. No amount of violent action will save us either. Only courage to nail ourselves to a communal cross has a chance to do this. Such a massive act of civil disobedience could have stopped many massive evils in history. We could still do it. When will we take our place in history? Because if we don’t, nature itself will scour us off the earth, if Heaven doesn’t do it first.

End of comment.

I believe morality exists. I believe it is diamond hard and bright. I believe that we can bury it only to become poorer. I believe in a God whose nature is to love, and that we, made in Their image, are able to experience and participate in love at our level and scale. I believe that God is not ‘out there to get us,’ or any other such obnoxious nonsense, and that Their will is so deeply and absolutely against death, that They came among us and joined Their Divine Nature to our human nature in such a way that we no longer have an excuse to behave like irrational animals. Morality is our nature as much as it is God’s, and we know that life wins, that life ‘will find a way.’ Even an infant being aborted fights to live according to its capacity. Everyone knows the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not murder,’ even when we disobey it.

I think that there are far fewer things that are sinful than our religious instructors would have us believe. I think that they are often protecting us, because we act like children. But some of us don’t stay children. We grow up, and we can follow Father and approach Him face to face. We still love Mother, but she’s done making our case for us, wheedling favors and permissions from Father on our behalf. Now it’s our turn to follow Father and do what we’ve seen Him doing all our lives, all around us—that is, if we’ve watched.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights may offend some people, religious or irreligious. They may think it goes too far. I say it doesn’t go far enough, and that Christ among us will push it further than we can or maybe want to. The same people who call Christ ‘the Revolutionary’ are to be found sitting with the unrighteous in the judgment seat reserved for Them alone who are both Worthy (Axios) and Holy (Agios).

There really are human rights that are inalienable because God’s sovereignty is inalienable, who said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image.’

The first right is that which was bestowed by the Creator, and that is life. That right is what has been denied to some millions of human beings recently in our country, and to billions in human history, by law, by lawlessness, never by right, for there is no such right.

Yes, civil disobedience, what I suggested in my short comment, works when applied correctly. Gandhi was right. Yes, because Jesus was right. ‘Offer the evil man no resistance.’ It sent the British packing. They quit India. One cannot say ‘what would have happened’ if it had been applied to Hitler. It hardly seems the way to overcome the Islamic Caliphate, but who knows? Or the caliphate of misanthropic, false feminism—May we find the way! Or as I humbly warned, ‘nature itself will scour us off the earth, if Heaven doesn’t do it first.’

To become His disciples

The problem is not that the Church is bad or wrong or needs reform. The problem is that we think, speak and act as if there were moments in our lives when we are not the Church. We think of Church as this or that—it’s the institution, or it’s the building, or it’s the worship service, or it’s the altar call, or it’s the bible study, or it’s the prayer group, or it’s the social functions, or it’s the fund raising, or any number of other ‘its.’

The reality is first and foremost that we are in Christ. That fact alone establishes the Church, not only in every time and place, but in every one of us, alone or in a crowd. Yet we fail to see that, and continue living as though church were something to do, and to do only at specific times, in specific places.

This is not to say that there ought not to be ‘sacred spaces,’ sanctuaries, churches, but that these tangibles are not to become an external focus, supplanting in us the knowledge and experience of our being in Christ. When this happens in any age or place, the Church suffers loss, the members of Christ’s Body become the prey of wolves.

For us as Christians, there is nothing in this human life that is not infused with God, with His presence, and so there is nothing that cannot be infused with our acknowledgment of Him in everything we think, speak and do. That acknowledgment is worship: we recognize God by acknowledging Him in all our relationships with people, events and things, and we testify that He alone is worthy, and that is worship.

This is not to say that worship is not or cannot occur in church services, but when there is no actual worship going on there, it becomes a hollow ritual, evidence against us that we have forgotten who we are, not necessarily who God is. When this happens, it’s not time to reform churches, redesign services, deploy different ministry methods, or hire a marketing team.

When this happens, it’s time to repent our apostasy, to return to God and to live in His House all the days, all the moments, of our lives, in His presence, in His Word.

It’s time to become His disciples.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
the world of the past has gone…
2 Corinthians 5:17

Wake up from your sleep, rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.
Ephesians 5:14 Jerusalem Bible

A place of mercy

Speaking of priests and ministers, a sister said,

‘Some of them, unlike Chrysostom, cannot even preach a good sermon but tell little stories which, I guess, they think the average person can relate to. Sometimes, I wish I could go home and read the Bible....’

A few years ago, we had a priest who was very eloquent but actually almost never said anything at all useful or edifying, just a vague mixture of story-telling and New Age philosophy. I always brought my Jerusalem Bible with me to church, and whenever he would start his sermon I would listen until I saw where he was going. Then, I would open my bible and bury my face in it as I read it, sort of dropping out of sight.

Once, after the service, the deacon came over to me in the fellowship hall and scolded me for reading my bible during the sermon instead of paying attention. He said it was disrespectful and giving the people around me a bad example. I told him that I listen to the sermon as long as what I hear is the voice of the Shepherd, but when I hear the hireling, I turn away and read the Bible to stay safe. As for the people, I said, well, I am a sign to them too, because they know me better and longer than they've known this priest. If they see me reading the Bible, they know why.

That priest is no longer with us, nor is he still a priest. The deacon who scolded me and told me I should support this priest even if I didn't agree with him, whenever the ex-priest is remembered in conversation, speaks of him with thinly veiled contempt. He knew the man was a fraud, not even a Christian let alone being Orthodox and a priest as well, yet he supported and even promoted him out of churchly protocol.

This is why the Church must be a place of mercy at all times, because we are all deceived, even all hypocrites, at one time or another. We are God's work, though an unfinished work, and it helps no one to be confrontationally judgmental. All we can do when faced with evil within the Church enclosure is to try to get even closer to Jesus, stay with Him, and do what we see Him doing.

Yes, love covers many offenses.

Light of the world

I wrote the following almost exactly four years ago to the day, and I think it deserves another hearing…

For some reason I wanted to wear white clothes to church this morning. I have a very nice white shirt with white embroidery, but I have no white pants—ah! my workout pants which are half of a martial arts outfit, without pockets, and a draw string for a belt! Perfect! No pockets in a shroud! So that’s what I wore today, standing out in the crowd for all that whiteness. It turned out to be a metaphor for the gospel I heard today,

The Lord said to his disciples, ‘You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.’
Matthew 5:14-19

How I hate church politics! Notice, I did not capitalize the word ‘Church’. That’s because church politics has nothing at all to do with the real Church, though it does its best to write history with big and loud letters, to make sure we know who’s in charge. But in spite of it all, it is the living God, the Christ, who makes His home in the praises of His people, as from olden times till now. He is the King, the Only.

So a former priest who like a wild boar let loose in a vineyard wrought havoc in my local community before he was finally shown the door, he writes a letter in a local newspaper publicly challenging an article published there, written by the learned and sanctimonious (but very correct) deacon who once supported him in everything and told us, told me, to do the same—though I would not.

I did not read the letter of the man now called ‘Mister’ instead of ‘Father’ and whose marriage and family morphed into irreconcilable strangeness, crossing too many lines of conventional gender and sexuality to be of any further use to the Orthodox community. I did read a declaration by the Orthodox episcopate in America opposing same-sex ‘marriage’ in the parish newsletter, but didn’t know why it was there. It seemed to me unnecessary rhetoric.

Everyone, Orthodox or not, who opposes same-sex marriage, and everyone who approves of it, well, there’s few who ever cross over to the other side, and as for the Church, we don’t need to be blasted by hot words issuing from the throat of hell either pro or con, even when church leaders issue them, because that is in fact where such words come from. The splitter, diábolos, keeps doing his work, but only One is worthy to clear the threshing floor, separate wheat from chaff, and put each in its proper place.

What I saw and heard thundering with carnal authority and the triumph of flesh over spirit from the steps of the soléa today was not the Righteousness of God. Yes, ‘not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished,’ as the Word declares, but that Law and Righteousness is not served by wounded pride lashing out against an offense. When will people understand it is in their power to not take offense or give it? When will we learn that the Righteousness and even the Law of God is empowered for Truth in mercy?

Praise God! and again I say, praise God! that our humble but courageous presbyter revealed to us in his homily earlier in the service that we are the light of the world, and focused our attention on the truth that living the faith, and only living it, has any real effect on ourselves and those around us. Rather than preaching to them, arguing or trying to convince them, our witness, our best witness, is the work of silence, silence and faithfulness.

Yes, ‘not an iota, not even a dot, of the Law is removed’ by the one who follows the commandments in meekness and charity, because that is the purpose of the Law, not only to tell us what is forbidden, but to open the gates of repentance to us, reconciliation, salvation, imitation of Christ and the saints, the Law is for those who obey it in themselves, though it sometimes tastes bitter at first, the sweetness of the Lord.

When we look back at our futile struggles and fighting, if we endure to the end and hear the Lord saying to us, ‘good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord,’ we will see how much time, how many opportunities we wasted, how weak we were in our strength, how sinful in our righteousness, how much we hated when we said we loved, and how mercy was shown us all the same. While there is still time, brothers, let us show mercy to one another, and leave thundering to the Lord of thunder. Let us seek salvation while it is near.

White for harvest

In spite of all the ‘wars and rumors of wars’ and the ‘nations rising up against nations,’ what Christ calls ‘merely the beginning of birth pangs’ (Mark 13:7-8), to me it looks not like ‘Armageddon on the horizon,’ but something very different. First of all, what He is describing is not something peculiar to our era. These things, along with the natural disasters He names, have been happening all through recorded history. Our days are, in fact, less violent and oppressive to humanity in general than many earlier ages. What Christ calls ‘merely the beginning of birth pangs’ is the period that is finally now coming to an end. The birth pangs are nearly over. The birth is in process. What birth? The birth of the new humanity of which Christ is the first Example, the Harbinger not of a new religion or ‘dispensation’ but of a new human race.

What? Hasn’t this already happened? I mean, aren’t we, the Christians, in fact that ‘new humanity’ that Christ has been creating ever since He became a human being? Don’t we ‘put to death the old man and put on the new’ in our baptisms, chrismations, and Christian lives? Well, yes, and no. As individuals and as a people—the Church—we are incorporated into the Body of Christ and given a chance to live our earthly lives in a heavenly way, and what have we made of it? Has the Millennium arrived? We’ve had two of them already and are now beginning a third. Hasn’t it occurred to anyone that something is wrong with this picture? Are we too busy pushing our own versions of ‘the Good News’ to let the eternal Gospel ‘kick in’?

Eternal Gospel? Yes, you know, this one…

Then I saw another angel, flying high overhead, sent to announce the Eternal Gospel to all who live on the earth, every nation, race, language and tribe. He was calling, ‘Fear God and praise Him, because the time has come for Him to sit in judgment; worship the Maker of heaven and earth and sea and every water spring.’
Revelation 14:6-7 JB

People call this book of the Bible mysterious and either avoid it completely or use it as colors to paint their own images of the end of the age, but it was meant to be ‘read aloud’ so that those ‘who hear and keep what it says’ will be blessed (Revelation 1:3). God forbid I should use this book or the Book itself as a spade to dig with, but the living God did not make it His own for nothing.

Since the beginning, He has been speaking to us, first through the prophets, then appearing Himself in the God-man Jesus Christ, He not only spoke, but breathed the new humanity into existence, into us, making a new and eternal ‘covenant’ just as was foretold…

‘It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD. ‘This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,’ declares the LORD. ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, “Know the LORD,” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the LORD. ‘For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.’
Jeremiah 31:32-34 NIV

What is ‘new’ about this covenant, or agreement, between God and mankind is the absence of an outward authority, ‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts,’ and the need for one, ‘No longer will they teach their neighbor… because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.’ This is echoed and reiterated after Christ’s coming by one of the apostles, writing to the Hebrews, to emphasize, not that this was something still to come, but that it was a present reality…

There will be no further need for neighbor to try to teach neighbor, or brother to say to brother, ‘Learn to know the Lord.’ No, they will all know me, the least no less than the greatest, since I will forgive all their iniquities and never call their sins to mind. By speaking of a new covenant, he implies that the first one is already old. Now anything old only gets more antiquated until in the end it disappears.
Hebrews 8:11-13 JB

The old covenant, a system of priesthood, laws and ritual sacrifices, we know as Christians was ended by this new covenant of which both prophet and apostle speak, but what exactly was ended? The Jewish priesthood? Yes, and as proof of this, the Temple was destroyed, and along with it, the sacrificial code was retired, never to return. All this, ‘divinely revealed’ in the Torah of Moses, was religion, and though unlike the religions of man-made, mythical gods, even this religion was destined to disappear. What about the laws? This is not as easily answered.

Just as religion is a prop to prepare humanity to meet God face to Face in the Messianic age, the law too is only a caretaker until the childhood’s end of the race. When will this ‘childhood’s end’ arrive? That is the question most needy of answer, and to this very day none is forthcoming, though it is plain in the words of Jesus in the Gospel…

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:17-20

‘Not to abolish, but to fulfill’ are the keys to understanding the words ‘until everything is accomplished.’ What is this ‘everything’ and when will it be accomplished, or has it already been? Obviously not an easy question, as we’ve wasted two millennia by not trying to answer it, and a third is waiting ‘for the sons of God to be revealed’ (Romans 8:19). Christ Himself in the same passage prompts our thinking in the right direction, ‘unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter.’ Enter what? The kingdom of (the) heaven(s). I put in parentheses what is written in the Greek to demonstrate the iconic nature of the phrase, which in other gospels is called ‘the kingdom of God.’ Both terms stand for the new humanity which Christ has created.

This new humanity is the fulfillment of ‘the Law and the Prophets.’ It is the ‘everything’ that must be accomplished. It was accomplished by the death-defying life and the life-giving death of Christ on the Cross, at His words, ‘It is finished.’ Its realization comes only in surpassing the righteousness of ‘the Pharisees and the teachers of the law’ not just talking about surpassing it. Jesus makes no excuses for Himself, His teachings, or His kingdom, nor does He give us an excuse for not following Him. There is no consolation prize for the losers of the new universe, only ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Luke 13:28). He is explicit. Why are we implicit? What do we gain by stalling His ‘new creation’ by our religious and legal systems?

‘Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.’ When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
Matthew 7:24-29

Yes, ‘and not as their teachers of the law.’ We’ve heard this passage so many times, memorized it even, know it so well, that we assume that everything we haven’t done is compensated for by everything we have done, even though very little is what He tells us to do. He is telling not only the Pharisees of His day but also us, the Christians of former ages till today…

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.
Matthew 23:23

He says in effect, ‘Yes, you want to be religious. Well, then, be religious. Pay your respects and reverence your traditions to the letter. Pay your tithes till it feels good. But this is not what God our heavenly Father expects. What He really wants has never changed. He wants you to grow up. To treat each other with the same love that He shows to you. The more important matters of the law, in fact, its spirit—justice, mercy and faithfulness—that’s really all you need to do. Everything else runs like clockwork—your well-being, your prosperity, your world—when you do what you know is right.’

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them. This will take place on the day when God judges people's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
Romans 2:13-16

Yes, ‘the day when God judges people's secrets through Jesus Christ’ is not a threat uttered to some distant, future age, but yesterday, today, and forever, to us. We read and we hear these words in scripture and, removing them from our real lives, ensconce them with our ikons and enshrine them in our liturgies, and we remain—children. We confuse childish with childlike and, clinging to Christ’s comfortable words, scramble onto His lap as we kick others behind us away. They aren’t like us. We’re better than them. We’re saved, or we’re Christian, or we’re Catholic, or we’re Orthodox. ‘I’m for Paul. I’m for Apollos. I’m for Peter. I’m only for Christ’ (1 Corinthians 1:12). Meanwhile, outside our gates—after all, we’re the Church!—the human race at its best is following Him without knowing who He is, ready to take the step we have already given up on. And, in spite of what looks like social chaos, at this very moment people are taking it, without our permission, our religion, our rites and rituals, or our righteousness.

Soon, there will only be one thing for us to do, and we had better start soon.

Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.
John 4:35

Only one

‘I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.’
— Martha Graham (1894-1991)

I was led on, to find out a bit about the author of the passage below, which was quoted in the book Write Is a Verb (2007, Bill O’Hanlon), and I found the words quoted above. Both spoke to me of the immediacy and inevitability of life in Christ.

‘There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action—and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly.’

Now, I’ve never been a dancer. Even in a private moment with no one watching, even with music that makes other people dance all around me, I’ve never ‘given in’ to the rhythm and just ‘let go’ and danced. Why? That’s just not me. In youth a geek, thinking that ‘dancing’ was expected of me, I gave it a try, failed, and found a hundred excuses why I don’t dance. There was really only one—that’s not who I am. At last, half a century later, with nothing to prove, I can just be myself, ‘sometimes not pleasant, sometimes fearful, but nevertheless inevitable.’

Being brought up in an environment of vigilant self-denial, surrounded by attitudes of rigorous if pharisaical piety, early on I came to despise the body and praise the spirit. It didn’t help that I was clumsy, unathletic, and too near-sighted to be any good at sports. Does upbringing shape the coffins that we seem to be happy to live in, unaware that our lives are dreams of people dead to the world who can do nothing but dream? Abandoning all thought of interaction with a world I was assured was of no account, I turned inward, to music and literature.

Or is it that our times and places, though seeming to shape us, actually prepare us to discover who we are inside, and at some point accept that inner nature, and maybe even express it openly, as ourselves? I think of Mother Gavrilía, almost an exact contemporary of Martha Graham, who expressed herself in her life in almost exactly the same way as the dancer, though she was a physical therapist and ascetic. Her upbringing squeezed her out of any social or inherited illusions, liberating her to be herself, to express who she was, and that, uniquely and inevitably…

‘When God created us, He gave us life and breathed His Spirit into us. That Spirit is Love. When we lack love, we become corpses and are altogether dead. The Christian must respect the mystery of the existence of everyone and everything. To reach nonexistence, love, love, and love—and so identify completely with the Other, with every other. Then at the end of the day you ask yourself, “Do I want anything? No. Do I need anything? No. Do I lack anything? No.” That’s it!’

It must be an amazing thing for someone to realize that ‘who they are’ is ‘to love’ as Avrilía Papayánnis, the girl who grew up to be known as ‘Sister Lila’ (when she lived and worked with the poor and destitute in India), and later (when she became an Orthodox nun at the age of sixty!) as Mother Gavrilía. Her ‘dance’ was every bit as original, unique, inspirational and, yes, even influential, as that of Martha Graham. In both of these women, the inevitable happened—they became what they were created to be—despite their upbringing (or because of it?), regardless of what others thought of them.

There’s a kind of rebellion that is an affront to God, and another kind that is as pleasing to Him as a commandment fulfilled. The first kind, which grieves Him, is to take what He gives and trash it; or maybe to not take what He gives at all, and to go on ‘a wild goose chase’ only to find despair. The second kind, which pleases Him, is to take what He gives—yourself, as He made you, as you discover little by little what you are—and hand it over to Him with interest, like the faithful servants in the Parable of the Talents. ‘Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.’

Well, almost inevitable. There’s only one charge of ‘living in denial’ that you cannot ignore. Not the ones coming from others, but the one coming from yourself. Everyone knows when they’re ‘faking it.’ To waste what we are given, what we have been created for, is a sin almost as serious as suicide. The words of a dancer—yes, that’s what she was created to be; she only appeared to be ‘merely human’—can be as important and life-saving as those of a canonized saint. If you knew her, and saw her dance, perhaps the message she spoke would have come across just as clearly. ‘There’ll never be another you.’ [*]

If you are young, as I once was (when there was no one to teach me), and you understand these things, then pursue them, pursue Him in yourself, be the man or woman He made you, is making you, and will make you in the world to come. If you are of whatever calendar age, whether you are old or only think you are, look to yourself. Make sure you are not still bound to fallacies, chained to appearances, trained to make-believe about who you are. What gives you ‘a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening’ if you would only let it, to be ‘translated through you into action,’ into joy? Have you accepted it?

‘There is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours.’

Words

Words are signs, not reality itself. That’s why I can write, ‘cease from struggle’ and ‘struggle with all your might.’ Am I saying two different things, using this same word ‘struggle’? Well, yes, and no. There is a way in which one idea somehow contains or includes its apparent opposite. Christianity is full of this kind of thing, which is why those who choose not to believe it become hopelessly confused and place the blame where it doesn’t belong, on Christ, or God, or the Church, instead of on themselves. First Christ or the Bible says one thing, then the opposite.

For yes, we are to blame when we refuse what is obvious and in plain sight, because we’ve allowed ourselves to be tricked by words, our own words or those of others, using them to further deceive ourselves. Isn’t this exactly what the prophet means when he utters, ‘Hear and hear again, but do not understand; see and see again, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people gross, its ears dull; shut its eyes, so that it will not see with its eyes, hear with its ears, understand with its heart, and be converted and healed’ (Isaiah 6:9-10)?

I always wondered, when I read this passage, who was the prophet telling, ‘Make the heart of this people gross…’? Was he telling God to do this? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then God is able to be tempted to do something wrong, which is something that the apostle Paul assures us He cannot do. But it is also written that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so that he would refuse Moses’ plea ‘Let my people go!’ and open the door for God to act, afflicting Egypt with plagues, killing the first-born, and leading Israel out of bondage ‘with signs and wonders.’

What kind of a God would do that, and still insist on being ‘compassionate and merciful’ and all the rest? Are we to go on blindly receiving and believing the words of scripture, setting ourselves up for a massive logical cataclysm somewhere down the road? Well, or else, as fundamentalists, secure our sanity with the jingle, ‘God said it! I believe it! That settles it!’ No, my brothers, ours is the God we know inwardly through the testimony of the Holy Spirit and the teachings and acts of Jesus Christ, who says, ‘If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.’

‘Words! Words! There was a time when I believed in words!’ declares Francesco of Assisi with a sigh to his beloved friend Bernardo da Quintavalle in the film Brother Sun, Sister Moon. No, I am not bringing in modern screenplay texts to prop up my beliefs, the Bible, or God. Only to give another example from life, that what we speak and think, using words, is never the whole picture, never reality, not even when the words are found written in the scriptures themselves. God entrusts Himself to us principally in the human person, in Christ, past, present, and to come.

Words follow like shadows, but it is the real man, the real God, we seek. Yet our desire is not strong enough, our memories soon take over, and words about Him replace being with Him, and Christ retreats to the sanctuary, the ikon, the scriptures. Our minds are now free to learn from words what our hearts once knew by His wordless touch and, as St Basil writes, ‘we are all deceived.’ In this frame of mind we find ourselves stoning the innocent, those Christ comes to save and whose sins He forgave, and drifting farther away from each other and from Him, justified by words.

It’s strange to visit a congregation of deaf Christians. Yes, like any other, they have words, but many of them have never heard them spoken, others have had to learn language through books and writings only. I often wonder how this affects their thinking and, hence, their actions. They seem to be a more peaceful, cooperative, even loving group than almost any others. Are they experiencing ‘by anticipation’ one of the conditions of the world to come, which is silence? At any rate, I know of only one ‘Deaf Church’ where I live. Apparently they haven’t quarreled their way into denominations.

Back to myself, I say that I am ‘a word man,’ and immediately notice how this has as much imprisoned me as liberated me. Words are both the way out of darkness of mind, and the way in. Heresies rarely come from following Jesus, doing what He does, saying what He says, but ‘by words are men entangled, as birds are by their feet,’ and we go astray, led by our word pictures, those static, false icons, into worshiping them and, through them, ourselves. Like St Paul who says, ‘the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life’ (2 Corinthians 3:6), let us not be enslaved by these, but beyond words, know the Word Himself, who is ‘the true Light that enlightens all men’ (John 1:9).