Revolution and the Restoration of Romanity, Comments on Aleksandr Dugin's “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos”

[Note: To those waiting for the second installment of my discussion of identity, I promise you, it is forthcoming. Today's essay is a product of recent reading and I wanted to get it out quickly, so it got priority. My apologies. -J]

I begin this essay with the admission that, because I do not read Russian, I am forced to confront the ideas presented by Professor Dugin in translation, which may result in some inaccuracies of detail; however, given the rise in popularity of his “Fourth Political Theory” among my philosophic and intellectual circle, I feel that addressing some of the problems with his larger ideas that come across in the essay is warranted. I also must confess a certain longing for the geopolitical situation that Professor Dugin envisions as the end result of his “new way.” However, as I will attempt to demonstrate in this essay, Dugin's end-game is, ultimately, the restoration of a kind of political order that pre-existed the Roman world (and in that world, or cosmos, we must include Hellenic philosophy and culture) and is, frankly, inferior to it.

Dugin refers back to the essential dichotomy of order and chaos, striving back and forth toward the omipresent Logos as the birth of western philosophy with the pre-socratic Heraclides of Ephesus. Heraclides' philosophy identifies a common Logos in which all things participate, even unknowingly, as quoted by Sextus Empiricus “So we must follow the common, yet the many live as if they had a logos of their own. Though logos is common, yet the many live as if they had a logos of their own.” [1] Dugin asserts:

    The European philosophy was based on the logocentric principle corresponding to the principle of exclusion, the differentiating, Greek diairesis. All this corresponds strictly to the masculine attitude, reflects the authoritative, vertical, hierarchical order of being and knowledge. This masculine approach to the reality imposes order and principle of exclusivity everywhere. That is perfectly manifested in Aristotle’s logic where the principles of identity and exclusion are put in the central position in the normative manner of thinking. A is equal to A, not equal to not-A. The identity exclude non-identity (alterity) and vice versa.” [2]

Within this quote, we begin to see what Dugin is suggesting through what he identifies as criticisms of 'Western' philosophy; namely masculine 'domination,' vertical/hierarchical order, and exclusivity are—if not negatives—at least grave weaknesses of the philosophic system. By quoting the principle of identity defined by Aristotle in this regard, Dugin is actually asserting that the principle of identity might not hold true. A might not be equal to A and sometimes might actually be equal to not-A.

Such an assertion, no doubt, finds a great many supporters in our contemporary context. Exclusivity, masculinity, and hierarchy are the typical bogey-men of western academics, and much of their prejudice has filtered into the popular culture. In upholding the non-exclusivity of truth, people are willing to violate principles of identity; Dr. Peter Fosl noted this anecdotally from his dealings with undergraduates in philosophy classes a few years ago:

    I remember once posing the following question to a class I was teaching: if we take the religions of the world, isn't it true that at most one can be right and that perhaps none are right? Every single student in the class answered in the negative, holding that all can be right. When I pointed out that such an option would violate the principle of non-contradiction in the sense that it would mean that both X is true and X is not true (where X is a religious doctrine, for example that Jesus is God). To my amazement, every student was comfortable with tossing out the principle of non-contradiction.
    At the time I figured that the event showed that people are more interested in moral and political practices of tolerance and even simple manners than with logic. But I later thought to myself that my students might be onto something about the curious way "truth" plays out in religious discourses. There may be a sense in which it's wrong to use ideas of truth and falsehood as they appear in the sciences, philosophy, law, etc. But if one takes that option, one does have to accept, I think, a set of consequences that most religious believers would be loathe to tolerate (for example, that believing in Jesus may have little to do with salvation). [3]

The principle of non-contradiction (a corollary of Aristotelian identity) is here identified as an essential in exclusivity. Fosl is generous in his evaluation of the motives of his students; I suspect that most undergraduates at the liberal arts college at which he teaches would rather melt into the floor than be seen as possibly believing that someone, somewhere might be in possession of a exclusive truth. But, when faced with Fosl's justification of this principle of non-exclusivity, we come upon an interesting couple of ideas. The first, and most important for this analysis, that the nature of “truth” may not be the same in religious discourse as it is in other disciplines. {As a side note, I wrote a bit about Fosl's claim that believing in Jesus might not have much to do with salvation a few years ago. Interested readers can check that out here.}

Such an assertion begs the question, though, “What would a non-exclusive truth be?” Pressing the limits of language, we might be able to articulate such a concept as the 'furious green idea'--a grammatical possibility, but still functional nonsense. Non-exclusive truth has to be within this category as well. If exclusivity is ever not an essential component of truth, then we are faced with the possibility of many co-existing truths; which is another way of saying no truth at all. Fascinatingly, this is precisely what Dugin is asserting about post-modernity in his essay, saying:

    [...]postmodernity as a sum of non-co-possible fragments which can coexist. It wasn’t possible in the Leibnitz’s vision of reality based on the principle of co-possibility. But within the postmodernity we can see excluding elements coexisting. The non-ordered non-co-possible monades («nomades») swarming around could seem to be the chaotic, and in this sense we usually use the word chaos in the everyday talk. [4]

To be fair, Dugin asserts that this “chaos” is not the chaos which he advocates. His vision of chaos is actually “a kind of post-order and the Greek Сhaos as pre-order, as something that exists before the ordered reality has come into being.” [5] Here, however, we see Dugin betray that what he really seeks is a restoration of a earlier philosophic-cosmological system that was defined by the pre-socratic philosopher Anaximander. It was Anaximander who first articulated the limitless, boundless prexisitng unity out of which all things that have being arose. In his commentaries on Aristotle's Physics, the neoplatonic philosopher Simplicius of Cilea writes of Anaximander:

    Anaximander from Miletus, son of Praxiades student and descendant of Thales, said that the origin and the element of things (beings) is apeiron and he is the first who used this name for the origin (arche). He says that the origin is neither water, nor any other of the so-called elements, but something of different nature, unlimited. From it are generated the skies and the worlds which exist between them. Whence things (beings) have their origin, there their destruction happens as it is ordained. For they give justice and compensation to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time, as he said in poetic terms. Obviously noticing the mutual changes between the four elements, he didn't demand to make one of them a subject, but something else except these. He considers that genesis takes place without any decay of this element, but with the generation of the opposites by his own movement. [6]

Dugin speaks of chaos as “something that precedes being and order, something pre-ontological.” [7]

Maybe the case that Dugin wants to make—indeed, it is the case that he does seem to make in parts of the essay—is the identification with Chaos with the apeiron, and that a restoration of the ontology of pre-existing Chaos out of which Logos can arise is the only way to save the Logos from the perversion of post modernity. However, in another part of the essay, he gives us the intellectual history of Chaos “as something that preceded the Logos abolished by it and its exclusivity was manifested and dismissed by the same move. The masculine Logos ousted the feminine Chaos, the exclusivity and exclusion subdued the inclusivity and the inclusion.” Here, we see Chaos not as a the boundless, limitless first principle, but rather as the opposition to the Logos (made clear by the description of the Logos as essentially masculine and Chaos as essentially feminine). This begins to set red flags off for me, because I see cloaked in philosophic language a return to the Babylonian creation myth, where the pre-existing feminine Chaos dragon Tiamat is slain by the male warrior hero Marduk, who then builds and orders the world from her carcass. [8]

A return to this creation myth would not bother me, perhaps, if I were not an Orthodox Christian—and if I did not believe that Orthodox Christianity is an essential component in Romanitas or Romanity. Vladimir Moss provides us with a starting point to understand Romanity as “the principle that legitimate political power is either Roman power, or that power which shares in the faith of the Romans, [that is] Orthodoxy.” [9] This idea is, we shall see, entirely inconsistent and, ultimately, incompatible with Dugin's thesis.

Perhaps the greatest definition of Romanitas is the Eastern doctrine of synergia between Church and State, which was articulated most succinctly by the sainted emperor Justinian in the sixth century:

    The two greatest gifts which God in His infinite goodness has granted men are the Priesthood and the Empire. The priesthood takes care of divine interests and the empire of human interests of which is has supervision. Both powers emanate from the same principle and bring human life to its perfection. It is for this reason that emperors have nothing closer to their hearts than the honor of priests because they pray continually to God for the emperors. When the clergy shows a proper spirit and devotes itself entirely to God, and the emperor governs the state which is entrusted to him, then a harmony results which is most profitable to the human race. [10]

This is the Roman ideal: the Orthodox emperor presiding over the ecumene as the pater familias of the kings of the nations which make up the Roman world, supporting and supported by the divine priesthood of the Church. This creates a unity, a singularity, of Christian/Roman understanding. There can be only one emperor because there is only one God; there can be only one Church because there is only one God. Here we see that the principle of identity and the principle of the non-contradiction of truth are absolutely impossible to divorce from any kind of Christian understanding.

But, Christianity ups the ante. Again, with Romanity, we must confess the Orthodox Christian faith. To do that, we must confess the Symbol of Faith espoused by the Holy Fathers of the First Council of Nicea. In that Creed, which is held up by the Orthodox Church as the definition par excellence of our Faith, we are required to believe in the singular divine-human person of Jesus Christ, the same divine-human person defined in the prologue to the Gospel of St. John as “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made […] and the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”[11] Here we see that the Orthodox Christian understanding of the pre-ontological nature of reality is that the Logos transcends Being, it is the Logos out of which all things arise. And that Logos was made flesh, in the divine-human person of Jesus Christ—a male human being. The Roman Orthodox Christian can no more abandon the Logos than be can believe that the Logos can be perverted. And yet, this is precisely what Dugin asserts: The Logos that was the guarantee of strictness of the order serves here to grant the curvature and crookedness, being used to preserve the impassibility of the ontologically border with nothing from the eventual trespassers. [12]

Again, we see a dramatic example of the Heracleitan position; the Logos is common to all, and yet men act as if each of them possessed a private logos. Professor Dugin, for all his laudable goals, has underpinned them with theory which is very much possessed of a private logos. While he heaps praise upon the “eternal nascency” of Chaos, saying:

    To sum up, the chaotic philosophy is possible because chaos itself includes Logos as some inner possibility. It can freely identify it, cherish it and recognise its exclusivity included in its everlasting life. So we come to the figure of the very special chaotic Logos, that is completely and absolutely fresh Logos being eternally revived by the waters of Chaos. This chaotic Logos is at the same time exclusive (and it is why is properly Logos) and inclusive (being chaotic). It deals with the sameness and otherness differently. [13]

Dugin attempts here to create a logical space within Chaos for the continued existence of Logos, like a Venn diagram where Logos represents a subset of the all-embracing Chaos; this sounds very attractive, because it attempts to allow for a continuation of the Logos-centric tradition while acknowledging the existence of other traditions that exist de facto outside it, and by dealing differently with differences. But what he claims is as impossible as the furious green idea; because the Logos-centric tradition is crowned by the claims of Orthodox Christianity, the Logos itself is outside Being and the source of Being. For the Logos-centric tradition to exist within the eternal nascence of Chaos, as Dugin puts it, the Logos would have to in some way be defined as Chaos, which is antithetical to the truth-claim proposed by adherence to Nicene Orthodoxy. As a result, Dugin's idea of a multipolar world, with multiple truth-claims mutually co-existing within their own thought-space inside the eternally nascent Chaos is antithetical not only to Orthodox theology but also to Orthodox politics, while presenting the possibility of an existence for it within another context. This is why the idea is so dangerous. Like the post-modernity it reviles, it attempts to infinitely reproduce within itself a truth with is essentially outside itself—namely, the Logos that became flesh and dwelt among us.

If there is to be a revolution away from post-modernity (which is really modernism fulfilled), it has to be through learning to embrace the Logos the way that transformed the ancient multipolar chaotic world into the Roman Orthodox ecumene; the way that does not denigrate the upholding of Romanitas through the principles of the Orthodox emperor and the Orthodox priesthood, synergistically cooperating to bring all of the cosmos into the ecumene. From my perspective, Dugin is not offering us a way to return to the glory of Christian Rome (which is the essential political norm for Orthodox Christians) but a chance at living in the world inhabited by Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné.

And, as the old cliché goes, it might be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

[1] Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, VII 133
[2] A. Dugin, “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos” 
[3] Peter Fosl, response of a questionon AskPhilosophers.org
[4] A. Dugin, “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos”
[5] ibid.
[6] Simplicius, Phys. p. 24, 13sq.
[7] A. Dugin, “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos”
[8] Thorkild Jacobsen, "The Battle Between Tiamat and Marduk" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1968), pp. 104-108
[9] Vladimir Moss, The Restoration of Romanity, p. 15
[10] Justinian, Novella Six
[11] John 1:1-3, 14
[12] A. Dugin, “The necessity of the Metaphysics of Chaos”
[13] ibid.

Authentic Identity: Part One

Understanding 'The Mind.'

The great American poet Robert Frost once summed up the human experience in the world in two lines: “The question that he frames in all but words/ Is what to make of a diminished thing?” [1] That we children of modernity are further diminished, more fragmented and broken than those who came before us, is almost axiomatic. When we look around us, and we see irrational acts of violence, hatred for others, people ruled by their passions and base impulses to such a degree that they are reduced to mere animals, it is hard to say that there is much left of civilization—much less that anyone sees any value in human existence.

Our society does recognize the fact of broken psychology. There is now a whole industry of self-help that brings to the masses the vague comforts of professional therapists that no longer seek to return people to a state of equilibrium, but rather to make them comfortable with their deviance and anesthetize them to the natural shame they feel (until such time as the conscience can be effectively eroded) as a result of it. This is, of course, the great mistake of our modern scientistic culture; we take as the baseline what we observe about people as the definition of human nature—a great, sticky mass of polymorphous perversion—and we do not realize that 'human nature' is the most unnatural thing in the world.

What does this mean? It means that human beings, being endowed with the ability to reason, to speak, to remember, to record, to imagine, and to dream, are not meant to live merely as animals. There is something qualitatively different about human beings from other animals. This is observable. To ignore it is to deny experience.

What, then, makes humans different? Human beings possess something we call “the mind.” The mind is difficult to define because while it can be experienced, there is no discrete place in the body to point to and say “that is where his mind is.” (Although, it is commonly associated with the organ of the brain; more on that later.) Indeed, while modern Westerners tend to identify the mind with rational cognitive processes, other cultures take a different, larger view.

In the Eastern Christian tradition, the mind is more than our psychology. In fact, we understand that there are two centers of human consciousness. The first, most superficial level, has a rough analog in the Western concept of the mind as the intellect; however, in the Eastern tradition, we understand that all the psychological processes that go on within us—from  the ability to engage in complex problem solving to sobbing incoherently over emotional trauma—is all part of the intellect or psychological mind. (For clarity, I'll be referring to this center of consciousness as the psyche.) In our fallen, broken state, it is on the level of the psyche that we live our lives. This is where we have thoughts, we process thoughts, and we engage in the creative construction of our own reality through our thought-lives.

The other center of our consciousness is the noetic mind, or nous; sometimes called the heart-mind, this is the part of us that can only be described in Western terms as the seat of intuition, although it goes far, far beyond mere intuition. The nous is nothing other than the faculty by which we perceive the will of God. In the rightly ordered human soul (consisting of the nous, the psyche, and the body) the nous rules the roost. However, this rule is not autocratic or dictatorial, like the Platonic conception of Reason charioteering the light and dark horses of moral will, but it is, rather, integrative and hollistic. You read and hear frequently within the Eastern tradition about “drawing the mind into the heart,” that is to say, reintegrating the nous, psyche, and body into a coherent unit—which is nothing other than human nature as it was meant to be, before the Fall.

This is what it means to have an authentic identity, to be an authentic person: to reintegrate the fragmented parts of our self which are disordered through our nature being corrupted by sin (which is the desire for communion with created things rather than communion with God), thereby renewing within us the likeness of image of God (that is, authentic personhood).

And how do we do this? Through participating in the life of God Himself, which He in His energetic power has offered to us through His Son. The arena for this participation is the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and the means why which we participate are the Mysteries of the Church.

Next up: Thinking about Thoughts.

[1] Frost, Robert. “The Ovenbird.” http://www.online-literature.com/frost/753/

On the Goodness and Mercy of God

The Paschal season is one of great joy. It seems almost scandalous, I suppose, to be truly joyful in the world today. There is so much suffering, so much tragedy, so much death; to be joyful in such circumstances must seem...wrong, I suppose, to many. But the joy of the Orthodox Christian on the blessed and holy Pascha of the Lord is the joy that is born of the absolute deep abyss of suffering, the suffering of the Passion of Our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, during Holy Week. It is born from the depth of our own sufferings in this life, as well. Heaven cannot be attained but by the cross--and Christ tells us all, if we would have salvation, to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. He has released us from the suffering of death, the eternal suffering; but to get there, we must suffer with Him in this life. We must die with Him, to the world, and so win the everlasting crown.

People do not want to do this. It is hard. I, myself, know this very well. But it is the only thing worthwhile, the one thing needful. There is no God but Christ, and Him crucified. When we sing on Great and Holy Friday "We worship Thy passion, O Christ" who can fail to understand the meaning? The adoration of Christ as God is revealed to us in the agony of the Cross--and the end of that line of chant "Show us also Thy resurrection" confirms the Great Mystery: the suffering of the cross leads to life eternal. This Bright Week, when all tears and lamentations are gone away, is the foretaste of the life of the age to come, for those who believe--for those who have suffered with Christ and are now getting only the tiniest hint of the joy to come.

But even that tiny hint is greater than all the fleeting, momentary enjoyment known by the world.

So let us keep the Feast, dear brothers, and remember the goodness and mercy of God, who allows us to suffer that we might also be partakers of His own very life in the age to come.

Christ is risen!

A Lenten Parable

Two Orthodox Christian friends were eating their brown bagged lunches together during Great Lent. The one had a bowl of spiced lentils and bread, the other a veggie burger. The man eating lentils told his friend, "I never eat any tofu meat substitutes. It's less spiritual, and doesn't keep the spirit of the fast." His friend shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.

Now I ask you, which of these men kept the spirit of the fast?

Too Much Reality

One of my favorite Orthodox blogs is A Desert Seeker, written by an internet friend, Arsenios, who is a recent convert to Orthodoxy. In one of his recent posts, "saints, demons, and the supernatural," he opines on what he sees as a deficiency with many moderns--including some modern Orthodox--specifically, an inability to believe in the reality of satan, demons, and the supernatural. Corollary with this is an inability to believe in the accounts of the saints lives the seemingly 'fantastical' elements contained therein. Part of the account Arsenios shares has to do with his growing up among animists in South America, where encounters with the more "real" and less refined conception of demons was an everyday, present reality.

Encounters with demons in this fashion, though, are not confined to animists living in the jungles of other continents. The worship and supplication of the powers of darkness happens every day right here in our own little suburban, American neighborhoods. I know, because in the years between when I left Christianity (at 13) and the years where I became convinced of it again, through Orthodoxy (sometime around 22), I was involved in (and obsessed with) demonology, ceremonial occultism, and was, in general, very messed up. Depression was a constant, ever-present part of that life; and that is not surprising. To be involved with demons, who are themselves the end result of slavery to passions, is to become a slave of passions.

Perhaps this is why there are some who see them as being, essentially, some kind of external projection of our own passionate desires; the Psalms tell us that "the gods of the nations are demons" (Psalm 95 LXX), and St. Paul tells us that the idols worshiped by the nations are nothing (1 Cor. 8:4). We can see how the case could be made for the passions (logismoi) being nothing, because they have no being; but then, there are the countless passages in the scriptures and in the hagiography that depict the demons as very real. How do we resolve this?

I think that it's not really something that we should try to divide out into an either/or. If those who claim the unreality of demons mean that in an ontological sort of way--i.e. that they have no being in themselves, being created themselves, and that in trying to live separate from the source of that being, which is God, they have come as close to un-being as is possible, and thus are tortured forever by that choice of self-will--then I wholeheartedly agree. But the same St. Paul who tells us that the idols are nothing tells us that "we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph 6:12). These agents of darkness are there, present, and supremely real, in the sense that they do, in fact, exist. St. Athanasius even goes so far as to say that the reason Christ had to be crucified on the Cross, lifted up into the air, was so complete the conquest of death in the aerial stronghold of the demons; if they weren't real, this seems wildly unnecessary.

I think we ignore their reality to our own peril. Not that we need to live in fear of the demons or their powers (which are powerless against the power of the Cross), but if we pretend that they are not real in order to make ourselves feel better, or somehow superior to our ancestors who took the demons reality very literally, we are deceiving ourselves, and any time we deceive ourselves we become somewhat more receptive to the prince of lies.

Being Sent Empty Away

He hath shewed might in his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. (St. Luke 1:52-54)

All too often, I find myself embattled and in total disaster mode this time of year; it is the perfect storm, really. The weather is nice; the post-Paschal laxity is refreshing; annual depression from sad events some years past revisits. And to top it off, this year, I am dealing with the extremely trying and wrenching illness of a loved one. After the deaths of so many family and friends last year (19 at final count in 2009), it is particularly difficult.

So on top of all of that, I decided to fall off the wagon. The longer I am Orthodox, the more I realize that even though the cure is there waiting, it sure doesn't work unless you take it. Does that make me a Pelagian? Some of my fundagelical friends and family think so (although not too many of them would say "Pelagian"). Regardless, I think it's a fundamental truth: you can believe all you want, but unless you suck it up and do as you ought, all the belief in the world won't save you.

Ah-ha, I hear you say, but didn't the Lord say that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed we could move mountains? Indeed He did; but Faith is more than just belief--it is belief perfected by right-actions, by living in conformity with what you profess. As it turns out, that is so very difficult that I see how, by comparison, moving mountains would be a simple enterprise.

Like the father of the demoniac child, I say "I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief" and hope that He will answer the weakest of prayers--because as it turns out, they are the most necessary ones after all. Especially if one does not wish to be sent empty away.

Dominus vobiscum+

The Paschal Falloff

Looking over the blog's history for the past few years, I can definitely tell, I lose all interest in posting anything after Pascha for quite a while. Oh, sure, here and there I might find something exceptional or especially interesting and decide to share it. But it just seems that in the post-Paschal exhaustion, I just want to sit and bathe in the warm glow from the risen savior and sing "Christ is Risen from the Dead/Trampling down Death by death/And upon those in the tombs bestowing Life."

And I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Heck, even the Gospel and Epistle readings in Paschal-tide are shorter than normal.

Thoughts on Yesterday's Gospel, or We Go to Heaven Together and to Hell By Ourselves

I know the topic of corporate salvation is A Very Big Deal and one of those things that cause many Protestants looking into Orthodoxy to cringe. However, what may surprise many is to find that Jesus himself granted forgiveness of sins based on the faith of others. Specifically, if we look at the first Gospel (St. Mark II:1-12) reading from yesterday (the story of the healing of the paralytic) we see just that:

And again he entered into Capernaum, after [some] days; and it was understood that he was in the house. And forthwith many were assembled, so that there was no room to receive [them], no not so much as about the door: and he preached the word to them. And they come to him, bringing one sick with the palsy, who was borne by four. And when they could not come nigh to him by reason of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken [it] up, they let down the bed on which the sick with the palsy lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the sick with the palsy, Son, thy sins are forgiven thee. But there were certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, Why doth this [man] thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only? And immediately, when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said to them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the sick with the palsy, [Thy] sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, he saith to the sick with the palsy, I say to thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go into thy house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; so that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.

I have drawn emphasis to the relevant passage above. What we see from the scripture's teaching is that this man who had been sick with palsy was forgiven his sins because of the faith of his friends, and their loving action to do whatever was necessary to put him in the path of the Lord. Now, I'm not saying that people don't have some responsibility for their own salvation (after all, the paralytic man could have refused to believe in his healing, and remained firmly in his bed), but it seems to me that the "ruggedly individualistic" notion of salvation is not scriptural. We are saved by the Church...and that salvation by grace is not mediated just through the enumerated Sacraments, but also through the sacrament of being brought together from all the tribes, nations, language-cultures and political persuasions in the world into one body, one holy nation, one Church. The visible expression of the mystical union is the Sacrament of Communion (which, in mystery, makes this real--that we be one flock with one shepherd). And it seems to me that through this mystical union, we are supported and support one another in faith; indeed, we go to Heaven together, and to hell by ourselves.

Pax vobiscum+

Clean Monday

Father D said something in his homily yesterday that has really stuck with me. In talking about the Gospel from yesterday, he said the real meaning of the reading was summed up in the last verse of the text: "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matt. VI:21) In the context of beginning Great Lent, he applied this to the fast in the following way:

"The whole purpose of Great Lent is to find where our heart is, where our being is encircled."

How profoundly true. As we begin to disconnect ourselves from the very earthly concern of meat and mead, we often find that the sins that beset us begin to be more keenly felt. Not just the actual deeds, necessarily, but the motivations for them suddenly become much more clearly revealed. At the same time that I'm trying to curb casually eating whatever, it comes to mind that my casualness with regard to my own sins is just as disturbing. As we attempt to disregard earthly things, we find that, all too often, that is where our treasure actually is. We still make the same sin as our first parents did in the Garden of Paradise, trying to derive our being from things that have no being in themselves, for only God is the source and author of being; how simple, and dreadful, a thing idolatry actually is.

How often it is that I am just a copy of a copy, deriving my being from things that are themselves mere reflections or created things themselves. I am not my books or my conversations, my schedules or my reflections, even my desires or my passions. Remembering that, and repenting of my stupidity in behaving as if it were true, is the point of the Great and Holy Fast. It reveals a lot about us, this attempt to be less of the world while still in the world; and it reveals, for this sinner, how much work is left to do.

Oh God, cleanse Thou me a sinner, and have mercy on me.+

St. Blaise, and the Enemies of Truth

from the Synaxarion:

Saint Blaise of Caesarea lived in the 3rd Century. He hailed from Caesarea Cappadocia (Asia Minor) and was a shepherd. When began a persecution against Christians, Saint Blaise virtuously gave himself over into the hands of the torturers. They subjected him to torture, and beat him with leather thongs, but the Lord healed his wounds. They then threw Blaise into a cauldron of boiling water, but he remained there unharmed. The pagan soldiers, seeing this miracle, came to believe in Christ Jesus. The governor, wishing to show that the martyr remained unharmed because the water had cooled, jumped into the cauldron and died. Having brought many to faith in Christ, Saint Blaise peacefully offered up his soul to God. They thrust the shepherd's staff of the saint into the ground, and it grew up into an huge tree, which covered with its branches the altar of a church built over his relics.
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First of all, I love the story of St. Blaise. Indeed, I love all the stories of God showing, through His saints, His one-upmanship to pagans, heretics, and other enemies of the Truth.

Of course, maybe it is the romantic in me that has not yet ascended the self-crucifixion of the 'old man' who looks back on these stories and sees such a marvelous simplicity of witnesses to the Truth of the Gospel. Living, as we do, in a world which takes for granted that truth is a product of one's own point of view (thank you, Obi-wan Kenobi) it is difficult to even get people who call themselves Christians to commit to the secure, unwavering Truth. Perhaps that is why these stories of the saint's lives are so scandalous to so many modern readers; after all, wouldn't it have been better if, rather than rushing to martyrdom, they had bided their time, working in the background, not being noticed overmuch by the pagan authorities, and so hope to change their society from within?

That is how, I think, most modern Christians would think. Of course, to me, this has disturbing parallels to the course of action advocated by Saruman to Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings; deploring, maybe, evils done along the way, but knowing that they lead to a greater good. That sort of thinking is something that I utterly reject. I am not saying that, for the health and salvation of a particular person (even, perhaps, of a particular community), in a particular time and particular place for particular reasons, the economia of the Church cannot be exercised, such that the Truth is proclaimed gradually, so as not to break the weakness of faith in some. But, when such a doctrine becomes our whole policy--when, to completely avoid the risk of offending anyone, we intentionally obfuscate, intentionally make vague the Truth of the claims of the Church--we begin to act in a way contrary to the teaching of Christ Himself.

I don't think it unreasonable to take His warning that "For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels" (Gospel of St. Mark VIII:38) very seriously.

And we look at the example of St. Blaise; the same boiling water that was intended for him as a torture convinced the soldiers of the Truth to which he was a witness and also killed the prideful governor who denied the power of God he saw demonstrated before him. In some ways, that cauldron of boiling water is symbolically like the Truth itself; those whose hearts were disposed toward it, who accepted it in humility, were saved--those who rejected it, and sought to explain it some other way, were killed by it. To me, this is both promise and warning, much like the verse from St. Mark's Gospel. If we, as Orthodox Christians, begin to take compromise positions--seeking, of course, not to offend our neighbors and family and acquaintances by telling them the Truth (when asked), then we do damage to not just our own souls, but to the credibility of the Church itself, and thus to Christ, who is both its bridegroom and head.

I am not saying we ought to beat people over the head with the claims of the Orthodox Church. We do not go on crusades. But when asked in the spirit of honest inquiry about those claims of the Church, to pretend that they are of little consequence in hopes of bringing someone into the communion is a disastrous proposal. Some would say, "But you need to do more than just speak the Truth, you have to speak the Truth in Love." Well, in my experience of childhood, there are times that my parents and my grandmother corrected me--in love--that involved my backside becoming red and smarting through a good spanking. I didn't enjoy it or even consider it very loving at the time, but in retrospect, I see now that what they were doing is correcting the seeds of very bad behavior that would have done me greater harm, in the long term, than the spanking. And I love and respect them for that. The same is true of those coming to the Church; the Lord says that you have to become as a little child to receive the kingdom of heaven (Gospel of St. Matthew XVIII:3). Literally, inquirers and catechumens are infants in the faith (indeed, some of us who have been in the Church a while are not much better than mewling babes ourselves), and they need to be treated that way. No matter how useful a good kitchen knife is for all sorts of things, you don't give one to a baby to play with.

Some people will probably say this is overly patronizing, but I don't think it is. Given the horrendous attrition rate of adult converts to Orthodoxy, I can only blame bad parenting. And part of that comes from just this refusal to say what we mean, and to mean what we say. In other words, sometimes, the Truth--and Love--hurts.

St. Blaise, lead us all to that Truth for which you struggled and suffered!

On the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, and Judaizers

Christ is born!

For many reasons, I have not been able to post much lately. However, I wanted to get a good Christmas post in while the Feast is still going on, and so here we are. Yesterday marked the mid-point of the feast, the sixth of the twelve days during which we celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, according to the flesh. Today, the seventh day, is the even of another feast which is sometimes forgotten between the the first day of Christmas, and Theophany (twelve days later), and that is the Circumcision of Christ.

Of course, there are questions like "Why would we celebrate that?" Especially when St. Paul urges the Gentile Christians not to be circumcised. In fact, St. Paul was the defender of the Orthodox position at the first council of the Church, in Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15; the only aspects of the Law required of Gentile Christians was to refrain from eating blood, or from animals that had been strangled, or meat offered to idols, and not to engage in fornication. So why the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ?

Well, the answer for that lies in the epistles of St. Paul as well. In fact, in addition to the rather striking statement in 1 Corinthians, chapter seven, "Was any one at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was any one at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God," St. Paul also gives a good defense of not only this matter, but of those who would seek to Judaize in general in the Epistle to the Galatians (III:2-29):

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Did you experience so many things in vain? -- if it really is in vain. Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Thus Abraham "believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "In you shall all the nations be blessed." So then, those who are men of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith. For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be every one who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them." Now it is evident that no man is justified before God by the law; for "He who through faith is righteous shall live"; but the law does not rest on faith, for "He who does them shall live by them." Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us -- for it is written, "Cursed be every one who hangs on a tree" -- that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. To give a human example, brethren: no one annuls even a man's will, or adds to it, once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, "And to offsprings," referring to many; but, referring to one, "And to your offspring," which is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance is by the law, it is no longer by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made; and it was ordained by angels through an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one; but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not; for if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture consigned all things to sin, that what was promised to faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

So there we have it. Christ was circumcised according to the Law so that the Law could be fulfilled in one of Abraham's offspring, that the nations might be blessed through him. And so it is that the need for circumcision according to the Law has passed away, along with the other strictures of the Law not outlined by the Holy Apostles in Acts 15. If you have been baptized into Christ, you have put on Christ--St. Paul seems to take his statement there quite literally. There is no need to Judaize in order to be saved.

This is especially important, this time of year, because there are certain among the heterodox who made vicious slander about the birth of the Lord, saying that the early Church apostatized and "moved" the celebration to the Birth of Christ in order to coincide with the pagan festivals centered on the Winter Solstice, such as that of Sol Invictus or Mithras or the indigenous Celtic religion. Many of these people make much of the association of examples from Christ's life and how they fit the "pattern" established by the Jewish festivals. And since there is no festival, in the Mosaic Law, for midwinter, they conclude that the celebration of Christmas is, in fact, an error that became popular to give Christians something to do while their pagan neighbors were partying during midwinter.

Of course, there is a Jewish festival in midwinter--Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights. Of course, the Miracle of the Lamps occurs in the Maccabees, scriptures that have been excised not only from the Old Testament that the Protestants use, but also from the scriptures used by modern Jews (who, nevertheless, celebrate the festival for eight nights). The significance of the number eight here should mean something too--for, since the earliest times, the number eight has been associated with Christ. The Kingdom of Heaven is called the Eighth Day, and the whole of the new creation is centered on the theological significance of the perfection of Christ, who is both Alpha and Omega, origin and ending, the summation of all things. So, if the Light burned for eight days in the temple, through a miracle, why do we fail to see that the True Light burned for eight days in a cave in Bethlehem of Judea, in a manger of beasts, revealing for us that He was both Truly God and Truly Man, and that the uncontainable, uncircumscribable God, submitted to the circumcision of His flesh to as evidence of His equality with us in His taking on flesh. In submitting to circumcision, He proved His humanity--He was able to be cut, to have that flesh which He put on removed, foreshadowing for those with eyes to see it, His passion and the pains which He would suffer for us all.

Christmas, then, is not the Christian appropriation of some pagan feast, but the fulfillment of yet another Jewish one; and in keeping it properly, with all the attendant days of the twelve day feast, we see that on the eighth day, Christ is circumcised in the flesh, so that we might be free of the law and can be circumcised in our hearts. And thus, the arguments of those who would try to destroy the importance of the Feast of the Nativity, or Christmas, by calling it a pagan feast do so at their own peril: for to deny that significance of the Feast where we celebrate the Incarnation (which includes the Feasts of the Nativity, the Synaxis of the Mother of God, the Circumcision of Christ, and culminates with the Theophany, that is, the revealing of His Godhood at His baptism in the Jordan) is to deny that He is the God made man, the Savior of the world, who put on flesh for our sake and suffered that we might be free of the curse of sin and death. Woe to those who deny His Divinity! But greater woe to those who deny His humanity, for, as St. Gregory the Theologian so eloquently stated, "That which is unassumed is unhealed." If Christ is not fully man, in addition to being fully God, then whatever part of Him was not totally as we are, that same part was not redeemed by Him for us. And to say that He was not the perfect sacrifice for sin is the same thing as saying that He is not the Savior, not the Christ.

So, in the spirit of Christmas, let us leave such foolish notions alone, and remember that:

Kontakion of the Feast (Tone 3)

Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One,
and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One.
Angels with Shepherds glorify Him,
the wise men journey with the star;
since for our sake the eternal God was born as a little child.

Some Thoughts about Today's Gospel

I published some thoughts about today's Scripture lesson at the DC blog. If you are interested in reading them, you can do that here.

The Shipwreck, or Salvation May Not Be What You Think

Like many converts to Orthodoxy, I have family who are firmly Protestant and, moreover, make use of opportunities of family gatherings to challenge me (or, as they would put it, save my soul from the cult I've joined). As a catechumen, and the first year or so after reception into the Church, I--somewhat shamefully--took great delight in these arguments and heated discussions over the festive dinner table. This was wrong, I regret it deeply, and, unfortunately, it has set a now hostile tone for whenever certain members of my family are present.

However, at yesterday's American Thanksgiving celebration (held this year at the home of my parents, and prepared almost exclusively my yours truly and my mother, the handmaiden of God, Ita), I found myself once again set upon by those who think that I have damned my soul by joining the Orthodox Church. It is, after all, too "Catholic" (because of the liturgical worship, priests, going to Confession); it is also, simultaneously, too "pagan" (because we pray to the Saints, who are leftover pagan gods, and worship Mary as a mother-goddess). Sigh. Now, interspersed among the fundagelicals and pentecostals in the family, there are also a few mainline protestants (primarily of the Methodist stripe), who are about as broadly and ecumenically minded as it comes. We have different issues than I have with the other family members, but, God bless my Methodist grandmother, she sought to deliver me from the post-dressing harangue by saying "As long as he believes in Jesus and is saved, that's good enough for me, and should be good enough for anyone who calls themselves a Christian."

Of course, this prompted one of my mother's first cousins to ask me if I was "saved."

I should have just said "Yes." Lord help me, I should have and ended it right there. But, instead, I have an honest answer with "Not yet, but I'm working on it."

Instead of giving you the blow by blow account of what I said (for, unlike Plato, I am no good at writing dialogues), I shall simply summarize my thoughts on the matter in straight prose, with, I hope, fewer words and less digressions from the main topic:

In thinking about salvation, let us leave aside proof texts for a bit. As Abelard pointed out, the Bible is just a text, from which one can get a yes and a no answer for almost any question. That is to say, it is a text that is not meant to be used as a systematic treatise; one gains one's understanding of the instructional material therein (especially St. Paul's Epistles, from which any argument on salvation would draw) through the eyes of interpretation, whatever interpretive framework to which one may subscribe. Since this would not be fruitful, let us begin another method of understanding...one that looks at the point of such stories as we may find, and try to tease out the symbolic meaning therein. That is, after all, the primary method through which the Lord taught those who did not understand Him.

On the topic of "salvation" one story, in particular, stands out to me from the New Testament. In The Acts of the Apostles, the twenty-seventh chapter, St. Paul is on a ship on the way to Rome to be judged. The ship encounters a terrifying storm, but St. Paul assures all aboard that, while he was praying, an angel appeared to him and assured him that all the people on the ship would be saved.

As you may recall, after he made this declaration, the ship continued being battered by the winds and tossed by the waves for some fourteen days. Most of the cargo had been tossed overboard, trying to keep the ship afloat, and the scriptures tell us that the men on board had not eaten for many days. St. Paul instructed them to eat (for which he gave thanks to God--perhaps even performed the Eucharistic service?), after which, the rest of the food on board was thrown into the sea. After this most desperate action, the sighted land; attempting to anchor the ship in a bay, the ship ran aground and was wrecked. The centurion in charge commanded everyone to jump overboard and to swim to shore. And all aboard were, indeed, saved.

But note here that God did not calm the seas, as He had for His disciples upon the Sea of Galilee; nor did He even provide them a safe harbor in which to anchor their ship. Instead, the ship was wrecked, and the people swam to land. One could even say, they saved themselves with their efforts. Does this mean that St. Paul lied? Surely the same angel that God sent to tell him they would be saved could have saved them in a more direct fashion? Was it mere human agency and determination that got those men to the shore?

Perhaps it was. But it was also God who did what He said--no one who was on the ship was drowned or lost at sea. Human agency and Divine agency cooperated together to accomplish the Divine will. There is no contradiction here. These men could not have been saved from the sea if God had not willed it; nor could they have been saved from the sea if they had refused to swim.

This is the context, then, in which I answer questions about my salvation. I have been ordered to jump overboard and swim. I am swimming--somewhat fitfully and taking on a lot of water from time to time, but that is the nature of the contest. If I were to give up, and let myself sink, I would not be saved. But, having faith means believing that God will give me the strength to continue to swim, if I continue to swim. This is what St. Paul meant when he said to the Church at Philippi "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." (Philippians 2:12-13).

It is God's good pleasure for us to be saved, and it is for us to work toward that salvation, through the power of God at work in us (that would be, the Holy Spirit, through communion with the Church). So no, I am not "saved." It would be presumptuous in the extreme for me to say so. But I am working toward salvation--badly, falling constantly, failing to keep even the simplest of the Lord's commandments--but refusing to give up or give in, because to stop would bring the only certainty a man can have, which is being given up over to sin and death.

Returning to The Arena

So far, 2009 has been a year that has been noteworthy solely for the amount of disasters, misfortunes and other general unpleasantness that has visited both my family and myself. I am not proud of it, but I admit, I have fallen off the wagon, and hit pretty hard. It has not been easy, either, to come back to the regular life of an Orthodox Christian--one of prayer, fasting, and, above all, repentance. This blog is not intended as a kind of public confessional; however, in coming back to what I let slip for a few months, I have again picked up St. Ignatius Brianchaninov's The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism.

Normally, it is bad advice for people in the world to read literature addressed to monastics. The reasons for this are many, but the most important is that it can create problems for those of us prone to delusional vainglory. However, blessed Fr. Seraphim of Platina often recommended this book for lay people in the world, because it gave advice about how to hold on to what is authentically Orthodox in a "modern" world.

I began reading it during Great Lent of this year. I did not finish it; this was not, entirely, through lethargy or laziness (although those were a part), but because I decided not to go on to the next chapter until I felt that I had fully absorbed what I had read in the chapter I was on. To anyone that knows me, it is no surprise that in 40 days, I managed a scanty 11 chapters. And, to claim that I really understood what I was readying (beyond the level of mere psychological comprehension), is probably grossly overstating the reality of the situation.

Nevertheless, St. Ignatius is a marvel. In returning to The Arena (both the text and the spiritual struggle), I reread the last couple of chapters that I had left off on. This gem is from Chapter 11: "On the Solitary Life":

It is impossible for a person who is still in the realm of carnal sophistry and who has not received the spiritual realization of fallen human nature not to give some value to his actions and not to consider himself of some worth, however humble he may appear outwardly. True humility is incompatible with carnal sophistry and impossible for it; humility is a property of spiritual understanding. Says St. Mark the Ascetic:

"Those who have not come to consider themselves debtors to every commandment of Christ honor the Law of God in a bodily manner, without understanding either what it says or on what it is based. Therefore, they think it can be fulfilled by actions"

From the words of the holy Father it is clear that a person who thinks he has some good work to his credit is in a state of self-deception. This state of self-delusion serves as a basis for the delusion by demons. In a Christian's wrong conception the fallen angel gets a foothold, and to this false idea he easily adds his own deception, and by means of this deception he subjects the person to his power, and casts him into so-called demonic delusion.

Would that I had paid attention the first time. As it turns out, the path to evil is often not made by someone choosing wickedness, but by those of us that choose to do the right thing for the wrong reason. And then, pretty soon, we add wrong and wrong on top of wrong--but, after all, it is ok because we are still Christians, and the Lord has forgiven us.

The path to Antinomianism is very much shorter than any of us would like to believe.

So once again, here I am acting as if I were going to live ten thousand years, and have time to get back to the real work of Christ--that of reforming my life and changing my nous--could wait until next week/month/year/etc. Ignoring Fr. Seraphim's words "It is later than you think; hasten, therefore, to do the work of God" does not make the reality go away. Perhaps I finally hit rock bottom last week; I could have sworn I'd gotten there before now, but apparently, I am more stubborn and willful than even I give myself credit for. So maybe, now that I have almost literally vomited out the evil after receiving the due penalty of my error, I am ready to begin again.

In the Arena.

+Lord Jesus Christ our God, through the prayers of Thy most pure Mother, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, and of all the Saints who have been well-pleasing to Thee from all ages, but especially those of St. Ignatius Brianchaninov by whose pen we who live in these latter times are able to even dimly perceive the light of Thy Glory, bring about of willing and true conversion unto Thee, both now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Ghosts

There are times when I feel almost overwhelmed by ghosts—no, not phantasms, or spirits, or things that go “bump” in the night, but the kind of ghosts that a person with a less than stellar past collects in life. I wish that I could say that the past is behind me. It should be. God has endowed me with a gift beyond price, but I spurn it, I ignore it, I intentionally forget it...because I want my own way. I am still stubborn and prideful, willful to the point of absolute absurdity. And when I start rolling in it deep, that's when the ghosts come trotting out on parade.

Regrets. Failures. Disasters. Pain and heartache and sorrows, both the recent and those long since gone by, come traveling through this dark and diseased psyche of mine. I have spent whole hours lost in memories of things that were; things that I wish I could forget, or finally close off. The demon of despair is one I have a particularly hard time fending off; acedia is the condition that, sadly, comes upon me all too often.

And so it is with a heavy heart that in these early hours of the morning I am contemplating the words of the holy prophet and king David:

Sacrifice unto God a sacrifice of praise, and pay unto the Most High thy vows. And call upon Me in the day of thine affliction, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me. But unto the sinner God hath said: Why declarest thou My statutes and takest up My covenant in thy mouth? Thou hast hated instruction, and hast cast out My words behind thee. If thou sawest a thief, thou didst run with him; and with the adulterer thou hast set thy portion. Thy mouth hath abounded with evil, and thy tongue hath woven deceits. Thou didst sit down and speak against thy brother, and against thine own mother's son didst thou lay a stumbling-block; these things thou didst, and I kept silence. Thou didst think an iniquity, that I should be like unto thee; I will reprove thee, and bring thy sins before thy face. Wherefore, understand these things, ye that forget God, lest He snatch you away and there be none to deliver you. A sacrifice of praise shall glorify Me, and there is the way wherein I shall show unto him My salvation. (from Psalm XLIX)

And really...I have nothing to say for myself after that.

Dominus vobiscum+

Will I Forever Wear the Chains?

Everyone carries a cross--at least, ever Christian does. We learn that from the Lord Himself in St. Matthew's Gospel (16:24). That cross is the struggle to deal with our passions, our sins...all those things which the Orthodox Christian tradition identifies as "the world," by St. Isaac the Syrian's definition. And we must die to the world, on that cross, before we can be raised to the heavens with Christ. St. Dismas (aka 'the good thief') found salvation in an instant of repentance, suffering next to the Lord; some people think of his salvation as an extra-ordinary event (I have even advanced that understanding once or twice), but the truth is, it is still according to the Orthodox understanding of salvation. He worked out his salvation with fear and trembling--and physical suffering of the same kind as the Lord Himself. The world within him was crucified with his true repentance and holy fear at the same time that his body was being crucified for his crimes.

The thing is...even though I see this, and understand it, and, heck, even believe it, I have come to this weird place spiritually. Deliverance and salvation at once seem near at hand, and impossibly far away. The truth is, I am still chained by the weight of sins that I commit continually...repent of, confess...and then commit again. The Lord is longsuffering and of great goodness, and his mercy endures forever--but my patience with myself has none of those things. I do love Christ, but I love my sins far more.

A friend tells me that Elder Paisios said that the goal of our life was to learn to love the Lord more than we love sin. I am far, far from the goal, it seems. And those dark hours before the dawn, there every evil thought assaults my imagination, consciously and unconsciously, make me begin to feel that I will never be able to shed the chains of my sins. Even taking things a day at a time proves too much for me. Hour by hour, minute by minute.

Psalm LXIX
O God, be attentive unto helping me; O Lord, make haste to help me. Let them be shamed and confounded that seek after my soul. Let them be turned back and brought to shame that desire evils against me. Let them be turned back straightway in shame that say unto me: Well done! Well done! Let them be glad and rejoice in Thee all that seek after Thee, O God, and let them that love Thy salvation say continually: The Lord be magnified. But as for me, I am poor and needy; O God, come unto mine aid. My helper and my deliverer art Thou, O Lord; make no long tarrying.

God Is Here. God Is Everywhere.

Abba Doulas, the  disciple  of Abba  Bessarion said, 'One   day when  we  were walking beside the sea I was thirsty and I said to Abba Bessarion, "Father, I am very  thirsty." He said a prayer  and said to  me,  "Drink some of  the sea water." The water proved sweet when I drank  some.  I even  poured some into a leather bottle for  fear of being thirsty later  on. Seeing this, the old  man asked me why I was taking some. I said to him, "Forgive  me, it is for fear of being  thirsty   later on."  Then  the old  man  said,  "God is here.   God is  everywhere." '

_______________________________

There are times--not many of them, because of my sinfulness, but they do occasionally occur--when I am struck by my own lack of faith.  Like Abba Bessarion's disciple, I am very thirsty...but, despising the words of the Lord which tell me, "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day" (Matt. XI:34), I go about my business, busying myself like a bee, collecting that which I can.  I make plans.  I attempt to forsee and plan for the future.

I do not trust God.

And, what is worse, when my own plans fall apart, for whatever the cause, I cannot just accept it and move on.  I react.  I get angry, I get impatient, and I become hurtful to others (especially those that love me).  I fall into despair and become despondent.  I resent.  I resent the fact that the universe will not bend to my will, I resent that I have to start all over with my plans and schemes and plots for the future.  I have no inner stillness, whatsoever.

And this is what it boils down to: I do not trust God.  I want to.  I love (or, at least I want to think I do) the Lord.  Unfortunately, it is all too obvious that I love myself and my precious plans much more.  Would that I could see, more often, how true it is that "God is here.  God is everywhere."  Perhaps, becuase this is Holy Friday, I feel the poignantcy of this.  God is here.  God is with us, He that is before the ages.  And today, He is crucified that I might be free from the curse of death.  Today, there is enough trouble and woe--because I crucified Christ.  By refusing to trust Him, by trying to act as if He were not the King before the ages, I cry out with the Jews: Crucify Him, Crucify Him! in my heart.

Lord, have mercy upon Thy wretched and unworthy servant.

What Began in the Garden Ends in an Egyptian Coffin

Genesis 49:33-50:26:

And Jacob ceased giving charges to his sons; and having lifted up his feet on the bed, he died, and was gathered to his people. And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept on him, and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants the embalmers to embalm his father; and the embalmers embalmed Israel. And they fulfilled forty days for him, for so are the days of embalming numbered; and Egypt mourned for him seventy days. And when the days of mourning were past, Joseph spoke to the princes of Pharao, saying, If I have found favour in your sight, speak concerning me in the ears of Pharao, saying, My father adjured me, saying, In the sepulchre which I dug for myself in the land of Chanaan, there thou shalt bury me; now then I will go up and bury my father, and return again. And Pharao said to Joseph, Go up, bury thy father, as he constrained thee to swear. So Joseph went up to bury his father; and all the servants of Pharao went up with him, and the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt. And all the household of Joseph, and his brethren, and all the house of his father, and his kindred; and they left behind the sheep and the oxen in the land of Gesem. And there went up with him also chariots and horsemen; and there was a very great company. And they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan; and they bewailed him with a great and very sore lamentation; and he made a mourning for his father seven days. And the inhabitants of the land of Chanaan saw the mourning at the floor of Atad, and said, This is a great mourning to the Egyptians; therefore he called its name, The mourning of Egypt, which is beyond Jordan. And thus his sons did to him. So his sons carried him up into the land of Chanaan, and buried him in the double cave, which cave Abraam bought for possession of a burying place, of Ephrom the Chettite, before Mambre. And Joseph returned to Egypt, he and his brethren, and those that had gone up with him to bury his father. And when the brethren of Joseph saw that their father was dead, they said, [Let us take heed], lest at any time Joseph remember evil against us, and recompense to us all the evils which we have done against him. And they came to Joseph, and said, Thy father adjured [us] before his death, saying, Thus say ye to Joseph, Forgive them their injustice and their sin, forasmuch as they have done thee evil; and now pardon the injustice of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept while they spoke to him. And they came to him and said, We, these [persons], are thy servants. And Joseph said to them, Fear not, for I am God's. Ye took counsel against me for evil, but God took counsel for me for good, that [the matter] might be as [it is] to-day, and much people might be fed. And he said to them, Fear not, I will maintain you, and your families: and he comforted them, and spoke kindly to them. And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his brethren, and all the family of his father; and Joseph lived a hundred and ten years. And Joseph saw the children of Ephraim to the third generation; and the sons of Machir the son of Manasse were borne on the sides of Joseph. And Joseph spoke to his brethren, saying, I die, and God will surely visit you, and will bring you out of this land to the land concerning which God sware to our fathers, Abraam, Isaac, and Jacob. And Joseph adjured the sons of Israel, saying, At the visitation with which God shall visit you, then ye shall carry up my bones hence with you. And Joseph died, aged an hundred and ten years; and they prepared his corpse, and put him in a coffin in Egypt.

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This is the last Old Testament reading for Pre-Sanctified Liturgies. The ones for the three days next week all come from the New Testament, and all deal with the Parousia. So, we must ask ourselves, what is the significance of this reading on the night before Lazarus Saturday?

I think the answer is probably obvious. Our exile from the Lord, because of our sin, ends with the working out of the curse of death upon man. Is it coincidental that the Egyptians spent so much of their religious thought thinking about death? Is it coincidental that the Israelites spend centuries in slavery and bondage to the Egyptians? No, I think in a larger framework, we are seeing biblical typology at its finest here.

Please understand--I am not saying the events here in Genesis did not literally happen; God forbid! What I am saying is, in addition to the historical record, Genesis offers us something more than merely history. The sin of man in the Garden, and the result of sin, which is death, and its marring of the world, is the lens through which this text (and the structure of the lectionary) beg us to read not just Genesis, but what is about to happen as we progress through Holy Week.

Sin and death mar the relationship of God to man, then of man to woman, then of man to the earth, and finally, man to man. Think about how often, in addition to the big, epic displays of man's failures (the iniquity of man leading up to the Flood, the incident at Babel, the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah) we see depictions of man's very personal evil toward one another--even inside the family, which we tend to think of as the "strongest natural bond." I confess, I have been more aware of news stories this Lent which detail the shocking and grizzly murders of children by parents, parents by children, sisters by brothers, and so on. However, in reflecting on the lectionary readings for the Pre-Sanctified services, it's all there in Genesis. These terrible, horrible things are just a single example of the horror which comes with the life lived away from God.

And then, we have Joseph. The Holy Fathers teach us that the patriarch Joseph is a "type" of Christ in the Old Testament. He certainly is one of the few exemplars of holiness to be found in Genesis, and we see that he lives a life that finds favor with God. And yet, Genesis ends with his death, in a land not his own, entombed among another people...but with the promise that the Lord will visit his people, and redeem them out of the land of their exile.

And so, with that, we begin the end of Great Lent, and embark upon the week which commemorates the wonder of God's salvation of his people: Holy Week.

The Big Goodbye

I think the human reaction to change is fascinating. On some level, I think most people have an instinctual drive which causes them to force changes in their lives, once they reach a certain level of awareness of their “stagnant” condition. We seek change. We desire change. We always want to be someone else—someone who is more confident, better looking, who has more money, is more spiritually oriented, and on and on and on goes the list. There is a whole self-improvement industry which thrives precisely on this internal lack of satisfaction with who we are and where we are.

Not that changes don’t sometimes need to be made—but very often, the things we want changed about ourselves are immaterial to what is really important. Sometimes, we need to be shaken up out of our complacency to grow. Sometimes, if we refuse to get up and do this, God makes this decision for us. He pushes us out of the careful insularities we build up around ourselves. He leads us through pits and valleys, through desert wastelands that force us to dry up some of our water-fat luxury and become reduced in order to grow. It’s like pruning a plum tree (which I had some experience with last weekend); you have to cut off the bad growth in order to get better fruit in the coming year.

Of course, we often react violently to this; we want change, but we want it to be easy. It would be so nice if a magic wand could be waved over us, or we could rub a lamp and have some genie pop out and make it so without any of the work. We want the benefits of having suffered without having to suffer. We want to learn the lessons without having attended class. How absurd we all are! To think that Truth is ever purchased without sorrows and pains, without misfortunes and hard times! It’s madness. Hard times and periods of uncertainty force us to rely on God; they help us develop the character traits that make us human beings, not just animals in a cage reacting to stimuli. We need these periods. That’s one of the reasons for Lent, and the other periods of fasting the Church sets for us; and there are so many of them throughout the year, because we learn lessons like this very, very slowly.

So, even though it hurts us, in the long run, it is better to embrace the opportunities when they present themselves. Say the big goodbye to things as they were; you can’t get the next dish passed to you at dinner, until you let go of the one you’re currently holding. In the end, no one is prepared to just let go…but we make the dive, we take the plunge, and do it anyway. Even if we don’t really want to. Even if we’re scared of failing. Even if we don’t totally understand why. We do what we know is right—we trust God and His Church, and we rely on that to sustain us even through these periods of reduction, reformation, and change. In a very real sense, that’s what metanoia means.

Psalm 48
For the End: A Psalm for the Sons of Kore.

Hear this, all ye nations; give ear, all ye that inhabit the world, Both ye that are born of earth, and ye sons of men, rich and poor men together. My mouth shall speak wisdom, and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding. I will incline mine ear unto a parable, I will unfold my problem on the psaltery. Wherefore should I fear in an evil day? The iniquity at my heel shall compass me about. There be some that trust in their strength, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches. A brother cannot redeem; shall a man redeem? He shall not give to God a ransom for himself, nor the price of the redemption of his own soul, though he hath laboured for ever, and shall live to the end. For he shall not see corruption, when he shall see wise men dying. The mindless man and the witless shall perish together, and they shall leave their riches to others. And their graves shall be their houses unto eternity, their dwelling places unto generation and generation, though they have called their lands after their own names. And man, being in honour, did not understand; he is compared to the mindless cattle, and is become like unto them. This way of theirs is a stumbling-block for them, yet afterwards they will please with their mouth. Like sheep they are laid in hades, death shall be their shepherd. And the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning, and their help shall wax old in hades; they have been cast out from their glory. Yet God shall redeem my soul out of the hand of hades, when he receiveth me. Be not afraid when a man becometh rich, nor when the glory of his house is increased. For when he dieth he shall carry nothing away, nor shall his glory descend after him. For his soul shall be blessed in his lifetime; he will acknowledge Thee while Thou doest good unto him. He shall enter into the generation of his fathers; he shall not see light unto eternity. And man, being in honour, did not understand; he is compared to the mindless cattle, and is become like unto them.

Fruits of the Desert

I live in Alabama, where we've been under a drought for going on six years. Even with our recent precipitation amounts over the last six months, we're still in drought status in many parts of the state. Two years ago, however, when we were in the "extreme drought" category--to the point that there was a standing ban on open burning and water restrictions in many areas--there was a great deal of concern over the peach crop.

See, Alabama produces a lot of peaches. Almost as many as our neighboring state that is so famous for the fruits. There had been so little rain, the peach crop was sure to be slim. Indeed, the trees produced fruit, but they were tiny, stunted things--nothing at all like the full-to-bursting, rich-fleshed, juicy peaches that we had come to expect. These were small, wrinkly, and pretty ugly. Despite the lower number of peaches, the prices actually plummeted; they looked so awful, no body wanted them. Demand was actually lower than the lowered supply.

It's a funny thing about fruit, though--especially fruits like peaches that usually have a lot of water content in them. The sugar content of the fruits, that tasty-tangy zing that makes your mouth water and your stomach rumble, is the same no matter how big the fruit actually gets. In years with a great amount of water and a bumper-crop, those huge, soft-ball size peaches had the same sugar content as these stunted little balls. In fact, the lack of water made the flavor of these unappealing peaches concentrated into a smaller area. They actually tasted really good. It took a heck of a lot of them to make a respectable homemade peach icecream that year, but, boy were they tasty.

Desert ecology forces you to look at the minimum. It imposes on you restrictions, limits what you can do, what can grow, how things grow. Really, our culture could learn a lot from the desert; we have this idea that growth without limits is what freedom is. The desert teaches you that learning to grow within even the most restricted limit is freedom...it is the freedom to live in way that is free from excesses that breed distraction.

Lately, I've been thinking of Great Lent as our yearly spiritual visit to the desert. Oh, I know that just by altering my diet according to the Lenten guidelines, attempting to follow the augmented prayer rule, and being more generous in alms for six or so weeks isn't going to turn me into St. Anthony the Great on Pascha--but there is something terribly valuable about the attempt at living with the limitations. Could it be that, freed from our water-fat (or, meat and cheese fat) distractions, something about our concepts of even food are concentrated more spiritually? Could it be that, like those ugly, wrinkly drought year peaches, a lifetime of Great Lent--the kind of life lived by those desert fathers and mothers in Scetis, and still lived by monastics everywhere--produces a person similiar in kind? Smaller, but richer. Poorer externally, more vibrant within.

Holy Father Anthony, and all the Saints of the desert, pray to God for us that we might also become this fruit.

Pax vobsicum+