on the temple doorstep

an invitation

2008-12-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

I'm back blogging (for now). If anyone notices this and has enough interest, you can find me over at Racing My Own Shadow.

crossing . . .

2008-06-25T06:56:00.008-04:00

. . . the Jordan? the Bosporus? or just plain crossing? (We do a lot of that.) Anyway, here are some pics of the main event.

Did I mention the two things I was most looking forward to? Spitting at the Devil (no pic, unfortunately) and going barefoot in church. OK, maybe there were other things I was looking forward to more, but they're both very cool elements of the service. My understanding is that, like Muslims, Christians used to take off their shoes for worship, harking back to Moses at the burning bush. We have some Ethiopians who still do it regularly, but now that the norm has shifted, for most of us this is the one opportunity.
The service starts in the back of the nave (technically, in the narthex, but ours is too small and not positioned right). The point is that you start out on the doorstep, and as the service progresses, you enter into the rest of the body. Godfather Jim is to my right, without his cigar but still looking very much the part. Jenna looks pretty happy, doesn't she? Poor kid has no idea what's coming.
After the questioning and the exorcism (yeah, that's right), we proceed to the middle of the nave where the font awaits. Since I'd already been baptized as a heretic, I was received by chrismation and confession only. Along with Ian and Jenna, there was one other baby baptized on this particular occasion. They have a nice, silver font for babies, but Ian's a little beyond that, so they broke out the cattle trough. Godmother Laura's ready to help out. Jenna still has no clue.
There's a lot of oil spilled in this service. We haven't even got to the chrismations yet, but before the baptisms, both the water and the catechumens are anointed, so that the whole process may be for their healing both physical and spiritual. Remember, this part is about restoring the fallen human back to the life we had in the Garden. Chrismation will carry us beyond to what God always intended for mankind--infusion with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Ian got a little ahead of the game. They were still trying to get him to kneel, and he was already putting his head in the water. Fr. Gregory made sure the rest of him got wet, as he said the appropriate words.
Now, I think she's beginning to figure it out. Maybe watching Big Brother go through it first helped to drive home the point.
Yep--we immerse babies too. Three times, no less.
As the only adult entering in this service, I wrapped up my confession (given earlier to Fr. Gregory) by receiving absolution.
Jenna seems to have recovered OK by this point. She's always loved playing with the cross around my neck--now she gets one of her own.
As, of course, does Ian. His is very cool and manly looking, with Longinus's lance and a skull at the bottom. (This is Traditional iconography; the Aramaic name for the hill on which Jesus was crucified is Golgoltha--"the skull.") Good call by the Godparents!
Part of the chrismation involves tonsuring. In the ancient Near East, slaves wore a distinctive haircut to show that they belonged to their master. In the Torah, the Israelites were instructed to shave their heads when they fulfilled a vow to the Lord. Most Westerners are probably familiar with the monk's tonsure--this is essentially the same idea, though it's made somewhat symbolic by cutting off so little hair that it can hardly be noticed. Still, the point is that even our physical appearance should reflect that we belong to Christ.
And for the final sacrament of the morning (after baptism, chrismation, and confession), of course we all took communion for the first time. Jenna, of course, is a pro at taking food from a spoon and letting others wipe her face.
With a little practice, Ian didn't do so bad either.
So there you have it. I've already given my reflections on the day's events; now you get a glimpse of what it looked like. Again, feel free to post comments, questions, whatever. I'll respond where necessary, but this is it for new posts. Of course, the doorstep is still there for anyone who wants to come knocking.

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

2008-06-18T09:00:00.000-04:00

One thing have I asked of the Lord, this will I seek after: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may behold the delight of the Lord, and that I may visit His holy temple (Ps 26, LXX).

The time has come to leave the doorstep. I started this blog two years ago, before I was a catechumen, to write about my life in between. By that point, I knew where I wanted to be. (Remember, I had been investigating Orthodoxy for two years already.) But I still had important lessons to learn in patience, faith, and humility, before I could move any further. I still have a long way to go in those and many other areas; the journey, of course, never ends. But now I enter a new phase, properly within the nave--the ark--of the Church, where the real work begins.

For those who aren't familiar, the metaphor of this blog's title is based on Traditional Church architecture. As you enter, you come first to the narthex--the porch, or entrance, or vestibule. Various services are meant to be observed here--parts of memorial and funeral services, I believe, and most notably for our purposes, the beginning of baptism and chrismation, by which someone formally enters the Church. Also, it was traditionally where the non-Orthodox would stand if they were allowed to be present at all in a service. This restriction is still observed in some monasteries, but for the most part Orthodox parish practice accepts that the basic rituals of Christianity are no longer so foreign to outsiders that their presence in the service will cause more harm than good.

Catechumens fell somewhere in the middle. They were allowed to enter the nave--the main room--for most services, but before the Eucharistic portion of the Divine Liturgy, they would be dismissed. Inspired by lines from a psalm about choosing to stand on the doorstep of God's Temple, I identified my own situation with that of a beginning inquirer, peering in from the narthex, to catch a blessed glimpse of God's grace at work in his Church. Even after becoming a catechumen, the metaphor still worked, since I was not yet all the way inside. Now that I am inside (again, more beginning than culmination), a good deal changes. I am a convert to Orthodoxy, which I suppose has its distinctive features, but more to the point, I am an Orthodox Christian, plain and simple. As the journey moves forward, the earlier metaphor no longer applies.

One solution, I suppose, would be simply to change the name of the blog. Perhaps better, I could end this blog and start another. And it may be that, in time, I will blog again. But for now, I think it makes sense to wrap things up. The personal need I felt to justify my path, to argue my points, to respond to critics, has mostly dried up. What remains I think is best ignored. For me, such things too easily stand in for real life in whatever I'm supposed to be doing here and now. I need to learn silence, before I'll ever have anything truly worthwhile to say.

What is here, warts and all, may still be of benefit to someone; for that reason, I don't think I'll take it down anytime soon. I also plan to post something in the way of pictures from the chrismation service, when I get a chance. It will still be possible to post comments, and from time to time I may respond to those who do. Otherwise, I'll be about the business of being human. Lord willing, we'll all find some success at it in whatever life brings us.

and I thank my dear wife as well

2008-06-16T09:08:00.002-04:00

Julie deserves such heartfelt thanks for her part in all this. Considering that she doesn't even believe in Orthodoxy, her cooperation with allowing me to convert, the kids to get baptized with me, helping to get their outfits, get them ready, dealing with a sleep-deprived baby, humoring Ian by playing church after we got home, coming to services with me in the first place, hosting the in-laws for another visit, coordinating a get-together in honor of the occasion, and the host of other things that I don't remember or notice in the first place, are far above and beyond the call of duty.

I literally could not ask for a better partner and friend. Poor sinner that I am, I don't even deserve the one I have. I love you!

I thank Thee, O Lord my God . . .

2008-06-16T07:03:00.002-04:00

. . . that Thou hast not rejected me, a sinner, but hast granted me to be a communicant of Thy holy Things. I thank Thee that Thou hast granted me, unworthy as I am, to partake of Thy pure and heavenly Gifts.

--Thanksgiving after Holy Communion

If there's ever anything to be said for preparing in advance, it's this: When it came to the point yesterday, I almost missed what happened. I don't mean that I didn't get there in time or anything. I mean, it's all kind of a blur in my memory. I don't remember feeling so much this way at our wedding, but I think Julie did. The first thing she needed to do when we got home from our honeymoon was look at the pictures and video, because going through the event itself, it was so hard to take in what was actually going on. In this case, I was so preoccupied with making sure the kids got through everything, that I didn't have much time to contemplate the significance of what was happening. If I had come expecting just to focus all my attention on the liturgy, I would have been sorely disappointed. That's where the days and weeks (years, even) of preparation were a true Godsend.

Actually, the comparison with a wedding is kind of apropos--and not my idea, either. Julie asked me last night if I felt any different after being chrismated. I didn't particularly, and she said it's probably like when people ask at a wedding if you feel married. After thinking a bit, I did remark that it felt somewhat different being in the service, knowing it was going to end with actual communion, vs. so many times when I've been in a service and known it was off-limits. I guess, to stretch the comparison into possible sacrilege, it's kind of like a wedding when you've preserved your virginity until marriage.

As was more or less expected, Jenna didn't exactly cooperate on her sleep schedule. The past few days she's been sleeping until about 6:00. In general, that's better than what she was doing, getting up around 5:00, but this time it might have worked better if she'd got up earlier; she might have been ready to take some kind of a nap before we left. As it was, she was just about ready for a nap but didn't sleep in the car. She was kind of irritable when we arrived, and grumbled until I held her instead of our Godparents. (Does having the same Godparents make us brother and sister?) Even then, she still did her fair share of screeching, grunting, and wriggling. She was also kicking Ian in the head through quite a bit of it, but he seemed to appreciate the distraction, so I didn't intervene too much. The water was a shock to her, but she recovered quickly enough. (At least she was awake--poor Aidan was practically asleep until he hit the water.) After the chrismations were over, and we got her dressed, Julie took her out in the car to nap until it was time for communion.

Ian was looking forward to getting baptized and quite the trooper in the event. He cooperated with two anointings, getting breathed and blown on by Fr. Gregory, a public haircut, and of course the baptism itself. They were trying to get him to kneel down after he got in the water, and he just went ahead and stuck his head in. Fr. Gregory went with it, said the right words, splashed some water to get his back wet, and the thing was done. He was hungry after getting dressed downstairs, so since kids aren't absolutely required to fast, we let him have a quarter of a bagel. We knew we were supposed to get back up in the service for the procession at a certain point, and it came while he was still eating. He had to drop everything, and we ran upstairs, joined the procession already in progress (Orthodox conga line?), then went back down afterward so he could finish his snack, and got back up for the homily and the rest of the service. Communion went off without a hitch, though I was so preoccupied with making sure Jenna got through it OK, that I'm pretty sure I forgot to cross my arms after handing her to Laura. Jim shepherded Ian through the process, who was excited that he got to grab bread out of the basket and share some with Grandpa and Grandma.

Possibly the most poignant moment--because I didn't have to do anything with either of the kids and could actually take in what was going on--was the prayer for the catechumens, when for the first time in a year and a half, I didn't go up. I just stood there and prayed with all my heart for the catechumens who will soon follow.

I'll probably post some pics when they're available.

Behold, I approach the Divine Communion . . .

2008-06-14T21:45:00.003-04:00

O Creator, let me not be burnt by communicating,
For Thou art Fire, consuming the unworthy.
But, rather, purify me of all impurity.

--St. Symeon Metaphrastes

getting ready

2008-06-13T19:24:00.002-04:00

Less than 40 hours to go! Today I gave my confession--the leave-me-hangin' sacrament. Baptism and chrismation are the entrance into all the other sacraments of the Church (simply because they're the entrance into the Church). But Orthodox do everything at once--baptism, chrismation, first communion. Rather than stop the service so the newly illumined can give their lifetime confession before communion, the hard part is done in advance. All but the absolution, that is. That step waits until after chrismation.

Julie asked, who gives you absolution? God, naturally. Then aren't you already absolved? Well, this is the part where our heads start hurting. Of course, God is eternal. He's not waiting around to forgive us when it's convenient scheduling. But he's given us the sacraments by which these things are manifested in time. And as he gave the apostles the keys to the kingdom, the Church is entrusted with binding and loosing sins. For God, forgiveness happens in the eternal present. For us time-bound mortals, it plays out in some kind of sequence. Even then, there's a lot that we can only struggle to grasp. I've heard that there's a reason processions in church tend to go counter-clockwise. It shows how Christ's resurrection reversed the order of fallen nature. Similarly, they say some icons of his baptism depict the Jordan flowing backward. (What's more, in some places at the Theophany blessing of waterways, the miracle is repeated.) We have to be open-minded when it comes to God's working in time. He can answer our prayers before they're asked; sometimes in the New Testament we see people baptized before they receive the Spirit, sometimes after. I passed through the water 20 years ago; this Sunday I will be born into the Church.

Ian had one more go at putting his face in the water this evening at the pool. I think he'll do OK on Sunday. We've got the kids' clothes, I have the service book to review, and my parents are coming into town tomorrow. Ian and I have one more service to attend before the big day. Tomorrow is a memorial Saturday, when we pray for those who have reposed before us. We'll attend matins and hopefully the first part of divine liturgy. This last time, after the prayer for the catechumens, it will be appropriate for us to leave. (Holy Cross doesn't recite the ancient dismissal of the catechumens, nor do most parishes actually require that catechumens or anyone else leave the service; but the division is still there between the liturgy of the catechumens and the liturgy of the faithful.) Mostly, we're doing it that way so we can get home and see my parents when they arrive, but it still seems fitting.

Fr. Gregory posted an announcement today about the weekend's services. In Orthodoxy, we do know how to prepare.

vacation

2008-06-07T15:13:00.003-04:00

We're back from vacation. We didn't plan very far ahead this year. A few weeks ago, we decided to find something through Government Employee Travel Opportunities--a great program, BTW, which we heartily recommend to anyone who's eligible (any kind of government employee, and you can extend the program to your families as well). We wanted to keep it fairly local, so as not to burn too much gas on the way there and back, so returned to Massanutten, about three hours away in VA. (We stayed there two years ago, the first time we tried this program.) It's a nice resort, and we knew the sleeping arrangements would suit our kids' needs. A major drawback is that you have to pay for just about anything you want to do there. Last year, we went to Williamsburg, and the resort we stayed at there had more stuff included in the price--miniature golf, arcades, etc. Of course, those were two of the activities Ian was really looking forward to, so we had to limit his fun. We did the timeshare "tour" (read: sales pitch) again, so we could afford the water park. They have a big indoor/outdoor water park--fun, but pricey. This year Ian was just tall enough to do everything, which meant we had to pay full price for him. The $100 we got for enduring the three-hour tour (not nearly as much fun as Gilligan's Island would lead you to believe) didn't quite cover the admission fee for one day. At least we maximized what we got out of it. We got there when they opened, and aside from a couple of breaks for meals, Julie and Ian were there pretty much the whole day. I stayed in the condo with Jenna for her second nap, which was fine with me.

Anyway, it was a very relaxing time. I didn't bring a lot of reading material, so I could focus more on the kids and on spiritual preparation for chrismation. I'll give my confession this week, so I had some soul-searching to do for that. I also wanted to make sure I kept a regular prayer rule throughout the vacation, when a lot of other routine was out the window. I didn't attend a service on Sunday, but I did make it to vespers for the Ascension. There appear to be three Orthodox parishes, all about an hour's drive from the resort. The Russian parish wasn't having a service because the priest was away; that left a Greek parish and a Ukrainian. I heard back first from the Ukrainian priest, and it seemed more likely to be an English service.

It was a beautiful drive down and back, alongside the mountains. A strong storm came through during the service, which left fog visibly resting on the slopes as I returned. Julie said it hit the resort earlier in the evening, but we got it toward the end. The power went out at the very moment that the service ended. (I thought they were just very prompt about turning out the lights at the end, until someone commented on it in the narthex.) The parish has been there about ten years. The priest and his wife are Carpatho-Rusyn and found the Ukrainian bishop to be the most cooperative about starting a new parish for non-Greeks in the area. I had a good talk with both of them after the service. I also met someone who lives in Harrisonburg, up by the resort. I think it's bad to have to travel 35 min. each way to church; they've got to run closer to an hour each way! With gas prices climbing, I don't want to think about it . . .

The service was very refreshing and a great way to keep me going through the week. In my spare time, I also worked on learning how to crochet. I've been thinking for some time about trying to learn some kind of hand craft. It comes up a lot in ascetic literature, not only as a source of income for the desert fathers, but more importantly to keep productive and awake while praying. For my circumstances, none of the more traditionally "manly" crafts seems to make much sense. I don't have the kind of work space for serious woodworking or anything like that. Even basket weaving seems to require some room to spread out, and it's not very portable. Whittling might be an option, but it's pretty much an outdoor activity (and it doesn't look like I'm going to have much of a porch for it any time soon). So, for compact, portable, do-almost-anywhere crafts, it's hard to beat crocheting. Even knitting requires a bit more equipment and elbow-room. I have no idea yet what I'd make with it--right now, my interest is more in the activity than the end product. I have one skein of yarn (black, of course--there has to be something masculine about it) and one hook to start. This week I muddled my way through some written instructions. Hopefully I can get some input soon from someone who actually knows what they're doing, before I establish too many bad habits. (I know both my mom and my Godmother crochet, so help is there.)

I guess those are the highlights from my standpoint. We went some places, saw some stuff, did some things. Ian said constantly how much he liked being on vacation. He also said he liked being home when we got back today, so it seems like a good balance. Jenna found the condo to be suitable for rolling, but it seemed like most of our outings involved harder surfaces than she really cared for. She might have enjoyed eating gravel, if I hadn't intervened. She started freaking out a few minutes from home. Julie sang "Twinkle Twinkle" over and over (backed up by Ian), until she was gasping for air and everyone was laughing. Even with that, it took Jenna quite a while to calm down, but we made it, safe and sound.

Oh, and one nice thing. Julie was rear-ended a couple of weeks back, and to keep a long story short, we couldn't get the car into the shop for repairs until this week. We were able to drop it on Saturday, it was fixed by Friday, and we can pick it up any time now. Part of the week's rental is covered by insurance, so at minimal cost we got to spare the extra wear on our own car and drive someone else's. If we play our cards right, we'll even get to drive separately to church tomorrow, so I can get in one more service before the chrismation. Woo hoo!

and there was evening, and there was morning

2008-05-22T22:16:00.002-04:00

Cranky Old Guy's back for more. Looking at my most recent posts, I'm really starting to wonder. Anyway . . .

From metrics, to digital, to standard time. I've been reading lately about the development of standard time in America. I never really thought about there being much controversy around this stuff, and as with metrics, I've probably spent most of my life wholeheartedly embracing the current norms. I liked to set my watch down to the second, usually at New Year's. (Yeah, that's what I did at midnight--set my watch.) I'm the one who zealously goes through the house resetting all the clocks twice a year. When I first discovered that I could sync my computer clock with the Naval Observatory online, I couldn't get enough of it. And I was really pretty excited (as much as I disliked the idea of getting a cell phone) about having a clock built into my phone that syncs itself regularly.

But once I realized that these time standards were not implemented without controversy--that they were largely introduced only in a context of war--once I started thinking about them as imposed standards that the government had no business setting, my opinions formed pretty quickly. I'm not sure it would be at all practical to "turn back the clock" on this issue (so to speak), but I'm definitely nostalgic for solar time.

For just about all of human history until the past couple of centuries, the basic standards of time were found in nature--the sun, the moon, the seasons, etc. For marking out the time of day, the sun was the norm. Sunrise in the morning, high noon, sunset in the evening, and some regular divisions in between. Of course, by colonial times in America, there were clocks to help keep things a bit more regular and bridge the gaps when the sun was not readily visible. But they weren't very consistent and had to be constantly re-calibrated--to the sun. And because they weren't very accurate, it was uncommon to find precise agreement between one clock and another, so they couldn't be taken very seriously. Their manufacture was relatively expensive, so many people didn't own one. Needs for common time, to schedule a meeting or show up for an event, were met by public devices--a church bell or clock tower, or maybe a town hall. Those who had their own clocks or watches could set them by the public clock in town, and any clock could be set by a sundial. In a less mechanized world, the system worked well enough.

Ever since moving to Maryland, I've had a conviction that drivers around here lack a certain perspective on their own existence. They drive like there is no higher power. When it snows, half of them drive like the roads are perfectly dry and there's nothing to worry about. The other half panic like the world is about to end. The result, of course, is total chaos. But things are different in Western New York, where I learned to drive. Snow is a fact of life and a substantial reminder of things beyond human control. You learn to drive with a healthy sense of contingency. We'll get there at such and such time--if God wills. It doesn't always go as planned.

There seems to be a broader pattern to all of this. There is an older, more traditional way of life that recognizes our place within the natural order; there is a newer, more modern view that rejects this order and seeks the control that comes from crafting our own arbitrary existence. This newer view took the lowly clock and elevated it to a sovereign role for which it was never intended. Instead of expressing the sun's time, it came to define its own time. The sun was just too irregular and too local in its effects. Factories had to run like clockwork, and trains had to keep tight schedules. Indeed, it was the railroads that pushed for, developed, and implemented what we now know as standard time. No longer could timekeeping be a merely local affair. Clocks had to be synced across the continent.

The time zones were established, but not without objection. Cities that fell between one meridian and another often balked at adjusting their time as much as a half-hour forward or backward. States were split up by time zones and proceeded to wobble back and forth. The Federal government did not step in until it also chose to impose daylight saving time during WWI, at which point it also codified standard time. DST also sparked controversy--and contrary to popular belief, it was not primarily for the benefit of farmers. They were, if anything, its most consistent opponents. Their lives operated by natural patterns that could not arbitrarily adjust back and forth each year. The main advocates of DST wanted it for recreational purposes, but it never passed into law without the conviction that it would save energy. (Energy savings is actually the hardest defense of DST to substantiate.) And that usually happened when we were at war.

So I take my stand with the more traditional way. (Surprise, surprise!) Again, I don't think it's at all likely that I'll be on solar time next week. I do, after all, have to interact with the world around me. I have to show up for work, catch buses, and even attend church according to standard and daylight time. But I'm still going to be looking for ways to take back some sanity.

One interesting thought I had as I was contemplating all this: Not so long ago, I was actually closer to practicing what I now preach (yet without any principled stance at the time). When I was in school, I kept my watch set to the bell tower at the Basilica. I have (and had) no idea what it was set to (probably standard time). But the point is that my referent was local. In a sense, it didn't matter what it was set to. It was the most prominent public timekeeper in my life, and it was enough to go by. (Admittedly, if it had been too far off from standard time, I wouldn't have used it--but that was me then.) I can't think of a similar referent in my life right now, but if I could, it just might be enough to get me wearing a watch again (instead of always going by the time on my cell phone). Which of course would be ironic in itself--another clock, to free myself from over-mechanized time.

For now, about the most I can do is find those times to ignore the clock altogether. And maybe invest in a sundial . . .

the digital stone-age

2008-05-17T20:36:00.002-04:00

RANT WARNING: This entire post is just me complaining. It has nothing useful to do with anything. Read at your own risk.

So, today we got a digital receiver for our TV. We have continued to watch only broadcast TV, mostly because I'm too cheap and too anti-TV to invest the money in cable or satellite. We augment the broadcast offerings with a subscription to Netflix, which includes a generous selection of TV series on disc. We also have a lot of movies and TV series available for free through the local library. To my thinking, this is more than sufficient.

Well, as hopefully everyone knows by now, in about nine months everything will change. Congress has mandated that all broadcast TV convert to digital signals, so frequencies are freed up for other uses. (Apparently, digital signals are more compact.) The newly available frequencies will be used for "public safety communications" and commercial wireless. Needless to say, they are listed in that order on the FCC's Web site. We're told that benefits will include improved clarity and expanded variety due to the opportunity for sub-channels. Our local PBS station, for instance, has already developed multiple digital sub-channels with greater programming specialization.

So what's the catch? Well, like most technological "progress," the first thing you'll notice is widespread obsolescence. There are plenty of new TVs out there with the capability to receive a digital signal, and of course those who already pay hundreds of dollars a year for cable or satellite can pretty much ignore the change. But for the countless older TVs being used to watch broadcast TV, there are only two options--buy a new one, or buy a separate digital receiver.

Not to worry--your helpful government is providing $40 coupons--two per household upon request--for the external receivers. Right now, you can easily find a receiver priced at $50, so $10 out of pocket isn't too bad. Given the benefits, what's to complain about?

Plenty. Yes, a good digital signal gives a cleaner output than a comparable analog signal. But what happens with the signal is less than perfect? With analog, you might get a fuzzy image that makes it a little hard to read print on the screen. You might even get some static in the audio that obscures quiet dialog. But you can still watch the show. With digital, you get severe pixelation, frozen picture and sound, and complete loss of the signal. Watching a show like Lost, where every detail counts, you might experience some frustration with a weak analog signal where dark scenes are a bit hard to follow. But try missing a piece of dialog because your signal faded a bit. Think, watching a scratched DVD where you finally have to give up and skip to the next scene. That's worse than just about anything you'd get with analog. Well, with the possible exception of a badly positioned antenna while taping your favorite show and finding out the static was so bad you can't hear anything. But that brings us to the next problem.

Get ready to junk your VCR. Of course, if you've already migrated to DVR, you might not have much to worry about. (I wouldn't know.) And I guess there are some newer VCR/DVD combos (you can't buy just a VCR anymore) with built-in digital receivers. But most of the stand-alone VCRs out there will become practically useless for recording programs. For starters, you can hook your receiver to your VCR (supposedly--it didn't seem to work right when I tried it), but say goodbye to taping one show while watching another. The VCR must stay parked on channel 3, while the receiver controls the actual channel. There is a work-around--buy two receivers, so you can have one on your TV and one on your VCR. I'm not sure if that means you also need two antennas, but either way, you've just used up your allotment of coupons.

Say goodbye as well to easily programmable taping of shows you can't be there to watch. You can still use your VCR's program feature to set the time to record, but remember--you can only record channel 3. The receiver needs to be set to the right channel ahead of time; although you might program the VCR to tape your favorite show every Wednesday evening, you'll need to verify every Wednesday morning or afternoon that the channel is set properly. And forget taping two shows on two different channels in the same evening if you can't be there to change the channel.

If none of that is bad enough, you will probably lose channels that you can get now. We live between Washington and Baltimore, where it is sometimes possible to get channels from both cities. Tests so far have shown that the fuzzy stations you might have got before could become non-existent. Hopefully there will be some improvement on this count. Apparently many broadcasters are waiting for the official switchover to beef up the power on their digital signals. Right now, we can't get either of the two Baltimore PBS stations, but according to Wikipedia the signal strength is pretty minimal. It's disappointing, because Ian watches a lot of PBS as it is, and we were looking forward to the better niche programming of their digital offerings. Without any signal at all, it's a deal-breaker for now. We've boxed up the receiver until February, in hopes that things will improve. For now, we'll stick with our trusty analog.

It's sad, really. Analog TV still works fine. Old VCRs still serve the purposes for which they were created. The only problem is that, in less than a year, there will be no signal to receive. I'm reminded of Ralph Nader's point that the airwaves belong to us. Somewhere along the line, we (through our elected representatives) sold them off to big corporations. Don't hold your breath for some renegade broadcaster to keep sending out analog signals for all the freedom-loving fuddy-duddies who want to receive them.

Is it a conspiracy to force more of us into buying cable or satellite service? Or is it just simple crowding of free broadcast to make way for more important things? Either way, the outcome seems to be more expensive for anyone who hasn't already chosen to pay for TV (beyond what we already pay to the manipulative advertisers). Well, there's one other group that won't be paying more--anyone who has chosen or chooses now to opt out. Your analog equipment will continue to work just fine. If you can't get a signal, so what? You can still watch VHS tapes, DVDs--heck, you can even watch Beta if that's your thing. Many of the networks are now providing current episodes online for free. If you don't mind being a year or so behind, you can watch a favorite series on video. Or you can find something more productive to do with your time than sit in front of a TV.

I don't plan to challenge anyone's right to complain about this scam. But I do offer this encouragement: You are not a slave. You still can choose. You don't have to play their game. You have nine months to think about it.

in praise of traditional measurements

2008-05-14T07:26:00.002-04:00

OK, I'll admit it. I swallowed a lot of liberal propaganda when I was growing up in public school. Somewhere along the way, for instance, I bought into environmentalism--even adopted my own humpback whale--then later repudiated the idea under the influence of Rush Limbaugh. I've since come back around to what is more properly labeled "conservation," which is a great conservative value (even etymologically) and resonates with my innate abhorrence of waste and the way I was brought up.

Something I accepted more wholeheartedly and never thought to repudiate until now was the metric system. My ambitions at the time were mathematical and scientific, and it did seem like a natural fit. I embraced the simplicity of the decimal base, the regularity of its fit to scientific applications, and the universality of the system. On the other hand, I guess I did come to accept that America wasn't changing anytime soon. And by that point I'd already internalized traditional America measurements. Metrics was a nice system to play around with in science classes, but since then I haven't given it much thought. I just went on with the assumption that it was better.

Well, no more! I am now decidedly pro-traditional measurements. Why? Glad you asked :-)

They're traditional; and, well, you should know by now how I feel about tradition. The point here is that they've been used for centuries, even millennia, and they've worked quite well. You have to ask--or at least I do--what's the compelling reason to change? (And whom does it serve to do so?)
They're endangered. There's been a specific campaign to abolish traditional measurements, mostly by governments and pseudo-governments that have no business in such areas anyway. The U.S. may be only one of three countries that still use traditional measurements officially (though there are plenty of others that haven't given them up altogether), but I don't see that as a bad thing. The bad thing is that so many others have caved to an artificial standard.
From an antiquarian perspective, traditional measurements are a whole lot more interesting. The metric system is a boring, bureaucratic standardization. Its history is the sort of thing to help with insomnia. The story of traditional measurements has twists and turns and legends and myths. What's not to like about that?
Traditional measurements, to a great extent, make more sense in real life. The scales fit our normal measurement needs. The units are based on familiar things to which we can relate. (Well, they would be if our culture weren't so degenerate that it no longer knows what length of furrow makes good sense with an ox-drawn plow.) But let's look at some examples.

Units of length, based on the human body:
inch = thumb width = (etymologically) 1/12 ft.
palm = hand width w/o thumb (3 in.)
hand = palm + thumb (4 in.)
span = hand width stretched out (9 in.)
foot = foot length
cubit = forearm length (18 in.)
yard = belt length (or 1/2 fathom)
fathom = armspan (6 ft.)

Of course, everyone's body is a little different, and I suppose there's something mildly sexist in the assumption that we're talking about the body of an adult male. (Though I must say, there are some women around who could squash me like a bug.) But the point is that as rough approximations, these units are pretty good. And the nice thing is, you can estimate lengths in a pinch without any ruler at all.

Units of distance, based largely on agriculture:
pace = paired marching step (5 ft.)
rod = 16 men's feet (16-1/2 ft.)
chain = 4 rods
furlong = standard plow furrow length = 10 chains
Roman mile = (etymologically) 1000 paces
English mile = 8 furlongs
league = hour's walk = 3 mi.

Now, this section needs some extra clarification. Keep in mind that standard definitions and conversions would have come later. For generations, the different units could have got along quite nicely without correlating in any precise way. Most notably, the shorter length units seem to have developed in isolation from the longer distance units, resulting in the awkward relationship between feet and rods. Also, we have a historical development from the Roman mile to various local standards. In the English system, which we adopted here, the accepted conversion came to be eight furlongs to a mile. (Eight is in fact the closest estimate, if you're going to define a mile in terms of furlongs.) The rod and chain were surveyors' tools to break down the furlong into more manageable units. As the tradition goes, you get the length of a rod by having 16 men line up their left feet. In any case, there was probably no specific concern to make the rod come out an even number of feet until much later, at which point the length was relatively stable and didn't easily fit. Not that it makes much difference--we don't have too many instances where it's even necessary to convert from the shorter inches, feet, and yards to chains, furlongs, and miles.

The etymology of "furlong" is pretty obviously the length of a standard plow furrow. This is fairly meaningless to us now (though it may not be for long, with the way fuel prices are going), but it would have been almost universally relevant for talking about land measurements up until the past century or so. Now that we mostly think of acreage as applied to suburban and exurban residential parcels, perhaps we should adjust to something specific to lawn-mowing. But sticking with the agricultural standard, the logic gets even more interesting when we turn to area measurements:

rood = furlong x rod
acre = day's plow w/two oxen = furlong x chain
subdivision = 1/4 division (40 acres)
division = 1/4 section (160 acres)
section = sq. mi. (640 acres)
township = 36 sections (6 mi. x 6 mi.)

In particular, note the definition of an acre, which becomes much more elegant once you know what a chain and a furlong are. So assuming a standard plow drawn by two yoked oxen, you'd have a parcel of land that could be done in a day. The furrows were an acceptable length, and the optimal number of passes fit into a tenth of that distance. The rood would make sense as a unit, just because you could measure the width easily with a rod. (And I suppose it might be worth knowing that it takes a quarter of a day to plow a rood--two before lunch, two after?) The rest shows a more uniquely American system, which established one-square-mile sections, divided them into quarters, then again into quarters, which is why 40 acres comes up as a basic parcel of farmland ("back 40," "40 acres and a mule," etc.). I included "township" just because I've heard the term used so often but never knew where it came from.

Units of volume, based mostly on containers:
teaspoon = teaspoon volume (1/3 T.)
tablespoon = soup spoon volume (1/2 oz.)
ounce = volume of 1 oz.-weight of water
cup = 8 oz.
pint = 2 c.
quart = 2 pints
gallon = 4 qt.
peck = 2 gal.
bushel = 4 pecks
bag = 3 bushels
barrel = 31-1/2 gal.
hogshead = 2 barrels
cord = 8' x 4' x 4'

The barrel is actually somewhat variable depending on where and what is contained. I haven't found where the term hogshead originates, but I just love the term. Which leads me, of course, to a Simpsons quote:

The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it.
--Abe Simpson, "A Star is Burns"

I don't expect to convince anyone; it's just my own preference. But don't be surprised if I talk about a two-quart bottle of pop instead of a 2-L bottle of soda :-)

Corfu

2008-04-30T05:41:00.002-04:00

I went to high school in a little blip on the map named Corfu, NY. People kept wanting to call it corfoo, but we pronounced it corfyu. It's from an Italian form, which I would now guess is supposed to be pronounced more like outsiders' initial expectation. I didn't know then that it was named after a Greek island, and still don't know now why it was named after that Greek island. (The only remark I could find about it on their Web site was that some postmaster suggested it.) It's interesting to me, nonetheless.

The original Corfu (Gk. Κέρκυρας) is off the coast, just north of modern Greece, next to Albania. The Gospel reached the island in the time of the Apostles, and it has remained predominantly Greek Orthodox down to this day. For much of its history, Corfu fell on the border of the Eastern Roman Empire and bounced back and forth between Eastern and Western control. It was saved from the Ottoman conquest by appealing to Venice for protection. There was an influx of Latins, which has left a permanent mark on the cultural landscape, but the Greeks were allowed to practice their own Christian traditions in relative freedom.

Over the centuries, several Ottoman sieges were repelled, owing at least in part to Venetian assistance; the locals, however, see another, more important cause. When Byzantium fell to the Turks, a priest who had charge of the uncorrupted relics of St. Spyridon fled to Corfu, bringing the relics with him. Ever since, St. Spyridon has been the patron and protector of Corfu; deliverance from plague and invasion has been considered a miraculous result of his intercession.

In modern times, the island fell with Venice under Western colonial rule, until it was finally given to Greece. There remains a Catholic presence on the island, but it is fairly small and generally gets along well with the Greeks. When Greece adopted the Gregorian civil calendar in the 20th c., it caused a split in Easter celebrations, but the Catholic bishop appealed to the Vatican, and they now observe the holiday with the Greeks for the sake of consistency. (Western Easter is also celebrated for the sake of visitors.)

It's interesting now to think that this little village where I went to school was named after a place of such historical significance for Greek Orthodoxy (despite having hardly any Greeks in the community). In a county that currently lacks a single Orthodox church, perhaps St. Spyridon would be a good intercessor for that to change?

PBS, eat your heart out

2008-04-28T16:10:00.004-04:00

If you ever need to raise money to build or repair a monastery, ask the Serbs how to do it. I've seen at least two different videos from this project referenced on different Orthodox blogs. Apparently a bunch of professional musicians and performers contributed to this fund-raising effort, to restore a medieval Serbian Orthodox monastery. I don't know more than about two words in Serbian, but if I weren't already interested in Orthodoxy, I'd like to think watching these music videos would have got me interested.

I definitely recommend the one I saw referenced most recently, which features prominently the Slavonic Easter greeting: Christos Voskrese! (Christ is risen!) But as far as I'm concerned, they're all (all that I could find online anyway) worth watching.

alive!

2008-04-26T14:48:00.003-04:00

Well, we survived this morning's service. My Godmother Laura was a big help, watching Ian most of the time. When we got there, I figured he'd probably have a better vantage point on the baptisms from where she was standing with her kids, David and Ana. He stayed with them for the rest of the service, other than one time when he came looking for me.

Both kids decided to start the day by getting up early. Jenna was making noise before 5:00. She, Julie, and I all got up around 5:30. Ian was awake a little after 6:00. I made him stay in bed until 7:00, but he never went back to sleep. The good news is that Jenna got a good nap before we left the house around 9:30. The bad news is that she was due to eat again around the time we'd be arriving. I checked her diaper before we left but forgot to check it when we arrived. I realized after we were in the service that it was poopy, but there wasn't much to be done. Baptisms and chrismations start at the back, by the entrance, so there was no convenient way to get out. She didn't seem to mind, so we waited it out until after the chrismations--about half an hour. I took her downstairs, changed her, came back up, and hung out a bit longer until she got really irritable about not eating. By that point, I'd lost my seat anyway, and it was getting crowded in that section. So I grabbed everything and went back downstairs to give her a bottle.

She ate quite well. We weren't sure how she'd do. She hasn't typically nursed much for Julie during services. It had been about five hours since her last feeding (quite a bit longer than she normally goes), so she may just have been extremely hungry. Or maybe it's easier for her to take a bottle with distractions. In any case, she ate all six ounces that I made. Ian came down to see what I was up to, but I sent him back to stay with Laura. He stayed with her the rest of the service. After I came back up, we also went over by Laura, so I could help keep an eye on Ian. Also, I figured she was probably more interested in holding Jenna than watching one more active little boy.

Jenna did OK for a while, but she started to get sleepy around the middle of the service, so I took her to the back of the room, hoping she would sleep in her car seat. No such luck. I think she might be coming to the end of doing that sort of thing. Earlier this week, at our small group study, she kept puling the blanket down when she was supposed to be sleeping. She'd end up crying, all hot and sweaty. She was doing the same thing today. With the warmer weather and her more active, I don't think it's going to be as easy. She wouldn't go to sleep in my arms, either, so I took her out into the narthex to get away from some of the noise. She calmed down but still wasn't interested in sleeping. I let her scoot around a bit on the floor, then took her back into the service and let her roll in the back. She had fun playing with the bay leaves Fr. Gregory had scattered around. Eventually, she got irritable again; the service was almost over anyway, so I took her downstairs and fed her solids. We were wrapping up by the time others came down.

She melted down pretty quickly after that. When I was cleaning up, someone asked to hold her. I warned them that she was close to her limit, and sure enough, she melted down pretty soon after that. At least I was able to get everything together, scarf down some food, and round up the kids. She's sleeping now, hopefully for another good nap. Ian did OK, aside from constantly bugging Ana. He got upset at the very end, when he wanted to go over to David's house, and we had to explain that today everyone's too busy.

The service was quite good. It might not have actually been the longest liturgy of the year. Maybe it was anyway, but I did notice we skipped some of the (something like 15) Old Testament readings, including the entire book of Jonah. There were two baptisms and one chrismation--a couple (he was already baptized, she apparently wasn't) and a new baby from another family. I'd never seen a baby baptized there before. He seems to have a good technique. He gets the baby balanced just right and then skims it through the water three times, going in all the way, but coming out very quickly each time. He cried for a few seconds afterward, but settled down pretty quickly.

I had to eat so quickly, I didn't get anything to drink. Traditionally, Holy Saturday doesn't have an actual meal. In earlier times, this service would have started later in the day and been followed by a reading of the book of Acts until the Pascha Vigil. There would be a short break to distribute nuts, dried fruit, and wine for some energy to sustain everyone through to the end. We do this service earlier in the day and skip the reading of Acts, but we still eat the traditional snack. I didn't have time to drink anything there, but I finished it out with a beer when I got home. I wasn't planning on taking a nap, but now I feel like maybe I should. If I'm feeling this sleepy already, what will it be like at 4:00 a.m.?

I probably won't blog again today. A blessed Pascha to all.

let us be attentive!

2008-04-25T16:58:00.000-04:00

We tend to schedule out the Orthodox services I will attend pretty far in advance. Usually, at the beginning of each month, I send Julie a list of what's coming, my preferences, etc., and we try to line things up with both our schedules. Of course, this month has a lot more services to manage than most, since it includes Holy Week. I don't try to attend everything (though it would be nice), but I try to catch the highlights, especially incorporating services I've never attended before or haven't attended recently. This year, I finally get to attend the Lamentations service in the evening. It was my first service at Holy Cross, three years ago. Joel, the only Orthodox person I knew at the time, invited me to come along with him. It's a beautiful and moving service, but I haven't been able to line things up to attend since.

I would also have liked to attend vespers this afternoon, when the icon of Christ is taken down from the cross. But Jenna has a doctor's appointment that conflicts, so instead I dragged Ian to the Royal Hours this morning. His behavior wasn't perfect, but I had to give him kudos anyway. If you don't know, the Royal Hours consist of four services combined--first, third, six, and ninth hours, which were designed to stand alone throughout the day, especially in monasteries. These days, even monasteries tend to skip or contract them. In Russian churches, I believe the vigil service ends with the first hour and liturgy is preceded by the third hour. But in a lot of parish settings, they only make an occasional appearance, before the greatest of the feast days, when they're combined like this into one long service. There's nothing particularly dramatic or exciting about them, either. They're intended to be quiet breaks of contemplation throughout the day, and stringing them all together doesn't change the mood much. For a kid who struggles to stay in his seat from start to finish of family dinner time, one such hour would be hard enough--two is pretty taxing.

I'm still learning how to interest my son in spiritual things, and I know his experience of worship is still mostly "waiting it out." But today I think I learned an important lesson. As usual, he asked me periodically through the service, "Are we almost done?" I realized part-way through that, if I'd taken more initiative, and if he had a little bit better capacity to follow my explanations, I might have explained to him in advance that the service consisted of four cycles, and he could get a good sense of how much longer we had by counting those cycles and paying attention to what happened when. It would have gone over his head, but as a secondary application, I decided that when he asked during the ninth hour part, "Are we almost done?" I would give him an answer that would hopefully get him to pay some kind of attention. So I said, "After the priest reads from his big Bible again, we'll be almost done."

Of course, I suspected that that "almost" would be an Orthodox "almost." It's a common joke that "let us complete our prayer unto the Lord" means the service is maybe 15-20 min. from winding down. I didn't have a service book to look at, but I figured the ninth hour couldn't be too much longer than the others. It did, in fact, have extra stuff at the end, which forced him to ask me a couple more times if we were (really) almost done. But he was definitely more attentive to the Gospel reading in that last cycle than in any of the others, or for that matter, in most other services he attends. Granted, he was paying attention because he wanted to know when he could get out of there; but for now I'll take what I can get.

Incidentally, at the last minute, I had decided to attend the service at St. Matthew's instead of Holy Cross. Julie was kind of floored yesterday by how much it cost to fill up the car, and I think we were both looking for ways to minimize driving. I consider it a form of offering to drive back and forth to Linthicum so many times this week, but it still seemed like attending at least one service close by would help break things up a bit. Plus, I had to take time off of work to attend, and the less I consumed with travel time, the less leave I'd have to use. In any case, I'm glad I did. Attending a service like that in the middle of the day, I'd just be running in and running back out anyway. More to the point, it was perhaps the most moving, impressive experience I've had at St. Matthew's.

I don't know what it was--maybe my own spiritual condition, maybe the different feel of having such a small group present. (Hours services tend to be sparsely attended.) Maybe the experience of attending an "off" service at St. Matthew's. (In my experience, they have mostly done Sunday morning liturgy only; Lent and Holy Week constitute a general exception, but other than Sunday of Orthodoxy, I think this was my first time attending anything out of the normal routine.) Whatever it was, I was glad to be there. I have to admit that I did not stay focused on what was going on in the service 100% of the time, but what I mostly remember being distracted by was contemplating how helpful the experience was for my attitude. I can sometimes get a little uppity about parishes like St. Matthew's, where the clergy wear suits and collars, the chairs obstruct proper bowing, the liturgical schedule is thin, etc. It was a good dose of humility to realize there's more there than I give them credit for.

I've got about an hour and a half before I have to leave for the Lamentations service. Next up after that, Vesperal Liturgy at Holy Cross tomorrow morning. (The services of Holy Week tend to run ahead of schedule. You get Matins in the evening and Vespers in the morning. It's like we just can't wait to get to Pascha.) This is the big day for baptisms and chrismations. Lent was historically a preparation for catechumens anticipating baptism right before Pascha. So between that, the blessing of bread and wine at the end, the fact that it's vespers and liturgy combined, and St. Basil's liturgy no less--I read today that it's the longest Divine Liturgy of the year. (Speaking here just of the liturgy itself. The Pascha Vigil will be longer, but that's because you've got three or four services together.) And what am I doing? I'm bringing both kids by myself! Should be exciting. I haven't done that since shortly after Jenna was born, when Julie was laid up at home from her gall bladder surgery. This was the only way I could make it--Julie's going to a nearly new sale, and I would normally be staying home with the kids. Fortunately, she can ride with a friend, so at least I have transportation. Now let's see if I can "take no thought for any earthly thing when the time comes . . . "

evangelical Bible-thumpers

2008-04-24T12:17:00.002-04:00

Last night was my first time witnessing the sacrament of holy unction. (In the Orthodox Church, what RCs often know as "extreme unction" is actually available many times throughout life, for both physical and spiritual healing.) It is commonly administered to anyone who wants to receive it, the Wednesday before Easter.

I don't know how it's done in more isolated applications, but in this service, it begins with the chanting of a canon, followed by 14 Scripture readings--seven from the Epistles and seven from the Gospels, alternating along with seven prayers. I suppose it probably seems long and repetitive to anyone who's not used to "liturgical" services. (Our service was a concise two-hours-and-ten-minutes.) At the conclusion, the faithful kneel under the upraised Gospel book, which is held open, pages facing down over their heads, while the priest prays. Then, one by one, they are anointed with oil, again coming under the Gospel book.

I guess some people think that Orthodox don't give enough attention to the Bible. They put too much emphasis on Tradition, they don't do enough personal reading, etc. But it's a tough accusation to substantiate. Their treatment of the Bible is certainly different from Protestant expectations. But to call it a de-emphasis of Scripture misses the point. Last night was, in a sense, a warm-up for tonight's reading of the Passion Gospels, in which the accounts of Christ's sufferings and death will be read from all four Gospels, with the faithful kneeling for each extended reading. There's a lot of Scripture reading in Orthodox public worship, and a lot of context for that reading. No one had to explain last night that unction is for both physical and spiritual healing--it's obvious from the selection of readings. And in general, if you pay attention to what passages are used and how and when, you start to see a lot of connections between the biblical text and the substance of faith and practice. Often, too, there will be accompanying icons and actions; there is extensive quoting from and allusion to Scripture in Orthodox hymns; often the point of the sermon is to tie it all together and make explicit what is otherwise implicit.

Orthodox bow when the Gospels are carried into the nave, when they are opened to read, when they are closed at the end. The book sits enthroned on the altar whenever it is not in use. It is venerated during the Orthros service. It is used in situations like holy unction to convey the presence of Christ in the midst of his people. The Gospel is laid on the head of the person in need of healing, and the priest lays his hands on the Gospel. It is Christ, first and foremost, who heals; the priest is just there to do the leg-work. Similarly, the Gospel is laid across the neck of a bishop at his consecration. No one's ever explained to me why that is, but I can guess that at least some of it is to show the burden he is taking up as one with primary responsibility to convey the Word of God to his people. It also shows that Christ's yoke is on him, and Christ is the one laying hands on him, blessing him for the work of leadership.

There is no question in Orthodoxy of the divinity of Scripture, of its power for salvation, of its inspiration by God, its truth, its status as God's Word. Scripture is woven throughout all of the Church's worship and is regularly referred to as the standard for the lives of the faithful. It is integral to the authority of the priests and bishops and essential for the Church's gathering as the Church. If that's not evangelical (centered on the Gospel), what is?

As a side note, Orthodox seminarians are currently attempting to hand out 400,000 booklets of the Gospel of Mark in Moscow subway stations during Holy Week.

for those who missed it

2008-04-16T17:38:00.002-04:00

Esteban comments on my post "into the splendor of Thy Saints . . . ":

Glory to God! These are wonderful news. Imagine: to receive the perfecting Grace of Baptism through the seal of the Holy Spirit on the very day on which He, like a mighty rushing wind, was poured on all flesh! Please let us know in time which name you will be given so that we all may pray for you by name at the Services after Pentecost.

I agree--it's a great day for it. Pascha would be the ultimate, but since he just made the decision, I'm guessing he didn't want to rush things. An interesting note here. A couple of years back, when I moved into a newly renovated space at work, I had these shelves that weren't good for much of anything "practical." I deduced that they were for such things as pictures and knick-knacks, so I ordered a few icons to put there. I needed four to get a shipping break; I knew I wanted a Pantokrator, a Theotokos, and St. Michael. (At the time, I was exploring just sticking with my middle name for a patron saint; plus, St. Michael is just a cool icon to have in any case.) For the fourth, I went with one that was on sale, figuring I'd eventually collect the Great Feasts anyway. As you might have guessed by now, it was the icon of Pentecost. Some of the others have found homes elsewhere, but that one still watches over my office. I was never quite sure why. ("It was on sale" didn't seem like a reason.) Now I guess I know.

As for your request, some time ago I found St. Peter the Aleut, or perhaps he found me. In any case, there seems to be a consensus among my priest, my Godfather, and this poor sinner. Follow the link (and subsequent links), if you feel like reading my thoughts on this subject over the years.

into the splendor of Thy Saints . . .

2008-04-16T09:58:00.004-04:00

. . . how shall I who am unworthy enter? For if I dare to enter the bridechamber, my vesture betrays me, for it is not a wedding garment, and as a prisoner I shall be cast out by the Angels. Cleanse my soul from pollution and save me, O Lord, in Thy love for men.

After three years of waiting here on the doorstep, I've finally been invited to come inside! Now the only question is, can I get beyond trembling at the threshold? Fr. Gregory has proposed Pentecost for my chrismation. I'd grown so used to being told "not yet," that his "yes" really caught me off guard. There was joy in my initial reaction, but the dominant response was probably terror. In a way, it's good that he told me now. I think I can finish Lent and Holy Week with the proper perspective. Contemplating my own death doesn't inspire enough fear to make me truly repentant, but apparently the thought of approaching the mysteries does the trick.

More details as they become available. For now, here's St. Symeon the New Theologian's pre-communion prayer, which expresses what I'm feeling a lot better than I can:

From sullied lips,
From an abominable heart,
From an unclean tongue,
Out of a polluted soul,
Receive my prayer, O my Christ.
Reject me not,
Nor my words, nor my ways,
Nor even my shamelessness,
But give me courage to say
What I desire, my Christ.
And even more, teach me
What to do and say.
I have sinned more than the harlot
Who, on learning where Thou wast lodging,
Bought myrrh,
And dared to come and anoint
Thy feet, my Christ,
My Lord and my God.
As Thou didst not repulse her
When she drew near from her heart,
Neither, O Word, abominate me,
But grant me Thy feet
To clasp and kiss,
And with a flood of tears
As with most precious myrrh
Dare to anoint them.
Wash me with my tears
And purify me with them, O Word.
Forgive my sins
And grant me pardon.
Thou knowest the multitude of my evil-doings,
Thou knowest also my wounds,
And Thou seest my bruises.
But also Thou knowest my faith,
And Thou beholdest my willingness,
And Thou hearest my sighs.
Nothing escapes Thee, my God,
My Maker, my Redeemer,
Not even a tear-drop,
Nor part of a drop.
Thine eyes know
What I have not achieved,
And in Thy book
Things not yet done
Are written by Thee.
See my depression,
See how great is my trouble,
And all my sins
Take from me, O God of all,
That with a clean heart,
Trembling mind
And contrite spirit
I may partake of Thy pure
And all-holy Mysteries
By which all who eat and drink Thee
With sincerity of heart
Are quickened and deified.
For Thou, my Lord, hast said:
"Whoever eats My Flesh
And drinks My Blood
Abides in Me
And I in Him."
Wholly true is the word
Of my Lord and God.
For whoever partakes of Thy divine
And deifying Gifts
Certainly is not alone,
But is with Thee, my Christ,
Light of the Triune Sun
Which illumines the world.
And that I may not remain alone
Without Thee, the Giver of Life,
My Breath, my Life,
My Joy,
The Salvation of the world,
Therefore I have drawn near to Thee
As Thou seest, with tears
And with a contrite spirit.
Ransom of my offences,
I beseech Thee to receive me,
And that I may partake without condemnation
Of Thy life-giving and perfect Mysteries,
That Thou mayest remain as Thou hast said
With me, thrice-wretched as I am,
Lest the tempter may find me
Without Thy grace
And craftily seize me,
And having deceived me, may seduce me,
From Thy deifying words.
Therefore I fall at Thy feet
And fervently cry to Thee:
As Thou receivedst the Prodigal
And the Harlot who drew near to Thee,
So have compassion and receive me,
The profligate and the prodigal,
As with contrite spirit
I now draw near to Thee.
I know, O Saviour, that no other
Has sinned against Thee as I,
Nor has done the deeds
That I have committed.
But this again I know
That not the greatness of my offences
Nor the multitude of my sins
Surpasses the great patience
Of my God,
And His extreme love for men.
But with the oil of compassion
Those who fervently repent
Thou dost purify and enlighten
And makest them children of the light,
Sharers of Thy Divine Nature.
And Thou dost act most generously,
For what is strange to Angels
And to the minds of men
Often Thou tellest to them
As to Thy true friends.
These things make me bold, my Christ,
These things give me wings,
And I take courage from the wealth
Of Thy goodness to us.
And rejoicing and trembling at once,
I who am straw partake of fire,
And, strange wonder!
I am ineffably bedewed,
Like the bush of old
Which burnt without being consumed.
Therefore with thankful mind,
And with thankful heart,
And with thankfulness in all the members
Of my soul and body,
I worship and magnify
And glorify Thee, my God,
For Thou art blessed,
Now and throughout the ages.

we have movement!

2008-04-12T17:55:00.003-04:00

Figured we'd try out the video component on our rather old, rather cheap digital camera. We have a camcorder, but it's also old, from back when it was the decidedly more affordable option to get analog. Jenna's taken right off with a lot of her motor skills in the past few days. She's clapping and waving, feeding herself snack puffs, and monumentally--she's ambulatory! (Does that have to mean walking, or is any form of propulsion sufficient?) You can't see it in this brief clip, but she can make a full circuit of the room (or at least the open area), just by rolling. She does get a little hung up sometimes when she reaches a corner, but that shouldn't take long to sort out. Anyway, enough yappin'--here she is!

does this mean they're OK for Lent?

2008-04-11T20:30:00.004-04:00

"There's very little meat in these gym mats."

--Lunch Lady Doris
"The PTA Disbands"
The Simpsons

monasticism in the 21st century

2008-04-09T10:01:00.002-04:00

This is more than seven years old, but still quite good I think. Mother Ephrosynia discusses the point of monasticism in our (post)modern age.

Where are the American saints?

2008-04-07T08:11:00.002-04:00

A couple of things I've come across recently have got me thinking again about the American saints. There are about a dozen recognized saints associated significantly with the territory of North America. Of these, most were immigrants from Russia or Eastern Europe. Only two were born and died on the continent (both Alaskan); one (Varnava of Hvosno) was born in the contiguous U. S. (Gary, IN) but left as a child, never to return. About half a dozen others were born elsewhere but died here.

Although many of them were not ethnically Russian, all but two of the American saints belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. For the sake of convenience, we could divide the American saints into three periods:

the foundation, from the start of the Russian mission in 1794 to the departure of St. Innocent in 1867
the zenith, from the arrival of St. Alexis in 1889 to the death of St. Raphael in 1915
the struggle, from St. Nikolai's first visit in 1915 to the death of St. John in 1966

Naturally, the first stage would be exclusively Russian, because it falls during the time when the Russian church was planting Orthodoxy on American soil. Russian dominance in the second stage also makes sense, though I guess there are some who argue that by this point Greek Orthodoxy already had an independent existence in America. In the third stage, there's not much to show in any case, but we have two Serbians--one going, one coming--and another Russian.

In the first two periods, there were almost always multiple saints at any given time. In the foundation period:

1794-96 St. Herman and St. Juvenaly
1802-16 St. Herman, St. Peter, and St. Jacob
1816-23 St. Herman and St. Jacob
1823-37 St. Herman, St. Jacob, and St. Innocent
1837-64 St. Jacob and St. Innocent

In the zenith period, the concentration was even higher:

1895-1898 St. Alexis, St. John, St. Alexander, and St. Raphael
1898-1907 St. Alexis, St. John, St. Alexander, St. Raphael, and St. Tikhon
1907-1909 St. Alexis, St. Alexander, and St. Raphael
1909-1914 St. Alexander and St. Raphael

Of course, everything changed with the Russian Civil War (1917-22). Around this period, we have the three brief visits of St. Nikolai to America (1915, 1921, 1927) and the American childhood of St. Varnava (b. 1914). After WWII, St. Nikolai spent the last decade of his life in America, from 1945 to 1956. Finally, St. John of Shanghai arrived in San Francisco in 1962 and reposed in 1966. From a high point of five saints at the turn of the century, we've seen more than 90 years in which only two saints lived here as adults, one of them for four years, the other for 11. From the standpoint of the chaotic condition of Russian Orthodoxy during this period, the dearth makes a fair amount of sense; but does it in any way indicate an American Church that is ready to stand on its own?

Various groups argue that our fate has long been detached from that of the Russian Church. But where are the Greek saints? Where the Arab? Where the distinctively American? Should we really care which group is the largest, or the fastest growing, or the most at home in American culture? Should we ascribe weight to claims of universal jurisdiction? What would it mean to follow this strategy: the Church in America is founded on her saints; when those saints are distinctively American, she will be ready to run her own affairs. It is also interesting to consider that, in the age of ecumenism, the saints we see in America (and, I have heard, the saints in historically Orthodox lands) have been anti-ecumenist. Indeed, when we turn to the third period, it may well be that the forces of ecumenism have been at least partially responsible for the dismal numbers.

Now, I'm not saying that any of this is terribly conclusive. I set out mostly to get a clearer picture in my own mind of when the saints lived, where their lives coincided, and what any of this might show us about Orthodoxy in America. And I doubt that there's anything profound here. I'm sure plenty of people before me have seen these trends. They don't say much in themselves, without some kind of interpretation of what's going on. Is it the fragmenting of Orthodoxy in America that has caused the lack of saints (or perhaps vice versa)? Is it ecumenism? The New Calendar? The loss of Russian leadership? A general apostasy? I'm hardly the person to say what caused what. But it does seem to me like we should pause over these trends. In a century when the Old World has seen the ranks of its saints swell with new martyrs, American Orthodoxy has offered very little. I don't want to wholly discount whatever benefit we have experienced here from relative religious freedom; but when we leave things like saints and monastics out of the equation, are we perhaps adopting the wrong standards by which to measure maturity?

suit up!

2008-03-30T21:16:00.002-04:00

Maybe there is some hope that Ian's friend David can rub off on him in a positive way. His lesson on quiet signals during church didn't seem to take, but it looks like the wardrobe is showing some promise. With his well-placed hand-me-down jacket, when David says to "suit up," Ian will be ready! Now we just need to get him to take more interest in the service, stop harassing Mommy, obey when we give him directions . . . but the clothes make the man, right?

get in shape, the Orthodox way!

2008-03-14T10:53:00.002-04:00

You too can get in shape, with our patented, simple regimen:

Don't eat anything. Don't drink anything either, if it can be avoided.
Spend a couple of hours each night in church,
- standing more or less continually (no whining about feeling weak from #1)
- prostrating often (ditto)
- bowing to the floor incessantly (what, you were already feeling light-headed?)
- singing almost non-stop (dry throat? what dry throat?)
Also extend your private prayer times at home, with any or all of the elements from #2.
Which means, of course, that you should be getting less sleep. (Feeling drowsy? Try standing . . . or bowing . . . or prostrating . . . )
Oh, you can eat on Wednesday night, but late, and you'll need two services to make up for it. And don't eat too much (not that you can, with a stomach shrunken from three days without food and a throat so dry that well-cooked pasta can feel like broken glass).
Don't worry--it gets much better after the first week (seriously).

I say this, knowing myself to be a world-class wuss (huh--no flags in the spell-checker on that word), who didn't make it the full three days without food, who attended only one service all week and still fidgeted, rolled my feet on their sides to ease the soreness, and had to resist looking at my watch. But what's the point of having standards, if they don't give you something to work up to, right?

I also say it, wishing I could have done more with the first week of Lent. I discovered that I have too much anger. (This is one of my favorite scenes from the Joan Cusack movie High Fidelity. [PROFANITY WARNING: There are a few instances of the dreaded f-word in this clip; if that bothers you, don't play it.]

While it didn't go anywhere near as far into absurdity, I had my own mock confrontation play out in my head earlier this week, which I suppose wasn't anything terribly new, but it surprised me to realize it had happened.) G. I. Joe used to say, "Knowing is half the battle," but I'm not sure I've moved on to the other half.

I also wish I could have prayed more, been in more services, paid more attention to the needs of those around me, etc. Five more weeks to get it right, I guess.

Moscow Patriarchate endorses the Simpsons

2008-03-12T09:11:00.003-04:00

Interfax quotes Moscow Patriarchate spokesman Fr. Mikhail Prokopenko:

I would not say that absolutely all cartoons shown on 2x2 are immoral and offensive. In fact, some of the cartoons shown there can even be called Christian and promoting family values - take, for instance, The Simpsons, a cartoon series that I, for one, really like.

Finally! Vindication from an official religious body. This is what I've been harping on for years. I knew there was something I liked about this Church :-)

Wurmbrand on Orthodoxy

2008-03-06T07:49:00.004-05:00

Funny how things come at once. I posted yesterday on Fr. George Calciu's remark about American Christians. This morning I listened to Kh. Frederica''s podcast about another clergyman who suffered under the Communist persecution in Romania--Richard Wurmbrand, a Jewish convert and Lutheran pastor. Wurmbrand will be known to many Evangelical readers as the author of Tortured for Christ, about his experience in Romania, and the founder of Voice of the Martyrs--a publication that brings to light the continuing experiences of Christians under persecution around the world. Here, the tables are turned, and Wurmbrand--who remained a Protestant until his death in 2001--comments on his experience with Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Most of the material in the podcast comes from a pair of Again articles that can be downloaded in a Word doc from Ancient Faith Radio, or read online here and here. The first article refers to a recorded conversation between Hieromonks Damascene and Gerasim of St. Herman Monastery in Platina, CA, Mother Nina, and Pastor Wurmbrand; the podcast contains clips from that recording, including Wurmbrand singing his own arrangement of "Ave Maria" in English and Hebrew.

Wurmbrand speaks with respect of the Orthodox individuals he met, and the monks speak with respect as well of their encounter with him. His stories of these Orthodox confessors are touching and should encourage Orthodox and Protestants alike.

Calciu on America

2008-03-05T07:29:00.002-05:00

I just got the July-August 2007 issue of The Orthodox Word. (I recently subscribed, so I don't know if they're just behind schedule or still sending me free back issues.) This issue is devoted to Fr. George Calciu, of blessed memory--a Romanian confessor who suffered under Communist persecution and died a little over a year ago of pancreatic cancer. I never met Fr. George, but he was the spiritual father of my spiritual father and of some of my friends. For the last several years of his life, he pastored a Romanian parish in Northern Virginia. I can't recall exactly if I've ever heard the term "saint" applied to Fr. George, but the sentiment seems to be there in those who knew him.

The issue contains two previously unpublished talks by Fr. George, as well as a brief biography and an account of his final days. There's a lot of good material here, but I thought the last paragraph, from a Q&A session that followed his talk on "The Inner Church" (2001), was particularly noteworthy. After describing France as a "lost country," he continues:

When I returned to America from France, I took a cab from the airport to my house, and the driver started to talk to me about God, about the Bible. In shops people often start talking to me about God, about the Bible. As long as simple people speak about God, as long as simple people read the Bible, America is saved. For despite all the mistakes America has made, despite the war against Yugoslavia, despite all the killings of people, despite everything, America is blessed by God--not because Clinton or another president says, "God bless America," but because of these simple people who speak of God, worship God, read the Bible, and preserve America against every evil and every attack of the devil.

I should add that Fr. George in his other talk does not shy away from criticizing "the invasion of American and Protestant-style 'evangelization'" in Romania. He is no ecumenist, and he clearly sees Protestantism as deficient, if not at times downright anti-Christian. But note the contrast when it comes to talking about American people, most of whom are not Orthodox. He does not say they are perfect, he does not say their theology is altogether right, he does not say they have nothing important to learn. But he does say that they are good, that they have faith, that they genuinely worship God, and that they are instrumental in the spiritual war. And all this, without being Orthodox!

I don't know where we would be without persecution in the world, because it seems that without it we would lack the perspective of those, like Fr. George, who have walked through the very depths of hell. Persecution solidified his faith into something that could not keep silent (so much so, that he was re-imprisoned and after Western pressure was exiled from his homeland), but it also softened his heart toward broken humanity. Here was a man who learned to love his God-hating torturers; it does not seem so surprising that he could also see in the "simple people" of America a goodness and genuine spirit that survives, even amidst sectarianism, heresy, and imperialism. I know I, for one, need voices like his to remind me every now and then.

" . . . and call him George"

2008-03-02T18:48:00.002-05:00

I've long used a vaguely-remembered quote from Looney Tunes to harass Ian. It's about the only memorable line from Marvin the Martian's abominable snowman Hugo, which is better watched in context than written out. If you want to skip to the relevant part, start around 3:30:

You have my permission to use it with your loved ones as well!

paraklesis

2008-02-28T12:22:00.003-05:00

Holy Cross does a monthly Paraklesis service (similar to a Moleben in the Russian tradition), which for those who don't know is an Orthodox supplication service. Now, for my Evangelical friends, don't expect to walk in and find people sitting around, sharing requests and then breaking up into small groups for extemporaneous prayer. We'll pray for specific people (from requests circulated daily on the parish e-mail list and weekly in the bulletin), but we assume that God knows at least as much as we do about their situations. So the prayer is light on details, heavy on context.

"Concise Orthodox service" is a Googlenope, a term coined by columnist Gene Weingarten for a phrase that does not register any hits if you Google it in quotes. (Of course, once you've identified a Googlenope online, it ceases to be one.) So it should come as no surprise that we spend an hour singing about our general human plight before God, and then the priest rattles through a long list of names. I never get the impression that this belittles their needs or anyone else's. It's sort of like the guys who brought the paralytic to Jesus and had to lower him down through the roof. They had to get a group together, somehow climb up on the roof, open up a hole, lower him down--a lot of hard work, it seems to me. But when everything was done, it was a simple act of laying their friend at Jesus's feet. They didn't have to explain anything, didn't have to make any eloquent speeches. The need was as obvious to him as it was to them, and their faith and love were obvious too. In prayer, we come before God's throne. We prostrate, we invoke the saints, we acknowledge our sin--and when all is said and done, we lay down our friends and neighbors and trust God to act.

I find it to be a very moving service, and I love when I get to attend. Last week, unexpectedly they scheduled an extra Paraklesis instead of the usual weekday Vespers. It happened to be a night when I was going anyway, so I could hear the talk afterward. If it wasn't enough that I got to attend, they decided to record the service and put it online. Kudos to Reader Ben for that! Now I can pray the service more often (with others is better, but I'll take what I can get), and hopefully learn the words and music more thoroughly. I've thought before that it would be nice to have some of the regular services recorded. Ideally, you learn it by attending; but for those of us who can't attend as often as we'd like, it's a nice alternative.

So I'm pretty psyched. I guess that makes me weird, but oh well . . .

nothing new under the sun

2008-02-20T12:03:00.005-05:00

After we screwed up Ian's hair, I told Julie that it just looked like one of those old, wide middle parts that you see in pictures of people from the 19th and early 20th centuries. When we were visiting my aunt this weekend, she showed us a bunch of pictures she'd salvaged from my grandpa's house, including this one of Great-Grandpa Peterson:

Ian saw it and said, "That looks like my hair!" My point exactly.

the implosion of humanism

2008-02-20T08:31:00.003-05:00

It is perhaps too much to credit postmodernism with leading me to Orthodoxy, but it has certainly played a key role. There's a lot that goes by the name of "postmodern," so let me clarify a bit. I came at most current (and not-so-current) thinking by way of literary criticism (also music, but that's a story for another post). The journey went something like this:

desire to know God led me to theology
desire to know theology led me to the Bible
desire to know the Bible led me to hermeneutics
desire to know hermeneutics led me to literary theory
desire to know literary theory led me to philosophy and politics

And it was once I realized that the end of this progression was meaningless that I knew something had to give. Where I ended up was pure relativism and subjectivism. Nothing can stand on its own--not truth, not the meaning of a text, and certainly not the conclusions we think we draw from such things. What we see as truth, what we find in a text--these things grow out of our subjective experience. The best we can hope for is to be honest with ourselves, which could still mean we're delusional; but admitting that is half the battle, right?

In the midst of all this depressing nihilism (I suppose I was never quite optimistic enough to be truly postmodern), I learned something important from Stanley Fish (and others, I'm sure--but he seems to have been the key voice here)--that texts and meaning happen in community. This notion shed a great deal of light on where I'd been so far--as my "community" changed, so did my thinking--and pointed the way to where I might go. I had started within a community that still held with conviction the humanistic notion from which it had been born--that an earnest student with a Bible can trump all else and arrive at the truth. I could not regenerate such a rosy perspective, but I could look for a community that recognized its own role in the process, while still retaining a deep respect for Scripture. This is what I ultimately found in Orthodoxy, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Since then, I've kept myself for the most part out of the mess of postmodern literary criticism, which has wrapped itself up nicely by declaring its own death. (Or I should say, by declaring its own meaninglessness. It can still proceed without meaning, so I suppose it's not exactly dead.) But I happened to come across a blog entry by Stanley Fish, referenced in a newsletter by a gentleman who still believes in good, old-fashioned humanism. Needless to say, he was rather upset by it, but once again I find a great deal of wisdom here. Fish concludes:

And that, I believe, is how it should be. Teachers of literature and philosophy are competent in a subject, not in a ministry. It is not the business of the humanities to save us, no more than it is their business to bring revenue to a state or a university. What then do they do? They don’t do anything, if by “do” is meant bring about effects in the world. And if they don’t bring about effects in the world they cannot be justified except in relation to the pleasure they give to those who enjoy them.
To the question “of what use are the humanities?”, the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said – even when it takes the form of Kronman’s inspiring cadences – diminishes the object of its supposed praise.

Hear, then, the words of this postmodern prophet. There remains no value to the humanities except the joy it brings its practitioners. Anything else would only degrade the discipline. Where humanism set out to ennoble mankind through learning, it has succeeded only in producing a discipline that wants nothing to do with humanity. It will keep to itself, thank you very much, like so many self-absorbed and ungrateful children (to strains of "Cat's in the Cradle"). Our thinking and our society have run their course together, and now neither is any more concerned about raising up future generations than it is about honoring those that came before. Intellectual hedonism meets its social counterpart in a perfect, childless marriage.

Of course, in Fish's world, this is the end of the story. And the same goes for those reactionary humanists who take offense at his betrayal. That's why they take offense--because if he's right, there is nothing left to save mankind. But Fish is simply calling a spade a spade. Learning on its own has never been anything more than learning on its own. Removed from the context of faith, it has no power to save. I suspect this is part of the reason that I lost interest in my academic program. When I started out, I still believed it was the way to my destination. Once I realized that was an illusion, I discovered that I was much more interested in my original goal of knowing God than in humanities or any intellectual discipline for its own sake.

boor

2008-02-08T22:22:00.000-05:00

I don't generally get into artsy movies. You know--the kind that do well at film festivals, get critical acclaim, but never see the light of day at the box office. Often low-budget, stretching the limits of the medium, and popular with filmmakers because someone had the courage to make the movie they wanted to make, whether it sells well or not. I'm sure I've combined several incompatible ideas here, put forth glaring stereotypes, and completely missed the point. But that precisely is the point. I'm not even cultured enough to know what I'm criticizing.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not some couch potato with a cheap beer in one hand and a remote control in the other, searching for a mindless movie with less dialog and more explosions. (Though I do drink cheap beer--just not very often.) I like movies that make you think. I like Memento, which runs the scenes in reverse order to mimic the main character's affliction of short-term memory loss. Or Donnie Darko, which after three times watching it I'm still not quite sure I can put everything together. Or even the Matrix, which has its share of destructive action, but is set in a world that raises all sorts of interesting issues. I think the problem may be, I don't like movies that make you feel--at least, not if that's the primary focus.

Recently, some friends raved about Once--a low-budget Irish film that got something like 98% on Rotten Tomatoes. We got it from Netflix and watched it tonight. (SPOILER ALERT--there's not much suspense in this movie, but I suppose I do give away whatever surprise there might be.) The music was great, but I have to say, beyond that I wasn't too impressed. I told Julie afterward that it struck me as an extended music video. Someone had an idea mostly about music and pieced in enough story to hold it together. I wasn't surprised when we watched the "making of" feature on the disc. The director started as a musician and developed a later interest in film-making. He sees the two as similar processes and wanted to make a film that was mostly about the music.

On one level, I could appreciate what was going on. But I never really got caught up in the story. Mostly, I just kept asking myself, where is this going? He's still in love with his ex-girlfriend, she's married but living apart from her husband. There's an attraction between them, so what--they're going to find "true love" despite the inconvenient, extraneous relationships? they're going to go their separate ways, always wondering what might have been?

It was somewhat more vague than that--they made this deep connection, he went after his ex, she tried to patch things up with her husband. What then? Presumably they both got where they were going, but now with the baggage of a deep friendship in which they share with each other something they apparently don't get from their spouses. There's some glimpse of the danger--that it easily could have taken a different course in a more romantic direction. There are clear vestiges--the recording they made together will always be a reminder of what they once had, not to mention the new piano he bought for her before leaving town. But I don't get any sense that we're supposed to wish this relationship had never happened or wish for it to just fade away either. What will these ghosts do to their separate relationships with spouses and lovers?

I know, I know. I'm expecting too much. There was an icon of the Theotokos in the background of one scene, but otherwise, there's almost nothing religious in the film. There's no reason I should expect a definitively moral message about extramarital relationships with the opposite sex. I guess it's a sign of my own weakness that I feel the need to highlight these flaws and refute them. If I were stronger, I could simply accept that the film's message is what it is, appreciate the story's insight into the human condition, and go on with life. Perhaps I could even see in this fleeting moment of beauty and mutual encouragement a snapshot of how our lives comprise countless relationships, each of which is a glimpse of the divine. Instead, all I can think is, how is this possibly helping to restore her relationship with her husband?

Am I afraid to let films like this move me? Is it just a cop-out to say I don't trust my feelings to teach me wisdom? I guess I'm still just a critic at heart. At least in this case, I don't think Julie's impression of the movie was much better than mine; better to bug my artsy friends than my wife, I guess :-)

sockless

2008-02-06T07:15:00.000-05:00

I have to keep telling myself that it's February. As if yesterday wasn't bad enough (I didn't wear a coat), today's shaping up to be even warmer. They were calling for rain, so I held off putting on my socks until I could see what was happening this morning. (No point getting them wet first thing.) It looks like the storms aren't supposed to come until the afternoon (should be a great commute!), but it was so warm outside that I decided to go sockless on the way to work anyway--just because I can!

fortunately, I'm already married

2008-02-01T09:37:00.002-05:00

commence sleeping now

2008-01-31T07:12:00.000-05:00

Now that Julie knows I'll complete these silly things just because she tags me, she's merciless. Well, here's payback. You want to know what's the nearest book? Have at it:

הֲקִימוֹתִי instead of הֵקִימוֹתִי
תְּקוּמֶינָה instead of תָּקוּמֶינָה

d. The II yod verbs are, with the exception of the Qal imperfect, imperative and infinitive construct, identical to the II waw verbs in all respects, e.g. קָם and שָׂם.

In these exceptions the yod, instead of the waw, functions as a vowel indicator (as the only distinguishing feature of II yod verbs), e.g. קָם and תָּקוּם, but שִׂים and תָּשִׂים.

Ah, Hebrew morphology. Is there anything more exciting? I haven't actually done much with this book lately, but it happens to be one that I keep in my desk, in case the mood strikes to read some Hebrew and I get stuck over a construction.

'sup?

2008-01-28T10:11:00.000-05:00

I guess I've been kinda quiet the past several days. It's probably a combination of factors:

not much going on that's worth writing home about
reading other stuff
feeling less inclined to write about everything

I'm still plugging along with my monastic readings, which probably has a lot to do with the third factor, too. Among other things, they tend to stress silence. If part of the point of starting this blog in the first place was to provide an outlet for my need to say stuff, even when no one wants to listen, maybe I will one day mature to the point where it goes away. (Don't worry--I'm not there just yet.) From the sayings of Macarius the Great:

26. One day Abba Macarius went to see Abba Anthony. He spoke to him and then returned to Scetis. The Fathers came to meet him, and as they were speaking, the old man said to them, "I said to Abba Anthony that we do not have an offering in our district." But the Fathers began to speak of other things without asking him to tell them the old man's reply and he himself did not tell them. One of the Fathers said about this that when the Fathers see that the brethren fail to question them about something that would be useful, they ought to begin talking about it themselves; but if they are not urged on by the brethren, they should not say anymore about it, so that they shall not be found to have spoken without being asked, and to have said unnecessary words.

In this respect, I say a lot of "unnecessary words." If Abba Macarius didn't need to finish a thought when no one else was interested (after, I'm sure, having carefully considered whether it was a thought worth bringing up), what could I possibly have to say that's so important I need to rattle on? When the topic is something that interests me, I tend to give much longer answers than anyone really wants. If I'm interrupted before I finish everything I wanted to say, I try to go back and finish, even if the conversation has moved on to something else. I think there's an important lesson here for me to learn, especially when most of what I feel like saying doesn't really need to be said in the first place.

Anyway, I finished The Spiritual Meadow and The Lausiac History a while ago, yesterday I finally wrapped up St. Cassian's Conferences, and I'm nearing the end of Sayings of the Desert Fathers. In the meantime, I've started getting some Orthodox periodicals that I recently subscribed to (Orthodox Word actually started me off with two free back issues and a calendar). I want to read St. Vincent of Lerins and probably St. John of Damascus; besides that, I'll go back and re-read some of the other ascetic literature I've collected. I'm also reviewing some math stuff. I always enjoyed math up through high school, but haven't taken a single class since. I was going through my old notes from college, scanning a bunch of stuff, and noticed my math-related doodling on the backs of pages. So over the past few days I've been refreshing my memory on some basic algebra, geometry, and trig (while drifting a bit into calculus). I've requested a pre-calculus textbook from the library, which I'll skim through before diving back into calculus. I don't plan to spend a lot of time on it, but right now it's a fun diversion.

I'm adjusting well to life on the porch. As slow as I am, it took me a while to make the connection to the name of this blog, though in this case the doorstep is the temple. Jim gave me some incense samples to play with. I appreciate the variety, but I think I'll be just fine with my (probably sub-par) less expensive, run-of-the-mill frankincense. I don't have much sense of smell anyway (unlike the rest of my family). I spent quite a bit of time and energy wrestling with the "matches or lighter" controversy (again, feeling like a smoker), finally settled on matches with some guidance from Jim; but because we seem to have a lot of lighters around the house right now, I guess I'll use a combination for the foreseeable future. (The big drawback to a lighter is it's harder to get down in the censer. I can hold the charcoal over a candle to light it, but when I'm re-using a piece I already burned, I figure it's less mess just to use a match.)

I was hoping to get to a talk at church last week on 20th-c. persecution and martyrdom, but it would have meant leaving Julie alone with the kids just about the whole day; since they were both sick, I changed plans at the last minute. Lord willing, Ian and I will be at this Saturday's liturgy for the feast of the Presentation.

Georgia on YouTube

2008-01-17T11:35:00.000-05:00

In my continuing obsession with Georgian Orthodoxy, I did find some interesting stuff on YouTube, mostly shots of churches set to some background music--liturgical:

and otherwise:

Here are some pics of a monastery:

and of the great Sameba Cathedral--largest in the region:

This one isn't much to look at, but some good singing:

Hope you enjoy. The first few also show some of the landscape, which looks beautiful to me. I could easily put it on my short list of places in the world to visit.

smokey

2008-01-12T15:05:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm exiled to the porch, I keep thinking about incense and smoking. The initial correspondence is obvious--I have to go outside, because my wife doesn't like the smell or the associated effects of my habit. What's more, she's worried about it permeating everything in the house. I worry about the smell clinging to my clothes and bothering her when I come back inside. I have to watch out for getting ashes on things. When you think about it, the blowing on the charcoal to keep it lit, the container (that can be carried around), the smoke, the scent--aside from direct inhalation, it's almost like smoking a pipe. In fact, in a pinch, you could probably use a pipe as a censer. Hmmm . . .

Anyway, it's got me wondering whether smokers adapt better to this particular aspect of Orthodox worship than non-smokers. Not that I've ever smoked anything in my life (though I did spend a lot of my youth inhaling the smoke and fumes of burning papers)--but would it be easier on Julie if she had?

One thing I'm finding--burning incense tends to make me pray longer. I'm so cheap, I hate to waste anything. It's hard to re-light the stuff, so I tend to keep at it until the incense burns out on its own. I guess that's a good thing--anything for more prayer, right?

banished to the outer darkness

2008-01-10T06:48:00.000-05:00

There aren't too many things that excite me about this new house in Elkridge (which now isn't scheduled to be completed until June or July, incidentally). The setting lacks most of the advantages of a site that's truly urban or truly rural, or even the usual amenities of a truly suburban location. It's not a very walkable area, nor will we have much opportunity to get outdoors within our own domestic space. (There's a small balcony, but it will be off one of the kids' rooms.) The distribution of space is odd, with large bedrooms and a comparatively small living space, due to the garages taking a bite out of the first floor. (This is a stacked townhouse; ours, the bottom unit, has a chunk taken out for the one-car garages--one for us, one for the neighbors above.)

But one thing that I have been looking forward to is having my own walk-in closet. The master bedroom and bath could almost serve as its own apartment. (In fact, it's not much smaller than our first apartment was.) There are double sinks and a double shower, a mammoth linen closet (besides two more in the hallway), a large bedroom area with a bay window, and two walk-in closets, the larger with its own window on the front of the house. Even the smaller one is still a very generous size. I can't possibly make full use of it with my clothes, so I'm thinking about other functions. A desk would be one thing to look at. I won't have a dedicated office, but for my needs a closet might suit. More importantly, though, I plan to establish my icon corner there.

Sharing a home with an iconoclastic Protestant, I've tried to be sensitive in this area. One of the earliest things I bought as I was exploring Orthodoxy was my first icon--a little diptych with traditional Byzantine icons of the Pantokrator (Jesus as Judge) and the Theotokos (Mary holding Jesus as a child). I would only get it out when I prayed (more to the point, when I did my morning and evening prayer rule), and kept it stowed away the rest of the time. A year ago, my Godparents got me a candle for Christmas, so I started burning a candle during my prayer rule as well. I had put some icons up at work, and eventually I asked Julie if it would be OK to hang one of those--another Pantokrator--in our walk-in closet, so I could do my morning prayers in there, rather than going out to the dining room. Later, my Godfather bought me an icon of St. Peter the Aleut (my patron), which I put on the shelf in the closet.

I would also use the diptych with Ian when we prayed before he went to bed. Initially, I carried it into his room for that purpose and put it away afterward. When we rearranged our bedroom to make space for Jenna, a small bookshelf ended up in the eastward corner, so I started leaving my candle and diptych there. Because of Jenna's sleep schedule I was doing most of my praying in the closet, so I started leaving the diptych in Ian's room to avoid the trouble of carrying it back and forth. And that was pretty much the extent of the icons around our house.

So I was pretty excited about the thought of having more dedicated space. Even though I would prefer to have them out in a more public area, it's not my purpose to offend Julie, so I'm fine settling for something that suits my needs without disrupting anything else. I figured I could put my Orthodox books on a shelf that's already built into the closet, my icons on the wall or the shelf, and my candle probably on the shelf as well. I also have a prayer rug that I almost never use because Julie doesn't think it goes with anything in our present decor; I figured I could put that down more or less permanently in the closet. Then I got to thinking about incense.

Incense is a regular part of Orthodox worship. In most services, there's at least some point where a priest or deacon censes around the whole church. At other times, a censer is used just at the iconostasis or in the altar. Often when a particular feast icon takes center stage there will be a part in the service where everyone gathers around it with the priest right in front, censing and praying. The rising smoke has long been a traditional symbol of the prayers of God's people rising up before his throne. In the heavily liturgical scene in St. John's Revelation, a great deal of incense is offered, and it is specifically said to represent the prayers of the saints. In the Israelite temple, there was a special blend of incense that was forbidden from private use, offered at a dedicated altar of incense. In Orthodox homes, it is common practice to use incense during prayers and to cense around the home, just as is done in church. For this, a hand censer is used, rather than the swinging censer with bells. But the purpose is the same. Typically, you cense the icons around the house and the people (because we are also icons of Christ).

I've long appreciated the dimension that's added to my worship in church when the sense of smell is incorporated. I figured especially if I'm going to have my own dedicated space it might be good timing to start using incense in my prayers at home. So this year, when I got money for Christmas, instead of spending it all on books, I spent some of it on a hand censer, charcoal, and incense. I told Julie what I was doing, but I didn't ask if it was OK. I fired it up two nights ago, after she'd gone to bed and again in the morning before she got up. She commented on the smell lingering in the air, so I thought I'd try skipping it in the morning and see if that helped. Last night I got the incense burning before Julie went to bed, and she was already complaining about it. She fled pretty quickly to the bedroom. I think the smell was stronger than the previous night, since I had a better idea what I was doing with it and got the charcoal burning hotter. At least, it seemed like it was consuming the incense faster than before. I couldn't smell anything in the bedroom, but my nose isn't very good anyway, and I was probably acclimated to the more overwhelming scent in the dining room. Julie woke up and complained again.

Even before that, I'd started thinking that burning it in the house was going to be a problem. I'd underestimated both how much it would bother Julie and how much the smell would spread. I doubt that even a closed closet door would be enough, if she were sleeping in the next room. But now I have a censer, two pounds of incense, and close to a year's supply of charcoal. (I was trying to make the most of the shipping cost.) So I'm not quite ready to scrap the idea.

Plan B (or C, or D, or something like that): Take the operation outside. The agreed-upon course at this point is that I'll start keeping my prayer rule on the balcony. Julie's allowing me to hang an icon out there, and I can use a TV tray for the candle and censer. It suits me fine for now, since "I like the cold" (how many times have I heard those words from my son's mouth?), and it rarely gets too cold in MD. In warmer weather, I can just consider it part of my ascetic discipline. Plus, it's usually dark when I'm praying, so at least it shouldn't be unbearably hot. Once we move, who knows? I'm thinking a corner of the garage might work. (Someone said to me about our new house that a man needs his own space, even if it's just a corner of the garage. I'm not sure this is what he had in mind, though he is Orthodox.) Of course, that throws off my plan for the closet. Maybe I could just get them to add an exhaust fan :-)

I've tried to tell Julie that it's only frankincense, and if it was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for her. But all kidding aside, I get it. For much the same reason that I feel different praying with incense, she has a rather opposite reaction. It's her house too, and I have no desire to make it seem less like home, if that's the effect of making it smell like a Church with which she does not identify. This whole experience has reminded me of the "dark machine of superstition" post from a year ago. When the funky smell from the machine's exhaust is causing family members to choke, I guess it's time to take it outside.

where does it end?

2008-01-08T07:45:00.000-05:00

There's a lot of good stuff in The Spiritual Meadow--too much to bring it up here every time something strikes me. But I thought this bit was particularly interesting, from "152. The Life and Sayings of Marcellus the Scetiote, Abba of the Monastery of Monidia":

Brethren, let us leave marriage and the raising of children to those whose eyes are towards the earth, who long for the things of the present and take no thought for that which is to come; who do not strive to possess the good things of eternity, and are unable to disentangle themselves from the ephemera of this world.

I get his point. As St. Paul says, and as any parent whose had small children in a worship service can confirm, it's easier to give your attention and energy to God if you're not distracted, even by things as important as family. And when he says "brethren," I take it he's assuming his audience are already monastics, so in that sense he's preaching to the choir.

What I found striking, though, was how our own culture is so degenerate as to invalidate his point today. It seems to me that "those whose eyes are towards the earth, who long for the things of the present," are no longer at all interested in "marriage and the raising of children." Our selfishness has matured over the past 1400 years. Modern man still has no time for God, but neither will he tie himself to spouse or children. His relationships can only be casual, with no possibility of remorse when he decides to give up and walk away.

In another of these stories, a demon settles into a monk's cell, explaining that he has every right to stay because the monk is still upset with his brother over something about a plate of lentils from three days ago. We see that, even after stripping away as many potential causes for division as possible, it's still a struggle to resist the infection of bitterness. But the monk, when confronted with his sin, runs to prostrate himself before his brother and beg forgiveness. Most of us today would offer the demon a blanket and a hot meal, figuring we can always find new friends.

In this climate, marriage and raising kids must itself be viewed as an ascetic endeavor. If we leave it to those who are lax about their spiritual development, it will stop altogether, or it will be done so badly that we will wish it had. I'm not saying that the monastic vocation has no more purpose. Far from it--we need their prayers now more than ever. But if we don't also have good Christian families, God will have to raise up his monks from the stones. It seems to me that things are a bit more complicated than they once were. For those of us who awaken to the reality when we're already married, the path is rather straightforward. But for singles it's not so easy. The way of the cross may run through a monastery, but equally it may mean abandoning the world's selfishness in a different sense. We need both kinds of ascetics--those who are celibate with regard to all, and those who are celibate with regard to all but one. We need Mary, who rises at night to kneel at Jesus's feet, and Martha, who rises to feed a crying baby. Because without that crying baby, both kinds vanish in one generation.

Orthodox church structure

2008-01-07T18:49:00.001-05:00

After Justin's comment on my last post, I thought it would be useful to say something more directly about Orthodox church structure. I should stress for those who don't know (not necessarily you, Justin), that the problems I was addressing are largely unique to the history of Orthodoxy in America (and modern Western Europe, though the situation is a bit different). To some degree these problems do reflect a cultural entrenchment that grew out of centuries of one basic political situation. For most Orthodox peoples, there was no accessible frame of reference within which to adapt life in a non-Orthodox nation. Orthodox Tradition contained a frame of reference, though it required some dusting off. Namely, until the time of Constantine, Christianity existed in a non-Christian, often hostile environment.

But even though pre-Constantinian Orthodoxy grew up without the cooperation of the state, the fundamental structure of the Church was there from the beginning--in each city you had one local church (the New Testament knows nothing of a multiplicity, though they undoubtedly had to meet in many locations to maintain secrecy), with many presbyters but one bishop. (The early terminology didn't consistently label the two offices, but it was a natural development as the missionary apostles died out and church unity was rooted in one head of each local church.) The principle of catholicity is nothing more than the assertion that the Church is not tailored to niche groups. It is what it is, for everyone, wherever it appears. So we see in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers that upon arriving in a given city there was only one entity to be sought out--the catholic church. The only alternatives were heretical assemblies that taught some distortion of Christianity.

As for inter-congregational structure, even this was relatively well established before Christianity became legal. There were already recognized groupings in which bishops would represent their congregations as regional synods (usually according to Roman provinces), and certain cities (Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome) had already achieved a widely acknowledged status as centers for even larger groupings. With the conversion of Constantine, it became possible to assemble all the bishops from throughout the Empire, and the bishops of the capital cities (Rome and Constantinople) took on special status. Later, as the Empire contracted and other lands were Christianized, the same structures applied--first as subordinate to some existing patriarchate, then eventually as independent, national churches.

Even after the death of the Byzantine Empire, it was replaced by the Ottoman, which established the millet system, where Christians had their own internal political structure, headed as it happened by the Patriarch of Constantinople. (The Turks don't seem to have had much inclination to separate civil and religious government--as far as they were concerned, only one leader was necessary for cultural and religious Christianity.) So even though they lived under a hostile government, the structure remained much the same as it had been.

When Orthodoxy began its return to the West, Russia was pretty much the only game in town. Most Orthodox lands were dominated by Russia, the West, or the Ottomans. With the backing of the Russian tsars, Orthodox missionary outreach naturally structured itself as an appendage of the Russian Church. The nearly simultaneous collapse of the Russian and Ottoman empires produced radical change. At the same time that Russia was no longer the default guardian of world Orthodoxy, all these nations that were formerly subject to the Ottomans were now free to establish their own national identity, and to emigrate to the West. Their natural response to the disarray caused by the Bolshevik Revolution was to establish churches under their own, national jurisdictions.

But as Fr. Josiah points out in the interview, the situation we have now is sinful. It violates not just the cultural norms of formerly Orthodox kingdoms but the fundamental principles of Christian unity from the very beginning of the New Testament Church. Part of the reason that the solution is unclear is that there's no binding requirement for the superstructure of American Orthodoxy. If we did nothing more than re-draw the jurisdiction of each bishop currently exercising authority in America, so that there were no overlaps, and if they all remained in communion with each other, we'd have a basically canonical situation. It would be chaotic for a while, but it would probably work itself out in the same way that the early Church did--eventually, natural groupings would develop in which bishops could form synods, and higher level structures on up to some as yet undefined top. Of course, it's never going to be that simple. The existing allegiances exist for better or worse, and it's difficult to see anything happening without whole jurisdictions signing onto a solution.

In the meantime, it is still possible to distinguish Orthodox jurisdictions from Protestant denominations. Aside from some schismatic groups, they are in communion with each other (theoretically, if not practically), and their core theology is consistent. They also share a common notion of what the Church should look like, and although their ethnic divisions belie the standard, they accept catholicity as normative. There are pastoral differences that have arisen over time, but the source of the divisions is mostly political.

And I should add that there is hope. One of the deepest wounds caused by the Russian Revolution was the split between the Russian church abroad and the Russian church under Communism. Last year was marked by the healing of that rift, nothing short of miraculous. If that can happen, anything's possible!

praying for bishops

2008-01-07T10:25:00.004-05:00

There's a good interview with Fr. Josiah Trenham on the Illumined Heart, about Orthodox disunity in America. He makes some suggestions about what we can do as individuals, the first of which is to pray daily. He also brings up the issue of canonical territory and multiple bishops, which got me thinking about "my" bishops. Of course, Bp. THOMAS is my bishop in the strictest and most important sense of that term. It is his parish where I was made a catechumen, where I attend regularly, and his priest who is bringing me through this process.

But as I've said before, it's almost impossible to define "canonical territory" in any way that puts me more in his than in that of at least half a dozen other bishops. My earliest visit to an Orthodox parish was to the closest geographically, which happened to be in the OCA. Another early visit was to a Ukrainian parish that's also closer than where I currently attend. I used to visit with some regularity a small ROCOR parish that could just about as easily have ended up my permanent home. And once we move to Elkridge, I'll be closest geographically to a parish of the Moscow Patriarchate. Any number of different circumstances could have put me under a different bishop.

So if I'm going to pray for unity, it makes sense to pray for all the bishops in my territory. Here's the list:

His Grace, Bp. THOMAS (Antiochian)
His Grace, Bp. JOB (Russian)
His Beatitude, Met. JONAH (OCA)
His Eminence, Met. HILARION (ROCOR)
His Eminence, Abp. ANTONY (Ukrainian)
His Eminence, Met. EVANGELOS (Greek)
His Eminence, Met. NICHOLAS (Carpatho-Russian)
His Grace, Bp. MITROPHAN (Serbian)

I suppose I could have included a few others, since there are more jurisdictions in the U. S. But some of them have no presence in the immediate area (and as far as I can tell, not much prospect of a future presence either), so I think it's a fairly safe omission.

I should say something about the order. I list Bp. THOMAS first, because--as I said--he's most precisely my bishop. Holy Cross uses part of Holy Trinity's cemetery and holds picnics there; I'll live so close that I suspect I'll end up visiting services now and then, so it will become something of a second parish home. St. Matthew's is currently the closest parish and will continue to be near the top of the list; there are other OCA parishes close by, and Met. JONAH's position as abbot of St. Tikhon's monastery makes it likely that I will participate in his services with some regularity. I used to visit a ROCOR parish, and there will still be parishes close by; if Holy Trinity takes second place, I ought to be prepared for developing ties between the Moscow and ROCOR parishes. There will continue to be Ukrainian parishes in reasonable proximity, and it seems like visits between Holy Cross and Four Evangelists in Bel Air are common. Greeks are, of course, ubiquitous; and although I haven't had much interaction with Greek parishes so far, I I expect that closer proximity to Baltimore will start to change that. As for the Carpatho-Russian and Serbian bishops, I'm going mostly by location.

I've commented already on my general thoughts about Orthodox unity in America. Although I have no clear sense of how we should get there, or what it should look like, I do think it should be a high priority. As a lowly catechumen, it doesn't seem like there's much I can contribute at this point, but I do plan to pray--for Orthodox Americans as a whole and especially for these bishops.

And on a vaguely related note, I wish those following the Old Calendar a Merry Christmas! May Lent come quickly, when we shall all be together again, and may we one day put this two-calendars nonsense behind us. In the meantime, you enjoy your feast (Christmas), and we'll enjoy ours (Theophany).

tag-team fogies

2008-01-05T18:20:00.000-05:00

I used to imagine that when my kids were teenagers I'd be hip (or something like it--but that's probably not even remotely the right word to use, so I'm already off to a bad start). Not that I ever was in the first place--I just figured I'd be this incredibly open-minded guy who would listen to the same music as his kids, watch the same shows, keep up with their technology, and be able to discuss such things seriously. I noticed at the time that Julie's taste in music seemed to be drifting more adult, while I was going in the opposite direction, listening to Rage Against the Machine, Kid Rock, Eminem, and System of a Down. I've always been something of an arm-chair techie, and a couple of years ago I got my first mp3 player (not impressive in itself, but relatively speaking--I'm not sure Julie has much clue what to do with an mp3). I've been into newsgroups and e-mail lists for years; she's started on them more recently. I was also the first one to start a blog.

On the other hand, Julie was the first one to get a cell phone. I resisted until I started taking the bus to work and figured it would be helpful if we could communicate during my long, sometimes unpredictable commute. Now, she's joined Facebook, which I want nothing to do with (or anything like it). To me, it seems like a colossal waste of time. I have no idea what the point is of "poking" your friends, nor do I think I want to understand. A while back someone invited me to join an Orthodox networking group. I had no interest then, and I have no more now.

Frankly, I think I'm moving back the other way. If anything, these days I'm looking for ways to get offline. I'm avoiding actual discussion groups. (There are a few that I nominally watch, but none in which I actively participate, including the one I moderate.) I'm still blogging, though I keep asking myself how useful it really is. I'm trying to cut back my dependence on websites for reading. I recently subscribed to a couple of Orthodox periodicals, and I've been trying to assemble a basic Orthodox library of materials I can keep coming back to. I'm trying to spend less time with earphones on my commute. My selection of music has shifted radically--instead of the latest and greatest, I'm listening to centuries-old chants--and even there, I view it as a necessary evil. I would rather be in services regularly enough to pick up the music there, but since my circumstances prevent it, I listen to recordings--for now.

I'm not sure what I'll do when it comes to interacting with my kids about their music and other forms of entertainment. At this point, though, I highly doubt that I'll be meeting them where they are--at least, not in the way I used to envision it. I find myself saying "amen" when someone says kids need direction, not necessarily discussion. I'll be the dad who doesn't like what's on TV, or new technology, or pop music, or electric lighting--who seems like he'd feel more comfortable in a monastery or a shack somewhere in the woods. My kids will avoid me when they bring their friends over (assuming they're not too embarrassed for that)--and I'll know I'm doing my job.

I guess one of these days I should tag Julie again, but right now I'm having too much fun being the fogey. And with that, I need to go whip myself for spending so much time writing this online ;-)

MD gets a monastery - update

2008-01-03T12:26:00.000-05:00

Still not much out there about the new Greek monastery being built in Emmitsburg, but I did run across this discussion in a Catholic forum, by a self-professed acquaintance of the family that donated the land. It was posted back in September, but I have corroboration from another local source that it should be up and running in Feb 2008. That's only a month away!

river of fire

2008-01-01T18:03:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I'm just now reading "The River of Fire" for the first time. This talk was given in 1980 by Dr. Alexandre Kalomiros. Apparently it's a well-known and well-discussed piece. The subtitle says, "A reply to the questions: (1) Is God really good? (2) Did God create hell?" Dr. Kalomiros's answer is by no means unique. He articulates what I would say is the standard Orthodox view on these matters; along the way, however, he speaks pointedly about the corresponding Western ideas and judges them to be no less than a lie of Satan.

I think in all fairness it should be acknowledged that the Orthodox view, at least in general terms, is not unknown in the West. As usual, C. S. Lewis comes to mind as an example of one who seems to have captured the concept. In my feeble summary, the main point is that hell is something we bring on ourselves when we choose to hate God. God's glory is the same regardless; we simply experience it as torment when we reject his love.

Kalomiros sees as pagan the notion that God is subject to some binding standard of justice, whereby his divine offense can only be satisfied by pouring out wrath on the Son. Like the gods of pagan Greece, such a being is really subordinate to arbitrary and inexorable Fate. From this grows the notion of unconditional election and irresistible grace--because if God himself is subject to such external standards, then surely our freedom is no more than an illusion. He also contends that atheism is a natural result of this Western view--that an infinitely punishing God (especially one who claims to be loving) can only inspire contempt.

As I've said before, I think we can be thankful for some currents in Evangelical thinking that seem to de-emphasize the juridical view of God's relationship to man. I'm not convinced that they do so consistently. The same person might speak in a counseling context of God as healer of the wounded soul, while singing on Sunday about Jesus satisfying the Father's wrath. I suspect (though I hope I'm wrong) that in today's theological climate they are simply ignoring the implications of Protestant theology in favor of a more expedient metaphor. This sort of approach can produce occasional gains, but until there is a fundamental revision of the underlying paradigms, it's going to produce even more contradictions and inconsistencies. My hope is that at least the presence of these ideas, somewhere in the vast array of Evangelical thinking, will open opportunities for some to find the truth.

Even so, it may be too much to hope that an argument as polemical as "The River of Fire" will be well received by Western Christians of any flavor.

a barrel of monks

2007-12-29T13:46:00.000-05:00

Well, it's finally happened. I've got nothing but monks on my reading list, as far as the eye can see. I'm still plugging away at St. John Cassian's Conferences for my reading at home. I started that a while back from a suggestion in The Arena. St. John helped to establish Western monasticism by traveling throughout Egypt, interviewing desert fathers, and compiling guidance for monastery life. The volume's kind of bulky, so I don't carry it with me when I commute. For that, I now have a Christmas gift from Julie--John Moschos's Spiritual Meadow. Perhaps one of my earliest encounters with Eastern Christianity was a book by William Dalrymple, called From the Holy Mountain. He traveled throughout the eastern Mediterranean region in the 1990s, visiting a lot of the places mentioned by John Moschos, to see what things looked like centuries later. I went back and read the book again not long ago (now that I have a somewhat better frame of reference), and that got me interested enough to read the Spiritual Meadow for myself.

And if that's not enough, I'm still working my way through Palladius's Lausiac History when I need something to read on the computer. That was mentioned by Seraphim Rose in Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future. All three books are collections about the desert fathers. John Cassian's work is more discursive, while the other two are narrative. But they all have a similar feel.

If I don't get it for my birthday, I'll probably use some gift money to buy Sayings of the Desert Fathers (what is it with Cistercian Publications, anyway?), and maybe Way of a Pilgrim. So that should keep the trend going. I'm actually quite glad to be back to this kind of thing. I spent too long trying to rush through a lot of secular writing that I was getting from the library, and I can already tell that my spiritual life suffered from it.

American saints and American unity

2007-12-24T07:08:00.000-05:00

I don't often do this, but I just really like this piece on four recent American saints by Fr. Andrew.

Not much time to write with the in-laws in town, but I do wish everyone a Merry Christmas! Tonight, Lord willing, I will attend my first Nativity service at Holy Cross. (I visited a Ukrainian service once, since it's on the Old Calendar and doesn't conflict with family stuff.) This year, since we have family around, Julie's OK with me slipping out while everyone's sleeping.

what was in that drink, anyway?

2007-12-17T07:03:00.000-05:00

Never say I'm not a good sport. Someone got the idea to take this photo at Tait's birthday party yesterday. It ended up involving two photographers and several shots, so what began as a candid pic ended up requiring a great deal of cooperation on my part. (Mostly of the "stand right there" variety.) I'm not sure what it says about me that I felt more self-conscious about posing as a mock-saint than as a bearded beauty queen, but there it is.

artos, take two

2007-12-14T18:39:00.000-05:00

This afternoon I tried again with the artos. I took Laura's advice and, besides adding more flour from the start, stirred it with a wooden spoon until I was sure it was workable. It was still a little too sticky once I got going, so I kept adding pinches of flour on the surface and my hands. The rest of the process went without a hitch. I stuck with the basic procedure of the prosphora recipe, since that's seemed to work for me so far. This one developed more of a crust, though that could be because I let it bake a bit too long. It's been a while since my last artoklasia, so I can't quite recall what the consistency is supposed to be like.

I've decided to ditch the bread machine altogether. I never used it much anyway for the space it took up, and the bread always came out too dense and not terribly appealing. (Though some of that might be because I was using old yeast.) I figure with a little more practice I should be able to do at least as well by hand, and get more out of the experience. My father-in-law has agreed to take it when they come down for Christmas.

artos, take one

2007-12-09T18:32:00.000-05:00

I've started baking bread from scratch. I like the idea of developing some kind of practical skill (I have so few), and it's certainly more engaging than a bread machine. I figured I'd start with something relatively simple and perhaps at some point useful--prosphora, which is the bread that's used for Orthodox divine liturgy. One advantage is that by nature it contains no ingredients that could not be consumed while fasting. Another is that the composition is very simple--flour, salt, yeast, and water. I figure if I can get that right, I'll be off to a good start. I had to cut down the recipe from the Holy Cross Web site, since I don't need five loaves at a time. The first attempt seemed bland and a bit too crusty. On the second, I made a few minor adjustments (doubled the salt, covered the bowl completely while rising, cut down the baking time), and it came out just about right.

Now that I've met some success with that basic recipe, I figured I'd move on to artos, the bread used in the artoklasia service, for various celebratory occasions. I guess some of the inspiration came from my name day, which is this week. Again, there's a recipe online for five loaves, so I cut it down accordingly to try just one for starters. The outcome was rather different.

Both times I used the prosphora recipe, it came out just about the right consistency without any trouble. I used a spoon for the initial mixing, but I got the sense that I could have used my hands just as well. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong time to test that theory. In this case, the dough was far too wet to work with. Of course, by the time I realized that, my hands were rather engulfed in the stuff. I managed to scrape enough off one hand, so I could scoop some more flour into the bowl. There was some improvement, though it remained very sticky. I decided to put flour down on the table and try kneading it, and just see what happened. I was hoping it was good enough that adding little bits of flour as I went would do the trick. But it stuck to the table and my hands so badly that about all I could do was drag it around in sticky streams.

I finally decided to give up on this attempt. Just cleaning up was a rather big job. After quite a bit of scraping I managed to get a wad back in the bowl. It took a few minutes to wash the rest off of my hands, then I used a plastic spatula to scrape the rest off of the table. I wasn't sure how to dispose of it. I knew I didn't want it just washing down the drain, and I wasn't sure what it would do just sitting in the trash. So I wrapped it in plastic wrap before throwing it away. More scrubbing got the table clean, and eventually the dishes. I didn't feel like starting again tonight, but I do plan to make another attempt. I'll just have to start with more flour and be more careful about assessing the consistency before I get my hands or the table involved.

I think part of the problem is I didn't know what kind of consistency to expect. I figured it would probably be stickier with oil and sugar in the dough, but whatever I had just seemed unworkable. Better luck next time.

Perelandra

2007-12-07T14:41:00.000-05:00

Sometime back around the start of my teen years, an adult friend introduced me to C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. Up until that point, I'd read the Chronicles of Narnia, and perhaps Mere Christianity, but I wasn't yet familiar with any of his more grown-up fiction. I remember enjoying the trilogy quite a bit, though the last of the three got off to a slow start. (Fortunately, he warns you of this at the beginning.) I also remember a distinct preference for the middle book, Perelandra, though until now I couldn't have told you why. I'm not sure whether I ever read the trilogy again between then and now, though I've owned it for quite some time. Wendell Berry makes several references to the third book, That Hideous Strength, which got me thinking about reading them again.

The first book, Out of the Silent Planet, begins with the main character, Dr. Ransom, being abducted and taken to Mars. This is something of a surprise element, and I should warn you now that there will be some minor spoilers throughout this post, but it's the kind that readers probably figure out long before the protagonist. Besides, if you haven't read the books yet by now, it's your own fault--they were written and are set in the 1940s, before Sputnik or any manned space travel. (Consequently, they can take quite a bit of license.) Ransom makes it back to earth (another spoiler, but nothing more than you'd get from reading the back of the second book), and in Perelandra he's sent to Venus (Perelandra being its "real" name). The third book is set on Earth, with a clear connection (eventually) to what went on in the first two.

In the world of the Space Trilogy, Earth is the only planet (as far as we know) whose sentient race has fallen. Mars is much older and was already inhabited when Satan fell; Venus is much younger, and Ransom encounters its equivalent of Eve. He is not the only visitor from Earth; a couple of days after he arrives, Weston--the scientist who built the spaceship and abducted him in the first book--shows up, now a liberal/New Age theologian of some sort. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Weston is possessed by some demonic force, which relentlessly works on persuading the Woman to break their one negative command--not to live on the fixed land. (They live on floating islands in a mostly water-covered world.) The effect is reminiscent of the Screwtape Letters through the middle of the book, during which time Ransom struggles in vain to refute what he now thinks of as the Un-man. The demon apparently needs no sleep, and the woman much less than Ransom, so he's constantly waking up to find them already in conversation.

Ransom's internal struggle reaches its climax in chap. 11, when he finally realizes why he was sent to Perelandra and what he has to do. It's at this point that I not only remembered why I liked this particular book so much, but I also learned something about my proto-Orthodox past. I've already commented on my love for Stephen Lawhead's novels and how that seems to have have expressed some latent Orthodox longings. If anything Perelandra goes a step further. Sometimes it seems like C. S. Lewis is perhaps the closest thing we have to an authentically Orthodox Evangelical or perhaps an authentically Evangelical Orthodox. His classical Anglicanism probably helps in this respect, but somehow it seems like there's even more going on here. I'm not going to try to sort it out; I'll just mention it and move on. The point is that by now it wasn't terribly surprising to discover yet again that Lewis wrote something that looks very Orthodox. The surprise was more in knowing that somehow this book touched me in the depths of my teenage soul, and only now I see how I was responding to Orthodoxy before I knew what it was.

If it seemed like it would make much sense on its own, I would just put chap. 11 before you and let you read the whole thing for yourself. But it is part of a larger story, so instead I'll just include a few selections, noting along the way where I think they connect with Orthodoxy:

Inner silence is for our race a difficult achievement. . . .

A great deal of Orthodox asceticism is about achieving inner silence, and the difficulty is widely acknowledged.

. . . And at that moment, far away on Earth, as he now could not help remembering, men were at war, and white-faced subalterns and freckled corporals who had but lately begun to shave, stood in horrible gaps or crawled forward in deadly darkness, awaking, like him, to the preposterous truth that all really depended on their actions; and far away in time Horatius stood on the bridge, and Constantine settled in his mind whether he would or would not embrace the new religion, and Eve herself stood looking upon the forbidden fruit and the Heaven of Heavens waited for her decision. . . .

And, I might add, Heaven waited for the decision of the Virgin--the New Eve, as Orthodoxy calls her. Her greatness is in her "Yes" to God's will; where Eve failed, she obeyed. To speak of her saving us seems blasphemous to a lot of Protestants, but properly understood, it is the very point Lewis makes here.

. . . His thoughts had stumbled on an idea from which they started back as a man starts back when he has touched a hot poker. But this time the idea was really too childish to entertain. This time it must be a deception, risen from his own mind. It stood to reason that a struggle with the Devil meant a spiritual struggle . . . the notion of a physical combat was only fit for a savage. . . .

. . . It would degrade the spiritual warfare to the condition of mere mythology. But here he got another check. Long since on Mars, and more strongly since he came to Perelandra, Ransom ahd been perceiving that the triple distinction of truth from myth and of both from fact was purely terrestrial--was part and parcel of that unhappy division between soul and body which resulted from the Fall. Even on earth the sacraments existed as a permanent reminder that the division was neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation had been the beginning of its disappearance. In Perelandra it would have no meaning at all. . . .

Salvation comes even through the physical, as the sacraments teach. Because of the Incarnation, we cannot make the spiritual merely spiritual.

. . . Every minute it became clearer to him that the parallel he had tried to draw between Eden and Perelandra was crude and imperfect. What had happened on Earth, when Maleldil was born a man at Bethlehem, had altered the universe for ever. The new world of Perelandra was not a mere repetition of the old world Tellus [Earth]. Maleldil never repeated Himself. As the Lady had said, the same wave never came twice. When Eve fell, God was not Man. He had not yet made men members of His body: since then He had, and through them henceforward he would save and suffer. . . .

Since God became Man, salvation is now mediated through humanity. This is precisely what we see in the Orthodox doctrine of the saints, whose greatness is only to the extent that they are vessels of Christ.

By the end of the chapter, Ransom resolves to fight the Un-man, and his resolution echoes that of the martyrs, who know that their physical suffering is for a greater good. Predestination and free choice merge in his decision, and the sequence of time becomes irrelevant. The conflict in the following chapters parallels the dominant Orthodox conception of Christ's death and resurrection as victory over the enemy. These are just the highlights, but I hope they show as clearly as I feel that somewhere back there in my teenage years I came face-to-face with Orthodoxy, and it stirred my heart. It's good to be back at that point today.

heavy horses

2007-12-06T07:20:00.000-05:00

I finished my marathon read through essays by Wendell Berry--pretty much everything I could get from our county library (which was a lot). I'll admit that I did quite a bit of skimming in the later volumes. His writing is good, and he always has something worthwhile to say. But the themes and positions are similar enough throughout that it gets easier to follow his arguments on the fly, the longer you spend with his work.

Along the way, I also read Worms Eat My Garbage, a classic manual of vermicomposting, and the Seventeen Traditions, by Ralph Nader--a good book about lessons he learned growing up, though it makes me feel like a failure as a parent. (I'm formulating a general principle, that anything that doesn't make you feel like a failure as a parent probably isn't worth reading.) It's a very good book, regardless of what you think about his politics--and easy to get through, so if you don't like it, at least you won't waste much time. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Ralph, and since I don't expect any of my favorites in the two major parties to survive the primaries, if he runs again, I'll probably vote for him. I agree with the criticism I read somewhere recently that, although his positions are fundamentally right, his major weakness is that he has too much trust in government to solve the problems. Incidentally, in case anyone cares, his family's background is in fact Eastern Orthodox (or so he claims in the book--I already knew he was Lebanese), but they went to a Methodist church when he was growing up. His hometown doesn't appear to have an Orthodox parish, so that might be some of the reason; but I also get the impression of his parents that they wanted their kids to fit into the American landscape as much as possible.

One interesting thing that happened in the midst of my reading Berry--I had to take a friend to the airport before Thanksgiving. I've got out of the habit of listening to music in the car, and when I do, it's usually something Orthodox. But in this case, I figured my friend would appreciate something to listen to, and probably not Byzantine chant. So I put in a Jethro Tull CD. Yeah, I know--go ahead and start heckling. But I really like a lot of their stuff. I think the prominent flute in a rock band is an interesting twist, and I've always been a sucker the medieval schtik. On the way home, the song "Heavy Horses" came on, which I'd heard before, but in the context of reading Berry's work, I was struck anew by its message:

Iron-clad feather-feet pounding the dust,
An October's day towards evening,
Sweat embossed veins standing proud to the plough,
Salt on a deep chest seasoning.
Last of the line at an honest day's toil,
Turning the deep sod under,
Flint at the fetlock chasing the bone,
Flies at the nostrils plunder.

The Suffolk, the Clydesdale, the Percheron vie
With the Shire on his feathers floating--
Hauling soft timber into the dusk
To bed on a warm straw coating.

Heavy Horses move the land under me.
Behind the plough gliding--slipping and sliding free.
Now you're down to the few,
And there's no work to do:
The tractor's on its way.

Let me find you a filly for your proud stallion seed,
To keep the old line going.
And we'll stand you abreast at the back of the wood,
Behind the young trees growing.
To hide you from eyes that mock at your girth
And your eighteen hands at the shoulder.
And one day when the oil barons have all dripped dry,
And the nights are seen to draw colder,
They'll beg for your strength, your gentle power,
Your noble grace and your bearing.
And you'll strain once again to the sound of the gulls,
In the wake of the deep plough sharing.

Standing like tanks on the brow of the hill,
Up into the cold wind facing,
In stiff battle harness chained to the world,
Against the low sun racing.
Bring me a wheel of oaken wood,
A rein of polished leather,
A Heavy Horse and a tumbling sky,
Brewing heavy weather.

Bring a song for the evening,
Clean brass to flash the dawn
Across these acres glistening
Like dew on a carpet lawn.
In these dark towns folk lie sleeping,
As the heavy horses thunder by
To wake the dying city
With the living horseman's cry.

At once the old hands quicken,
Bring pick and wisp and curry comb,
Thrill to the sound of all
The heavy horses coming home.

Now, I should clarify. Berry never argues (nor would I) against all mechanization. What he does advocate, however, is the best equipment for the job. He defends, for instance, his preference of a pencil over a computer for his writing. That particular essay was written when PCs were just becoming popular, and it seems to me that there's a lot more people can do with them now. Not to say that you can't still get by without one, but personally when I look at my use of the computer and what it would take to do the same things without it, I'm not sure the equation balances quite the way his did. His point was simply that a pencil and paper is much cheaper, much more portable, much less dependent on fossil fuels, and it gives him a feeling of connectedness and fulfillment to write his own letters. He argues similarly in other areas that, if something needs to be done, it should be done with the least resources and expense necessary for the best output. In his farming, he uses horses, but he also uses a tractor. For some work, horses are the only sensible way to go. Because their energy is directly linked to the natural cycles of a well-run farm, they're generally the more efficient option.

Horses are just one example, of course, but they make the point well. The modern trends of farming highlight the modern mindset. Fields are made as large as possible, worked with machines that run on petroleum, in such a way that they absolutely must be fertilized with petroleum, to produce crops that will be shipped all over the world using petroleum. Seeds have to be manufactured to stand their abnormal conditions, so they must be bought. Livestock is considered a separate operation, and is also managed in large quantities, which makes it less efficient to use the "waste" that results. Resources are acquired, used up, and waste materials are produced. This is a destructive process that fails to replenish itself. He contrasts it with a more traditional, more conservative approach that recognizes and flows with the natural cycles of life. Small farms raise crops and livestock together--each feeds the other, so that artificial inputs are minimized. The soil is carefully maintained for repeated use. Most of the energy comes from the sun through plants, not from expendable petroleum reserves. The family is sustained by its own efforts, with extra to sell or trade for what it cannot produce at home.

Farming is where these conflicting approaches can be seen most clearly, but we all participate. We've accepted the norm that our food comes from money, without concern for the real costs involved. We're less capable of taking care of ourselves and less aware of the effects of our actions. We consume, but we do not produce. Now we've become a nation of consumers, with a massive trade deficit and diminished skill and resources to provide for our own needs. He ties this in with our national security concerns, as we continue to depend on foreign investment, foreign oil, foreign products. It all comes back to the systems we've embraced and the lie that more and better technology is always the answer.

Will we get our act together before "the oil barons have all dripped dry?" Or will it require a catastrophe of our obsolete way of life to force us back to a more sensible approach?

Maryland, My Maryland

2007-12-05T09:08:00.000-05:00

Finally, I think I feel OK about being a Marylander! Though I still wouldn't object if an opportunity came along to move back to NY, as the prospect of staying here grows, I'm finding ways to come to terms with it. I don't think I've mentioned here except in passing that we're buying a townhouse in Elkridge--not too far east of here, but significantly closer to Holy Cross. (At the same time, with faster routes involved, it shouldn't affect significantly the time it takes to get to Bethany or where I work.) We're buying through a county program for poor folk--developers get a break on the density rules, and in exchange they make available a certain number of units for sale at lower prices through a lottery. In a way, I kind of like the randomness--it's less burden on us to pick something ideal. On the other hand, what we're getting has significant drawbacks. It will be harder to get to work by public transit, the distribution of space in the house is a bit odd, and there's no yard to speak of (without the benefits of living in a truly urban setting either). Still, I hope to do some gardening where I can, and it looks like there's a farmer's market on the corner. The library is closer than what we have now, and they're supposed to be putting in a path to walk directly from our development over to the elementary and middle schools. It should be tolerable.

But that's not what I wanted to write about. The point is, it looks like we're probably here for the long haul. So it's time to put down some roots and make this place my own. That's a difficult thing to do in the Baltimore-Washington metro area. With so much government and military, and ever-expanding suburbs and exurbs, it's like your typical cosmopolitan city, only with even less local character. What's a localist like me to do?

Well, for starters, learn something about where I am. Here's one cool thing: Maryland cuts across four geographical regions--the Appalachian Mountains in the west, the Piedmont (foothills) in the middle, and the Atlantic coastal plain in the east. Which will we be in? None of the above. Elkridge happens to sit right on the Fall Line--the boundary between the Piedmont and the coastal plain. In a fairly narrow span, the elevation drops significantly, identifiable in particular by waterfalls where rivers cross it. We'll be right on the edge, neither here nor there.

Speaking of boundaries and neither here nor there, where is Maryland? The North or the South? (No copping out and calling it Mid-Atlantic, either.) It gets fairly cold in the winter, with some snow, which might suggest the North. On the other hand, they have no clue what to do with snow here, and sometimes it seems like spring and fall last only a week or two, which is more like the South. Its northern border is the Mason-Dixon Line, which would make it South, just barely. But it stayed in the Union during the Civil War, which would make it the North. Keep in mind, though, that it stayed at gunpoint. Lincoln didn't want Washington surrounded by Confederate states, so he sent troops to arrest and imprison Maryland's elected leaders--anyone who might cause trouble--and shut them up in Ft. McHenry. Maryland was cautious about secession anyway, because they knew it would be on the border and play host to major battles. So who knows what would have happened if left to their own devices?

These days, with most of its population concentrated in this suburban nowhere, Maryland tends to align politically with the North. What surprised me, though, was an aberrant vestige from the Maryland of the Civil War era--the official state song, "Maryland, My Maryland." I was Googling Maryland and "the South," when I came across it for the first time. The song was written after a deadly altercation in which Union soldiers passing through Baltimore were attacked by a secessionist mob. The songwriter, James Ryder Randall, a native of Maryland, was living in Louisiana at the time. When he heard about the bloodshed, he wrote this nine-stanza poem, which was quickly set to music and became a popular anthem throughout the South. Almost 80 years later, it was selected as the state song of Maryland and has been ever since. You can see the full lyrics at either of the links above--definitely worth it--but here are a few choice excerpts (keeping in mind who the enemy is in context):

The despot's heel is on thy shore . . .
His torch is at thy temple door . . .
Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain . . .
Virginia should not call in vain . . .
"Sic semper!" 'tis the proud refrain . . .
Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll . . .
Thou wilt not crook to his control . . .
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul . . .
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!

Yes, he just called Lincoln "despot . . . tyrant . . . Vandal"; yes, he spoke the same Latin as John Wilkes Booth; and yes, Maryland schoolchildren (though perhaps not so much in recent years?) learned to sing about "Northern scum." Say what you want about the Maryland of today, but a state that could inspire this song has got to have something going for it.

Now, let me clarify a bit. I'm no proponent of American slavery, and I don't think that everything about the South--then or now--was right. So why am I, born and raised (mostly) in the North, so excited about this song? I'm sure at least some of it is the sheer surprise at finding such a state song, especially in such a state. But more than that, I do in fact sympathize with the Southern cause in the Civil War (War between the States, War of Northern Aggression, etc.). As a localist, I prefer my government decentralized, to the greatest extent practical. When the U. S. Constitution was written, there was a much clearer balancing of state and federal powers than what we've had for more than a century now. As I see it, that balance was upset decisively on the battlefields of this region where I now live.

I reject the notion that slavery was the fundamental issue of the War. Lincoln himself said that preserving the Union was a higher priority. The differences between the industrial North and the agrarian South had come to a head, and in the tradition of the American Revolution, it was time for the two sections to go their separate ways. Defending the Union was a convenient way to legitimize the Northern interests as higher and better; focusing on slavery was a convenient way to demonize the economy of the South. The Northern victory secured for industry a dominant role in American life, to the point that even what now passes for agriculture works more like a factory than anything remotely organic. The Federal government has become increasingly invasive in our lives, with fewer and fewer resources under the control of local communities. (Does anyone even remember what the word "federal" means?) Old structures and traditions have been sacrificed on the altar of Progress. Local cultures are deteriorating, only to be replaced by the global anti-culture of the corporate media.

To the extent that the agrarian South stood against these trends, to the extent that Northern victory served to diminish the cultural diversity and balance of these United States--yes, I lament that victory. I lament the bloodshed. I lament the nation that was lost. This is not to say that no good came as well. The end of slavery was an end to be desired (though, we have to ask some serious questions about how effective that end was); was civil war the only or right way to make it happen? Perhaps the North is a better place for still having some influence from the South, though it's hard for me to believe that the benefits there outweigh the negative effects on South or the nation as a whole.

The outcome is what it is, and we'd best get on with life. But there is still a need for people to stand against tyranny. There is still a daily choice to be made between the ideals of the Revolution and the expedience of overcentralization. There is still opportunity to support local institutions and culture. As long as we have these things, we need songs like this. I'm proud to live in a state that still sings it, however faintly.

dust

2007-12-05T07:08:00.000-05:00

Today it's still fairly cold--perhaps colder than the past couple of days, though with less wind. They're calling for 1-2 in. of snow. So far, we have a dusting that more or less covers untreated, untraveled pavement and dirt. Sad, that such things should be big news around here, but take what you can get.

Fast Forward

2007-12-04T08:53:00.000-05:00

This video put out by Willow Creek (an influential Evangelical mega-church in the Chicago area, for those who don't know) runs through Church history (in about 13 min.) from the New Testament to the present, specifically focusing on Christian unity. I include it here particularly for anyone who's curious what they have to say about the Church from Constantine to the Reformation (about 3:50-5:12):

Julie saw it before I did and concluded that I wouldn't like it. She was basically right, although not necessarily for the right reasons. After one pass, here are some of my general concerns:

As would be expected, the viewpoint is thoroughly Western. This is most apparent when the Crusades (starting around 5:12) are blamed on "the Church." The Eastern Church has enough of its own skeletons, but the Crusades were perpetrated by Westerners, and Eastern Christians were mostly on the receiving end. Considering that the video clearly assumes the standard Protestant definition of "the Church," it seems like a rather glaring oversight to ignore (or unjustly implicate) the primary alternative to Western Catholicism at the time of the Crusades.
As far as that goes, I'm not exactly sure why they highlight the Crusades as the one particularly negative event in Church history. The most sensible explanation is that they are a prime example of Western racism and cultural bias, though that point is not explicitly highlighted, and it would probably be too much to assume that the intended audience would get it. Perhaps it is merely to set the stage for the Reformation. The transition seems to suggest that the Reformers were responding to the Crusades in particular, though one might hope that the connection was unintentional.
The otherwise generally rosy picture of Church progress glosses over some important negatives. Particularly, the great missionary era of Western Christianity is presented without any reference to the accompanying problem of colonialism. Since most of the attitudes that divide Christians culturally are grounded in colonialism, it seems like a substantial omission.
On the other hand, the portrayal of medieval Christianity suggests nothing beyond the cloister. There is no mention of the Church that converted Slavic Eastern Europe or any of the other great missionary movements of the era, East or West.
Of course, the greatest problem is the overall thrust, which ignores the very real, very substantive issues that divide churches from each other. Racism, cultural bias, and ethnic divisions are a problem, to be sure. Orthodox, not least among Christians, face this problem. But there are key political and theological factors as well, most of which pre-date the modern causes of racism and ethnocentrism; a solution that brushes over them will never bring true unity.

Knowing what I know about Willow Creek, I don't think the point is to endorse liberal ecumenism, with a wholesale exchange of Truth for unity. But Evangelicalism as a movement has always had its own conservative ecumenism, which boils down the gospel to its lowest common denominator, then brushes aside all other issues as unnecessarily divisive. The vision of transcending denominational divisions is a positive one. Likewise, overcoming racism and ethnocentrism is a worthy goal. The problem is with what they sacrifice (and what they don't) to get there.

The ancient Church of the ecumenical councils worked hard to preserve unity, but it always knew unity needed its proper basis in shared faith. When that faith was endangered by theological innovation, it responded as necessary to clarify the Church's Tradition. With a more or less opposite approach, it took Protestantism very little time to fragment Western Christendom into several incompatible strands. In the centuries since, the divisions have only multiplied, despite the separate efforts of liberals and Evangelicals to unite Christianity around shared goals. I would dearly love to see unity restored, but it's hard not to be pessimistic when the root causes remain.

I don't want to over-simplify the situation. There are many types and layers of factors to be addressed, and Orthodox have their own unique contributions to the lack of Church unity in our age. As far as that goes, Orthodox have enough trouble right now with unity in their own midst. It's easy to blame them for moving too slowly on such issues, but the challenge is very real--how to live and function in this modernized, Westernized world without being conformed to its standards. And I have in mind here a tension that is not primarily between East and West; rather, as Meic Pearse says, it is between the West and the Rest. This Western trajectory, shaped by its individualism, its orientation toward progress over tradition, has been part and parcel of Evangelical development. To a large degree, the struggle is easier for Western Christianity, because it has never been engaged in the first place. And so we see a push in Evangelicalism to follow the secular trends of multiculturalism and globalism--not altogether divorced from the legitimate, biblical imperatives toward Christian unity, but the key question is, which is the real driver?

A constant source of heresies in the early Christian centuries was the attempt by various individuals to make Christian theology fit secular/pagan philosophy. The Church Fathers used philosophy where it suited, but they also criticized it whenever necessary. And generally speaking, the Truth of the Gospel was already there--in the day-to-day practices and quiet faith of the illiterate peasants--before and after the councils did their work. In the end, philosophy only complicated things. It seems to me that, when Christians let the secular trends of the day set the agenda for their own reform movements, we're walking right back into the same kind of trap. If it brings unity at all, it will ultimately be the wrong kind of unity--in fact, one that pulls us further away from any hope of true, biblical unity. The way out is back, not forward.

flurry

2007-12-04T07:05:00.000-05:00

This morning, for the first time this season, I saw snow in the air. When I stepped outside, it was the faintest of dandruffs, barely visible if you caught just the right angle in the street lights. By the time the bus arrived, it was somewhat more accessible to the naked eye. That was it, as far as I saw. I wasn't paying much attention while on the commuter bus, and there was nothing to see in Silver Spring or Bethesda.

Yesterday, it could have snowed. It felt considerably colder in the afternoon than in the morning--perhaps nothing more than a trick of the wind. By late afternoon, it was driving dark, dull clouds into battle with the otherwise blue sky. There was no precipitation, but for once it felt like winter was truly on its way. I'm too cheap to buy new sneakers, so I've been treading the line between sandals and boots for my commute. Yesterday would have been a good one to make the switch, if I'd known how much colder it would feel in the afternoon. I also tend to favor a relatively light coat, since inevitably I will find myself bundled up on a bus with the heat blazing. Just as inevitably, on a day like yesterday, when I could have used some heat, neither bus was doing much more than circulate air. I wasn't seriously uncomfortable, but I still felt pretty chilled by the time I got home. I had a cup of coffee right away and followed it with soup for dinner. After that, I think I'd fully recovered, but this morning I did dust off the boots at least, and packed a hat in my bag, just in case.

cry room

2007-12-02T13:52:00.000-05:00

Back when I was interested in Judaism I read an explanation of prayer in Hebrew. The point was not that you absolutely have to pray in Hebrew, only that it's safer to do so. When you pray in any language, with any words, if your heart is in it, and you express yourself correctly and sincerely before God, you have done a good thing. When you pray in Hebrew, using the words handed down by tradition, you're expressing true and right thoughts to God, even if your heart is not in it. In that case, you've also done a good thing. So, it's better to pray in the traditional words from the Hebrew prayer book, because your prayer will always be worth something, and sometimes it will be worth double. There's a strong potential here for a legalistic outlook, but at the same time I think it contains a valuable principle--that sometimes reading right words you don't feel can be good in its own right--that it might be just the thing to "prime the pump" and get you feeling more the way you should. (Whether those right words have to be in Hebrew or not is another matter.)

But I bring it up here to illustrate another pattern. This morning Julie wasn't feeling well, so she asked me to stay with her in the cry room at Bethany until after she'd fed Jenna. Orthodox churches traditionally expect the whole family to worship together in one service. (Though I heard a talk not long ago by a Khouria whose husband had at one point been assigned to a parish that did not allow children in the service with the adults--it was brought up as a decidedly wrong way of doing things.) Other traditions take a similar approach, including some Presbyterian and Reformed churches, but the trend in modern Evangelicalism seems to be to keep kids out. It fits nicely with the "seeker sensitive" mentality--that worship is something to be tailored to the needs of the intended audience. Kids are therefore better contained in their own classes, where they can learn to worship God in their own way, and presumably grow into a more adult form of worship whenever the time is right. A common feature of this model is the cry room, which allows for infants who aren't quite ready to be deposited in the nursery to accompany their parents to the service, without disrupting the controlled, adult atmosphere. (Not that cry rooms don't appear in Orthodox churches as well--sometimes children just get too noisy and have to be taken out for a while.) The typical pattern for us is that Jenna eats in the cry room through the first part of the service and then spends the rest of the time in the nursery.

It's the first time I've really spent in the cry room with Jenna (maybe once or twice with Ian--I can't recall). They pipe in the audio, and there's a window so you can see what's going on. For me, it just felt like something was lacking. Actually, it felt like a lot was lacking. Evangelical worship normally seems incomplete anyway, but sitting in that room, it was almost non-existent. I felt completely like a spectator. Things were going on, but I wasn't at all engaged with them. The effect of being in that room brought to mind the bit about Jewish prayer. In Orthodox worship, the liturgy has an effect of creating worship, in and of itself. I feel it when I'm watching a service on the Internet or listening to music in the car. Actually being in a service, present with the other participants, certainly adds something to it, but the two elements are distinct and cummulative. Today it felt like what I normally got out of worship at Bethany depended solely on the "being there" part. Take that away, even if it's only through the separation of a single wall, and nothing is left.

I don't suppose that this perception can be generalized. I'm sure there are Evangelicals who get something out of the music and prayer itself, whether watching on TV or listening on the radio. Such people may feel that something is lacking when they're removed from direct participation, but can probably still consider it worship. For me, I guess it was just an eye-opening moment about my own connection to Evangelical practice (or lack thereof). There is still an element of the familiar. There are still people I know and love, and the connection I have with them is real; there are still songs that have special meaning for me; there is still a familiarity with services at Bethany. But the actual substance of the interaction, the thing we're there to do, the "about" of the experience--that's what seems to be missing. All that's left is the familiar feel, and when that is cut off, the void is apparent.

O Christmas Tree!

2007-12-02T13:08:00.000-05:00

Last night, for the second time in our adult life, we bought a "real" Christmas tree. When we first got married and moved to Maryland, we bought a tiny, artificial "Charlie Brown" tree (at Wal-Mart, I think). Our dwelling at the time was a 320-sq.-ft. apartment on the campus of the seminary I was attending. For three years, we listened to our neighbors through the walls, went to sleep staring at our kitchen, and collected no-bake dessert recipes (because all we had for cooking was a two-burner stove, a toaster oven, and a microwave). Once we bought a "real" tree, but generally we traveled for the holidays, so it seemed better just to throw up our little standby. It moved with us to our first off-campus apartment, then the townhouse we shared with a good friend of Julie's, then here to where we are now. Since we're not going anywhere this year, Julie decided to buy a tree; for good measure, we're also going to give away "Chuck." It's the end of an era.

Not that we have much space for a tree now, either. We asked for the smallest type they had on the lot. It's a nice tree, though. It certainly looks better, and it is a bit larger and considerably fuller. The smell is nice, too (though I'm thinking either it's wearing off already, or I'm getting used to it). On the way home, Julie asked me what I thought about "real" Christmas trees. My initial thought was, as long as I don't have to pay for it, I really don't care. (Some time back, Julie put herself on a weekly allowance for things like eating out, extras for the house, and various forms of entertainment; buying a Christmas tree was one such thing.) But the more I think about it, I guess there are some distinct advantages:

You're a lot more likely to buy local when you buy a "real" tree. An artificial one could come from pretty much anywhere (and probably does). I suppose you could truck a "real" tree several hundred miles, but it doesn't seem like there'd be much benefit to doing so. The quality would diminish, the longer it took to get there.
Christmas tree farms seem to be one of the few agricultural operations these days that are still likely to be family-run. They don't take a great deal of maintenance, and although I doubt that you could live off one exclusively, it seems like they can probably be maintained on top of some other job. I'd like to think that we bought our tree directly from the guy who grew it. It certainly looked like a family operation, with help from the kids and a few hired hands to wrap and tie the trees on cars.
Although I keep saying "real" in quotes, because obviously the tree is dead, there really is something different about it from an artificial tree. It may not be a living tree, but it still needs regular watering, to keep it from drying out. As I've been thinking lately about doing some gardening after we move into our new house, I figure this is about my pace to start out--watering a dead stick. It's already green, so don't confuse me with Abba John the Dwarf; but hopefully I can at least keep it from turning brown and shedding all over the living room.

So I guess I am pretty positive about the tree, as long as I still don't have to pay for it :-)

The Year of Living Biblically

2007-12-01T21:59:00.000-05:00

I finally made it to the top of the waiting list at the library for The Year of Living Biblically. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the premise looked interesting--an agnostic men's magazine editor spends a year trying to follow everything the Bible says, as literally as possible. It could have gone different ways, from very cynical to very serious. Fortunately, he seems to have taken the project rather seriously. There's plenty of humor, but especially as the book progresses, he becomes more introspective and seems more in pursuit of some meaningful results.

The author is Jewish, so although he begins with a sensible enough division of the year--focusing proportionally on one testament at a time--by the time he gets to the New Testament, he confesses a more detached approach. Indeed, although he continually maintains an attempt to be biblical, rather than following some traditional application, he leans heavily on Jewish tradition to aid his efforts. Of course, it should only make sense that applying OT commands will bear some striking resemblances to Rabbinic Judaism, since the objective of Jewish tradition is to keep the Torah. And there are points where he decisively departs from tradition--meat and dairy restrictions, for instance (though he does avoid cooking a young goat in its mother's milk). But he also appeals at various points to existing Jewish practice--bringing in an Orthodox Jewish consultant to check his wardrobe for mixed fabrics, sacrificing a chicken with Hasidim, etc.

I guess the most interesting thing to me was how his efforts to live biblically led him to appreciate Jewish tradition, not just for its biblical aspects, but as his own distant heritage and as a logical way to apply the OT, even though it clearly does go beyond what's explicitly written in the text. He recognized that often you have to choose how to apply a biblical command, and acknowledged the advantage of tradition's explication. On the other hand, by the end of the book he tended more to embrace the freedom to choose for himself. In this respect, the book is unremarkable. It concludes with much the same outlook that one sees today in other postmodern approaches to the Bible--everyone picks and chooses, you have to pick and choose, it's probably OK to let a tradition choose for you, but it's also OK to choose for yourself, as long as you do it with open eyes. Is it telling that at the same time he admits only to a greater belief in the sacred, while remaining agnostic about God? In my own experience, it was a lot easier to accept this fuzzy, postmodern vision while my focus was on the Bible as such. I wasn't exactly agnostic about God, but I was certainly more vague about him than at any other point in my life. Once God comes into focus as a personal, self-existent entity, it gets a lot harder to accept that making a choice is more significant than what I choose.

And that's where tradition becomes critical. If God is really "out there" (in the Christian concept, he's not just "out there," but transcendence is an important element here), I can't be happy with my own subjective experiences and opinions. To have real communion with this real person, it can't just be about my perceptions. There has to be Truth beyond me and my little brain. The Bible itself embraces divine Tradition as a critical means of ascertaining this Truth; indeed, it is the only means available.

That point aside, it's still a very funny, very interesting book; and it makes some great points about taking the Bible seriously, even if the outcomes seem bizarre. There are important lessons here--just don't expect too much from its theology.

four dead presidents, and counting . . .

2007-11-27T08:48:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me this morning, as I went to pick up a roll of the new James Madison dollars, that I've never shared here about my obsession with dollar coins. I can't even remember now exactly how or when it started. I think it had something to do with thinking they'd be easier to use on buses than paper dollars, which got me looking for more information and finally becoming a die-hard supporter of the things (even though I rarely use cash on the bus anymore).

A couple of months ago, I was checking out in David's (a local whole-foods type market)--I think just a box of falafel mix, so I paid cash--and the rather young cashier, after examining the coins carefully, asked, "Are you sure you want to use these?" After some contemplation, I politely answered, "Yes," foregoing the more elaborate response I was thinking: Yes, I'm sure I want to use coins that will likely be here when you and I are dead and gone, when the government that issued them is nothing more than a historical memory, rather than paper dollars that will be out of circulation in a month or two. In a store that dutifully asks whether I want a bag or not, do I really need to explain my preference for currency that will never have to be thrown away, and only replaced at the rate the coins are lost or collected? Her question was a good one--only the referent was misplaced. Ask it instead of every person who comes in using $1-bills.

The real travesty is that we even have paper dollars left in circulation. They have only two things going for them--habit, and the fact that they don't make noise in your pocket. Dollar coins, on the other hand, are much easier to use in machines and infinitely more durable. I don't know or care how the cost of initial production compares--once you factor in the rate of deterioration, it's a no-brainer which is more economical and environmentally friendly in the long term.

When I first started using dollar coins, probably a couple of years ago, the biggest problem was finding them. Initially I was able to get them from the bank in the building where I worked, but that supply dried up quickly. They didn't actually maintain a stock of dollar coins--they just collected in rolls whatever they were unfortunate enough to receive, which apparently happened at a rate slower than I was using them. I tried a couple of other banks that I could walk to on my lunch break and the bank we belonged to near home--same story. Someone I knew could get them from her bank; I tried one of their branches, and apparently it was only certain locations that had them. Eventually, I got so frustrated that I wrote my senator, who happened to be the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, which had sponsored the bill to issue Sacagawea dollars. I asked how it made any sense to have dollar coins in circulation if they could not be readily obtained by those who wanted to use them, and what I could do as a citizen-advocate to promote their use.

To my surprise, it didn't take very long to get a meaningful response. A cover letter came back from the senator's office, with an attached response from the deputy director of the U. S. Mint. He acknowledged the problem and even cited a recent GAO study that had investigated the issue. He also pointed out that a new bill had been passed, to start a program that would hopefully improve the availability and circulation of dollar coins. Starting the following year (2007), new dollar coins would be issued with pictures of deceased U. S. Presidents, in chronological order, at a rate of four per year until the list is complete. Based on the success of the state quarters program, the hope was that this would increase activity.

I have no idea whether the program is increasing actual usage of the coins in any way. Personally, I have never received a dollar coin as change (though I must admit, the opportunity is limited, since I try to make sure I never get back $1-bills as change), and I don't think Julie has either. It has certainly improved availability at banks, which is something anyway. At least now I have no problem keeping a supply onhand, and like a modern-day Johnny Dollarseed, I do what I can to spend them into circulation. I suspect that for the most part they are either socked away by collectors or quickly taken back to banks, to get them out of circulation. But I'm doing my part, including turning in paper dollars to the bank whenever possible.

As far as I'm concerned, there are only two negatives associated with using dollar coins. It seems like most vending machines are now set up to receive them as payment, but in my limited experience change and token machines are not. So if you need quarters or arcade tokens, a dollar coin may not be of much use. The bigger problem is the noise they make in your pockets. This is especially an issue for me, since I try to carry a supply, so I never have to receive $1-bills as change. I suppose I should revel in the sound they make, but I really don't like making noise when I walk. I would like to have a belt dispenser, but so far I haven't found any designed to fit them. I thought about getting one of those plastic squeeze change purses, but settled on wrapping them in a piece of rag. It does the trick, with the added benefit of winning sympathy points whenever I have to pull it out and unwrap them to pay somebody.

I read that GAO report, by the way. The overriding message was that no successful implementation of such a program has ever established dual usage. They always phased out the paper dollars altogether. If you give people a choice, they'll tend to stick with what's familiar, regardless of the relative advantages. Our government is not yet prepared to take that kind of decisive step, probably because it's so reluctant to get rid of anything. We add, but we do not take away. And surely someone's budget would be slated for cutbacks if we actually scrapped the $1-bill. My favorite example that highlights this mentality, also from the GAO report, is what became of the advertising campaign to improve circulation of Sacagawea dollars. Someone came up with a great idea for a commercial, showing someone trying unsuccessfully to feed a tattered paper dollar into a vending machine, while someone else made a quick and easy purchase by depositing a dollar coin. It was never used, however, because the Mint and Engraving & Printing are both part of the same government agency, and it was deemed inappropriate to advertise one by reflecting negatively on the other.

So, I assume that when this program is completed, things will go right back to the way they were. (Maybe I should start hoarding now.) But for the next few years, anyway, I'll enjoy the easier access. None of this has much to do with anything, though of course I can always find a relevant Simpsons quote. When Homer is trying to help out Comic Book Guy after his heart attack, he takes him to Moe's:

Homer: Now, when you've got a bum ticker like we do, you need all the friends you can get. And Moe's is the friendliest place in the rum district.
[opens the door. Inside, Moe aims his shotgun at a bar patron.]
Moe: Get out, and take your Sacagawea dollars with you. I'll give you 'til three.
[cocks gun. The man leaves.] One! [fires]

happy anniversary to me

2007-11-20T13:28:00.000-05:00

It's kind of hard to believe that it's been a year already since I officially became a catechumen. If you weren't reading my blog back then, you can catch the highlights in a couple of posts--one reflecting some of what went through my head beforehand, and one following up the day after. There was a rather frantic flurry of e-mailed dialog, mostly between me and my then-pastor, that preceded the service, up to literally hours before, as well as one emergency visit from a couple of elders. In the midst of all that, I attended the Society of Biblical Literature conference in Washington over the weekend, which may have been good in that it kept me from saying or writing more than I did. But it was a very fast-paced few days, and I was relieved to get through it.

After so much build-up, it was almost anti-climactic what actually happened in the service. I just responded when they called the catechumens forward, was prayed for like everyone else, and went back to my spot. Looking back on it a year later, it seems even less of a milestone, because I do the same thing in every liturgy I attend. In that sense, becoming a catechumen was almost a non-event. There is no inaugural ritual--only the difference between not being one and being one. It has to happen sometime, but that's really all there is to it. Not to downplay the significance of the moment--because of the build-up, because Fr. Gregory came to our house to talk with Julie ahead of time, because we worked for a while on setting a specific date, because Julie was there in the service and brought a friend for moral support, because suddenly at the last minute there was vocal protest from the Evangelical church leadership, because I really did go through a lot of soul-searching before the leap, it was still a monumental occasion.

Quite a bit has happened since then, but the pace has seemed more relaxed. I think Julie and I have reached a somewhat better place in our relationship and on this whole issue (even though we still have a long way to go, and no idea where it's going to end). I've rejoiced to see my fellow catechumens complete their journeys into the Church. Today, my name is the only one on the list that remains from a year ago. Names have disappeared, and others have come in to replace them. I'm not giving up the first slot just yet, though :-) The timing is not mine to decide. Fr. Gregory says it's a kind of dance in my situation. I suppose in a sense, it is for everyone--just some steps are more complex than others. I've never been much of a dancer, but fortunately I don't have to lead in this case. My fate is in better hands than my own.

For now, I'm still glad just to be here on the doorstep. My own Entrance will come soon enough.

in praise of "boring old mothers"

2007-11-19T09:48:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been reading a lot of Wendell Berry (more follow-up reading from Crunchy Cons). A prolific essayist and outspokenly agrarian farmer from Kentucky, Berry has been for several decades the voice of rural American heritage against the industrializing trend of society. There's far too much of his work that bears repeating--more than I could possibly offer on my little blog. In this respect, all I can say is, read his stuff. But one passage I read last night really stood out for me personally. If that wasn't enough reason to post, I realized this morning that it may encourage my "boring old [God]mother," and others whose kids don't always appreciate what they do (or don't do). In the 1980 essay "Family Work," Berry writes:

How can we preserve family life--if by that we mean, as I think we must, home life--when our attention is so forcibly drawn away from home? . . .

We can see clearly enough at least a couple of solutions. We can get rid of the television set. As soon as we see that the TV cord is a vacuum line, pumping life and meaning out of the household, we can unplug it. What a grand and neglected privilege it is to be shed of the glibness, the gleeful idiocy, the idiotic gravity, the unctuous or lubricious greed of those public faces and voices!

And we can try to make our homes centers of attention and interest. Getting rid of the TV, we understand, is not just a practical act, but also a symbolical one: we thus turn our backs on the invitation to consume; we shut out the racket of consumption. The ensuing silence is an invitation to our homes, to our own places and lives, to come into being. And we begin to recognize a truth disguised or denied by TV and all that it speaks and stands for: no life and no place is destitute; all have possibilities of productivity and pleasure, rest and work, solitude and conviviality that belong particularly to themselves. These possibilities exist everywhere, in the country or in the city, it makes no difference. All that is necessary is the time and the inner quietness to look for them, the sense to recognize them, and the grace to welcome them. They are now most often lived out in home gardens and kitchens, libraries, and workrooms. But they are beginning to be worked out, too, in little parks, in vacant lots, in neighborhood streets. Where we live is also a place where our interest and our effort can be. But they can't be there by the means and modes of consumption. If we consume nothing but what we buy, we are living in "the economy," in "television land," not at home. It is productivity that rights the balance, and brings us home. Any way at all of joining and using the air and light and weather of your own place--even if it is only a window box, even if it is only an opened window--is a making and a having that you cannot get from TV or government or school.

That local productivity, however small, is a gift. If we are parents we cannot help but see it as a gift to our children--and the best of gifts. How will it be received?

Well, not ideally. Sometimes it will be received gratefully enough. But sometimes indifferently, and sometimes resentfully.

According to my observation, one of the likeliest results of a wholesome diet of home-raised, home-cooked food is a heightened relish for cokes and hot dogs. And if you "deprive" your children of TV at home, they are going to watch it with something like rapture away from home. And obligations, jobs, and chores at home will almost certainly cause your child to wish, sometimes at least, to be somewhere else, watching TV.

Because, of course, parents are not the only ones raising their children. They are being raised also by their schools and by their friends and by the parents of their friends. Some of this outside raising is good, some is not. It is, anyhow, unavoidable.

What this means, I think, is about what it has always meant. Children, no matter how nurtured at home, must be risked to the world. And parenthood is not an exact science, but a vexed privilege and a blessed trial, absolutely necessary and not altogether possible.

If your children spurn your healthful meals in favor of those concocted by some reincarnation of Col. Sanders, Long John Silver, or the Royal Family of Burger; if they flee from books to a friend's house to watch TV, if your old-fashioned notions and ways embarrass them in front of their friends--does that mean you are a failure?

It may. And what parent has not considered that possibility? I know, at least, that I have considered it--and have wailed and gnashed my teeth, found fault, laid blame, preached and ranted. In weaker moments, I have even blamed myself.

But I have thought, too, that the term of human judgment is longer than parenthood, that the upbringing we give our children is not just for their childhood but for all their lives. And it is surely the duty of the older generation to be embarrassingly old-fashioned, for the claims of the "newness" of any younger generation are mostly frivolous. The young are born to the human condition more than to their time, and they face mainly the same trials and obligations as their elders have faced.

The real failure is to give in. If we make our house a household instead of a motel, provide healthy nourishment for mind and body, enforce moral distinctions and restraints, teach essential skills and disciplines and require their use, there is no certainty that we are providing our children a "better life" that they will embrace wholeheartedly during childhood. But we are providing them a choice that they may make intelligently as adults.

one small exception

2007-11-18T20:37:00.000-05:00

I used to collect Simpsons quotes. Well, let me clarify that. I still pick up quotes just from watching. But I used to collect them more seriously. The Simpsons has got a lot of flak over the years for mocking religion. Shortly after I started watching it (belatedly, when I was in seminary), I decided that judgment was unfair. The show mocks pretty much everything, but more than most T.V. fare, it embraces religion as an indispensable feature of ordinary life. Taken in that context, what the Simpsons does with religion actually has some important positive aspects.

So, I started collecting religious quotes. I faithfully watched the two reruns that aired each night and all new episodes. Some had such major religious themes that I taped them for later study. With others, I transcribed the relevant dialog. I had an idea of someday writing a book about the topic (which has already been done, but I still think there's room for a more comprehensive project). Over time, however, I realized that I was devoting far too much time to the show. I cut out watching reruns, and then decided that I needed to put the religion project to rest. I just didn't need that pressure to keep watching faithfully. I still watch new episodes as they come out, but now I typically watch them once, and that's it. I did watch the movie this summer (though honestly, I didn't pay much attention to when it was coming out, nor was I terribly optimistic that it would be any good), and I even made the pilgrimage to the nearest Kwik-E-Mart. (To promote the movie, about a dozen 7-11 stores around the country were transformed into Kwik-E-Marts for a month; there happened to be one not terribly far from here.) I sometimes think about stopping altogether, but I think I've mostly got the habit under control :-)

Tonight, I had to make an exception. I can't recall ever having seen a reference to Orthodoxy in the Simpsons. (I deleted all the material I collected, so it's hard to say for sure.) But in the most recent episode, "Husbands and Knives," the opening scene highlights Comic Book Guy's usual foul attitude toward his clientèle. After Milhouse accidentally sheds a tear on a comic book, he says, "Nice work, Dr. Boo-hoo. Your tears have smudged Wolverine's iconic sideburns. Hence, you must buy this comic book. And the cost of your innocent accident is . . . (he checks a pricing guide) . . . $25, please."

In response, Milhouse wails, "But that's the money Yia-yia Sophia gave me for Greek Orthodox Easter."

It's not a terribly funny line--mostly just based on the obscurity of the reference--but how could I resist recording it?

Mongo or Rodan?

2007-11-18T18:22:00.000-05:00

I probably won't be able to get away with nicknames like this when she's 14 (or six, for that matter), but right now I'm vacillating between two for Jenna: Mongo and Rodan.

Mongo was a character in Blazing Saddles, with a more recent homage in Shrek II, as the giant ginger bread man cooked up to storm the castle. Ian has pretty much always been small for his age (even for someone else's age); to date, anyway, Jenna is on the large side. At her recent four-month doctor's appointment, she weighed in over 17 lbs. Ian weighed 17 lbs. once--when he was a year old! She looks about to out-grow her car seat, and this evening we mistakenly thought she might be ready for her exer-saucer. (It was an easy mistake, based on her size, but she's still pretty floppy--she hasn't rolled over yet, and she mostly just sat there in the saucer, leaning her face against the side of the seat.)

Rodan was the screechy, pterodactyl-like creature from Godzilla. Lately, Jenna likes to hear herself talk. (How many more times will I say that about my daughter before she leaves home?) The problem is, herself talking falls somewhere between a hawk and a jet-engine. Ian complains that he can't hear the T.V. when she gets going; he's right--you really can't hear much of anything else. She might sound upset, but it's usually with a smile on her face. I've tried teaching her to talk quietly. That hasn't worked with our four-year-old; I'm thinking it won't work much better with a four-month-old.

Speaking of our four-year-old, his Sunday school teacher asked this morning if he'd eaten ice cream for breakfast. I guess he was a little bouncy in class. Nope--just nachos. We may be bad parents, but give us some credit. Now if we could just figure out where the line is between, this kid has a lot of energy and, somebody diagnose the little bugger!

Georgia on My Mind

2007-11-16T09:20:00.000-05:00

One of the oldest Orthodox nations on the planet is the little Republic of Georgia. (Nothing secessionist going on here--I'm taking about the former Soviet Republic in Western Asia, sandwiched between Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. As far as I know, the State of Georgia is still in the Union and not terribly Orthodox either.) Last spring, when I visited St. Tikhon's, we got to talking about religious revival in Eastern Europe since the fall of Communism; one of the seminary students mentioned that Georgia has some of the most impressive levels of actual participation (vs. those who now say they believe but almost never go to church or anything), which piqued my curiosity. I haven't found much online about Georgian Orthodoxy--it has only a very small presence here in the U. S., and there doesn't seem to be much available in English about the Church in Georgia. (Any suggestions?) I did happen across a film with some minor Georgian Orthodox characters not long after that, which I mentioned here. More significantly, the English edition of Pravoslavie has been posting lives of Georgian saints from a recent book published by St. Herman's. Today I read about the 100,000 martyrs of Tbilisi, who are commemorated Oct 31, which might make them a good candidate for some kind of Halloween-alternative celebration, except that the liturgical day runs evening to evening. (Not to mention the difference between calendars.)

I've also been following the political situation in Georgia, which had its own "color revolution" a few years back, resulting in better relations with the West but greater tensions with its neighbor Russia. Now our "friendly" Georgian government seems to be cracking down on opposition protesters with an uncomfortable level of strictness. After an outbreak of police brutality, the street demonstrations were called off; a state of emergency was declared, which looks soon to be lifted. There will be an early election to sort things out--hopefully. For me, the interesting part of the story was the desire of opposition leaders that any talks with the government be mediated by the Orthodox Patriarch. That story made it into the mainstream media as well--seen here, in the NYT. (Sorry--you may have to sign up for a free login to view the article.)

And speaking of shifting Eastern elections, how about this possibility for Putin to serve a third term? Maybe the next best thing to crowning a new tsar . . . :-)

7.5794559776 random things about me

2007-11-06T06:43:00.000-05:00

1) That subject line has to be good for at least half credit :-)

To my dear wife, BOO, HISS! Of course she knows about me that, as much as I deserve the nickname Android (by which I was affectionately known to my Washington Bible College colleagues), I cannot bring myself to abstain from this detestable task when she, of all people, tagged only me (of all people). With that,

2) I also despise picking life verses, but if I had to pick one honestly, it would probably be Matt 21:28-31a:

But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first.

And so, like the first son, I will often begin by saying no, by giving every reason why I shouldn't, by giving every impression that I won't, and finish by doing the very thing that was asked.

3) My most recent meal was rosemary chicken and white bean soup, with bread machine sourdough--this morning--at 4:30 a.m. (No, I didn't get up at 2:00 and make it fresh--the soup, on sale and with a coupon, was $2.00 from Safeway on Saturday; the bread I made later that day.)

4) What I'm currently reading. I have bookmarks stuck in:

America First! Its History, Culture, and Politics / Bill Kauffman
The Portable Edmund Burke / Isaac Kramnick
The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot / Russell Kirk
Exposition of the Holy Gospel According to Saint Luke / Saint Ambrose of Milan
The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to John / Blessed Theophylact
From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire / Pierre Briant

I will probably finish them in that order--the first three are library books, which I tend to read in order by size. (I'm also expecting Who Owns America? to arrive today, which will probably come on the list somewhere near the top.) I'm reading Ambrose along with the daily Gospel selections in the lectionary. I'm about halfway through Theophylact and will get to the rest as soon as I have a lull in library materials. Briant is about 10,000 pages (give or take) of .25-pt type, with margins so small that the words actually keep falling out of the book. I will finish it when the coming nuclear holocaust wipes out all the other books on earth (and several of the outer pages on this one, but probably leaving intact at least 90% of the volume).

5) I got my dad's facial hair patterning--for years, I couldn't get my beard to come up very high, and it took too long to grow a mustache that would connect with it, for the few months of each year when I was allowed to grow a beard (yes, I went to a college that forbade beards and long sideburns). At one point I gave up and grew a beard without a mustache, but I had people I didn't even know calling me Amish, so I gave that up. My ape-like body hair, however, comes from my maternal grandfather. This is supposed to be random things about me--there's probably nothing more random than the line where a haircut ends, somewhere on my neck, chosen arbitrarily to save the trouble of shaving my entire back. It's both a blessing and a curse to have my own fur coat wherever I go--I'm perpetually overheated; the other day my boss came into my office with a sweater on and said she'd have to bring a coat for her next visit.

6) I was banned for several years from cleaning the bathroom. I did nothing intentionally to avoid the job, though I can't say it was a particularly negative side-effect. Apparently I'm more efficient than germophobic--what looked to me like a convenient source for floor cleaner looked to Julie like a toilet. I tell you, sometimes she just has no imagination.

7) It's election day, or so the calendar says. I have no idea what offices are open or who's running. I haven't seen a single campaign commercial, poster, or button. I'm not voting, and you probably aren't either. The fact is, it would be irresponsible for me to vote, because I'm completely uninformed about this year's election. (I have to specify this year's, because for months now, it's been impossible to look at any news source without something in your face about next year's election. Sadly, the offices that are up this year are probably of more local significance and should therefore concern me more than next year's choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

8) It's nothing short of a miracle that I've made it through this post without quoting the Simpsons. (Though there were a few places where I really wanted to.)

I'm not tagging anyone else, because I wouldn't subject my enemies to this form of torture, much less my friends. Let it lie here where it fell, in all its pseudo-randomness.

discussing theology with a four-year-old

2007-11-03T22:34:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: This is probably one of those cases where it would have been better just to provide a straight transcript of the talk. Alas, I didn't have a recording device rolling, and my memory just isn't that good.

Lately Ian's been thinking a lot about monsters. I have to make a confession here: I might have played some small part in this by leading him on in thinking that monsters inhabit the woods behind our house. I didn't plant the idea--just watered it, I suppose, by not quickly denying it, and by playing dumb when he felt me touch the hair on the back of his head. What can I say? I'm by no means anxious to stamp out any sense he might have that this world is a mysterious place, even if that mystery has its spooky elements. (What fairy tale doesn't have its evil forces as well as good?) Besides, I figure he's probably going to believe in stuff like this whether I go along with it or not. What's more likely to help a four-year-old who's got it in his head that there might be monsters in his room? Explaining them away, or teaching him about the God who is sovereign over anything this world can cook up? (And wouldn't I feel bad if there really were monsters, and I'd just told him to get over it?)

So, in the past couple of days we've been having this struggle over the position of the light switch. He keeps wanting to leave the hall light on--not when he's in his room (he seems to have no real issues with thinking something might be in there while he's sleeping)--but when we're all in the living room, and he just sees that dark open doorway down at the end of the hall. I've tried the logical approach--have you seen a monster in the house? have you heard a monster in the house? (even tried smell, taste, and touch, just to make sure) so what makes you think there would be a monster in your room? See, I'm fine with him thinking there might be monsters, until it starts costing me money on utilities. The answers were all "no," but he still wouldn't be swayed--there might be monsters, just because.

Today, I tried another angle. I told him prayer would be a good way to deal with monsters. I explained that God could protect him. Ian said that God's not here--he's really far away. (OK, he's got the transcendence part--now we just need the immanence.) I tried to explain that God is everywhere, but we just can't see him. He reminded me of what I'd told him before--that even though we can't see God in person, we can see pictures of him, when he was a baby and then when he was bigger. (He does remember some of what I say.) We talked for a while about Jesus, how he was born as a baby and grew up like any other kid, and eventually became an adult. I explained that once he became an adult some people who didn't like him killed him. Ian wanted specific details about that part--how exactly did they do it? I then explained that he came back to life. Why? Hmm--good question. Because he's God, and you can't really kill God. (Not very good, I know, but I'm trying to tailor this for a four-year-old, remember.) So then he went back to heaven, but he said that he'd still be with us, that he would live in our hearts if we believed in him.

At this point, I think it was getting to be a bit much for him. I tried a fairly lame comparison. You can talk to someone on the phone, even though they're not in the room and you can't see them. Something like that, God can hear our prayers, when we talk to him, even though we can't see him. Then there was something about God coming on a plane, and I said God doesn't ride on planes, and he said it's the other god that rides on planes (remember?), and I said I wasn't familiar with that god. Then I backtracked and said there's only one God. I explained that God has angels (it's a lot easier to explain that God can send angels wherever we're in need of help, than to explain how he's everywhere all the time)--you know what angels are? Yeah, they have wings, and they're shiny. Right--so God sends them to help us and protect us from bad things, including monsters. Yeah, they can kill it with a sword. I have a sword too (a rather sturdy cardboard tube--probably from a roll of wrapping paper or something)--I can kill the monsters with it. Yeah, but you're small--the monsters wouldn't be afraid of you like they would of an angel. Maybe a small monster.

Anyway, in the end, he seemed to like the idea of adding a prayer at bedtime for good dreams and that no monsters would get him. I found one in my prayer book that seemed about right, and we used it tonight. It's not as cool as the prayer Fr. Stephen's son came up with when he was four, but it should suffice.

a Homer moment

2007-11-01T10:23:00.000-04:00

Headline: Kurds in Turkey Who Backed Erdogan Now Fear Civil War

mmmmm . . . curds in turkey . . .

Here's hoping we all survive until Thanksgiving! (Not least, the Kurds in Turkey.)

why I ride the bus

2007-11-01T06:54:00.000-04:00

. . . aside from the fact that I'm the world's biggest cheapskate, and my commute is practically free . . .

A snapshot of my morning, before 6:30:

3:45--prayer
3:55--shower
4:10--e-mail & feeds
4:20--breakfast & bills
4:30--stretch
4:35--teeth & clothes
4:45--walk through the woods to the bus stop, singing, praying, enjoying the great weather we've had this week
4:55--on the bus, listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra* for the first time since last winter, reading on my laptop:

Fr. Stephen's current blog entry
today's selection from the Prolog of Ohrid
a speech about NATO and Kosovo by Bp. ARTEMIJE

By the time I finish Bp. ARTEMIJE's speech, the bus has reached Scaggsville, where it really starts to fill up. I put the laptop away and slide over by the window to make room. I drift in and out of sleep until we reach Silver Spring, never really losing the plot in Lost Christmas Eve.*
5:55--back outside, across the street to the Metro station
6:00--on the bus, still listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra* (it's a long album, and I repeat a couple of my favorites), standing as usual, just enjoying the music and the sway of the bus; it's full but not terribly crowded this morning
6:20--Medical Center Metro; one more time outside, nice quiet walk across campus; now listening to my Arabic Christmas album from Lebanon*
6:25--in my office; greet the icons and a quick prayer for the tasks ahead

What did you do before 6:30 this morning?

*--Yes, I'm listening to Christmas music! I know it's early, but I really want to learn some Orthodox Christmas songs this year, and I don't learn new songs quickly. Plus, if I can get a jump on things, it hopefully won't be a distraction during the Nativity Fast. I haven't quite decided whether I'll abstain from music in any fashion during the fast or not; if I do, that's even more reason to start now. (I probably won't, at least not altogether--if there's one thing we Orthodox do badly, it's compartmentalize present sorrow from future joy. We can't even get through Good Friday without singing about the Resurrection!) So, as of this morning, my mp3 player is loaded up with Christmas tunes, which still leaves some room for podcasts.

better than no steps forward, two steps back

2007-10-31T08:56:00.000-04:00

In the continuing saga of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, maybe one step forward, two steps back is the best we can hope for. The last thing I heard was that the PA and Jordan were backpedaling from their earlier recognition of Pat. THEOPHILOS Now it appears that Israel is finally going to approve his enthronement (was it waiting for the others to change their minds?), assuming it doesn't get overturned by appeal. Again, it's all about the land, which is getting to be a rather dead, bludgeoned, maimed, mangled horse.

Meanwhile, life just got a bit harder for Arab Christian clergy in Palestine . . .

American chant?

2007-10-30T08:37:00.000-04:00

As usual, I'm way behind the curve on this one. In Clark Carlton's most recent podcast, he continues his musings on the role of Southern culture in forming an American Orthodoxy. He refers to the music of the Old Regular Baptists in Appalachia and its striking similarity to Byzantine Chant. Carlton alludes to prior discussion in the Orthodox blogosphere; in fact, you could get just about everything he says about it by reading this post on Christ in the Mountains (from back in February, I'm so far behind), and following the included links. There really are some interesting similarities, and given that the musical tradition goes back to the earliest days of English Protestantism, it's not out of the question that something is preserved here from pre-Reformation liturgical singing.

In any case, it would be a potential vehicle for some American adaptation of Byzantine chant, though I'm not sure exactly what that would accomplish. Perhaps in some parts of the South it would resonate enough for people to adopt it more comfortably than Byzantine chant. But I could see a lot of Northerners and Northern-minded urbanites having no more affinity for what sounds to their ears like a very depressing form of country, or southern gospel, or bluegrass (most of us probably wouldn't have a clue of the proper categories) than for Byzantine or Russian chant. The fact is, you'd be very hard-pressed to define anything as a national American musical form. Probably the safest bet is the ubiquitous, bland pop, pumped by the globalist media, but it's also the least suitable candidate for Orthodox liturgical music.

It may be that making liturgical music truly American inevitably requires a regional or local approach. For a rural area like Appalachia, maybe there are surviving musical traditions with enough popularity or familiarity that it would make sense to adapt them for Orthodox worship. On the other hand, a northern city with substantial immigrant communities might just as easily embrace the "ethnic" feel of Byzantine. For those who appreciate the sound and feel of Classical European, later Russian liturgical music might suit just fine, or at least might form the most convenient starting point to adapt something more familiar. Beyond those categories, however, I can envision a rather large chunk of the American population raised on more contemporary forms (increasingly used in churches as well) that would not care for any of the above. What do we do with them?

I really don't profess to have any answers here. Personally, I think I could get into the style used in these Old Regular Baptist churches, but then I had a quick and natural affinity for Byzantine chant, so I'm hardly the person to judge what will work for Americans in general. I like the idea that Orthodoxy could take on more indigenous forms in the South, and if Carlton is right, maybe that's where the ball will really get rolling for America as a whole. As for me, I'm just trying to learn the music as it stands right now. Lately I've been trying to learn some key troparia--for major feasts as they come along, and for patron saints. Occasionally I play around with how they're sung, since I'm mostly singing to myself and anyone in the spirit world who happens to be listening. To me, the troparion to St. Peter the Aleut (my patron saint) sounds good sung loud, forceful and raspy. I could hear it in some kind of rock ballad. St. Nicholas and St. John of Damascus sound better with a relaxed, jazzy feel (I'm sure there are more technical terms to use here--I just don't know what they are). Not that I want Orthodox liturgy to sound any more like a rock opera than it does like a free-form jazz odyssey--just pointing out how little I have to offer on the issue :-)

coming full circle

2007-10-29T06:36:00.000-04:00

It's always interesting to see how things come back around. I mentioned in my post on Crunchy Cons how I'd started out conservative, shifted liberal, then radical, then back to some kind of conservative. This particular progression just keeps getting "curiouser and curiouser." If I haven't already mentioned my bad habit about reading, I probably should have. Julie's been saying a lot lately that I read too much. In general, that's a fairly accurate statement, but if it's seemed more applicable in recent weeks, it's largely due to how I read. When I read something that really strikes me, like Dreher's book, I comb it for references to other sources. I read those sources, and if any of them strikes me similarly, I repeat the process, until I've exhausted the library, or myself, or this crazy impulse I have. I'm pessimistic about a lot of things, but in at least one area I'm the eternal optimist--I think that if I rush through this pile of books and get them all done, I'll be able to move on to more significant things than reading. Of course, it never works that way--I just end up with an even bigger pile before I finish what I started with.

So, since reading Crunchy Cons, I've kept myself pretty busy with follow-up projects. Many of them have been fairly short rabbit-trails--books that were only marginally interesting and turned out to be much less useful than I'd hoped. I could simply skim through them and be done with that particular excursion. One of the more interesting diversions, however, has given me this weird feeling of "I've been this way before."

In something of a throw-away remark, Dreher refers to an Internet publication called The New Pantagruel. I believe he's discussing Caleb Stegall, the site's editor, as an example of a Protestant Crunchy Con (though my memory's a bit fuzzy on this point--it may have been someone else associated with the site). I thought it would be good to check out an actual, on-going periodical with this kind of outlook, and if it was Internet-based, so much the better. I had no trouble finding the site, but as I might have expected, it was defunct. (I have an unnatural attraction to dead authors, artists, projects, etc.; by the time I get interested in something, it's already gone.) Fortunately, the archives were still up, so I had a chance to browse through the few years' worth of material. I found interesting tidbits here and there, most notably a reference to an even more short-lived (by design) blog about Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists, a book by some guy named Bill Kauffman. (Dreher has reviewed the book, for whatever it's worth.) With key words like "radical" and "anarchist," my first thought was, I gotta read that book!

They didn't have it in our county library system, so I had to wait a bit for it to arrive from elsewhere in Maryland. When it arrived, I devoured it in short order. Like Dreher (at the time he wrote Crunchy Cons), Kauffman is Catholic; unlike him, he was born into that tradition and takes religion in general somewhat less seriously. Not that he doesn't see it as culturally significant--he just isn't exactly what everyone would call devout. On the other hand, the book is decidedly more fringe/radical/anarchist. (Dreher accuses him of missing the "fine line between hale eccentric and outright kook," in his chapter on Carolyn Chute, acclaimed Maine author turned militia leader. Personally, I found this particular chapter to be one of the more endearing.) Kauffman also has a more biting (and crass) sense of humor. Actually, I'm not sure "crass" is an appropriate word to use here. He certainly has his vulgar side, but I get the feeling I've missed at least half of his jokes due to my unsophisticated grasp of culture, literature, and vocabulary.

Part-way into the book, I discovered something unsettling--actually two things:

Kauffman is from Batavia, NY, where I grew up (if anywhere), and
Julie had already read him, long before I did.

And she thinks I held out on her! Here, all along she's been reading radical, anarchist literature behind my back, and saying I'm too political. Here's how it went down. Back in 2003, Kauffman published a book called Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette: A Mostly Affectionate Account of a Small Town’s Fight to Survive. For those of you who don't know, a Muckdog is a mythical beast that was adopted a few years back as the new mascot for the minor-league baseball team in Batavia, NY (rated best hometown in New York State by ePodunk). It became an insanely popular nickname, inspiring several little league teams around the country, and selling merchandise to the four corners of the globe. (Muck, BTW, is a rich kind of soil in abundant supply just north of Batavia--actually in Elba, where Kauffman currently lives--great for starting onions and cabbage.) The book is about Batavia, which deserves to be listed on a site called ePodunk (we have a friend who lives a couple of towns over, in the only house on Podunk Rd.--no kidding)--a small town in Western New York State, about half-way between Buffalo and Rochester. After bouncing around the country, my family settled there when I was in sixth grade and stayed until after I got married. We ended up there mostly because it was cheaper than Rochester, where my dad was working at the time we moved.

Julie, on the other hand, was born and raised in Genesee County, not in Batavia proper, but the adjacent town of Oakfield. Both sets of grandparents lived within a couple of blocks of her house. She walked to the same school her dad had attended before her. Her brother ended up moving into her grandparents' house and pastoring the church we all went to. For several years now, their high school has had an e-mail list for the alumni (all of them, since there are so few), and I think that's how she found out about Kauffman's book when it came out. She read it and liked it; I decided I was too busy with who knows what other reading and didn't think much of it. (How could we both like the same thing?) Little did I know . . .

Once I realized the connection, I requested Dispatches as well (fortunately, they had it in our library, so I was able to get my hands on it more quickly) and devoured it over the past couple of days. I must say, though, that I enjoyed Look Homeward somewhat better, where he draws on uniquely positive examples; in Dispatches, he paints small-town life in all its stark, often depressing reality. Both books are quite good (though I must warn--Dispatches has a good deal more profanity), and both are hopeful in their own ways, but Dispatches has a lot more about how small towns have got themselves into their current mess. Still, you come away (or at least I came away) with a strong message that they're worth fighting for. And it was nice to learn a lot about the town I (sort of) grew up in.

We moved to Batavia after it was pretty far gone, and lived so far out on the rural margins that we never identified that much with it. We were actually in the school district for the next town over, we commuted to Buffalo for work, and we happened to be on the side of town where most of the big-box expansion outside the city limits was going in. We made a fair number of trips "downtown," but we mostly grumbled about the ill-timed traffic lights and run-down buildings. We got a taste of what Batavia was, but in a lot of ways we were original exurbanites, as likely to head for Buffalo as anywhere closer at hand. We may have been surrounded by corn fields, but it was still just our house with the (really) big yard, from which we commuted to pretty much everything we did.

Don't get me wrong--we were hicks enough. We had our vegetable garden and a big, smelly compost heap. We burned our paper trash in a 55-gal. drum out back. We wore jeans and flannel before it was cool to be grunge. We ate venison when we could get it and beef from a locally-raised and -slaughtered cow, including the tongue and heart sandwiches I took to school to gross out my friends. My dad had an ongoing feud with the woodchucks, which did not stop short of burying our dead dog in one of their holes. (Not entirely out of spite--we had him put down in winter, when the ground was frozen solid.) I never did much with guns myself, but I can't even remember when I started carrying a knife in my pocket pretty much everywhere. When I wasn't mowing, I stumped around the homestead pruning trees with my trusty hook saw and went on four-mile walks around the block with an ax handle to ward off the dogs that were never tied or fenced. It was a rich experience in its way, but we were never really part of small-town life.

Yet here I am, finding about the strongest political resonance I've encountered, with a native Batavian, who left home for DC but returned to stay for good. Go figure. My family is long gone from that area--parents are in SC, we're here in MD, grandparents deceased, aunt in PA, and brother in Springfield, New York but still a few hours away (I normally say he lives near Cooperstown, but here I'll say he lives near Jordanville)--but Julie's parents are still there, which has made us think seriously about moving back, if the circumstances ever seemed right. Right now, it's looking more like we'll stick around in this area, but who knows? In any case, I'd really like to pick somewhere and stay put. It would be great if we could do that close to grandparents, but right now this area looks more promising for jobs. (Kauffman has an advantage--professional writers can work from pretty much anywhere, so for him it doesn't matter if every job in town disappears into a sinkhole.)

But perhaps the best part was finding that Julie and I both liked the book. If we can find common ground with something this wacky, maybe there's hope . . . (She says now she wants to read Look Homeward, America.)

Clark Carlton

2007-10-17T11:48:00.000-04:00

A few months back someone gave me a book called The Life: The Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation, by Clark Carlton. I was finding that the Orthodox notion of salvation seemed to be one of the most pressing issues for Evangelicals I talked to, and I liked the straightforward presentation. At the time I thought, huh--this guy graduated from the Catholic University of America (where I went to school most recently). Since then, I've discovered his podcast on Ancient Faith Radio, which I now listen to regularly. Most of the time I find it entertaining, if not necessarily informative.

Then, the other day, someone posted a link to his testimony of how he became Orthodox. I've read a lot on that site over the past few years, so it's possible that I've already read it before. But now that I have some sense of who he is, I was a bit more interested in what he had to say. It's a very interesting story, especially as I saw a lot of common threads with my own. There are marked differences, of course. He was Southern Baptist, while my background has been in more independent churches. As such, we went through some of the same things, but his were on a larger scale. Prof. Carlton also went through the process at a younger age. From what I can tell, I explored further down the road of theological liberalism (to use the term rather loosely) before finding Orthodoxy. Still, the similarities definitely outweigh the differences.

It's a rather long story, but I would definitely recommend it as worthwhile reading.

crunchy cons

2007-10-16T12:10:00.000-04:00

Whether by references from his friend Frederica Mathewes-Green, podcasted interviews, or an old blog entry I ran across while browsing, Rod Dreher and his book Crunchy Cons have been drifting in and out of my awareness over the past few months. It sounded like it might be vaguely interesting, so I finally broke down and requested it from the library. Ever since, it's been hard to put it down.

It's not so much that I'm learning new information here. Quite to the contrary, it seems like Dreher and I have similar reading lists: The Geography of Nowhere, Fast Food Nation, Small is Beautiful--the list goes on. What I've been finding through other channels is all wrapped up here in one, neat package. I've been finding myself difficult to classify in social and political terms, but this may be about as good a fit as any.

It's kind of a weird experience to find this kind of resonance in one source, especially on what we might lazily call the right end of the political spectrum. I started out a fairly mainstream conservative, at least from the earliest time when I thought in such categories. I was a ditto-head in high school, who loved to antagonize my liberal teachers. I protested outside abortion clinics, joined the county committee of the NYS Conservative Party, and voted for mostly Republican candidates. Throughout seminary, I lost interest in politics along with most facets of real life. I would still have considered myself conservative, although my outlook was shifting a bit more Anabaptist, in that I saw a stronger biblical argument for staying out of politics altogether.

Toward the end of seminary and into grad school I started learning about more radical politics by way of ideological literary criticism and such overtly political music groups as Rage against the Machine and System of a Down. My interest in this area accelerated when I finished my coursework and started paying attention to social issues once again. Particularly, I found myself siding with the Palestinian cause against Zionism. Reading in this area led me to look more critically at Western imperialism in general and to explore a wide range of sources on both left and right, which were united in their opposition to current U. S. policy in the Middle East. On issues of personal morality, I still found myself leaning more conservative, but I sympathized a great deal with the left on larger-scale issues like economics and the environment. I saw some hope of fitting in with the religious left of Ron Sider and Jim Wallis, but their approach didn't seem radical enough to me. I found much that I liked in the populist anarchy of Howard Zinn and the monarchist anarchy of Matthew Raphael Johnson.

During this time, I voted for Ralph Nader, when I didn't abstain from voting altogether. Of course, I knew he'd never get elected, but I just couldn't stomach the alternatives. My second choice was Pat Buchanan, which may seem like a contradiction, but not as far as I was concerned. I flirted for a while with the idea of joining a local group to protest the war in Iraq, but I didn't figure they'd much care to have me. (When you're already engaged in activities that some would call anti-American, you generally try to avoid anyone who's in favor of violent revolt as a principle.) In general, I felt like I didn't fit anywhere politically, nor could I exactly define for myself what kind of political creature I was. I knew I was outside the mainstream, but beyond that, I couldn't say much about it.

What Dreher calls a "crunchy con" is someone who values permanent things--tradition, family, the environment, religion, etc. I may not agree on every particular (I don't think he expects me to), but in general, I think I identify with the major points. I like the idea of conservationism (vs. environmentalism), and the push toward smallness makes a lot of sense to me. I'm certainly more comfortable classifying myself as a conservative on issues of personal morality. Plus, I've tended to see where there might be room for someone like me in classical conservatism anyway, as distinguished from the unbridled economic libertarianism and imperialistic madness that seem to pass for conservatism these days.

One area that concerns me, though, is his take on Islam, which isn't a large element in the book but comes out more in his other writings. Perhaps it's not an integral element of crunchy conservatism anyway. I don't have a clear stance myself at this point, but I do tend to recoil from what seems like a high level of paranoia in some groups. Conservatives aren't the only ones. I've seen the same thing--perhaps even stronger feelings, though to some degree justifiably--in Greeks, Serbians, and other Orthodox groups of the former Ottoman Empire. There's a lot of jumbling of religion and politics in this area, and I don't profess to have it all sorted out myself. I guess I tend to react with a high level of political pragmatism. I disagree with Western imperialism, so I sympathize with those who are trying to stand against it. If there's a threat of Islam taking over the West, I see it mostly as a problem we've created for ourselves. Maybe it's a force that does need to be dealt with, but it's hard for me to side with secularism over against a traditional faith (even if it's not my faith).

But assuming there's room for disagreement in that area, I think I'm pretty comfortable calling myself a crunchy con. It still doesn't give me anyone to vote for, but it's nice to know I belong somewhere.

my patron saint

2007-10-15T10:22:00.000-04:00

If you're relatively new to this blog, you might have missed my post on Peter the Aleut, which I wrote right before I decided on him as my patron saint almost a year ago. If so, and if you've been wondering what his picture is doing on my site (and why I'm asking him to pray for me), it might be worth a look back. For a brief life of St. Peter (which is about all we have), try the OCA saints site.

As for the broader question of why one would need a patron saint in the first place, or why we ask their prayers, it's just one of those things that has been part of Christian Tradition from about as far back as anyone can tell. The early Christians met in secret, often in tombs and catacombs where they buried their dead. The practice of using the tomb of a martyr as an altar in their services links directly to John's vision of the martyr souls under the altar in heaven (Rev 6:9-11) and to the continuing practice of placing saints' relics in the altar and antimension of every Orthodox church. (I'm not sure if Catholics still follow this practice--I'm pretty sure they used to.) Back then, they had no problem understanding that departed saints were still very much a part of the life and worship of the Church. We pray for them, and they pray for us, and even outside the corporate worship of the gathered Church, their presence before the throne of God in heaven ensures that we always come before him as part of Christ's body.

The taking of a saint's name is not practiced in every Orthodox culture (though I think even when it is not each individual, or at least each family, still has a patron). But assigning of new names has been part of God's interaction with his people for millennia. He changed the names of the patriarchs Abraham and Sarah and of Jacob. The prophet Daniel was actually given a new name by the Babylonians, but it was important to retain his original, Hebrew name as well. Christ gave St. Peter his name, and St. Paul seems to have changed at least the name he went by after his conversion. Again, we see in St. John's Revelation (2:17; 3:12) an allusion to the early Christian practice of taking a new name in baptism. This practice continues among the Orthodox to this day.

When we are born into this world physically, God gives us in particular to one set of parents. Although we are called to love all humankind, we learn first to love those in our family, because love over-generalized is no love at all. Similarly, it is easy to get lost among the myriad of saints. Having one patron assigned at baptism helps to narrow the focus. All the thousands of saints remembered throughout the year are important, but one day a year I celebrate in particular the memory of my saint. Any of them might pray for me, but there is one I can always go to by default. If I can learn to love this one saint in particular, it will be that much easier to develop my relationship with others. I see his icon when I pray at home, I sing his troparion when I think of him, and I remember that the saints in heaven pray for us in our struggle here on earth.

my racist friend

2007-10-15T07:32:00.000-04:00

(For those who aren't familiar, the fairly inaccurate title of this post is an allusion to a They Might Be Giants song.)

So, last night we were in Barnes & Noble. We almost never actually buy anything there, but Ian likes to play with the train table in the kids' section, and it can be a good place to see what's new or interesting, so we can get it from the library. (Julie was flipping through a book of Mother Teresa's writings, which surprised me. On the way in, I got sidetracked by a book called The Year of Living Biblically, in which an editor for Esquire spends a year taking the Bible as literally as he possibly can.) At one point, I was supervising the kids, while Julie was browsing, and another kid came over with his mother to play at the train table. Ian kept me busy enough by pushing his way around the track, regardless of who got in his way. Eventually, they seem to have worked out a system--the younger boy, who wasn't as intent on actually making his trains travel a full circuit, would step out of the way whenever Ian passed by. When he didn't, Ian would stop and wait impatiently, but at least he stopped. (Sometimes, with a kid his age, that's about as much as you can hope for.)

Anyway, at one point they got into a conversation. I wasn't paying much attention until I heard Ian protest, "Don't say it in Spanish; you have to talk like me!" I was relieved to see the other kid's mother laugh at the remark. I don't think he meant it to be offensive, though it could have been taken that way (unreasonably, I would think, when it's coming from a four-year-old). I might have been a bit more concerned about what led him to say it, except that earlier that evening when we were playing hide-and-seek he'd yelled at me for counting in Spanish (and Japanese). Just one of those things, I guess. This is the same kid, after all, who freaked out when Julie moved the new shoe rack from where it had been sitting temporarily in the dining room to its rightful home by the door. He gets something in his head, and anything else really bugs him. At least he knew enough not to call it "Mexican" . . .

caught by surprise

2007-10-15T07:24:00.001-04:00

I keep meaning to say something about this but forgetting when I'm actually at the computer. The other day, on the way home from work, I caught myself repeating the Jesus prayer in my head. I have no idea when I'd started or how long I'd been doing it, but I think it's the first time I've noticed myself doing that involuntarily. I make no pretense that it's prayer of the heart (though I wouldn't say my attitude was out of line with what I was saying). More realistically, I'm just forming a habit in my head. Still, it's got to be a good first step to something, right?

what kind of reader are you?

2007-10-14T12:29:00.000-04:00

I don't normally post this kind of thing, but this one is kind of interesting, especially the rating I got:

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

The graph doesn't seem to have come across quite right in blogger, so I'll need to clarify a bit. My ratings for "dedicated reader," "literate good citizen," and "book snob" were noticeably lower by degrees, but still fairly high. I apparently got zero for both "non-reader" and "fad reader" (no surprise there).

One thing that was lacking from the quiz was a category that would let me say what I'm really reading these days--mostly a fairly narrow selection of religious and political books. But I suppose I'm still applying the same reading style that I've used over the past few years, so it's probably not far off.

Lutheran service

2007-10-14T11:49:00.000-04:00

We attended a Lutheran service this morning. We had planned on it for next week, but Julie decided to move it up. My first reaction was to notice several similarities with the Orthodox liturgy. For some reason, I had more of a feeling that it was a very stripped-down Orthodox liturgy (at least in its shape) than I had with the Episcopal services. It probably helped that one of the first things we experienced (we arrived a few minutes late) was the kyrie--basically, a shortened form of the litany of peace. It was almost identical through the first three petitions, then finished with "help us, save us," etc. We'd missed the confession, which doesn't seem to have a corresponding element in the Orthodox liturgy, perhaps because it is intended to replace individual confession before a priest. The framing of the Gospel reading was somewhat similar to that in an Orthodox service. They recited the Nicene Creed (with the filioque, of course) before the sermon instead of after. There was a section very similar to the Orthodox anaphora: "The Lord be with you . . . lift up your hearts . . . let us give thanks to the Lord our God . . . it is right . . . ," and finishing with the pastor's prayer and "Holy, holy, holy . . . ." There's a prayer of thanksgiving before the Lord's prayer, which I suppose is meant to substitute for the elaborate offering ritual in Orthodoxy. They practiced open communion, though not as open as in the Episcopal church. You're only supposed to commune if you believe in Christ and believe that his body and blood is present. A couple of people indicated that we could go forward just to receive a blessing, which I think I saw one of the clergy (a deacon, maybe?) give to some of the people, making a cross on their forehead. They had little cups, which I guess gave people the option to take their own or drink from a common cup.

The people were very friendly. We (mostly I) talked for a while afterward with the pastor, and then out in the vestibule with his wife and another woman. They have Sunday school between the traditional and contemporary services, so there wasn't much time for people to hang around. Ian was getting pretty active and usually doesn't do well anyway with a new Sunday school, so we were heading out. The pastor said that we'd probably find Missouri Synod Lutheran was the best compromise for our situation, but offered that Wisconsin Synod might be more conservative. He also recommended a church nearby that's a bit more traditionally liturgical than they are.

I guess I'd have to say I found it to be an OK service. There was nothing particularly offensive about it. It seemed to be lacking important elements (no surprise there), but as compromises go, it certainly has its strengths. I missed the beauty of the Orthodox liturgy. There were no icons, of course, most of the liturgy was spoken rather than sung, no incense, etc. There was also a lot of missing content, and the ascesis was weak. I think I've mentioned before that one struggle I have is that I don't care for organs, which are pretty much a required element of any Western liturgical service. (This issue complicates our search for "something in the middle," since stylistically I prefer contemporary worship with a praise band to Western traditional music accompanied by an organ.) But I think I would find it tolerable if given an otherwise even choice between that and Bethany.

The problem, though, is that it's not an otherwise even choice. Julie has no particular attraction to the Lutheran service--has many of the same objections she has to Orthodox services. I know I would be unhappy with the Western theology and disappointed with the thin liturgy. As I was talking to the pastor, and he was explaining why he found it to be a good option in his own search, I found myself disagreeing with his argument. He saw Orthodoxy (and Catholicism) as too extreme in its embrace of tradition, which skewed theology, and sola scriptura as the necessary corrective. Although it may be a more moderate form of sola scriptura than what I'm used to, it's still the kind of argument I was trying to get away from in the first place.

So, I think our search continues elsewhere. I think we owe it to ourselves at least to visit the Reformed church I mentioned earlier, especially since we both already respect the pastor there. But I must say, I'm not getting any more optimistic about finding something we'll both like.

marriage is a vast ocean . . .

2007-10-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

Hard, but encouraging, words from "Marriage: The Great Sacrament" (a sermon delivered in the Church of St. Nicholas, Trikala, Greece, 17 January, 1971) by Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra, Mount Athos:

. . . Remember: from the moment you marry, [St. Paul] says, you will have much pain, you will suffer, and your life will be a cross, but a cross blossoming with flowers. Your marriage will have its joys, its smiles, and its beautiful things. But during the days of sunshine, remember that all the lovely flowers conceal a cross, which can emerge into your sunshine at any moment.

Life is not a party, as some people think, and after they get married take a fall from heaven to earth. Marriage is a vast ocean, and you don't know where it will wash you up. You take the person whom you've chosen with fear and trembling, and with great care, and after a year, two years, five years, you discover that he's fooled you.

It is an adulteration of marriage for us to think that it is a road to happiness, as if it were a denial of the cross. The joy of marriage is for husband and wife to put their shoulders to the wheel and together go forward on the uphill road of life. "You haven't suffered? Then you haven't loved", says a certain poet. Only those who suffer can really love. And that's why sadness is a necessary feature of marriage. "Marriage", in the words of an ancient philosopher, "is a world made beautiful by hope, and strengthened by misfortune". Just as steel is fashioned in a furnace, just so is a person proved in marriage, in the fire of difficulties. When you see your marriage from a distance, everything seems wonderful. But when you get closer, you'll see just how many difficult moments it has.

God says that "it is not good for the man to be alone" (Gen 2.18), and so he placed a companion at his side, someone to help him throughout his life, especially in his struggles of faith, because in order to keep your faith, you must suffer and endure much pain. God sends his grace to all of us. He sends it, however, when he sees that we are willing to suffer. Some people, as soon as they see obstacles, run away. They forget God and the Church. But faith, God, and the Church, are not a shirt that you take off as soon as you start to sweat.

Marriage, then, is a journey through sorrows and joys. When the sorrows seem overwhelming, then you should remember that God is with you. He will take up your cross. It was he who placed the crown of marriage on your head. But when we ask God about something, he doesn't always supply the solution right away. He leads us forward very slowly. Sometime he takes years. We have to experience pain, otherwise life would have no meaning. But be of good cheer, for Christ is suffering with you, and the Holy Spirit, "through your groanings is pleading on your behalf" (cf. Rom 8.26).

Orthodox Europe gets noticed

2007-10-12T07:28:00.000-04:00

I don't know how long this article in the Christian Science Monitor will be available, but it's good to know it's out there. It may not be of direct relevance here in America, but if the tide of religious atrophy in Europe is going to turn, it will likely involve the Orthodox. That should be relevant to all Christians.

Reformed worship

2007-10-08T16:46:00.000-04:00

After a substantial hiatus around Jenna's birth and Julie's subsequent gall bladder issues, we're gearing up to try visiting a few more churches. First on the agenda, this month, is a Lutheran church of the Missouri Synod. This particular type of Lutheran church is noted for its conservative theology, and I guess its conservative liturgy as well, though that part is changing. Someone has already warned us that he knows of Lutherans who live in Columbia but bypass the local Missouri Synod church for one in Northern Virginia, because this one just isn't traditional enough (or some such thing).

Beyond that, we plan to try something from the Reformed tradition, and just today we received a recommendation for a church in Annapolis, Christ Reformed Evangelical Church. It's too far away for us to think seriously about attending there regularly, but it's probably worth checking out anyway. The first selling point is the pastor, who filled in at Bethany for a communion service while the pastor there was sick. We both somehow liked his message, though for some different yet overlapping reasons. (Personally, I found his presentation of communion to be shockingly sacramental--so much so, that I questioned how much thought had gone into picking him for that particular service.) In addition, they place a strong emphasis on liturgical worship, which seems promising. Considering that it comes from an Evangelical perspective, the section on their Web site that explains their take on worship is worth reading.

One big apprehension I have is that it doesn't seem likely that we'd find a church similar enough close by to gain much from the visit. As I've said before, it's all well and good to find one specific congregation that seems to meet our needs, but if its denomination as a whole is repulsive or, as in this case, so small that finding another church like it is next to impossible, it may not be of much practical use. On the other hand, if we try a church like this, and it doesn't seem like it would meet our needs, it may help us to rule out a whole strand of tradition as unlikely. In any case, it's probably better to start there than to pick something blindly just because it happens to be close by. More to follow . . .

men and Orthodoxy

2007-09-30T15:43:00.000-04:00

That article I mentioned about men and Orthodoxy has been published. I don't see it yet on beliefnet, but Frederica has a copy on her blog. Maybe I should give out a prize for anyone who can identify my quote(s) :-)

reviewing my story

2007-09-27T08:33:00.000-04:00

Recently I was asked to contribute some thoughts to an article about men and Orthodoxy. There's no particular distinction in that--I was one of something like a hundred men contacted for that one article, and it's anyone's guess which quotes will make it into the final product. It's got me thinking, though, about my journey to Orthodoxy. I still have no idea how many people read this blog or who most of them are, but it's possible that some have started here too late to see my rather lengthy, multi-part account of my journey, which I posted more than a year ago, which I wrote about a year before that. The nine segments that I posted were:

Coming Home: Why I Have No Choice but to Be Orthodox

For the most part, it still seems like an accurate representation. If I were to write it over again, I'd probably emphasize certain points differently.

If you want a quick-and-dirty chronology, either so you can skip the narrative altogether or to help keep straight what happened when, here's the gist:

My Philippians 3 list:

born into an Evangelical home (1975)
active in my youth group--quiz team, Scripture memory, choir, writing, preaching, etc. (1987-93)
graduated top of my class from Bible college (1996)
graduated top of my class from seminary (1998/2000)
taught college classes in Bible, theology, and language (1998-2000)
earned an M.A. (and ABD) in Semitic languages (2003/2004)

Key Milestones:

1994--adopted a strong, four-point Calvinism
1996--Tony Badger fired from PBC for teaching against Lordship Salvation (I later adopted his view)
1997--adopted a radically biblical approach to theology; adopted Arminianism (with eternal security, not Calvinist perseverance)
1999--controversy erupted at WBC/CBS over the Openness of God (pros were mostly WBC faculty, cons were mostly CBS--I was teaching at one school and still finishing up as a student at the other)
2000--started exploring non-Evangelical hermeneutics
2001--started exploring Oriental Orthodoxy and traditional fasting
2002--started exploring Orthodox Judaism and liturgical prayer
2003--started exploring Messianic Judaism
2004--first Eastern Orthodox prayer book; first visit to St. Matthew's
2005--resumed Orthodox fasting; first visits to Holy Cross and Holy Apostles; informed Evangelical friends
2006--informed parents and in-laws; became a catechumen at Holy Cross
2007--first visit to St. Tikhon's Monastery

more Chrysostom on prayer

2007-09-26T20:35:00.000-04:00

In his fourth homily on Hannah, St. John discusses at length the practical application of frequent prayer:

Blessed David also practised [prayer], and hence said, "Seven times a day I praised you for the judgments of your righteousness." Now, if a king, a man immersed in countless concerns and beset from every quarter, beseeches God so many times a day, what excuse or pardon would we have, with so much free time on our hands, not to implore him incessantly, especially as this puts us in a position to reap such benefit? . . .

How is it possible, you ask, for a man of the world, tied to the bench, to pray three times a day and betake himself to church? It is possible and quite simple: even if heading off to church is not manageable, it is possible even for the man tied to the bench to stand there in the vestibule and pray. After all, there is not such need for words as for thoughts, for outstretched hands as for a disciplined soul, for deportment as for attitude, since Hannah herself was heard not for uttering a loud and clear cry but for calling out loudly inside in the heart: "Her voice was not audible, but the Lord hearkened to her," the text says, note. Many other people also did this in many cases, despite the officer calling out from inside, threatening, ranting and raving, while they stood in the porch making the sign of the cross and saying a few prayers in their mind, and then going in and transforming and soothing him, turning him from wild to mild. They were not prevented from praying like this by the place or the time or the absence of words. Do likewise yourself: groan deeply, recall your sins, gaze towards heaven, say in your mind, "Have mercy on me, O God," and you have completed your prayer. The one who said "Have mercy," after all, gave evidence of confession, and acknowledged their own sins: it belongs to sinners to have mercy shown. The one who said "Have mercy on me" received pardon for their faults: the one to whom mercy has been shown is not punished. The one who said "Have mercy" attained the kingdom of heaven: the one on whom God will have mercy he not only frees from sin but also judges worthy of the future goods.

Accordingly, let us not make excuses, claiming a house of prayer is not close by: if we have the right dispositions, the grace of the Spirit made us personally temples of God, and there is ease for us in every respect. Our worship, after all, is not of the kind that formerly prevailed among the Jews, which was long on appearance but short on reality. In that case, you see, the worshiper had to go up to the temple, buy a turtle-dove, get hold of wood and fire, take sword in hand, appear before the altar, and carry out many other requirements. In our case, on the other hand, it is not like that: wherever you are, you have the altar with you, the sword, and the victim, you yourself being priest and altar and victim. In other words, wherever you are, you can set up the altar, giving evidence only of an attentive will, place being no obstacle, time no hindrance; even if you do not go down on your knees, do not strike your breast or raise your hands to heaven, and merely demonstrate an ardent disposition, you have completed the whole of the prayer. It is possible for a woman with distaff in hand working at the loom to gaze towards heaven in her mind and call upon God with ardor; it is possible for a man venturing into the marketplace and walking by himself to pray with attention, and for someone else seated at the workbench sewing skins to direct his soul to the Lord; it is possible for a servant making purchases and running hither and yon, or standing in the kitchen, when there is no possibility of going to church, to pray attentively and ardently. Place is not something God is ashamed of: he looks for one thing only, a fervent mind and sober spirit. . . .

In saying this, I exhort you unceasingly to keep up the habit of visiting the churches and praying at home in tranquility, and when time allows going on your knees and stretching out your hands. If, however, we are caught up by reason of time or place with a crowd of people, let us not on that account abandon prayer, but in the fashion I mentioned to your good selves pray and beseech God in the conviction of gaining your petition nonetheless with that prayer. I said as much, not for you to applaud and marvel, but for you to practise this yourselves, night time and day time, interspersing the time of work with prayers and petitions.

Chrysostom on prayer without ceasing

2007-09-26T13:30:00.001-04:00

In St. John Chrysostom's second homily on Hannah, he writes:

But how is it that the text says that "she continued" her prayer? Surely the woman's length of prayer was short . . . . She kept saying the same thing over and over again, and did not stop spending a long time with the same words. This, at any rate, is the way Christ bade us pray in the Gospels: telling the disciples not to pray like the pagans and use a lot of words, he taught us moderation in prayer to bring out that being heard comes not from the number of words but from the alertness of mind. So how is it, you ask, that if our prayers must be brief, he told them a parable on the need to pray always, namely, the one about the widow who by the constancy of her request wore down the cruel and inhumane judge, who had fear neither of God nor of men, by the persistence of her appeal? and how is it that Paul exhorts us in the words, "Persevere in prayer," and again, "Pray without ceasing"? I mean, if we must not reach to lengthy statements, and must pray constantly, one command is at variance with the other.

It is not at variance, however--perish the thought; it is quite consistent: both Christ and Paul bade us make brief and frequent prayers at short intervals. You see, if you extend your prayers to great length without paying much attention in many cases, you would provide the devil with great security in making his approach, tripping you up and distracting your thoughts from what you are saying. If, on the other hand, you are in the habit of making frequent prayers, dividing all your time into brief intervals with your frequency, you would easily be able to keep control of yourself and recite the prayers themselves with great attention.

His argument here is quite plain and is repeated in many Orthodox sources. I'm not sure how or where it was lost somewhere between the fourth century and today's Evangelical thinking about prayer, but it bears consideration in any case.

Till We Have Faces

2007-09-19T10:22:00.000-04:00

Several years back I discovered C. S. Lewis's novel Till We Have Faces--an adaptation of a Greek myth about Psyche, who though mortal is so beautiful that she provokes the jealousy of Aphrodite. She ends up chained on a mountain as an offering to a dragon, but Eros rescues her and marries her. He will not let her see his face, but her sisters persuade her to sneak a peek while he's sleeping. She is caught and banished as a result. I never actually read the book back then, and it slipped my mind until recently, when someone referred to it in a talk I was listening to. I decided to get it from the library so I could finally read it.

It's a good story, all in all, and an interesting twist on the myth. What we get is the "back story" from the perspective of the sister (there are two sisters, but only one visits Psyche and persuades her to disobey her husband). She writes in protest against the gods, to set the record straight and present her complaints about their manipulation. We discover late in the book her specific motivation--that years after the key events take place, she encounters a temple to Psyche and is told the story in a different form. Essentially, the priest at the temple presents the classical version of the myth, but her own recollection of things is more complicated. One major difference is that the palace in which Psyche lives is invisible to outside observers. Aside from one brief glimpse at night, her sister cannot see it, or Psyche's clothes, but what appears to be a girl in rags, living (though living well enough) in the woods. She struggles with various doubts and theories about what is going on, until she finally determines to force Psyche by whatever means necessary to look at her husband and see whether he is actually a god.

There is a teacher in the story--a Greek slave--who speaks for secularism (he seems to be a stoic, but Lewis is, after all, writing for a modern audience), while the barbarian natives have a more ingrained trust in the supernatural. Neither contingent sees the truth, however, so for instance when the sister is processing Psyche's situation, one side says the "husband" can only be a criminal vagabond of the mountains, while the other allows that he is probably a demon or monster.

Probably the most poignant part of the story for me comes when the two sisters meet after Psyche is sacrificed. The joy that she is alive gives way to confusion when she speaks of a palace that should be present but isn't. To Psyche it is real and present and substantial; to her sister it is invisible and most likely a hallucination. There is a strong echo here of the dwarfs at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia. In the final chapters of the last book, when that world reaches its end, and those who refuse to side with the Antichrist figure are cast into a stable to be killed, most find the door to be a portal into heaven. A few, however, experience it as merely the entrance to a dank stable and act accordingly. The others can see them as if they were in heaven with everyone else, but as far as they are concerned, it's dark, and small, and smells and feels exactly like a stable should. A group of dwarfs who chose in the end to take no one's side falls into this latter category, and they sit in a tight circle, oblivious to the world around them. No matter what the others try, they cannot convince them that they are anywhere but a stable.

In Narnia, it's a pretty clear image of the notion that Lewis expresses elsewhere--that people who end up in hell are there by their own choosing, not even in some special place per se, but experiencing the presence and love of God through the darkness of their own hearts. This is a fully Orthodox notion--the light that the blessed will experience will be fire to the damned, only because they choose to experience God's love as hatred. Here, the interaction is very much the same, but without the kind of finality you get in the other story. What struck me when I read it was not so much the connection with Narnia, but with my own situation. Sometimes when I'm trying to communicate with Julie about Orthodoxy it feels like Psyche trying to tell her sister about the palace. To her, it is there, it is real and plain as anything, and she need only take it in--but to her sister, it is totally invisible and can only have some dark explanation (whether natural or supernatural).

In the same way, what seems so real and meaningful to me about Orthodoxy (I can only imagine) seems half-baked, if not downright insane to Julie. It's a desperate moment when you realize the other person can't see what seems so plain to you. You realize that the things that seem most obvious are that much harder to explain to those who can't see them, much less convince them that they're there. At the same time, you can't help but feel sympathy toward the sister in the story, who for all that she can see has no good reason to accept Psyche's story. (Except, of course, that she was formerly a very honest and very real person, who was not at all likely to make up such things--but there is no Professor Kirk in this tale to point that out.) Likewise, I feel sympathy for Julie and other Evangelicals who react the same way. There's simply no room in their world for all this mystical hocus-pocus. I didn't get here by "figuring it out" or by forcing my will to accept it. Only God knows what it really took to open my eyes so I could see, and only he knows what it will take for them.

The real problem is if someone does see and still refuses to believe. In the story, after Psyche glimpses the god and is banished, he appears briefly to her sister as well, and in no uncertain terms. From that point on, her continued resistance is of a different sort, because now she knows and has no excuse. It seems to me that something similar happens with Orthodoxy. For most Evangelicals, the big hurdle they'll never even bother to clear is recognizing Orthodoxy for what it is. Many never really encounter it at all; others might have some exposure but see it through the lenses of what they already know and believe and decide it doesn't measure up. It's when the glasses come off, and they see Orthodoxy in truth that the decision to reject it becomes particularly problematic. At that point, they've moved from not knowing to not wanting what they do know. Certainly such a response is possible, but if the Spirit has truly been at work in their lives, can it be common? I hope not.

can we ever make them happy?

2007-09-12T11:44:00.000-04:00

I want to start out by clarifying the tone of my title here. It's not an exasperated exclamation, but a thoughtful and honest inquiry. I don't know the answer, but it bears considering. That said, what am I talking about?

Today I ran across a talk given by Hieromonk Damascene about a year ago, on the subject of Orthodox Evangelism. Whenever I encounter such things, I'm initially excited about the prospect of passing them along to Evangelical friends, or at least taking away useful tidbits for possible discussion. In most cases, however, as in this one, initial excitement gives way to frustration. I don't mean to blame Fr. Damascene here, or any other writer or speaker whose materials have provoked this kind of response. There's nothing they're doing wrong. It's just that I know how some of what they say will be received, and how it will tend to color the reception of their overall message.

I wrote last year about how it seems that Evangelicals react negatively to Orthodoxy in opposite directions, when they judge its view of salvation as both too legalistic and too universalist. Here, it seems like there's something similar at work. On one hand, they accuse Orthodoxy of ignoring the Great Commission. And certainly, Orthodoxy has had its share of problems in this area. Although there are plenty of historical examples one can point to, where Orthodox saints have brought the Gospel to unreached peoples, in recent history they seem to be few and far between. Although present trends in America and some other places are more favorable, with Orthodoxy experiencing significant growth, the reaction is often that they are growing mostly by taking in disgruntled Protestants. (This is not altogether accurate or fair, but there is a certain amount of truth. Case in point--I recently listened to an interview with the editors of Death to the World, an Orthodox punk zine, who set up shop at Christian music festivals, where presumably most of the target audience already has some connection with Christianity.) There is important stuff happening, to be sure, but it still looks rather inward focused by comparison with what a lot of Evangelicals are used to.

On the other hand, when you do find someone promoting evangelism with an Orthodox audience, as in Fr. Damascene's talk, there is another problem for Evangelicals. To motivate Orthodox to take the Great Commission seriously, he stresses that it is not enough for Christianity to be spread around the world--it must be Orthodox Christianity. So (Evangelicals reply), now Orthodoxy has the only true Gospel, and what the rest of us are doing is worthless! Well (we say), which do you want? First you don't think we get what a pressing need there is to go out and preach the Gospel, then when we do, you think we overestimate the message that we uniquely have for the world.

I think I know the Evangelical response--we don't want you to evangelize on your own terms, but to join us in evangelizing on ours. At least, that would be the honest response. Evangelicals obviously aren't going to accept Orthodoxy's claim to be the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church. For one thing, if there is such a thing, it can only be the invisible Church comprising all believers everywhere. For another, if they accepted the Orthodox view on this point, they would themselves become Orthodox--there would be no other rational response they could give. So they'll always see a claim to be the one, unique Church as exclusivistic. For Orthodox to evangelize properly (they would assume), they must first straighten out their ecclesiology and enter the arena of evangelism as part of the Protestant team. If Orthodoxy does not proactively evangelize, it will be judged as ignoring the Great Commission; if it tries to evangelize on its own terms, it will be perhaps worse yet--it will be working against the Evangelical effort.

So, to return to my question, can we ever make them happy? Is there a way for Orthodox as Orthodox to evangelize the lost without antagonizing Evangelicals? Should we bother trying? One thing that I think needs to be communicated as clearly as possible is that we're not in the business of proselytizing Evangelicals or other Christians. We believe Orthodoxy is the true Church, but we don't generally go around telling people they need to leave their churches or face the wrath of God. For one thing, we don't believe that per se--mostly we're agnostic about what will happen if they stay where they are. For another, we just don't see that kind of thing as our mission. A lot of Evangelicals have come into the Orthodox Church, but for the most part, they've done it on their own initiative. If anything, Orthodox have probably been less helpful than they could have been to these Evangelical seekers.

Holding to the idea of the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church may sound like "us vs. them," but that's not how we treat it. This may sound offensive, but in a sense, there can be no "us vs. them," because there is no "them." It's never "our church vs. your church"--there is only one Church. We think we're in, and we think everyone else should be too. But whether they are or aren't is a matter of individual standing--there's no other team "out there" for us to play against. (Not a Christian one, anyway.)

I could go on with this, but I think I've already dug myself a deep enough hole, with no hope of climbing out. Maybe I'm trying too hard for something that doesn't exist. Maybe this is one of those things that you only get once you're in and can see it from a place of faith. Maybe I'm not the one they should be listening to, anyway.

more from the Gulag Archipelago

2007-09-11T12:18:00.000-04:00

In the lengthy excerpt that follows, Solzhenitsyn recounts two trials related to the famine in the Volga region after the Russian Civil War. The question of spending money to make worship beautiful vs. giving it to help the poor is a long-standing one; the agenda of the Soviet government, however, seems to have gone far beyond any legitimate critique in that area, to manipulate the circumstances as an excuse to attack the Church:

[342] In the two trials following we will take leave of our favorite supreme accuser for a while: he is occupied with his preparations for the major trial of the SR's. This spectacular trial aroused a great deal of emotion in Europe beforehand, and the People's Commissariat of Justice was suddenly taken aback: after all, we had been trying people for four years without any code, neither a new one nor an old one. And in all probability Krylenko himself was concerned about the code too. Everything had to be neatly tied up ahead of time.

The coming church trials were internal. They didn't interest progressive Europe. And they could be conducted without a code. We have already had an opportunity to observe that the separation of church and state was so construed by the state that the churches themselves and everything that hung in them, was installed in them and painted in them, belonged to the state, and the only church remaining was that church which, in accordance with the Scriptures, lay within the heart. And in 1918, when political victory seemed to have been attained faster and more easily than had been expected, they had pressed right on to confiscate church property. However, this leap had aroused too fierce a wave of popular indignation. In the heat of the Civil War, it was not very intelligent to create, in addition, an internal front against the believers. And it proved necessary to postpone for the time being the dialogue between the Communists and the Christians.

At the end of the Civil War, and as its natural consequence, an unprecedented famine developed in the Volga area. They give it only two lines in the official histories because it doesn't add a very ornamental touch to the wreaths of the victors in that war. But the famine existed nonetheless--to the point of cannibalism, to the point at which parents ate their own children--such a famine as even Russia had never known, even in the Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century. (Because at that time, as the historians testify, unthreshed ricks of grain survived intact [343] beneath the snow and ice for several years.) Just one film about famine might throw a new light on everything we saw and everything we know about the Revolution and the Civil War. But there are no films and no novels and no statistical research--the effort is to forget it. It does not embellish. Besides, we have come to blame the kulaks as the cause of every famine--and just who were the kulaks in the midst of such collective death? V. G. Korolenko, in his Letters to Lunacharsky (which, despite Lunacharsky's promise, were never officially published in the Soviet Union), explains to us Russia's total, epidemic descent into famine and destitution. It was the result of productivity having been reduced to zero (the working hands were all carrying guns) and the result, also, of the peasants' utter lack of trust and hope that even the smallest part of the harvest might be left for them. Yes, and someday someone will also count up those many carloads of food supplies rolling on and on for many, many months to Imperial Germany, under the terms of the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk--from a Russia which had been deprived of a protesting voice, from the very provinces where famine would strike--so that Germany could fight to the end in the West.

There was a direct, immediate chain of cause and effect. The Volga peasants had to eat their children because we were so impatient about putting up with the Constituent Assembly.

But political genius lies in extracting success even from the people's ruin. A brilliant idea was born: after all, three billiard balls can be pocketed with one shot. So now let the priests feed the Volga region! They are Christians. They are generous!
If they refuse, we will blame the whole famine on them and destroy the church.
If they agree, we will clean out the churches.
In either case, we will replenish our stocks of foreign exchange and precious metals.
Yes, and the idea was probably inspired by the actions of the church itself. As Patriarch Tikhon himself had testified, back in August, 1921, at the beginning of the famine, the church had [344] created diocesan and all-Russian committees for aid to the starving and had begun to collect funds. But to have permitted any direct help to go straight from the church into the mouths of those who were starving would have undermined the dictatorship of the proletariat. The committees were banned, and the funds they had collected were confiscated and turned over to the state treasury. The Patriarch had also appealed to the Pope in Rome and to the Archbishop of Canterbury for assistance--but he was rebuked for this, too, on the grounds that only the Soviet authorities had the right to enter into discussions with foreigners. Yes, indeed. And what was there to be alarmed about? The newspapers wrote that the government itself had all the necessary means to cope with the famine.

Meanwhile, in the Volga region they were eating grass, the soles of shoes, and gnawing at door jambs. And, finally, in December, 1921, Pomgol--the State Commission for Famine Relief--proposed that the churches help the starving by donating church valuables--not all, but those not required for liturgical rites. The Patriarch agreed. Pomgol issued a directive: all gifts must be strictly voluntary! On Febraury 19, 1922, the Patriarch issued a pastoral letter permitting the parish councils to make gifts of objects that did not have liturgical and ritual significance.

And in this way matters could again have simply degenerated into a compromise that would have frustrated the will of the proletariat, just as it once had been by the Constituent Assembly, and still was in all the chatterbox European parliaments.

The thought came in a stroke of lightning! The thought came--and a decree followed! A decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on February 26: all valuables were to be requisitioned from the churches--for the starving!

The Patriarch wrote to Kalinin, who did not reply. Then on February 28 the Patriarch issued a new, fateful pastoral letter: from the church's point of view such a measure is sacrilege, and we cannot approve the requisition.

From the distance of a half-century, it is easy to reproach the Patriarch. Of course, the leaders of the Christian church ought not to have been distracted by wondering whether other resources might not be available to the Soviet government, and who it was who had driven the Volga to famine. They ought not to have clung to those treasures, since the possibility of a new fortress of faith arising--if it existed at all--did not depend on them. But one has also to picture the situation of that unfortunate Patriarch, not elected to his post until after the October Revolution, who had for a few short years led a church that was always persecuted, restricted, under fire, and whose preservation had been entrusted to him.

But right then and there a sure-fire campaign of persecution began in the papers, directed against the Patriarch and high church authorities who were strangling the Volga region with the bony hand of famine. And the more firmly the Patriarch clung to his position, the weaker it became. In March a movement to relinquish the valuables, to come to an agreement with the government, began even among the clergy, Their still undispelled qualms were expressed to Kalinin by Bishop Antonin Grunovsky, a member of the Central Committee of Pomgol: "The believers fear that the church valuables may be used for other purposes, more limited and alien to their hearts." (Knowing the general principles of our Progressive Doctrine, the experienced reader will agree that this was indeed very probable. After all, the Comintern's needs
and those of the East in the course of being liberated were no less acute than those of the Volga.)

The Petrograd Metropolitan, Veniamin, was similarly impelled by a mood of trust: "This belongs to God and we will give all of it by ourselves." But forced requisitions were wrong. Let the sacrifice be of our own free will. He, too, wanted verification by the clergy and the believers: to watch over the church valuables up to the very moment when they were transformed into bread for the starving. And in all this be was tormented lest he violate the censuring will of the Patriarch.

In Petrograd things seemed to be working out peacefully. The atmosphere at the session of the Petrograd Pomgol on March 5, 1922, was even joyful, according to the testimony of an eyewitness. Veniamin announced: "The Orthodox Church is prepared to give everything to help the starving." It saw sacrilege only in forced requisition. But in that case requisition was unnecessary! Kanatchikov, Chairman of the Petrograd Pomgol, gave his assurances that this would produce a favorable attitude toward the church on the part of the Soviet government. (Not [346] very likely, that!) In a burst of good feeling, everyone stood up. The Metropolitan said: "The heaviest burden is division and enmity. But the time will come when the Russian people will unite. I myself, at the head of the worshipers, will remove the cover [of precious metals and precious stones] from the ikon of the Holy Virgin of Kazan. I will shed sweet tears on it and give it away." He gave his blessing to the Bolshevik members of Pomgol and they saw him to the door with bared heads. The newspaper Petrogradskaya Pravda, in its issues of March 8, 9, and 10, confirmed the peaceful, successful outcome of the talks, and spoke favorably of the Metropolitan. "In Smolny they agreed that the church vessels and ikon coverings would be melted down into ingots in the presence of the believers."

Again things were getting fouled up with some kind of compromise! The noxious fumes of Christianity were poisoning the revolutionary will. That kind of unity and that way of handing over the valuables were not what the starving people of the Volga needed! The spineless membership of the Petrograd Pomgol was changed. The newspapers began to howl about the "evil pastors" and "princes of the church," and the representatives of the church were told: "We don't need your donations! And there won't be any negotiations with you! Everything belongs to the government--and the government will take whatever it considers necessary."

And so forcible requisitions, accompanied by strife, began in Petrograd, as they did everywhere else.

And this provided the legal basis for initiating trials of the clergy.

H. The Moscow Church Trial--April 26-May 7, 1922

This took place in the Polytechnic Museum. The court was the Moscow Revtribunal, under Presiding Judge Bek; the prosecutors were Lunin and Longinov. There were seventeen defendants, including archpriests and laymen, accused of disseminating the Patriarch's proclamation. This charge was more important than [347] the question of surrendering, or not surrendering, church valuables. Archpriest A. N. Zaozersky had surrendered all the valuables in his own church, but he defended in principle the Patriarch's appeal regarding forced requisition as sacrilege, and he became the central personage in the trial--and would shortly be shot. (All of which went to prove that what was important was not to feed the starving but to make use of a convenient opportunity to break the back of the church.)

On May 5 Patriarch Tikhon was summoned to the tribunal as a witness. Even though the public was represented only by a carefully selected audience (1922, in this respect, differing little from 1937 and 1968), nonetheless the stamp of Old Russia was still so deep, and the Soviet stamp was still so superficial, that on the Patriarch's entrance more than half of those present rose to receive his blessing.

Tikhon took on himself the entire blame for writing and disseminating his appeal. The presiding judge of the tribunal tried to elicit a difTerent line of testimony from him: "But it isn't possible! Did you really write it in your own hand? All the lines? You probably just signed it. And who actually wrote it? And who were your advisers?" and then: "Why did you mention in the appeal the persecution to which the newspapers are subjecting you?' [After all, they are persecuting you and why should we hear about it?] What did you want to express?"

The Patriarch: "That is something you will have to ask the people who started the persecution: What objectives were they pursuing?"

The Presiding Judge: "But that after all has nothing to do with religion!"

The Patriarch: "It has historical significance."

The Presiding Judge: "Referring to the fact that the decree was published while you were in the midst of talks with Pomgol, you used the expression, behind your back?"

The Patriarch: "Yes."

Presiding Judge: "You therefore consider that the Soviet government acted incorrectly?"

A crushing argument! It will be repeated a million times more in the nighttime oflices of interrogators! And we will never answer as simply and straightforwardly as:

The Patriarch: "Yes."

[348] The Presiding Judge: "Do you consider the state's laws obligatory or not?"

The Patriarch: "Yes, I recognize them, to the extent that they do not contradict the rules of piety."

(Oh, if only everyone had answered just that way! Our whole history would have been different.)

A debate about church law followed. The Patriarch explained that if the church itself surrendered its valuables, it was not sacrilege. But if they were taken away against the church's will, it was. His appeal had not prohibited giving the valuables at all, but had only declared that seizing them against the will of the church was to be condemned.

(But that's what we wanted--expropriation against the will of the church!)

Comrade Bek, the presiding judge, was astounded: "Which in the last analysis is more important to you--the laws of the church or the point of view of the Soviet government?"

(The expected reply: "The Soviet government.")

"Very well; so it was sacrilege according to the laws of the church," exclaimed the accuser, "but what was it from the point of view of mercy?"

(For the first and last time--for another fifty years--that banal word mercy was spoken before a tribunal.)

Then there was a philological analysis of the word "svyatotatstvo," meaning "sacrilege," derived from "svyato," meaning "holy," and "tat," meaning "thief."

The Accuser: "So that means that we, the representatives of the Soviet government, are thieves of holy things?"

(A prolonged uproar in the hall. A recess. The bailiffs at work.)

The Accuser: "So you call the representatives of the Soviet government, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, thieves?"

The Patriarch: "I am citing only church law."

Then there is a discussion of the term "blasphemy." While they were requisitioning the valuables from the church of St. Basil the Great of Caesarea, the ikon cover would not fit into a box, and at that point they trampled it with their feet. But the Patriarch himself had not been present.

[349] The Accuser: "How do you know that? Give us the name of the priest who told you that. [And we will arrest him immediately!]"

The Patriarch does not give the name.

That means it was a lie!

The Accuser presses on triumphantly: "No, who spread that repulsive slander?"

The Presiding Judge: "Give us the names of those who trampled the ikon cover! [One can assume that after doing it they left their visiting cards!] Otherwise the tribunal cannot believe you!"

The Patriarch cannot name them.

The Presiding Judge: "That means you have made an unsubstantiated assertion."

It still remained to be proved that the Patriarch wanted to overthrow the Soviet government. And here is how it was proved: "Propaganda is an attempt to prepare a mood preliminary to preparing a revolt in the future."

The tribunal ordered criminal charges to be brought against the Patriarch.

On May 7 sentence was pronounced: of the seventeen defendants, eleven were to be shot. (They actually shot five.)

As Krylenko said: "We didn't come here just to crack jokes."

One week later the Patriarch was removed from office and arrested. (But this was not the very end. For the time being he was taken to the Donskoi Monastery and kept there in strict incarceration, so that the believers would grow accustomed to his absence. Remember how just a short while before Krylenko had been astonished: what danger could possibly threaten the Patriarch? Truly, when the danger really does come, there's no help for it, either in alarm bells or in telephone calls.)

Two weeks after that, the Metropolitan Veniamin was arrested in Petrograd. He had not been a high official of the church before the Revolution. Nor had he even been appointed, like almost all Metropolitans. In the spring of 1917, for the first time since the days of ancient Novgorod the Great, they had elected a Metropolitan in Moscow and in Petrograd. A gentle, simple, easily accessible man, a frequent visitor in factories and mills, popular with the people and with the lower clergy, Veniamin had been [350] elected by their votes. Not understanding the times, he had seen as his task the liberation of the church from politics "because it had suffered much from politics in the past." This was the Metropolitan who was tried in:

I. The Petrograd Church Trial--June 9-July 5, 1922

The defendants, charged with resisting the requisition of church valuables, numbered several dozen in all, including a professor of theology and church law, archimandrites, priests, and laymen. Semyonov, the presiding judge of the tribunal, was twenty-five years old and, according to rumor, had formerly been a baker. The chief accuser was a member of the collegium of the People's Commissariat of Justice, P. A. Krasikov--a man of Lenin's age and a friend of Lenin when he was in exile in the Krasnoyarsk region and, later on, in emigration as well. Vladimir I1yich used to enjoy hearing him play the violin.

Out on Nevsky Prospekt, and at the Nevsky turn-off, a dense crowd waited every day of the trial, and when the Metropolitan was driven past, many of them knelt down and sang: "Save, O Lord, thy people!" (It goes without saying that they arrested overzealous believers right on the street and in the court building also.) Most of the spectators in the court were Red Army men, but even they rose every time the Metropolitan entered in his white ecclesiastical hood. Yet the accuser and the tribunal called him an enemy of the people. Let us note that this term already existed.

From trial to trial, things closed in on the defense lawyers, and their humiliating predicament was already very apparent. Krylenko tells us nothing about this, but the gap is closed by an eye-witness. The tribunal roared out a threat to arrest Bobrishchev-Pushkin himself--the principal defense lawyer--and this was already so in accord with the spirit of the times, and the threat was so real that Bobrishchev-Pushkin made haste to hand over his gold watch and his billfold to lawyer Gurovich. And right then and there the tribunal actually ordered the imprisonment of a witness, Professor Yegorov, because of his testimony on behalf of the Metropolitan. As it turned out, Yegorov was quite prepared for this. He had a thick briefcase with him in which he had packed food, underwear, and even a small blanket.

[351] The reader can observe that the court was gradually assuming forms familiar to us.

Metropolitan Veniamin was accused of entering, with evil intent, into an agreement with . . . the Soviet government, no less, and thereby obtaining a relaxation of the decree on the requisition of valuables. It was charged that his appeal to Pomgol had been maliciously disseminated among the people, (Samizdat!--self-publication!) And he had also acted in concert with the world bourgeoisie.

Priest Krasnitsky, one of the principal "Living Church" schismatics, and GPU collaborator, testified that the priests had conspired to provoke a revolt against the Soviet government on the grounds of famine.

The only witnesses heard were those of the prosecution. Defense witnesses were not permitted to testify. (Oh, how familiar it all is! More and more!)

Accuser Smirnov demanded "sixteen heads." Accuser Krasikov cried out: "The whole Orthodox Church is a subversive organization. Properly speaking, the entire church ought to be put in prison."

(This was a very realistic program. Soon it was almost realized. And it was a good basis for a dialogue.)

Let us make use of a rather rare opportunity to cite several sentences that have been preserved from the speech of S. Y. Gurovich, who was the Metropolitan's defense attorney.

"There are no proofs of guilt. There are no facts. There is not even an indictment. . . . What will history say? [Oh, he certainly had discovered how to frighten them! History will forget and say nothing!] The requisition of church valuables in Petrograd took place in a complete calm, but here the Petrograd clergy is on the defendants' bench, and somebody's hands keep pushing them toward death. The basic princip:e which you stress is the good of the Soviet government. But do not forget that the church will be nourished by the blood of martyrs. [Not in the Soviet Union, though!] There is nothing more to be said, but it is hard to stop talking. While the debate lasts, the defendants are alive. When the debate comes to an end, life will end too."

The tribunal condemned ten of them to death. They waited more than a month for their execution, until the trial of the SR's [352] had ended. (It was as though they had processed them in order to shoot them at the same time as the SR's.) And after that, VTsIK, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, pardoned six of them. And four of them--the Metropolitan Veniamin; the Archimandrite Sergius, a former member of the State Duma; Professor of Law Y. P. Novitsky; and the barrister Kovsharov--were
shot on the night of August 12-13.

We insistently urge our readers not to forget the principle of provincial multiplicity. Where two church trials were held in Moscow and Petrograd, there were twenty-two in the provinces.

a few random thoughts on Luther

2007-09-11T09:05:00.000-04:00

. . . the 2003 movie, that is. Julie put it in our Netflix queue at some point, and we received it about seven weeks ago. I was interested in seeing it, but we had the chaos of her gall bladder issues to deal with; and aside from that, our evening schedule has been unpredictable, adjusting here and there to fit whenever Jenna goes to sleep. Then the other day Julie mentioned that she didn't really want to watch it, so we wouldn't get into a debate over the contents. Fair enough. I decided to watch it last night without her before sending it back.

In general, I think it's a decent movie. I'm not going to say much more than that about the artistic or technical aspects, except that I think Doc Oc (Alfred Molina) as Tetzel was a great choice :-) I wonder a bit about the portrayal of Luther himself. It was done well, but I'm not sure it quite captured his personality. I guess I'd always thought of him as having a stronger personality, which I guess is a polite way of saying, I would have expected him to be a bit louder and more obnoxious. Maybe it's just a stereotype, half-inspired by his appearance (he looks stouter in portraits than in the film); in any case, he comes across mostly as a meek, quiet person, with occasional controlled outbursts. We do see some rather hysterical private arguments with the devil, but even those seem a bit off. It's hard to put my finger on the exact contrast with what I was expecting. He sometimes comes across as mentally imbalanced, but perhaps not violent enough. (I don't think they included the episode where he throws an inkwell at the devil.)

The presentation of the conflict is about as good as I could have expected. In the scene where he crawls up the steps in Rome (I forget which building it is), it seems to me that the others around him exhibit heartfelt piety; Luther himself is mostly distracted by the commercialism of the clergy and the street vendors. There is a wide array of Catholics portrayed--opportunist clergy and monarchs, charismatic hucksters, those who follow Luther, and others devoutly sympathetic but nonetheless maintaining their loyalties. Luther is clearly the hero of the story, but at the same time he is by no means perfect. His words and subsequent absence spark peasant revolts, while his return and condemnation of their actions spark subsequent slaughter at the hands of the princes. In this, you get an impression of Luther as a reluctant leader, who comes back to prominence to straighten out the distortion of his teachings that happens in his absence. I'm not sure this sequence was intended to communicate what I got out of it--that as much as he talked about people reading and interpreting for themselves, it really did end up requiring strong leadership to keep things from getting out of hand.

From an Orthodox perspective, the movie seems to have captured most of the conceptual issues. Luther begins by addressing himself to an overly legalistic, overly commercialized expression of Christian tradition, not practiced to the same degree throughout all the Western Church, but problematically applied at the top. He finds the answer by appealing to Scripture alone, but his teachings are easily carried by others far beyond what even he intended. This foreshadows the fundamental weakness and the future trend of Protestant theology, in that it lacks sufficient controls to restrain every theological whim. The political dynamics of Western Europe at the time play a pivotal role in the success of the Reformation, as princes are pitted against pope and emperor. Eastern Christianity gets the passing reference that it got in fact during the Reformation--mostly as an example of non-Roman Christians who must show that grace exists outside the Church.

The Gulag Archipelago

2007-09-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

At some point this summer, I picked up a copy of Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (New York: Harper & Row, 1973) at a yard sale. This exposé of Soviet oppression, compiled from the author's own experiences and testimonies of many others, has been popular in the West; but perhaps we have failed to identify with the special suffering of the Russian Church. For those who don't have time to wade through its intimidating 600 pp., here are some key passages about the Communist attack on Orthodox believers (page numbers are in brackets):

[36] In the spring of 1922 the Extraordinary Commission for Struggle Against Counterrevolution, Sabotage, and Speculation, the Cheka, recently renamed the GPU, decided to intervene in church affairs. It was called on to carry out a "church revolution"--to remove the existing leadership and replace it with one which would have only one ear turned to heaven and the other to the Lubyanka. The so-called "Living Church" people seemed to go along with this plan, but without outside help they could not gain control of the church apparatus. For this reason, the Patriarch Tikhon was arrested and two resounding trials were held, followed by the execution in Moscow of those who had publicized the Patriarch's appeal and, in Petrograd, of the Metropolitan Veniamin, who had attempted to hinder the transfer of ecclesiastical power to the "Living Church" group. Here and there in the provincial centers and even further down in the [37] administrative districts, metropolitans and bishops were arrested, and, as always, in the wake of the big fish, followed shoals of smaller fry: archpriests, monks, and deacons. These arrests were not even reported in the press. They also arrested those who refused to swear to support the "Living Church" "renewal" movement.

Men of religion were an inevitable part of every annual "catch," and their silver locks gleamed in every cell and in every prisoner transport en route to the Solovetsky Islands.

From the early twenties on, arrests were also made among groups of theosophists, mystics, spiritualists. . . . Also, religious societies and philosophers . . . . The so-called "Eastern Catholics" . . . . And, of course, ordinary Roman Catholics--Polish Catholic priests, etc.--where arrested, too, as part of the normal course of events.

However, the root destruction of religion in the country, which throughout the twenties and thirties was one of the most important goals of the GPU-NKVD, could be realized only by mass arrests of Orthodox believers. MOnks and nuns, whose black habits had been a distinctive feature of Old Russian life, were intensively rounded up on every hand, placed under arrest, and sent into exile. They arrested and sentenced active laymen. The circles kept getting bigger, as they raked in ordinary believers as well, old people, and particularly women, who were the most stubborn believers of all and who, for many long years to come, would be called "nuns" in transit prisons and in camps.

True, they were supposedly being arrested and tried not for their actual faith but for openly declaring their convictions and for bringing up their children in the same spirit. As Tanya Khodkevich wrote:

You can pray freely
But just so God alone can hear.

(She received a ten-year sentence for these verses.) A person convinced that he possessed spiritual truth was required to conceal it from his own children! In the twenties the religious education of [38] children was classified as a political crime under Article 58-10 of the Code--in other words, counterrevolutionary propaganda! True, one was still permitted to renounce one's religion at one's trial: it didn't often happen but it nonetheless did happen that the father would renounce his religion and remain at home to raise the children while the mother went to the Solovetsky Islands. (Throughout all those years women manifested great firmness in their faith.) All persons convicted of religious activity received tenners, the longest term then given.

(In those years, particularly in 1927, in purging the big cities for the pure society that was coming into being, they sent prostitutes to the Solovetsky Islands along with the "nuns." Those lovers of a sinful earthly life were given three-year sentences under a more lenient article of the Code. . . . Religious prisoners, however, were prohibited from ever returning to their children and their home areas.) . . .

[50] Religious believers, of course, were being arrested uninterruptedly. (There were, nonetheless, certain special dates and peak periods. There was a "night of struggle against religion" in Leningrad on Christmas Eve, 1929, when they arrested a large part of the religious intelligentsia and held them--not just until morning either. And that was certainly no "Christmas tale." [51] Then in February, 1932, again in Leningrad, many churches were closed simultaneously, while, at the same time, large-scale arrests were made among the clergy. And there are still more dates and places, but they haven't been reported to us by anyone.) . . .

[59] There were once again believers, who this time were unwilling to work on Sundays. (They had introduced the five- and the six-day week.) And there were collective farmers sent up for sabotage because they refused to work on religious feast days, as had been their custom in the era of individual farms.

And, always, there were those who refused to become NKVD informers. (Among them were priests who refused to violate the secrecy of the confessional, for the Organs had very quickly discovered how useful it was to learn the content of confessions--the only use they found for religion.) . . .

[86] (In fairness we must not forget the brief reverse wave of priests in 1947. Yes, a miracle! For the first time in thirty years they freed priests! They didn't actually go about seeking them out in camps, but whenever a priest was known to people in freedom, and whenever a name and exact location could be provided, the individual priests in question were sent out to freedom in order to strengthen the church, which at that time was being revived.) . . .

[131] N. Stolyarova recalls an old woman who was her neighbor on the Butyrki bunks in 1937. They kept on interrogating her every night. Two years earlier, a former Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church, who had escaped from exile, had spent a night at her home on his way through Moscow. "But he wasn't the former Metropolitan, he was the Metropolitan! Truly, I was worthy of receiving him." "All right then. To whom did he go when he left Moscow?" "I know, but I won't tell you!" (The Metropolitan had escaped to Finland via an underground railroad of believers.) At first the interrogators took turns, and then they went after her in groups. They shook their fists in the little old woman's face, and she replied: "There is nothing you can do with me even if you cut me into pieces. After all, you are afraid of your bosses, and you are afraid of each other, and you are even afraid of killing me." (They would lose contact with the underground railroad.) "But I am not afraid of anything. I would be glad to be judged by God right this minute." . . .

[322] This case, in Krylenko's opinion, is going to have a "suitable place in the annals of the Russian Revolution." Right there in the annals, indeed! It took one day to wring Kosyrev's neck, but in this case they dragged things out for five whole days.

The principal defendants were: A. D. Samarin (a famous man in Russia, the former chief procurator of the Synod; a man who had tried to liberate the church from the Tsar's yoke, an enemy of Rasputin whom Rasputin had forced out of office); Kuznetsov, Professor of Church Law at Moscow University; the Moscow archpriests Uspensky and Tsvetkov. (The accuser himself had this to say about Tsvetkov: "An important public figure, perhaps the best that the clergy could produce, a philanthropist.")

Their guilt lay in creating the "Moscow Council of United Parishes," which had in turn recruited, from among believers forty to eighty years old, a voluntary guard for the Patriarch (unarmed, of course), which had set up permanent day and night watches in his residence, who were charged with the responsibility, in the event of danger from the authorities to the Patriarch, of assembling the people by ringing the church alarm bells and by telephone, so that a whole crowd might follow wherever the Patriarch might be taken and beg--and there's your counterrevolution for you!--the Council of People's Commissars to release him!

What an ancient Russian--Holy Russian--scheme! To assemble the people by ringing the alarm bells . . . and proceed in a crowd with a petition!

[323] And the accuser was astonished. What danger threatened the Patriarch? Why had plans been made to defend him?

Well, of course, it was really no more than the fact that the Cheka had for two years been conducting extrajudicial reprisals against undesirables, the fact that only a short while before four Red Army men in Kiev had killed the Metropolitan, the fact that the Patriarch's "case had already been worked up and completed, and all that remained was to bring it before the Revtribunal," and "it was only out of concern for the broad masses of workers and peasants, still under the influence of clerical propaganda, that we have left these, our class enemies, alone for the time being." How could Orthodox believers possibly be alarmed on the Patriarch's account? During those two years Patriarch Tikhon had refused to keep silent. He had sent messages to the People's Commissars, to the clergy, and to his flock. His messages were not accepted by the printers but were copied on typewriters (the first samizdat). They exposed the annihilation of the innocents, the ruin of the country. How, therefore, could anyone really be concerned for the Patriarch's life?

A second charge was brought against the defendants. Throughout the country, a census and requisition of church property was taking place (this was in addition to the closing of monasteries and the expropriation of church lands and properties; in question here were liturgical vessels, cups, and candelabra). And the Council of Parishes had disseminated an appeal to believers to resist the requisition, sounding the alarm on the church bells. (And that was natural, after all! That, after all, was how they had defended the churches against the Tatars too!)

And the third charge against them was their incessant, impudent dispatching of petitions to the Council of People's Commissars for relief from the desecration of the churches by local authorities, from crude blasphemy and violations of the law which guaranteed freedom of conscience. Even though no action was taken on these petitions (according to the testimony of Bonch-Bruyevich, administrative officer of the Council of People's Commissars), they had discredited the local authorities.

Taking into consideration all the violations committed by these defendants, what punishment could the accuser possibly demand [324] for these awful crimes? Will not the reader's revolutionary conscience prompt the answer? To be shot, of course. And that is just what, Krylenko did demand--for Samarin and Kuznetsov.

But while they were fussing around with these damned legal formalities, and listening to too many long speeches from too many bourgeois lawyers (speeches which "for technical reasons" we will not cite here), it turned out that capital punishment had been . . . abolished! What a fix! It just couldn't be! What had happened? It developed that Dzerzhinsky had issued this order to the Cheka (the Cheka, without capital punishment?). But had it been extended to the tribunals by the Council of People's Commissars? Not yet. Krylenko cheered up. And he continued to demand execution by shooting, on the following grounds:

"Even if we suppose that the consolidation of the Republic has removed the immediacy of threat from such persons, it seems nonetheless indubitable that in this period of creative effort . . . a purge . . . of the old turncoat leaders . . . is required by revolutionary necessity." And further: "Soviet power is proud of the decree of the Cheka abolishing the death penalty." But this "still does not force us to conclude that the question of the abolition of capital punishment has been decided once and for all . . . for the entire period of Soviet rule."

That was quite prophetic! Capital punishment would return--and very soon too! After all, what a long line still remained to be rubbed out! (Yes, including Krylenko too, and many of his class brothers as well.)

And, indeed, the tribunal was submissive and sentenced Samarin and Kuznetsov to be shot, but they did manage to tack on a recommendation for clemency: to be imprisoned in a concentration camp until the final victory over world imperialism! (They would still be sitting there today!) And as for "the best that the clergy could produce"--his sentence was fifteen years, commuted to five.

Other defendants as well were dragged into this trial in order to add at least a little substance to the charges. Among them were some monks and teachers of Zvenigorod, involved in the Zvenigorod affair in the summer of 1918, but for some reason not brought to trial for a year and a half (or they might have been, but were now being tried again, since it was expedient). [325] That summer some Soviet officials had called on Father Superior Ion at the Zvenigorod monastery and ordered him ("Step lively there!") to turn over to them the holy relics of 5t. Savva. The officials not only smoked inside the church and evidently behind the altar screen as well, and, of course, refused to take off their caps, but one of them took Savva's skull in his hands and began to spit into it, to demonstrate that its sanctity was an illusion. And there were further acts of desecration. This led to the alarm bell being sounded, a popular uprising, and the killing of one or two of the officials. (The others denied having committed any acts of desecration, including the spitting incident, and Krylenko accepted their denials.) Were these officials the ones on trial now? No, the monks.

We beg the reader, throughout, to keep in mind: from 1918 on, our judicial custom determined that every Moscow trial, except, of course, the unjust trial of the Chekists, was by no means an isolated trial of an accidental concatenation of circumstances which had converged by accident; it was a landmark of judicial policy; it was a display-window model whose specifications determined what product was good for the provinces too; it was a standard; it was like that one-and-only model solution up front in the arithmetic book for the schoolchildren to follow
for themselves.

Thus, when we say, "the trial of the churchmen," this must be understood in the multiple plural . . . "many trials." And, in fact, the supreme accuser himself willingly explains: "Such trials have rolled along through almost all the tribunals of the Republic." (What language!) They had taken place not long before in the tribunals in North Dvina, Tver, and Ryazan; in Saratov, Kazan, Ufa, Solvychegodsk, and Tsarevokokshaisk, trials were held of the clergy, the choirs, and the active members of the congregation [326]--representatives of the ungrateful "Orthodox church, liberated by the October Revolution."

The reader will be aware of a conflict here: why did many of these trials occur earlier than the Moscow model? This is simply a shortcoming of our exposition. The judicial and the extrajudicial persecution of the liberated church had begun well back in 1918, and, judging by the Zvenigorod affair, it had already reached a peak of intensity by that summer. In October, 1918, Patriarch Tikhon had protested in a message to the Council of People's Commissars that there was no freedom to preach in the churches and that "many courageous priests have already paid for their preaching with the blood of martyrdom. . . . You have laid your hands on church property collected by generations of believers, and you have not hesitated to violate their posthumous intent." (The People's Commissars did not, of course, read the message, but the members of their administrative stalf must have had a good laugh: Now they've really got something to reproach us with--posthumous intent! We sh-t on your ancestors! We are only interested in descendants.) "They are executing bishops, priests, monks, and nuns who are guilty of nothing, on the basis of indiscriminate charges of indefinite and vaguely counterrevolutionary offenses." True, with the approach of Denikin and Kolchak, this was stopped, so as to make it easier for Orthodox believers to defend the Revolution. But hardly had the Civil War begun to die down than they took up their cudgels against the church again, and the cases started rolling through the tribunals once more. In 1920 they struck at the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery and went straight to the holy relics of that chauvinist Sergius of Radonezh, and hauled them off to a Moscow museum.

[327] The People's Commissariat of Justice issued a directive, dated August 25, 1920, for the liquidation of relics of all kinds, since they were a significant obstacle to the resplendent movement toward a new, just society.

Pursuing further Krylenko's own selection of cases, let us also examine the case tried in the Verkhtrib--in other words, the Supreme Tribunal. (How affectionately they abbreviated words within their intimate circle, but how they roared out for us little insects: "Rise! The court is in session!")

This is already quite long, so I'll save for another post the last segment--a rather lengthy excerpt about the trials involving famine and the seizure of church valuables.