Mary of Nazareth

Everyone has heard of and perhaps even seen the film Jesus of Nazareth, by Franco Zeffirelli. First seen in the United States as a television broadcast on Easter Sunday, April 3, 1977, it has been a standard ‘religious’ movie ever since, though its extraordinary length, over 6 hours, makes it difficult to watch in one sitting. It is still my favorite movie about Jesus, although I have reservations here and there. One of them—and I still have a hard time understanding why they did this—is in the scene in which Christ bequeaths the keys of the Kingdom to the apostles, saying “and upon this rock I will build what I must call my church.” Since when is Christ in a position where He ‘must’ do anything? It sounds like a sheepish capitulation to some kind of political correctness, and who, if not Jesus, was the ultimate in political in-correctness? But that’s alright. Other scenes amply make up for it, especially the scene where Christ tells the parable of the prodigal son, and Peter standing in the doorway of Matthew the tax collector’s house but refusing to go in “to his blood sucking enemy” is self-consciously caught in the web of divine logic, realising that he is the older, dutiful son, that Matthew is the prodigal, and that Christ is the all-loving and all-forgiving father. The words of his Master, and His direct eye to eye look, draw Peter completely out of himself and directly to the Lord, of whom he asks forgiveness with tears in his eyes, and adds, “I’m just a stupid man.” At that moment, watching the scene my entire being dissolves as I realise, with Peter, that Christ is the Pantokrator, and I am less than nothing, and yet He loves me. Who says movies can’t be ikons?


Today is the first day of the Theotokos Fast, and it’s making me think more and more about Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, whom all generations have called blessed, even to the point of calling her the Mother of God, some going even further and calling her the All-holy, as Anthimos of Chios has, who is quoted as saying, “Our Panagia is the salvation of the whole world, she is the only mother for all Christians. She has much love for the human race, especially for sinners. Let us all run to the Panagia in every circumstance to ask her, to have her as our aid.” The title ‘Panagía’ means, all-holy.

How and why does he call her ‘all-holy’? Surely he doesn’t mean that she is a goddess. Neither did Mary die on the cross for our salvation. She is not the God-woman as Jesus is the God-man. She is still just a human being. Everything that Mary is and has is received from her Divine Son, yet she gave Him something too—her flesh—so that He could become man and be the Life of the world. There is no doubt that their lives interpenetrate in a way that no one else’s does, but Mary is simply not the mediator between man and God, not even between man and her Son, who is God.

For there is only one God, and there is only one mediator between God and mankind, himself a man, Jesus Christ, who sacrificed Himself as a ransom for them all.
1 Timothy 2:5 Jerusalem Bible
Mary of Nazareth, a Jewish girl, daughter of Joachim and Anna, a virgin of Israel living at home with her parents, but already betrothed to a man named Joseph.

New Testament apocrypha, like the Protevangelion of James, written long after the events they try to describe, have painted a very strange tale around this young woman. So strange, that the Church, though accepting some of the tale, has disposed of the rest, and even recommends that these apocrypha not be read by the average Christian. Why? We are told that everything of value that is in these ancient writings has been extracted by the Church and for the Church, so we don’t need to bother ourselves. The fact that even what the Church does accept does not square with the history or the customs of the Jewish people in the time of the 2nd Temple does not seem to matter. The hymns and ikons of the Church are simply true, because they tell the story so well.
My favorite painting of the event in salvation history called evangelismós in Greek, and ‘the annunciation’ in English, is very realistic. I know that it isn’t an ikon and I don’t pretend that it is. Nevertheless it speaks to me, and very profoundly, of the human reality of the Theotokos, Mary of Nazareth, a Jewish girl in the working class, following the commandments as befits a woman of Israel, devout, praying, believing what her parents taught her and what she sang and heard sung by the other women, conversant with the psalms as with her own heart, so much so that without premeditation she could compose and sing a new psalm after hearing her kinswoman Elizabeth greet her, “Of all women you are the most blessed…”

It is night. She is awakened and is sitting pensively on her bed, a blanket hanging between her sleeping area and the rest of the house hiding her from view. The rest of the house is in darkness, but not where she is sitting. A strange light is burning before her, emitting words. We would expect that when the bodiless power appeared, she would have retreated in fear, as she does in the film Jesus of Nazareth. But no, she sits quietly, listening. The angel (for now we know what it was, and even though we cannot see it, she can) has to tell her “Do not be afraid,” but only after he has called her ‘highly favored’ and said, “The Lord is with you.”

In what way is she favored? She trembles. How is the Lord with her? What does He want of her? When he reveals it, she says ‘yes’ to God, even though it will put her in the worst position imaginable. She is a virgin. She has never known a man. She is now pregnant. How to tell father and mother, how to tell her betrothed Joseph. What will people think?
“A virgin will bring forth a child, who will be called Immanuel, God among us…” Was she comforted by this prophecy?

In the Bible, there is only one mention of an angel coming to speak to Mary, and it is this one. But there is also another tradition that the same angel came and spoke to her at least once more (some say more than once more). The angel, whose name we have come to know as Gabriel, visited Mary when she was back in Jerusalem in her old age, still living with John, Christ’s beloved disciple, into whose care He gave His mother. The angel spoke good news to her again. It would not be good news in the ears of some, but it was to her. In just a few more days, her Divine Son would come and take her home to be with Him forever.

You would think that the evangelist John, with whom Mary lived for the remainder of her life, would have told us about her life after Christ’s ascension, that he would have written and told us about, not only the angel’s first bringing of the good news, but also the second, yet he is silent. How much he knew about her, how much he knew from her about Jesus! Yet he limits his writing of the good news to the person and words of his Lord and Master, even admitting that he was ‘barely scratching the surface,’ and that “if all were written down, the world itself, I suppose, would not hold all the books that would have to be written” (John 21:25). And in Christ, the same is true of Mary of Nazareth, and of every one of us who follow Him with her. The whole world could not hold all the books that could be written, but it doesn’t have to. Our lives are hidden with Christ in God, but when He who is our life is revealed…

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.Colossians 3:1-4 NIV

Ει ουν συνηγερθητε τω Χριστω τα ανω ζητειτε ου ο Χριστος εστιν εν δεξια του Θεου καθημενος, τα ανω φρονειτε μη τα επι της γης, απεθανετε γαρ και η ζωη υμων κεκρυπται συν τω Χριστω εν τω Θεω, οταν ο Χριστος φανερωθη η ζωη ημων τοτε και υμεις συν αυτω φανερωθησεσθε εν δοξη.

We are still the early humans

‘We are still the early Christians,’ is a saying of Christian apologist and author C. S. Lewis which I hold by, which gives me hope and patience with the Church when she seems to resist what I see as necessary change. I propose an adaptation of this saying which has wider implications, ‘We are still the early humans,’ because whatever or whoever our biological antecedents were in the immense chain of evolution, and regardless of what science today declares homo sapiens from studying ancient remains, the human family as we now know it is probably not much older than twelve thousand years, perhaps a good deal younger, and was ‘created’ in an event that is mythically described in the first chapters of Genesis, ‘Let us make man in Our own image, in the likeness of Ourselves.’

How the physical universe from cosmic down to terrestrial scale came to be is inadequately explained by the best guesses of science just as much as it is obscured by the traditional tales of humanity, yet the former, products of—you guessed it—evolution, often contain more practical truth than the latter, which are the product of, at best, four or five generations out of—at least four hundred of thinking beings. Yes, thinking beings—that’s what we are, despite the slanders of anti-humanistic critics. Thinking beings are what the Bible is describing when we read about God making man ‘in Our own image.’ Why is it that we have no human history, not even oral lore, reaching back to, say, the last great Ice Age? Could it be because those humanoids that fought the glaciers just to remain alive were not yet humans?

Out of the darkness of pre-human existence, an event horizon is seen, appearing as if ‘ready made,’ mirroring an event horizon we are much more familiar with from everyday life—the birth of a child. Before the child is born, without the aid of modern instruments, we can’t see it, we don’t know what it is, and then—pop!—a baby is born, a being which we immediately recognize as one of us, as human, and if we have ever stopped to think about it, that newborn infant is every much a human in every way as a mature adult, except that it lacks experience, the data which is added to the being that is the human. We see a similar thing happening in the case of human civilizations, such as that of Egypt. The illustrious and majestic remains of the earliest dynasties seem to appear ready made from nowhere.

Can you see where I am going with this? We are the early humans because as far back as you find evidences of human civilization—Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Egypt, Yucatan, China—these beginnings are relatively recent. Their spontaneous appearance has led people to speculate on their origins—extra-terrestrials or lost continents, the most popular—none of which are any more reasonable than the obvious explanations that have come down through the generations as myth and folklore. Whether or not one agrees with the notion that at some point the personal God—more precisely, the Tri-Personal God—through a blatant interference in the evolutionary process, ‘created’ humanity by a signal and unique historical event, one cannot dismiss the relative newness of the human species.

Yes, we are still the early humans. We can look back at both archaeological and literate remains that chart broadly if not always finely the course of human social evolution, how we as a society of persons (thinking beings) have tried this and that way to organize ourselves as a whole in order to ensure our survival. The study of these remains is called history, and that history at the very least goes back seven thousand years, with a twilight zone of perhaps an additional five. Human society is what makes personality possible, and vice versa: they emerge together in that ‘creation’ event. History reveals how humanity is evolving its social and personal aspects to reach that equilibrium which was instilled in the process of creation: We were created potentially perfect, and nature demands we realize our potential.

It is not merely in the evolution of social structures that our potential lies. These are only the containers that shape their contents—humanity as human beings. How we organize ourselves, families, kinship groups, languages, nations, follows the same laws as other forms of evolution—the survival of the fittest. This will always happen, this principle will always assert itself, no matter what individuals or groups attempt to apply various templates of their own to shape the human family. We smugly assert the superiority, for example, of liberal ‘democracy’ in government, and free market capitalism in economics, over the personal monarchies and regulated economies of earlier times, or the gender ‘equality’ of today’s feminist societies over what is derisively called ‘patriarchy,’ but which really ensure our survival?

We are still the early humans. Our first attempts at social and personal equilibrium, where we tried every form of government, every plan of economy, every hierarchy of social strata, has brought us where we are today. Are we there yet? I mean, have we achieved social and personal equilibrium, are we a society that functions justly and as we were created to function? And what of ourselves as persons? Has the cult of personality succeeded in ensuring every person’s health and happiness? ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity,’ the chant of the French Revolution, sounded so right when it began, despite the mountains of severed heads that tacitly denied the reality the words stood for. ‘Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ America’s credo, has this attained the potential for which humanity was created?

We have thousands and thousands of years left to achieve what is written in our very bones and blood. We have history to teach us, and now our technology can be integrated into our search for that which will ensure our survival as a species. Neither personal monarchy nor social democracy is to be ruled out as the chosen vehicle of good government, nor is any particular economic model to be totally rejected. What we must, for our survival, rule out, what we must reject, is our anti-progressive and actually suicidal preference for comfort over commitment, for short cuts over completion, for appearances over reality. Yes, for lies over the truth. In ‘democratic’ societies, what are we willing to work for?

What America and Europe, and perhaps other places, are experiencing currently on both social and personal levels is a wake up call in the fight for survival. It took centuries to evolve the social and personal guarantees of human survival that we were finally enjoying in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The assertions of an anti-humanism dressed up as political and social liberation that began to erode western civilization two centuries ago, starting small, have now placed both society and citizen in a position of great danger. The principle of survival of the fittest that drives the evolutionary processes despite the doctrines of political pundits will, fortunately, drive human society back to its mainstream course, and it is beginning now. Everyone must ask themselves, ‘Where should I stand?’

We are still the early humans. We have been taught to ‘think globally, and act locally,’ and this is a principle that can be applied whether we are for the evolutionary process that shaped the human family, or for the social engineering process that seeks to stop evolution in its tracks. The irony is that those who fight against social evolution, are the ones who promote Darwinian theories as applied to nature at large, and those who prefer the ‘traditional’ social norms that evolution has perfected are the ones who promote Creationism and similar religious attitudes. Traditional social norms evolved because society and individual survive best following them. As long as the human family exists, they will exist, and as long as we as a species still want reality, real life, over fantasy, we will be able to realize our potential.

I am optimistic. Time is on our side. We have thousands and thousands of years left. We are still the early humans.

Rivalry… and reunion

In a matter of just two days, long lost cousins have been reunited, at least, we are beginning to pierce the foggy mists of half a century, perhaps soon to see one another’s faces again.

Almost sixty years ago, I lost three of my grandparents in rapid succession.

On June 20, 1958 grandma Sophie passed away, the victim of a botched surgery. She smiled and laughed as she was leaving for the hospital for a routine surgical procedure, telling us, ‘I’ll be back day after tomorrow.’ We never saw her again. Her husband couldn’t live without her. On Christmas Day, 1958 grandpa Casimir passed away. For years afterwards, I thought O Holy Night was a funeral hymn, because from behind drapery at the funeral parlor, a gramophone played that solemn, seasonal song. The next year my other beloved busia (‘grandma’ in Polish) Maria passed away in her sleep on September 9, 1959. As Catholic children, we were all exposed to our grandparents in their coffins at the funeral parlor. We stepped forward, knelt on a kneeler set up in front of their coffins, recited a prayer, took a look, kissed them, and then sat down somewhere to amuse ourselves while the grownups talked in hushed tones.

Then, a little over fifty years ago, on July 7, 1965, my last grandpa, Pawel, passed away. By this time, my parents had moved our family out of Chicago to a small town in the country. What little we saw of our cousins when we still lived in the City was now reduced to never. One would wonder, how and why, since all the families had automobiles by that time. Well, there were many reasons, none of them good.

Uncle Leo, my mother’s older and only brother, disowned us when we moved out of Chicago in the summer of 1964, calling us the ‘N’ word because we abandoned inner city Chicago and moved ‘to the sticks’ (a demeaning term for the countryside). I never saw my cousin Tommy again after that until, as a grown man, married and with one son, we visited my uncle Leo and aunt Anne, saw Tommy again as an adult—he didn’t speak or recognize me, because he was at the time mentally ill—and met a younger cousin I hadn’t known as a child, because she was born too late. Uncle Leo had forgotten that we were apostates from Chicago’s Polish community, and let auntie Anne treat us lovingly and with great hospitality as she always used to do. But after that visit, the wall of separation closed again, for no real reason, other then the fact we were living on the West Coast by then.

I don’t really intend this to be a walk down memory lane, however I began, but a testimony to what sibling rivalry can do to a family.

First of all, there is hardly a family I have ever known where there was not some form of sibling rivalry—children competing for attention, learning the bad habits of slander and mockery in the process. In the best of families, this rivalry simmers down under the influence of Christian teaching and prayer, but except in rare instances—I know of only one family where siblings really appear to love and respect each other fully—most families are affected by it.

The separation from my cousins that is only now after fifty-five or more years coming to an end was caused by sibling rivalry. We were all children when our parents became estranged following the decease of our grandparents. The estrangement established itself on the basis of grudges about money and estate matters, but that wouldn’t have happened if peace and unity had reigned in the family to begin with. A death in the family brings out either the best or the worst in us.

Now, as we get to know each other at the end of our lives, as we once did at the beginning, my cousins and I will have a lot of ground to cover, lives lived apart and incognito, a condition we had no control over, but have inherited from a ‘family feud’ that was carried on in the previous generation.

Thankfully, our first meeting long distance and not face to face shows signs of being a reunion welcome to us. What it brings home to me, though, is how we don’t realize what harm it does to our families in the short or long run, when we let sibling rivalries divide us.

The remedy to rivalry is easy to find but hard to practice—love, respect, choosing not to give offense or take it, and the willingness to forgive everyone, everything, right away. This is, of course, another way of expressing the Golden Rule, which was always there waiting for us to take notice, and follow it.

Just one more thing. To be religious is not to go to church or temple frequently, but to make room for one another, trusting in Christ God to bring us all to safety and salvation, and believing that all we have is by gift alone, His gift, and that, no one can ever take from us.

The face of the earth renew

Τή υπερμάχω στρατηγώ τα νικητήρια
Ως λυτρωθείσα των δεινών ευχαριστήρια
Αναγράφω σοι η πόλις σου Θεοτόκε.
Αλλ' ως έχουσα το κράτος απροσμάχητον
Εκ παντίων μέ κινδύνων ελευθέρωσον
Ίνα κράζω σοι•
Χαίρε Νύμφη ανύμφευτε.

An almost untranslatable hymn. If you read Greek, you probably have this text memorized and can sing the hymn, and for the others, it will do no good for me to transliterate it into English letters. As for the translation, yes, this is problematical, at least for me. I’ve never found an English translation that conveys its many attitudes: the unassailable might, the irresistible victory, and the mystical and mysterious irony of the Woman whom God has made permanent wonder of the world and its protectress. That, along with the pitiful, personal cry of the woman who is also a city as well as the individual singer and supplicant. It’s hard for a man to fit inside the soul of a woman, for masculine to subsume into feminine, but that is what all must do, male and female, all who are, in the end, called to be the Bride, and the brides, of Christ. Next to that Man, all are women, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. She wasn’t, she who was unwedded bride most fertile as well as most blessed among women, she who bore the Son of God by an act of the Holy Spirit, and the rest of humanity by a word of her Divine Son, ‘Behold your Mother.’

Today is the first day of the fortnight before the Repose of the Theotokos. Like the first apostles who fasted and prayed as they awaited the fulfillment of Mary of Nazareth’s earthly life, we too are to fast and pray. What else is there to do? The Mother of all living, the New Eve, both mother and bride of the New Adam, waits with us as she waited with them, for the fulfillment of the word of the angel who once cried, ‘Rejoice, You most favored among women!’ and finally returned to intimate, ‘The God who loves you is coming.’ What will the world look like after she departs? We have seen the ikon of her falling asleep, her repose, the invisible Christ bearing her homeward cradled in His arms, upborne by the angelic hosts, antitype of what our eyes and hearts expect, the Son nestled in her lap, tiny hand raised in blessing. Everything changes. Nothing remains the same. Not then, not now. He who cries out, ‘Behold! I make all things new!’ never abandons us, but follows us, each and all, personally and corporately, from one age to another. The apostles, gathered for her repose, fasted, prayed, and sorrowed to lay her to rest, asking themselves, ‘What do we do now?’

The same question awaits us, awaits our answer, our response, for this too has been sent us, an age of days in which to fulfill the commandments, time in which to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Even the late among us, or within us, like Thomas, is not to be disappointed. For every missed opportunity too can be redeemed, and with even greater glory shared with those who ringed the couch of her repose, inhaling sweet fragrance as Paradise Himself opened eternity to receive her. An empty burial chamber vexed the grief of the apostles, vindicating even the eleventh hour laborer, seeking to view her face who mothered the Word. Even beginnings do not last but must begin anew, as if nothing went before, and we with the apostles finding no holy relic except the absence of decay to show where the Mother of God once lay, we too with them, wonderfully perturbed, must ask ourselves, ‘What do we do now?’ Yes, for fourteen days we will fast and pray, give alms, meditate, peruse the scriptures, and then rejoice with the saints as the Woman who once clothed the Son of God in her own flesh is once and forever clothed by Him in His own eternity.

Then, we as they, are sent. ‘What will the world look like?’ is exactly what we are sent to answer. Even our missed opportunities, our former failures, are slated to be taken up in the glorification of the human race and our ancient home, the earth. We are entering with her who is with us because she is with her Divine Son into a new day, a day of kairós, of acceptable time, a time that escapes obliteration, a time to be eternally remembered. Our invincible Champion, the Theotokos, who like her Son has not abandoned the world, is ready now as at all times, to defend us from our enemies, and to grant victory, because she is victorious. All the promises revealed to John in the Apocalypse are vouchsafed to her, and through her mighty intercession are likewise vouchsafed to us, to us who believe and who know that Jesus Christ is the Winner, and the Victor over every merciless force that rages against us. Though this age is very dark, the darkness is about to end. It is, in fact, ending now, because where we walk, we walk in the light of Christ and the Theotokos. Rejoice with me, brethren, and pursue the course of salvation during these fateful days, for we are sent, and the face of the earth renew.

Interpretations of love

There are so many interpretations of love among people.

One interpretation says…

We must love people, that is, want what is best for them,

have a good will toward them,

but we don't necessarily have to want to be with them,

or put up with them.

This is where many a marriage ends up, and many a congregation.

This is the love that can be commanded

and, once we've hedged the commandment with escape clauses,

we're free to follow this "commandment."

Though there are many kinds of love among us,

the Word of God is the only teacher of what love is.

How we apply it depends on how much we want to see.

For me, just to look, really look, at another human being,

or even at a fellow creature,

without thinking, without measuring, analyzing,

just looking,

for me love comes to the surface quickly.

I want to know the person I am looking at,

and spontaneously I want to love them.

Freedom intervenes to set the limits.
Does the other person want to be loved, or is it an intrusion?
Do I want to activate the love which naturally rises in me,

or will I let it die,

look the other way,

because I realise there will be a price to pay?

I hold myself "ready to love" others,

because Jesus may come to me in the guise of my brother.

I do not fret over whether I should or must love my neighbor

in an active way.

I just love the one who is put before me this moment.

If love requires action beyond that point,

I try to do whatever love demands.

The aftertaste of love is prayer, specifically intercession.

Mother Gavrilia says, "Love does not get tired."
I know what she means…

Once, when I was loving the brother whom God placed before us,

it didn't matter to me that I had to stay with him the whole day,

eating little, taking no rest, just making sure he was fed,

that he would stay awake (we were all up many hours that day!),

that he had somewhere to go while waiting for his bus connexion.

I just wasn't tired.

I could've stayed up all night with him, because I was loving him.

Love just doesn't get tired.

Have you ever noticed how John 3:16

(the often quoted scripture)

and 1 John 3:16

really go together,

and how the 3:16 in John's first letter is really a completion

and commentary of the 3:16 in John's gospel?

Rubrics of salvation

Believers, no less than Pharisees, have been known to shut the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven in men’s faces, while not going in themselves.

They do this by citing the sayings of Jesus or the apostles which are expressed to define boundaries, but they apply them as unjust judges, themselves not keeping the Law.

Quick to exclude others on the slightest pretext—whether moral or doctrinal it does not matter—applying to others what they do not apply to themselves.

If the apostle writes, ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’ (Romans 10:13), they agree provisionally, which means not at all, and then cite other verses to qualify it.

If the Lord says, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die’ (John 10:25), again, they rush to qualify Christ’s words, to fit their rubrics:

‘No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit’ (John 3:5), they quote, as if to pull out a trump card, changing Christ’s invitation into a stipulation.

But consider, salvation is nothing less or more than returning to our Father, we who have strayed. It is no more nor less than turning around, repenting, and accepting God’s mercy and pardon.

Over and beyond our return to Him, God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—imposes no other conditions, erects no other barriers between Himself and us.

Our sin covers us when we depart from Him, so we cannot see the road back. But His mercy also covers us when we accept it, and it hides our sins from us, and from Him.

Rubrics may be written well when they assist our return to God, but they are ‘lies from the pit of hell’ when they nullify our attempts to return by imposing restrictions.

‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life’ (John 3:16).

These are the rubrics of salvation, which even one for whom all is lost, even life itself, can take hold of, by confessing, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’

For Jesus answers, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23:42-43).

In His arms

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, the sinner.

The fast of Christ’s holy Mother’s repose draws near, reminding us that we must prepare, we must repent of the sin which clings so closely, that we may, like her, be received in His arms and carried as a newborn infant to Paradise. For all that Christ did for her He has promised to do for His disciples and lovers, whom He declares to be His very own relations, saying, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice” (Luke 8:21). Let’s not only hear His words, but do what He commands and so stay near Him, following behind Him closely. Christ goes on before, clearing the path ahead endlessly, preparing a place for His disciples. Have mercy on me, Lord, and let me be counted among them, even as the least.

Some words, brethren, to start us on the path of illumination which has only one destination, the holy death which is life immortal. First, a word on prayer…

Bishop Theophan the Recluse used to say that praying only with words written by another is like trying to talk in a foreign language using only textbook dialogues. Like many other Church fathers, he said that we must look for our own words in order to pray. I suppose that this is truly possible for us (if we dismiss artificially “invented” prayers of our own) only in moments of desperate need, real anguish, either for ourselves or for others. In such moments we do not “recite” prayers, we simply cry out to God, “Lord, please come to him and comfort him!” The audacity of prayer is born only in the audacity of love. Saint Makarios said, “Love gives birth to prayer.” Therein lies the mystery and the meaning of prayer.

We can recite endless litanies, we can endlessly finger our prayer ropes, but unless we have love, unless we have learned to grieve for others, we have not even begun to pray. We can thus go through all our life without having begun to pray. That’s why Abba Antony said, “Let’s learn to love sorrow in order to find God!” He did not say, “Let’s look for sorrow,” but “Let’s love it,” because sorrow is a cup offered us by Christ, and drinking it, we begin to partake of prayer.

Unless we are truly sympathetic to human suffering, we are merely carrying out a “prayer rule,” not really praying. To carry out a prayer rule is good and necessary, but only when we realise it is a means, not an end in itself. We must realise that it is only a spur to encourage our efforts.

Imagine a man peacefully fishing from the shore. Everything is fine, everything is according to fishing rules, the brightly colored float bobs on the surface. The man does not realise that there is no baited hook attached to the line. The float is just a pretence, and actually there is no fishing taking place. To many people their prayer rule is such a baitless float. Only the hook of suffering can catch real love.

And now, just a few more words, this time on fasting…

Fasting means trying to overcome that which is “too human” in us. It means trying to overcome the limitations of our nature and to introduce it to limitlessness, to make it breathe eternity.

Fasting must be understood, in the first place, as abstention from non-love, not from butter. Then it will become a time of light, a “joyous time of Lent.”

Non-love, animosity, is the most terrible form of indulgence, a gluttony and intoxication with the self. It is the very first, the original offense against the Holy Spirit of God. “I appeal to you by the love of the Holy Spirit,” writes Saint Paul (Romans 15:30).

Love is the opposite of pride and hatred. In our evening prayers, we ask forgiveness for those sins which are a breach of love.

…if I have reproached anyone, or become angered by something; or slandered anyone in my anger; or have lied or slept unnecessarily; or a beggar has come to me and I have despised him; or have saddened my brother and quarreled with him; or have judged someone or have allowed myself to be haughty, proud or angry …or have laughed at my brother’s sin…

It seems to me that I have been found out. It’s all written down in the prayer book, all the things I’ve done! And before I was halfway through the prayer, my internal advocate was already reasoning my defense, making excuses for me. Why is that advocate so silent in me when it comes to defending others and overlooking their sins, not just my own?

Lest this post devolve into an academic exercise, I want to bring it to a close by returning to the theme of the time we are about to enter.

Someone is coming for us. Someone who loves us more than our parents, our spouses, our kids, our friends. Someone is coming for us and in His arms we will be gently carried into the land of all joy, into Paradise. Actually, in His arms we find Paradise, because it is all in Him. The New Adam is Paradise, and just as His earthly Mother was made all-holy by being His chosen dwelling-place, so each of us is transfigured to the degree we let Him live in us while we live in this world. And as her repose prefigures the rapture of all who “will be taken up in the clouds,” we can look forward with confidence to our own repose, because like her “we shall stay with the Lord forever”
(1 Thessalonians 4:17).

With such thoughts as these you should comfort one another.
1 Thessalonians 4:18 Jerusalem Bible

Ωστε παρακαλειτε αλλήλους εν τοις λόγοις τούτοις.

New and old

In our Christian life we have to strike a balance between following the tradition and creating it. Those who only follow tradition stifle the Spirit in them, pruning the buds and never harvesting the fruit. Those who only create tradition, uproot the tree altogether. But to follow tradition as well as create it is to be the ‘tree that is planted by water streams, yielding its fruit in season, its leaves never fading’ (Psalm 1:3). This is what Christ expects of us, what indeed happens to us as we follow Him. We are transformed into the steward ‘who brings out from his storeroom things both new and old’ (Matthew 13:32).

A Christian brother wrote, ‘Many years ago I was at a symposium on “Youth and the Church,” and a sociology professor had been asked to speak. He said that the church could play an important role in helping youth to adjust to the demands and values and mores of society. I asked him what if society’s values were wrong, and the youth were revolting against them. He got very emphatic, and said “Youth must adjust!” I almost expected him to throw up his right arm in a Nazi salute.’

I hope the professor's emphatic response was just a careless enthusiasm for his own ideas (such it often is), and that he did not intend to circumscribe so closely the idealism of youth. This is, unfortunately, how some in the Church feel, that youth (indeed anyone) must ‘adjust to the demands and values and mores of society.’ By this, of course, they mean the status quo of churchly life. These same people are adamant that one must consult one’s ‘spiritual father’ in everything, before making a single move in one’s life. For them, an act, even a thought, done without
‘authorization’ is at best foolish and at worst brazen pride. The independent spirit, to them, is pure sin. But I don’t think so.

Christ does not turn us into robots. He did not come to destroy tradition, but He frees us from its stranglehold. He calls us to follow Him, but that call always includes our free will and implies the right use of it—something that requires independence. If His call and our following does anything, it transforms us into creatures capable of, and desirous of, living for ever with Him. It charges us with an independence of spirit that even angels do not share.

Only the independent spirit can undo its will and enter into the life of the Holy Triad, where three wills are one will from eternity, without confusion, without disorder, but in total freedom. Often what shows as a submissive will is a mercenary subservience, brazen pride concealed under an outward humility in order to reign in splendor.

The Holy Tradition is the life of the Holy Triad as lived by the Church throughout the ages, and every cell in the Body of Christ is both nourished by it and nourishes it, every father is a son, every son a father, and like its outward sign, an Orthodox temple, the walls once white and empty fill up with ikons, generation after generation. To follow tradition as well as create it is to be the ‘tree that is planted by water streams, yielding its fruit in season, its leaves never fading’ (Psalm 1:3), and we can ‘know the tree by its fruit’ (Matthew 7:16).

If Heaven doesn't do it first

A year and a week ago 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.’

Tossing golden crowns

A Christian must not be fanatic; he must have love for and be sensitive towards all people. Those who inconsiderately toss out comments, even if they are true, can cause harm.

I once met a theologian who was extremely pious, but who had the habit of speaking to the (secular) people around him in a very blunt manner; his method penetrated so deeply that it shook them very severely. He told me once: “During a gathering, I said such and such a thing to a lady.” But the way that he said it, crushed her. “Look”, I said to him, “you may be tossing golden crowns studded with diamonds to other people, but the way that you throw them can smash heads, not only the sensitive ones, but the sound ones also.”

Let’s not stone our fellow-man in a so-called “Christian manner.” The person who – in the presence of others – checks someone for having sinned (or speaks in an impassioned manner about a certain person), is not moved by the Spirit of God; he is moved by another spirit.

The way of the Church is LOVE; it differs from the way of the legalists. The Church sees everything with tolerance and seeks to help each person, whatever he may have done, however sinful he may be.

I have observed a peculiar kind of logic in certain pious people. Their piety is a good thing, and their predisposition for good is also a good thing; however, a certain spiritual discernment and amplitude is required so that their piety is not accompanied by narrow-mindedness or strong-headedness. Someone who is truly in a spiritual state must possess and exemplify spiritual discernment; otherwise he will forever remain attached to the “letter of the Law”, and the letter of the Law can be quite deadly.

A truly humble person never behaves like a teacher; he will listen, and, whenever his opinion is requested, he responds humbly. In other words, he replies like a student. He who believes that he is capable of correcting others is filled with egotism.

A person that begins to do something with a good intention and eventually reaches an extreme point, lacks true discernment. His actions exemplify a latent type of egotism that is hidden beneath this behavior; he is unaware of it, because he does not know himself that well, which is why he goes to extremes.

— Elder Paisios

Patterns

Many of the ideas touched upon in my post ‘God’ are developed in greater detail here. This was originally written and published on March 4, 2014.

Factual and actual

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

Observable patterns

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

‘Change’ and ‘squeeze’

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

Origins, of a human, and of a universe

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

Expansion from a singularity

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

The initial squeeze

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

Pre-verbal script

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

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

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

‘Squeeze’ as a basic pattern of life

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

Squeezed is the way to go

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

The pattern written everywhere

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


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

John 10:38

God

God. God is. This is an irrefutable truth, one that does not need to be proven verbally or critically. It is the self-evident in which all other truth, self-evident or deduced, is grounded. That I am sitting here writing these words, that you are there reading them, that something in my mind is speaking to something in yours, that we breathe, and move, and have our being, these are the unspoken, the unneedful of being spoken, evidences of the self-evident, the witnesses, yes, even the eye witnesses, of the Being. That’s why we see written on one halo, and one halo only, the letters Ο, Ω, Ν—omicron, omega, ni—‘ho Ōn’—‘the Being.’ But this is not going to be a Greek lesson.

God. God is. Something in us, in all of us, instinctively knows this, knows this long before we ever mount the steps leading to human speech. This is not belief, this is knowledge. It begins in us at least while we are being born, while we are passing through a physical impasse called the birth canal. All our senses, as yet unexposed to air and light, only felt the nearness of annihilation, as they were pushed and pressed in the contortion that ends fetal life. Then suddenly—they were out!—and not only out, but received, accepted, coddled by human hands, without knowing that they were hands, but knowing for certain that whatever they were, they are. For that newborn, there is God. God is.

Still, long before speech invests the tiny brain, though it is heard all around and gradually distinguished from other sounds in the new, undark and unquiet universe, the senses grapple and touch, not the world, but God. For them, not quite yet an individual, still a body full of sensations, not yet an ‘I’ or ‘me,’ the ‘other’ is truly there, is only there, is all there is, that ‘other’ which later, when we emerge as people, we call ‘God,’ or at least ‘the Other.’ The universe is still, not a place, but a unified experience of one by another, its existence unquestioned, dependence on it self-evident, the source and fountainhead of all we call ‘belief in God’ when we later learn how to convert reality to words.

God. God is. Like the universe itself, here before we come into being, here after our personal being ends, yet somehow not dropping us at the end, because holding us at the beginning. Certainty of the one urges certainty of the other. This is why the human race, by and large and if left to itself, believes in God, and not in God as a mere force or entity or power, but as a person. Moderns who say they believe in God, but not in a personal God, say this for many reasons, none of which are grounded in reality. Perhaps some want to escape the reality of moral choice, that there is a real right and a real wrong, which even a baby knows by what we call instinct. Others find other reasons.

‘God is at least a Person’ is a saying I learned in my Christian training, but I didn’t really have to be taught that from the outside. My teacher was preaching to the choir. Of course God is a person! If you trip and fall, a chair nearby is never going to catch you on its own, but if you’re walking beside another, that person will try hard to catch you, or at least to break your fall. In college, we did a psychological experiment to entrench trust. We would stand up, and then taking no precautions, let ourselves fall straight back to the floor. Behind us, a fellow student was standing to catch us, so we did not hit the floor or hurt ourselves. That was my first encounter with the meaning of faith.

Because faith is trust. Faith is not intellectual assent to an idea. That can be or become very impersonal and, in that way, verge on fantasy, thinking we believe in God, when we only believe in our ideas about God. But God is, and there is only one possible response to God, call it what you will—faith, trust, even knowledge: none of them quite hits the mark. It is in this gray, seemingly rational but actually irrational arena of thought, that atheism arises in some people. No one can be an atheist in the state of nature, that is, as a raw human, as that newborn babe that knows God in a growing sequence of manifestations: hands holding, then breasts feeding, then parents providing and protecting.

I don’t fault most atheists, because if I thought God were what they think He is, I’d be an atheist too. Remember, one of the charges brought against the early Christians by the Roman authorities, was the charge of atheism. From the Roman point of view, they controlled who or what God was or is supposed to be. From the Christian point of view, God was, is, and will be forever uncontrollable, He is the wild in wilderness, untamable except by love, to which He gladly gives Himself to His lovers, uncatchable by any other net, not a thing to be used, but a person to be loved, and He, being a person, being The Person, makes those who love Him into persons too, into real people, into what He is.

God. God is. Can we see yet how He can be One and yet be many? How One yet at least Three? Can we see yet how He can be unchanging, yet how we can see Him change? How we cannot grasp Him, yet He shows Himself to us gradually, from our moment of birth (perhaps even earlier) to our last moment? How what He is quickly becomes who He is, or at least as quickly as we ourselves grow from fetus, to babe, to toddler, to child, to youth, to man or woman, to father or mother, to that one lying near life’s end in peace, safety and love, knowing, as King David does when he sings in psalm 59, ‘The God who loves me is coming’? How what He is, is finally what we become?

God. God is. He is not very far from us, from you or me. He has never been far. Scriptures tell us such things, and if we are devout we believe them. Then, there is that story which is no mere myth, about the Man who says that He and the Father are One, that before Abraham was He is, the Man who asks us, ‘Which is easier, to say to this cripple, Your sins are forgiven, or, Pick up your mat and walk?’ the Man who says, ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life,’ and then asks us, you and me, ‘Do you believe this?’ Yes, anyone could have said such things, could have squeezed belief out of us, but that He does not do. No, He descends to each of us, and beckons, ‘Trust me,’ and then raises us.

God. God is. I am saying this just one more time. It really didn’t need to be said, not to me, not to most of us. This has always been a given. It is truth beyond name and number. He is beyond name and number, yet He calls Himself ‘I am,’ He names Himself ‘Yahweh’ in Hebrew, ‘The Being’ in Greek, and He says that He is One, yet He says ‘Let Us make man in Our image,’ and then tells that man, tells us, ‘I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God’ (Epiphanios of Cyprus). Yes, He in truth has become as we are, has become one of us, has appeared as us, and is now with us till the end of time.

Only one conversion

People get ‘converted’ to many things over the course of their lives. ‘Converted’ means, of course, ‘changed,’ but ironically many conversions do not actually change the people who make them. In many cases, a convert is actually a revert. They were involved in projecting an identity that was never really theirs, maybe foisted on them in childhood or because of their social class, and they finally have the courage or the realization to abandon it, and be who they always knew they were, but couldn’t tell.

Many types of conversions don’t get the name, but they’re conversions of a sort anyway. They are deliberate choices to change from one state to another. No, I don’t mean ‘state’ as in changing states, moving from Oregon to Washington, for example—though it can be argued that moving across the river from Portland to Vancouver USA amounts to a case of real conversion. No, I mean changing from the state of being, say, a Republican to being a Democrat—possibly, but not always, just a label change.

In America, political affiliations can be very absolute, part of one’s family history, and so a political party conversion can be devastating to some of those who experience it. Much more devastating can be religious conversions, changing from, say, a Baptist to an Episcopalian, something that probably almost never happens, except through marriage, and it has to be a very lukewarm Baptist to sink so low—or was it the Episcopalian who was lukewarm or lack-a-daisical enough to be willing to lose their dignity?

Meaning no offense to either religious affiliation, I simply observe that most Baptists abhor the broadness of the Episcopalian, and the Episcopalian shrinks from contamination by associating with ‘bible-believing’ (which means, fundamentalist) Baptists. For one of each to fall in love and marry, and then sort out the religious affiliations successfully and without injury, must be regarded as a true miracle. It is truly a case of ‘Love wins,’ the slogan of the successful spreading of marriage to gays and lesbians.

But the religious conversions, that is what always bothers me. When it’s for marriage, for love, I don’t have a problem. We all know what’s going on. As an Orthodox Christian, I expect anyone who marries into my family to become (at least nominally) Orthodox. This is a function of maintaining a family in smooth running order. We don’t care what you really believe. Just come to church with us on occasion. Do your best. What you can’t, or won’t, do, don’t worry. God is merciful. He’ll do the rest.

But when people convert to Orthodoxy, I am always suspicious. What was so wrong with where they came from that made them choose ‘the better part’? Are they simply following Mary of Bethany’s example, sitting at the feet of Christ to listen to, and absorb, the Savior’s every word? Hardly. They think they have found the better way, and being ambitious to have the best, to be able to piously pity those not so enlightened as oneself to choose the secure haven of Orthodoxy, that is what is important.

No, not to all who convert, but perhaps, at least to the unthinking few. May Christ reduce their numbers! Because it is not Orthodoxy to which one converts, though people may talk that way. Conversion to Orthodoxy, if that’s all it is, is worthless, no better than converting from one political party to another, or even converting from being a carnivore to being a vegetarian. It’s only an ‘upgrade’ to one’s lifestyle. It’s part of the self-help and personal improvement movement. Have the best to be the best.

I’m actually not excused from this very same malady. I too want to have the best, and to be the best. What I admit to myself and to God every time I encounter Him is that ‘all my righteousness is filthy rags.’ That puts a sudden, if impertinent, end to all my fantasies of being better than you. I console myself by telling people, as I told a visitor to my parish today at coffee hour, that I did not ‘convert’ to Orthodoxy twenty-seven years ago because it was better than Episcopalianism, just because I was ‘sent’ here.

That is the truth, as far as I can see it. I was a High Church Episcopalian holding to a stricter orthodoxy than many canonical Orthodox, and so when the door opened for me and my family to ‘immigrate’ to the Greek Church, that’s what we did. Only in the course of the years that followed did we learn and accept the subtle differences between Western (that is, Episcopal, Catholic, and Lutheran) beliefs and practices, and those of the East. By then, I knew for sure what I know now: You don’t convert to Orthodoxy.

No, there is only one move in the human experience that can rightly be called ‘conversion.’ It is the migration from death to life. The Puritan author John Bunyan had it right when he wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress. We move from the City of Destruction (the old, lost humanity) to the Celestial City (the new humanity, formed in the image of Jesus Christ). What it looks like or feels like to us when we undergo this change we may think is conversion from one religion (or religionlessness) to another, but it’s more.

There is only one true conversion offered to the human race in bulk or in fine, as a society or as an individual. That is conversion to Christ, the king-maker and savior of humankind. He has very little to do with ‘religion,’ and conversion to Him, though it may occur within religious structures, is not confined to them. Some pagans are reported in the book of the Acts of the Apostles to have received the Holy Spirit even without being baptized (that is, incorporated into the Church). Yes, they were then baptized.

But their conversion was to Christ, not to any church or religion, even though the Church already existed and was forced by the turn of events to hurriedly unite them to itself by the formal mysteries. There is something absolutely wild, that is, uncultivated and unexpected, in this. It is the wildness of God Himself who, though He tells us repeatedly that He is not a respecter of persons, we override by our traditions, making Him the accomplice to everything we do, good or bad, all in the name of serving Him.

I think I’ve made the point I wanted to make and which I’ve written about before in many different ways. There is only one real conversion, and that is to Christ. All of our other changes either lead up to this, or away from it. He made His apostles ‘fishers of men’ for no other purpose than to bring men to Him. Yes, they together constitute the Church, but no one can be brought to the Church without first being brought to Christ, regardless of what it looks like, or what sacramental acts have been performed.

I repeated myself to a new friend and brother today, meeting him after the Divine Liturgy. I told him, ‘I don’t witness for the Church. I witness for Christ, and He witnesses for the Church.’ I’m sure my new acquaintance was just as puzzled by this saying as I sometimes am, even though I came up with it. What does it mean to ‘witness for Christ’? And how is it that Christ witnesses for the Church? All I know is, I go where I am sent, speak to whomever He sends me, and what happens after that is all in His hands.

The Lord and Bridegroom of the Church knows how to entice His lovers, not with base self-gratifications, but by the beautiful gentleness and mercy of the Cross.

First He says, ‘Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light’ (Matthew 11:28-30), and then, ‘If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me’ (Matthew 16:24). Conversion, yes, real, true conversion, is the only state in which we can hear, and rejoice to hear, these things.

There is only one conversion, and it is to Jesus Christ.

Open Door

We are still the early Christians, at least,
we can be if we want to.

This doesn’t mean trying to set up yet another church denomination to ‘purify’ the Church of all the accumulations of tradition and what not that seems to obscure the Good News. Actually, it isn’t the traditions per se that obscure the Good News. Administered rightly, the traditions do what they were designed to do: amplify the Good News and integrate it into our personal lives.

What obscures the Good News is something so close to us that we can’t often see it. It’s our tendency to want the appearance rather than the reality of anything. The mind awake knows better, knows this tendency and refutes it, saying as C. S. Lewis writes, ‘I want God, not my idea of God.’ This is what the Christian mind awake realizes about God and, this being its starting point, begins to untie the knot of its self-deception.

Acknowledging the holy scriptures formally does nothing to promote our life in Christ. We must with the fear of God, with faith and love draw near to them. We must humbly bow our stiff necks and tender our tough hearts into the faithful care of the Word of God. Studying them in this way, we are drawn to the same life that the holy apostles and early church brothers lived. Why? Because we realize we want it.

When I read the first letter of holy apostle Paul to his spiritual son Timothy the other day, I didn’t read a daily portion. I couldn’t read any less than the whole book, cover to cover, short as it is. It drew me into itself, not in the imagination, but in the spirit of the life it contains. Reading it this way, I was placed right then and there, living the same church life that they live, with them. Why? Because it’s still happening.

As I said at first, we are the early Christians, and that’s that, but only if we want to be. Once you discover that through living in the holy scriptures, once you have had a taste of that life, that real Church life, you realize there really isn’t any other kind, everything else seems fake, seems contrived. Fellowship with the saints becomes more than a review of history, and you realize what it means to have an indelible baptism.

Christ is not religion to me, nor are He and His holy apostles and saints too exalted to be my friends, nor is the Holy Spirit an excuse for me to rest in comfortable exile from my heavenly home.

Instead, the Book is the door that was left open in my path, and I walked through it to find that all it says is true, that there is a heavenly country, that paradise still exists, that the Church has never changed, never been divided, and that it’s my Home now, and to the ages of ages.

Behold, I have set before thee an open door,
and no man can shut it.
Revelation 3:8

Ιδου, δεδωκα ενωπιον σου θυραν ανεωγμενην,
και ουδεις δυναται κλεισαι αυτην.

Together

‘I was born a Christian, and I will die a Christian.’ That has been the defiant confession of many a new martyr under the Turkish yoke over the centuries—men and women who were Christians, usually Orthodox, who somehow were coerced into accepting the Islamic religion, and who later openly renounced it, and with these words went to their deaths.

I can say the same words, and mean what I say, but not with the same effect. I was ‘born a Christian,’ that is, I was born into a Christian family, a family that had been Christian for possibly a thousand years, maybe longer. As a baby, my mother took me to the little church in the basement of a Catholic convent in Chicago, and had me ‘christened.’

That christening didn’t guarantee my salvation, didn’t make me a Christian in reality but in potential, placing me in an environment in which I would be raised in the knowledge and, hopefully, the love of God. Mine wasn’t a perfect upbringing—far from it—but it provided an indelible basis to my life, my thoughts, my feelings, that made faith possible.

Yes, I know about believer’s baptism, and I don’t have a problem with it, but I am with those who believe in the baptism not only of individuals, but of families, yes, even tribes, even whole nations. ‘Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else,’ writes the holy apostle Paul, whose call was preaching, not baptising.

The Christian family. One father, one mother, many children, living together according to the Word of God, following the commandments, teaching the faith to one another by love, protecting, nourishing, injuring but forgiving, remaining one, staying together, even if the walls are blown down by the tempest, the foundations shattered by the tremors, of life.

‘Even if we lose everything, we’ll still have each other, wandering as gypsies if we have too,’ we used to say. The family is more than the house it lives in. So also, I read last night in an old copy of the Anglican Digest that I saved from my first years as a Christian, ‘The Church is what’s left after the building burns down.’ How true! because the Church is the greater family.

What else is the Christian faith for, if not for this? ‘The only purpose of this instruction is that there should be love, coming out of a pure heart, and clear conscience, and a sincere faith’ (1 Timothy 1:5). To make a home in this exile world for the nomads of the Most-High God, a home that is not tied to time or place, but moves with the family as it follows the marching orders, ‘When the cloud moves, we move.’