extra cheese & halopinos [sic]

The other day I was listening to talks from the Orthodox-Anglican conference held recently in Michigan. Someone quoted Bp. KALLISTOS as saying, "It's not the meat, it's the cheese." I'm pretty sure I agree. Since we had to go up to see my grandpa, I didn't get much chance to finish Meatfare with a bang, but I didn't have big plans anyway. We might have gone to Golden Corral toward the end of the week, so I could have a selection of meat, but it was mostly because I felt like I ought to. As it is, I ended up having beef on weck for my "last meal," which was certainly unexpected, but appreciated nonetheless.

But Cheesefare--I had a long list of foods I wanted to eat this week. I've hit most of them--raspberry danish, various types of cookies, cheesecake, apple pie, ice cream, macaroni and cheese (from KFC, no less), cheesy potatoes (still working on those), and pizza. For Valentine's Day, we went to Red Lobster; I got the shrimp pasta (very cheesy), Caesar salad, and of course the ever-popular cheddar biscuits. I still need to have eggs, and maybe some donuts, but I have a couple of days left. Tonight it was pretty cold, so Julie decided to order pizza, rather than go anywhere. The coupon was for two toppings. I don't like vegetables 0r fungus, and it didn't seem like a good time to find out whether I like anchovies, so we ordered it with extra cheese, pepperoni on half, and jalapeños on the other half. They don't normally put them on pizza, so someone hand-wrote "halopinos" on the receipt. Julie put it into words as well as anything: "Hooked on Phonics worked for me!" I don't think I've ever ordered pizza with "halopinos" before, but what else could I do? It was pretty good, but I'm sure I'll regret it in the morning.

I'm definitely going to miss dairy over the next several weeks. Still, I'm looking forward to the fast. I get lazy in between. Fortunately, this time it wasn't long between the Nativity Fast and Lent (pity we're not on the Old Calendar--they had even less time to relax). I feel like I've done nothing but overeat since Christmas. My goal this time (aside from the more important spiritual needs) is to control my portions better than I normally do, even when fasting. One meal a day I can do. Give me the list of what I can and can't eat, and I can follow it. But too often I end up stuffing myself.

So here's my wish-list for Lent this year--portion control, compassion for others, prayer from the heart, and tears of repentance. Knowing myself, I'll be lucky to get the first one, let alone the others, but I hope at least to keep them before me as I go. In the meantime, I still need to have some nachos before Sunday night.

snow, dust, and ashes

Well, yesterday turned out to be the test of my ability to find God in shoveling snow. We had our first real storm of the season, which brought a mixture of everything from freezing rain to wet snow. The sun came out in the middle of the day, and the temperature stayed warm enough that, although the snow was wet and heavy, it was still loose enough to shovel. Last night it got cold again, and it's now hardened solid. I figured yesterday was the one good chance to move the stuff, so in the afternoon I got out there with my trusty shovel. Ian did his part, too, but I outlasted him. He went inside after about an hour and a half.

Although living in an apartment saves you a lot of work--someone else keeps up the grounds, plows snow, and shovels walkways--you still end up with about as much to do when it comes to shoveling out your car. You have the added difficulty of shoveling between cars (some of which don't belong to you, so knocking them with the shovel really isn't an option), and you spend a lot more time walking back and forth between where your car is parked and where you can dump the snow. Plus, although they do plow the parking lot, they don't want to hit cars either, so they leave a lot of snow in front of them. But the real kicker is that you never know who's going to end up parking in the area you clear out.

In our complex, there are no assigned spaces. So if you shovel the space where you're parked, the only guarantee that you'll get that space back is if you don't go anywhere. Otherwise, all bets are off. Most people don't shovel unless there's absolutely no way to get their car out otherwise, which is their own business if they're the only ones using the spaces they don't shovel. But of course if they take the spot you cleaned out, you're stuck with whatever mess they left. To make matters worse, the plows dump snow piles in empty spaces, so you end up with a general shortage. It's like some sick game of musical chairs, where the last person to come home might not have anywhere to park.

My solution is to shovel more than one space. I typically do two, even though we only have one car. I figure that increases the odds that we'll get to use one of them, and it also allows someone else to benefit. Plus, with the way things were yesterday, I couldn't pass up all those empty spaces. I knew if they didn't get shoveled then, they wouldn't get shoveled at all. Doesn't that make me a great person, shoveling more than is required of me?

No, it apparently just gives me occasion to sin. Aside from feeling proud of myself for clearing out an extra space, I also ended up judging the person who parked in it. Later in the evening, I looked out the window and saw that the biggest SUV in our building was parked in my extra space. That person obviously had not shoveled their own space (no one else had), and they had the vehicle most capable of parking somewhere else. If that wasn't bad enough, I knew their spouse also drove an SUV, and I was sure my other space would be gone as soon as we left. Sure enough, when we got back later that night, all the spaces were taken, including a car that doesn't even belong to anyone in our building. We ended up having to parallel park in front of the snow pile, and I had more opportunity to grumble about our inconsiderate neighbors.

So apparently I do fine when it's just me, God, and the snow. But once Satan shows up with my neighbors (not that he's making them do what they do, but he certainly draws my attention to it), everything falls apart. God, be merciful to me a sinner!

and speaking of movie quotes . . .

. . . put your pinky to the corner of your mouth and say it with me:

ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!!

(OK, if you've never seen Austin Powers, that probably makes no sense.) My brother-in-law is an evangelist with a ministry that produced these fake million-dollar bills with a quickie gospel message on them. They got in some trouble over them at one point. I'm not sure how that all panned out, but anyway, my father-in-law had a bunch of them hanging around. Ian liked playing with them (he pretty much likes playing with anything that resembles money), although his grasp of value is a bit off. No matter how much he was holding, he always had $26. We're not sure where that particular number came from (guessing from something on TV, but nothing we've noticed so far). Then again, he's probably smarter than we give him credit. It's fake money and pretty much worthless, so why not make up a value out of thin air? It's no more absurd to say he has $26 than a million. I kind of like that he's more interested in money as a toy than for anything more materialistic, but that's starting to change, and I'm sure it won't last much longer. Innocence goes quickly.

Anyway, he feel asleep on the way home with a wad of "money" in his hand, and we made an exceptional use of Julie's camera phone to capture the moment.

. . . and more snow

"God's given me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well."
--The Shoveler, Mystery Men

This past weekend we took an unexpected trip up to see my grandpa in the hospital. Things were looking pretty grim for a while, but he seems to be improving now. At least we got a chance to see my parents (who drove 38 hrs almost non-stop from Phoenix) and friends and family in the area. Ian was pretty excited. Not only did he get to see Opa (who lives in Opa-field) and Grammy, and Grandpa and Grandma, and Great Grandpa looking like an elephant, but perhaps best of all, he got to play in some real snow! I mentioned in my last post that he likes to shovel, even if all he can find is the filthiest dregs of what passes for snow around here. Well, this weekend he had a whole world to shovel. Opa got some great pics of him, including the one above. You can see his own, little shovel that we brought along, which is OK as far as it goes. But he really wanted to use the big one. There were other shots with him flashing his bright smile, but I like the determined look of this one.

People who aren't from the area seem to mix up what's going on weather-wise in upstate NY. The big snowfall comes off the east ends of the Great Lakes, so Buffalo gets quite a bit from Lake Erie (although much of that typically leans toward the south of the city). That's just a taste, however, of the snowfalls they get off Lake Ontario, to the northeast, in Oswego County. For the past several years, the church we grew up in has held its snow camp at a 4-H facility up there (in case you ever wondered where people from Buffalo go to get more snow). They're planning it for next weekend, but we'll see if they can pull it off. The camp was closed last weekend, after nine feet of snow fell in one week. Where we were, though, in Oakfield, lake-effect snow is hit-and-miss, and they had only about a foot on the ground. It's a very flat, windy area, though, so they get a lot of drifting, which gives someone like Ian plenty of towering banks to play with.

But, snow isn't all fun and games. With a larger storm system rolling through the Northeast, we decided to hurry back yesterday (missing a chance to sit down with our old youth leaders and good friends for dinner and a conversation about Orthodoxy) and beat whatever came. They're calling for more snow, of course, up there, and mostly ice and slush down here (go figure). The timetable's been pushed back, though. Instead of a bad commute this morning, they're now calling for a bad one this evening and probably tomorrow morning too. Hopefully the bad stuff will delay even further, so tonight's commute home isn't too bad. And hopefully Ian will get some kind of white stuff he can shovel.

snow

I had an epiphany this morning. (Not literally, at least I don't think so.) It's not so much cold that I like, as it is snow. I mean, I do prefer cold to hot. (There's a limit to how many clothes you can take off.) And I do like the feel of the cool/cold air. I almost feel the blowing of the Spirit in a brisk autumn wind. But snow! I don't know what it is exactly. I don't particularly care for driving in it, but then, I'm not a big fan of driving under any circumstances. In fact, that might be some of it.

I like how enough snow can bring some of our human busyness to a halt. No matter how gently it falls, snow has a way of forcing itself into our lives. You go to sleep one night, and by morning this silent intruder has closed your workplace, trapped your car, and given you manual labor to perform. And although I might have been able to find better ways to spend my evenings when I was growing up than shoveling from the time I got home until well after dark, I now appreciate the opportunity. It probably helps that we live in a warmer climate, where snow isn't quite so frequent or overwhelming, and in a complex, where all I have to shovel is our parking space. I spend my days at a desk, call the landlord when something breaks in the apartment, take the car to a mechanic when it needs work, and let someone else handle the landscaping. Shoveling snow is one of the few manual tasks I have left. It's a chance to find God in the exertion; and I must say, I'm also gratified that my son likes to shovel, even if it does mean I have to go out and stand in the cold and wet while he throws around whatever slushy muck can pass for snow most of the time around here.

But today is different. We've had seriously cold weather the past few days (a necessary ingredient for good snow). This morning I got out for my 5:00 a.m. bus before the cleanup crews arrived. It had that satisfying crunch under my feet, and the occasional slip on unseen ice patches. The world was just a bit muffled from its usual noise, and the flakes reflected the light of the street lamps. My usual walk to the bus stop takes me through what can lightly be described as woods. One nice thing about Columbia is that it has a network of walking paths throughout most of the villages, some of which do a pretty good job of avoiding roads. There's one that runs along a little creek beside our complex. If you follow it one way, it takes you over a footbridge and up the bank to the street. It's a bit shorter going that way than if you walked out the driveway of the complex; plus, there's no sidewalk going all the way to the road, so it's a bit safer. You pass through some trees along the way--not nearly enough to hide the buildings, especially without their leaves in winter, but enough that you can barely imagine.

If you follow the path the other way, it follows the stream through trees and behind houses, over a few footbridges, and eventually over a hill, to a small, man-made lake. It takes about 20 minutes (at a brisk pace) to get there and another 20 or so to walk around the lake, so it's a good hour's walk, without crossing a single street. (That's not quite true--the path around the lake isn't continuous, and there are a couple of points where you have to go up to the sidewalk on the other side of the houses. In one case, I think you could take a longer way around the end of a cul-de-sac, but I usually just cut across.) It's my default route when I get the chance. I really wanted to head that way this morning. Looking down the path, I could almost imagine a Russian monastery somewhere at the other end.

But going to work could have been worse. At least I didn't have to drive in the stuff. I had a nice, quiet wait at the first stop--got there a bit early because I wasn't sure what to expect with the snow, and the bus was a bit late. I'm usually the only one there anyway, and I had a chance to watch the snow fall. The walk across campus wasn't too bad either--more activity, more traffic, and six inches of salt on the sidewalk (an annoying feel under your feet) but the snow was still there. It gave me some time to gradually return to "reality," before walking into my building where someone was running an obnoxiously loud machine. Ah, industry!

The snow has stopped now, and the sky is clearing. Here, anyway, you can still see the grass peeking through, so it can't be more than an inch or two. It still looks nice, though--a little bit of frosting on the trees. They're calling for a high of 25 degrees, so hopefully it will stick around for a while.

I remember a couple of years ago, walking to find the Middle Patuxent River--the closest significant body of water that isn't man-made--just so I could watch it go by and know I was looking at something that hadn't been manufactured--something that could almost be called "natural." The nice thing about snow is that it comes to me. It's God breaking into our human existence to remind us that he still rules the universe. I concluded a long time ago that the problem with driving around here (well, one of the problems) is that people don't get their place in creation. Further north, where snow is more ubiquitous, you just know that you'll have to adjust. You can't drive like you would on bare pavement, and sometimes you can't drive at all. It's just part of life. Here, when it snows people seem to do one of two things--either they drive as if nothing has changed, or they act like the world is coming to an end. Both endanger themselves and others, and both miss the point. Yes, one day God will come in judgment, and although I suppose perhaps snow will play some role in that, I don't think it's mentioned in the Bible. But here and now, he's looking for us to wake up and notice that he exists, and that that makes a difference in our lives. Snow is one of his gentler reminders of that presence.

Western Orthodoxy?

I like to think of myself as a relatively balanced person. I mean, I can be idealistic at times, even something of a curmudgeon, but I think I usually do come back to reality at some point. Case in point--when we were trying to pick names for our first child, it was almost impossible to agree on a strictly biblical name. The main reason is that I wanted the name pronounced "correctly," not according to whatever warped English spelling and pronunciation had become commonplace. I now realize it was a silly thing. I still like to pronounce names correctly, especially if they're not very well-known, but I'm not going to jump all over someone else for following the norm. I also have what I think is a healthier sense of the fluidity involved. Pronunciations change over time and place, even if they don't move from one language to another. And sometimes it's just an educated guess what's original. Besides, the main point is that we all know what or whom we're talking about.

On the issue of American Orthodoxy, I suppose I have my preferences. I'll freely admit that I was attracted to Orthodoxy in part by the foreignness, or more specifically, the Easternness, of its worship. I don't like the idea of Western rite Orthodoxy--not that I've ever tried it (or have any specific plan to do so). I guess maybe the idea of reviving a pre-schism liturgy is fine (although it seems a bit like the whole primitivistic impulse in many forms of Evangelicalism), but my personal preference says that adapting the Anglican liturgy to make it Orthodox just misses the point. On the other hand, I don't want a liturgy I can't understand. I can appreciate the beauty of listening to it in Slavonic or Arabic, but I'd really rather be able to follow along. Maybe I'll feel differently once I've thoroughly memorized the flow of the services, so I don't need to hear the words to know what's going on. But for now, given the choice, I'll take it in English, thank you. But that just seems like a common sense necessity.

On other points, give me Eastern. Keep your pews and your organs, your shortened services, your heads uncovered, your four-part harmony, and your Westernized icons. Not that I'm particularly judgmental toward those who use such things. I understand the historical reasons for the various adaptations, and I understand everyone's in a different place. I also understand that I could easily get caught up in externals and forget about what's truly important. I'm just saying that, given the choice, I'd rather go old-world. Of course, I also recognize that there's a certain degree of irony. For instance, it's a later development to go back to strictly Byzantine iconography.

I guess I mostly just want to go on record, that for myself at least (and undoubtedly there are other converts and catechumens who feel the same way), the more traditional elements are a draw to Orthodoxy, rather than a turnoff. I worry sometimes that this point might get missed. Consider for a moment the Ark--the new online radio station that's supposed to broadcast contemporary Orthodox music. I somehow missed the "contemporary" part when I saw the announcement and spent a full day trying to figure out what they were thinking. You'd get the occasional liturgical piece, mixed with some contemporary music that I recognized as Orthodox. (I'm using the term "contemporary" loosely here. Evangelical music typically lags behind secular, and to me it seems like "contemporary" Orthodox music lags similarly behind Evangelical. I don't know the copyright dates, but from what I can tell, it's not a positive trend.) That apparently wasn't enough to fill up the time, so you also got a generous helping of Evangelical music, perhaps in some cases performed by Orthodox artists (what do I know?), but perhaps more often performed by well-known Evangelical artists. At least once I figured out what the station was supposed to be doing, I got some sense of the logic--if you can't fill your air time with what you really want, go with something similar--Orthodox but not contemporary, or contemporary but not Orthodox. I personally found the resulting product off-putting and haven't tuned in since.

I guess my next question after figuring out what they were up to was, "Why?" There was a time when I was up to my neck in the contemporary Evangelical music scene, and I remember the continuing battle to justify its existence. One of the favorite arguments you would see or hear (but one that no one I knew seemed to take seriously) was that it was an evangelistic tool. These kids will listen to anything that sounds good, and we might just sneak some words in there that will make a difference. Of course, the strategy only worked to the extent that they really weren't paying attention, in which case it was all quite pointless. Add to that the vague lyrics of many performers, and the incomprehensibility of their singing, and the fact that the quality of the music usually wasn't good enough to get someone to listen in the first place, and the whole thing really starts to fall apart. The plain truth was, the industry wasn't there as an outreach--it was there because Christian kids wanted music like their friends had, and their parents would more willingly take them to concerts and buy them CDs (being a bit anachronistic here) if they could attach a Christian label to it. My gut feeling is that the Ark is someone's bright idea to bring in new Orthodox converts and keep Orthodox kids from slipping away, but I have serious doubts that it's going to do much of that.

The point is, we're not going to win many points by trying to copy what seems popular in Western culture, especially if we start with Western Christianity as our prototype. In that vein, here's a tip. No one likes pews to begin with. If you want to be Western and win friends, go with chairs--movie theater-style, with high backs, soft cushions, and cup-holder armrests would be a good place to start. They're not big on organs either. A guitar would go a lot further and probably cost quite a bit less to install. They also won't know how to harmonize, because they haven't used hymn books in ages, and you don't put sheet music on PowerPoint. I should also dispel a myth about service length. Yes, Westerners are probably used to shorter services than you traditionally get in an Orthodox church. But keep in mind that an Evangelical service typically spends 30-40 min. on the sermon--the least interactive part. If you cut the sermon down to 15 min. and give people something to do through the rest of the service, surely you can take more time at it.

OK, this is getting rather long. I should make some kind of point and wrap it up. All that other stuff is basically my rant, to say that somehow Orthodoxy attracts Westerners without being particularly Western, and it's not always a step forward to become more Western, depending on what "Western" means. I'm sure there are those who are more likely to come to an Orthodox service if it's shorter, or they have a chance to sit, or something else that might be more familiar or less daunting. But there's a point at which this kind of accommodation gets you numbers but doesn't get you Orthodox converts. In other words, if Orthodoxy has to become something it's not to meet them where they are, something Orthodoxy is not may be all they'll ever get. That's not to say that any Westernization is a slippery slope to oblivion; I just think sometimes we need to put in perspective the push to fit the culture.

On the other hand, we don't need to treat church like it's some kind of boot camp, where we're trying to weed out the weak. We don't need to go out of our way to make it difficult. We certainly need to welcome people with love, regardless of their cultural background. We need to be gentle with their human weakness, wherever they are now. And I'm sure that Orthodoxy in America will take on its own local flavor over time. I am, however, in favor of taking things slowly. This isn't pagan Russia with a newly converted emperor. This is a culture that was born out of Protestantism, and a lot of the converts coming into Orthodoxy right now are coming from some kind of churched background. Somewhere we need to draw the line between contextualization and Protestantization, and I'm honestly not sure where that line should go.

a bunch of little old men standing around in the dark

If you've spent much time on this blog, you've probably noticed that I seem to have a lot of affinity for ROCOR (to those who might not know the ins and outs of Orthodox jurisdictions, that's the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, also known as ROCA, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad). Partly, this impression is exaggerated by the process that's been underway over the past few years, and particularly over the past year or two--the movement toward reunification of ROCOR with the Moscow Patriarchate. I hope that my excitement over this process is shared by more in the Orthodox world than those who lean toward Russian Orthodoxy in particular. We should all rejoice to see old divisions (well, maybe not so old in the Orthodox perspective) ready to heal. And I don't think it's exaggerating to say that all of world Orthodoxy suffered the effects of the Communist regime in Russia--it was a huge blow to what was at the time the most powerful (and still the largest) Orthodox Church in the world. Certainly some suffered worse than others, but all suffered. Here in America, the vision of a unified Church still seems remote--a vision that would in all likelihood have been a continuing reality if things had gone otherwise.

But yes, I personally do feel an affinity for ROCOR. Given the choice of parishes in my area, I ended up going with an Antiochian one for various reasons (most of which are probably around here somewhere); but the second candidate was definitely ROCOR. I guess some of it is a general respect for Russian Orthodoxy. I wouldn't necessarily follow the hard-line Third Rome way of thinking, but Russia really did step up to protect Orthodoxy when so much of the Orthodox world had fallen under oppression. I also appreciate the outreach of Russian Orthodoxy that took place before the Revolution. How could I not? It was Russian Orthodoxy that began the missionary enterprise in North America and gave us our first saints. I also like how they preserve just about everything in their worship. While I respect the effort to accommodate people's weakness, with shorter services, more sitting, etc., I love this Church that doesn't shy away from standing for hours at a time. And regarding ROCOR in particular, how can I not appreciate their suffering, and their perseverance, to hold out hope that one day the godless regime would fall, and once again Russia would be Russia. Along the way, they've had to endure the label of schismatic--but this reunion is their vindication. I rejoice with them in that, and I pray for their success.

I love this quote (the subject line of this post) from Fr. George, now of Holy Apostles Church in Beltsville, MD. He says in his conversion testimony that a friend described ROCOR worship as "a bunch of little old men standing around in the dark," and that he felt he just had to check it out. But these little old men are giants, and under all the pressures that came in their lives, they did what they had to do--they stood. As he puts it, they "had not bowed the knee to the Bolsheviks." When you boil it all down, this is what martyrs and confessors do--they know how to bow before God and stand before men, and not confuse the two. That's what I like about St. Peter the Aleut--we know almost nothing about him except that he stood his ground in the face of persecution and even death. And so it is with the countless saints who suffered under Communism.

Fr. George also points to an influential book--Russia's Catacomb Saints--that first awakened him to the spiritual strength of these people. When he originally told me about it, I wasn't able to find a copy to buy or borrow. He had had two copies at one point but loaned one out that was never returned. He was reluctant to let the other one go. I see, though, that someone is working on putting the book online. There are a few chapters available, with many more to go. It's a good taste, though. I highly recommend it.

Armenian creed

We recently had a guest talk on the creed. The speaker brought several different versions, including an Armenian English translation. It has some interesting differences from the Chalcedonian:

We Believe in one God, the Father almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of God the Father, only begotten, that is of the same substance of the Father. God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten and not made, of the self-same nature ofthe Father, by whom all things came into being in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible; who for us human beings, and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate, was made man, was born perfectly of the holy virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit; by whom He took body, soul, and mind and everything that is in man, truly and not in semblance. He suffered, was crucified and was buried and rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven with the same body and sat at the right hand of the Father. He is to come with the same body and with the glory of the Father to judge the living and the dead; of whose kingdom there is no end.

We Believe also in the Holy Spirit, the uncreate and perfect, who spoke in the Law and in the prophets and in the Gospels; who came down upon the Jordan, preached in the apostles and dwelt in the saints.

We Believe also only one universal and apostolic holy Church; in one baptism with repentance for the remission and forgiveness of sins; in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgment of souls and bodies, in the kingdom of heaven and in the eternal life.

Nothing earth-shattering to say here. I just thought it was worth having a look at. There are a few elements here that you don't find in the Chalcedonian version and a few there that you don't find here. On the whole, I don't think an Orthodox Christian should have any objection to affirming this version of the creed (there's nothing it says that we should object to), and it makes some interesting contributions as well. I'm not going to give an opinion on whether this means it should be easy to restore communion with Armenian Christians (what do I know?). I just think it's worth considering what's here.

bookbag

I haven't said too much recently about what I'm reading. (Guess I've been spending so much time reading, that I haven't had as much time to write.) I was able to buy several books with Christmas money. (No one bothers to buy me Christmas gifts anymore--just assume I'm going to want books and know where to find the best deals myself.) I bought The Arena, which I'd already read before but wanted to own for future reference. Also, Journey to Heaven by St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, which I hadn't read and was very good. My Godfather bought me the first volume of Fr. Michael Azkoul's The Teachings of the Holy Orthodox Church, which provides a good overview, and also loaned me The Soul, the Body, and Death, by Abp. LAZAR (Puhalo), so I could get a better handle on some of the different perspectives I've seen and heard articulated by Orthodox sources. As an afterthought, I was able to track down a very affordable copy of On Spiritual Unity, which includes writings of A. Khomiakov.

Finally, after plowing through all that, my order from Amazon showed up, including Touching Heaven, by (now Fr.) John Oliver. I'd been wanting to read that one for a while, after listening to some talks he gave, I think last year at Holy Cross. I liked his talks, and the topic of the book also looked interesting, which was a pilgrimage to Valaam. It's probably on my short list of places I'd like to visit before I die. It's not quite to the Arctic Circle, so the cold and dark thing is one positive. It's Russian, but practically in Scandinavia--a couple of other good hits. Plus, it's significant historically for American Orthodoxy, since the original band of missionaries who came to North America was from Valaam. If all that isn't enough reason to buy the book, it's got a cool cover design. It was an enjoyable read and something I might pick up again further down the line, so it was worthwhile.

The other book that arrived most recently and the one I'm just getting ready to start is Fr. Dumitru Staniloae's Orthodox Spirituality. It looks like enough substance to keep me busy for a while (400 tight-margined pages)--maybe even into Lent. I shouldn't omit the online reading either--in addition to the usual stuff, I've run across Holy Trinity Orthodox School, which has an incredible amount of material under the Textbooks link. I've also started collecting whatever patristic Bible commentaries I can find online--Chrysostom and Augustine, of course, from the NPNF series, and Cyril of Alexandria on Luke and on John.

The three commentaries on the Gospel of John might come in handy, as we're starting to meet with a small group from Bethany, and the first study will be on John. (I should explain a bit about this group. Bethany Community Church, where Julie and I have attended for years, is starting a small group ministry that will mostly meet in homes. Some good friends of ours who live nearby are starting one, and since Bethany is still very much Julie's church, we're going to participate. I plan to be very up-front, though, about my own inclinations, including giving the Orthodox perspective on whatever we're studying.)

Well, enough writing about reading. Staniloae's book is calling to me . . .

counsel to a king

From today's reading in the Prolog of Ohrid, St. John of Rila's message to Tsar Peter the Bulgarian:

If you desire the heavenly kingdom, be merciful as the heavenly Father. Do not trust in injustice and do not be covetous; be meek, quiet and be accessible to everyone. Do not accept praises from your noblemen. Let your purple robe radiate with virtues. May the remembrance of death never depart from your soul. Humble yourself before the feet of Mother Church; bow your head before her prime-hierarchs so that the King of kings, seeing your sincerity, reward you with goodness such as never entered into the heart of man.

What I wouldn't give for a national, state, or local leader today who at least tried to follow such a standard! But then, I'm reminded of something I read by G. K. Chesterton about the problem with a republic. At least a person who's born to nobility recognizes somewhere deep down that his position is nothing more than an accident of birth--that he himself did nothing to attain it. But in our system of government, you have to start by winning the most difficult popularity contest we can conceive. By the time you get there, you can really come to believe that people chose you because you're better than others, because of something you achieved. I find it difficult enough to maintain humility while seeking to move up in my career, and that's in the fairly non-competitive world of low-level bureaucracy. I can't imagine what it would take to succeed in American politics and remain humble.

Augustine's little balls

Get your mind out of the gutter! :-)

Ian's into playing with cards right now. He has several packs--some regular playing cards (boo, hiss), an Old Maid deck, a couple of matching games, a Thomas game, and some Bible cards that my aunt got him as stocking stuffers. Yesterday, I gave him a pack that I've had around for a while but wasn't doing anything with. Sometime shortly after I told one of my Evangelical friends about my interest in Orthodoxy, he gave me a card game he'd downloaded and printed. (Sorry--I don't remember what the site was.) It's a patristics game that I think someone developed as a study aid for a college class. Each card has a picture of a figure from Church history--typically an icon, or a more Westernized picture; in a few cases (Montanus comes to mind), there was apparently no picture readily available, so a cartoon figure was inserted. At the top, it gives the figure's name, and at the bottom, it identifies various attributes--whether they were orthodox, heterodox, or ambiguous; ecclesiastical rank; date of death; whether they were martyred; and whether, in the estimation of whomever developed the game, the story about them was mostly fabricated. If I recall correctly, the game can be played in various ways, but basically you work on trying to acquire a set of cards that share a particular characteristic.

Anyway, I've never actually played the game, but I couldn't bring myself just to get rid of the cards. I figured Ian would get a kick out of them, and if he keeps at it long enough, he might learn something along the way. Of course, his initial assessment was that they were from church. That didn't seem to be too big a problem. He soon decided that it was some sort of matching game and spread out the cards face down. As he would turn a card over, he would show it to me and ask who it was. (Fortunately, this was more of a reading exercise than a test of my patristic knowledge--I wouldn't have been able to identify very many of them by sight.) Sometimes he would try to repeat the name back to me; other times he'd just say "right" and move on to the next card. He also practiced counting the cards he'd turned over.

Most of the names he had no particular reaction to, but when we came to "Augustine of Hippo" (that's what it said on the card, and I just read it as it was), he immediately started to process what the "hippo" part meant. His mind quickly turned to his Hungry, Hungry Hippos game, which he got for Christmas. After that, about all he could associate with Bl. Augustine were the "little balls" you try to collect in the game.

The other interesting note on this game is that I happened to notice it designates Constantine as heterodox. I guess I hadn't thought of it before, but it's an interesting point to ponder. Constantine is designated as a saint in the Eastern Church at least, and he convened the first Ecumenical Council and enforced its judgment against Arius. On the other hand, he later changed his position, pardoned Arius, and exiled St. Athanasius. Is it, then, that we have in Constantine a heretic saint? Seems like an odd idea, but probably not so far-fetched either.

little mr. cloudy

Julie and I watched Little Miss Sunshine last night. I think we both agreed it had a similar feel to Garden State (and wouldn't you know it--there was a preview on the DVD for the latter film), which we liked enough to buy. (I should clarify that most of the DVDs we own are because Julie likes them. Not that I don't watch my fair share of TV and movies, but I rarely want to own them--we belong to Netflix anyway, so I figure if I really want to see it again, I can just put it back on the list.) Thinking of it as entertainment and as art, I would also have to agree with Julie that LMS is quite good, and probably at least as worthwhile to own as most of our collection. But that wasn't my fundamental reaction when we finished watching it.

I have to be careful here, because I have always tended to criticize stuff (thinking mostly here of movies, but also sermons, commercials, etc.), even though the kind of criticism hasn't always been the same. It might be a wrong use of "there" for "they're" in a printed advertisement. It might be a fallacious equation of PCs with Microsoft in a Mac commercial (which leads me to make judgments about the intelligence of the target audience). It might be an inconsistent treatment of time travel in a sci-fi movie. I guess inconsistencies are a big thing for me; it particularly annoys Julie when I point them out in TV shows or movies that obviously are not designed to be "think-pieces." I've also always been big on themes--especially religious themes--in entertainment. For instance, ask me why I like Rage against the Machine so much, and I'll tell you it's because of the substance in their lyrics--agree with it or disagree with it, most of today's music lacks conviction about anything. (This is also one of the reasons I've generally been torn over rap as a genre. I respect the political type, but when it drifts too much into the cruder elements of "gangsta" life, or gets downright sexual, I lose interest.)

Now, once upon a time, I probably would have appreciated the message of Little Miss Sunshine. Like all great literature, it addresses the problems of life in their stark reality. There's a messed-up family of messed-up people living messed-up lives, and by the end, they've learned to accept each other and themselves, as they are, and drawn some sense of community from their shared marginal existence. They learn to prioritize relationships, reject conformity, and not get too hung up on worldly success. Sounds good so far, right? And as far as all that goes, I do appreciate the message. But there's a darker side. The hedonist grandfather never stops being a hedonist. The homosexual uncle never stops being homosexual. The family rejects the superficial world of child beauty pageants, but in doing so they bond over the young daughter's striptease routine, which her grandfather had helped her prepare.

In short, the film articulates that core Western value--everyone is OK, no one needs to change. The only ideal to pursue, the only goal to strive for, is learning to accept how messed up we all are, and how normal and real that truly is. We've rejected external conformity, putting on a good show, upholding social norms on the outside, because we recognize that externals without internals are fake and meaningless. But instead of shifting our focus to bettering what we are on the inside, truly, deep down, we've settled for accepting ourselves as broken beyond repair. In fact, we revel in our brokenness. We fight for our rights to be broken, and to stay broken, and not to have anyone call it broken, because that's just imposing some societal norm.

So the message of the film at first glance is a good one--we're all broken people, so we need to love each other as we are. The danger is in the underlying message, which is dangerous because it is not right out on the surface. While we rejoice at the end over this family learning to love and support each other, we subtly buy into the lie that lurks underneath--that we're all just warped in different ways, and universal tolerance is the only reasonable answer, because there is no actual standard beyond societal norms. I don't want to seem judgmental here, because I'm not. I'm as broken as the next person. And yes--we need to love each other in the midst of our brokenness. But there is a standard, there is right and wrong, and there is hope and a way to become better.

Maybe I'm just tired of seeing the same message repeated over and over again. Maybe I'm just frustrated that this is the message coming from a culture that somewhere in the recesses of its past knew the Gospel. Maybe I just feel less sympathetic than I used to, because in Orthodoxy the hope is more tangible. I don't want to say that Protestants have no hope. That would be unfair. But it seems to me that the hope for real change is diminished in Protestantism. It settles for positional justification, positional sanctification, and the barest minimum of faith in Christ as the critical elements in our salvation. It emphasizes the fallenness of humanity, including the biblical heroes (it does not call them "saints" for that very reason). It diminishes the humanity of Christ with its iconoclasm (when it doesn't diminish his deity with its "historical Jesus") and rejects the divinity of redeemed mankind. It thereby creates a gap between God and man that should have been bridged--that was bridged--in the incarnation. As the saying goes, what Christ did not assume he does not redeem; and in Protestantism, the hope that our lives can truly change--that we can become saints--is seriously weakened.

Again, these are subtle things. There is no overt denial of the core teachings about Christ (at least, not among most Evangelicals), but the implications have been whittled away, and the overall structure has weakened. Protestant Christology lacks the power to infuse its culture with a lasting hope of redemption in real life, and over time, Western culture has lost whatever hope it had. It retains its honesty about our present condition--and that is an important foundation to start from. But it rejects anything that can be called a gospel--good news of a better way.

So I criticize. I guess I feel like, if I can identify the wrong message that's there, if I can name it and describe it, I will not unconsciously accept it. Maybe I should just keep my criticisms to myself, so I'm not raining on anyone's parade, but I'm not sure I can do that. I'm not sure it would be right to do it. As I told Julie last night when she asked why I criticized, "Someone has to." Otherwise, the message just slips right in with everything else, and what seemed like just a fun bit of entertainment becomes a subtle retraining of how we think about things. I'm not sure it's such a good idea to let that happen to the people around me.

everyone else is doing it . . .

In the past few days, two of the Orthodox blogs I read have had something to say about transience. First there was Godmother Laura's musing on her own background, which I discussed a bit with her off-line, since she doesn't normally allow comments. Then, this morning, Fr. Stephen posted about loneliness in our present culture. I started to write a comment but realized it was getting too long for a mere comment, so figured it would be better to post my own thoughts here. I'm sure I've said something similar before, probably multiple times, but since everyone else is doing it, why not . . .

We moved around a lot growing up, and although my wife and I knew each other throughout high school and college, as soon as we got married, we moved away from our home in rural upstate NY, and have lived in the DC area ever since. My in-laws grew up in adjacent towns and have lived for decades in the same house, two blocks away from both sets of grandparents. Here, churches regularly joke about running their own moving companies, since loading a truck seems to be the most often-provided service to each other. There are a lot of military personnel in the area, so they often don't stay more than a few years. Those with Federal civilian careers might put in their time here but get out as soon as possible. Who can blame them? (We'd do the same thing if we had a good opportunity.) It's an expensive area to live, with one of the worst commutes in the country. When you drive 90-120 min. each way to work, you might make friends there, but they probably don't live close enough for outside interaction. (Check a map sometime--how far apart are the co-workers from Annapolis and West Virginia?)

Anyway, I long for rootedness. I read one time about the three major factors that help people put down roots--family, land, and religion. My family is scattered. We spend our life in cars and buses, surrounded mostly by concrete and asphalt. And at some point, I discovered that Evangelicalism fits hand-in-glove with Western transience. It is the spiritual embodiment of our rootless culture. Always keep moving. Never leave anything alone long enough to become a tradition. Re-invent. Re-discover. Scrap the old songs for new ones, the old methods for something more flashy, the old doctrines for the latest book. And if none of that goes your way, just pack up and move on to the next church.

Unfortunately, Orthodoxy is not completely immune to Western transience. Now, instead of driving 20 min. to the Evangelical church, I get to drive 30 min. to the Orthodox one. There may not be 20,000 denominations, but there are several jurisdictions to choose from in America, and a hundred shades of variation between the cultural ghetto and the fully Westernized. And of course, the people can come and go just as they can in other churches. Still, I appreciate the ideal that is there, and the still-glowing cultural memory of a world where church is a fixture of the community, where this parish is your parish, because it happens to be the one in your neighborhood or village, where "catholicity" really means what it should.

It was by no means my only attraction to Orthodoxy, but it was an important one. If I can change nothing else about my situation (although, trust me, I'm working on the other factors too), at least I can find rest from my wandering in the Church. At the same time, there are things I do appreciate about my transient life. I think it's enabled greater cultural sensitivity and understanding. It's given me a chance to appreciate things that I might otherwise have taken for granted or even resented if I'd stayed in one place my whole life. And in a very real way, it seems to have been indispensable for my journey to the Orthodox Church. Where would I be today if we'd settled down in one geographical place, or if I'd been more content with my Evangelical faith? I don't know if I would ever have met an Orthodox person, or come to a place where I was ready to consider Orthodoxy as a valid Christian expression.

As I find myself saying a lot, the last Evangelical thing I need to do is become Orthodox. It's the last step of my wandering, the last decision based on my own best judgment, the last time I solve my problems by moving on to something new. (I'm not trying to discount the many other factors that have come together to bring me to this point, but it's still a personal decision that I'm making--to judge the Church on its merits and accept or reject it based on what I consider to be the most reasonable course, rather than to believe and to do what the Church tells me, because it is the Church.)

But I've added a parallel idea--that the last physical move I will ever need to make is the one that takes me to a place where I can put down roots. Perhaps I can do that here. I don't rule it out. Perhaps I can find a job and an Orthodox parish that are so close together that I can live in one place and walk to both. Perhaps that one place will have affordable housing, so that I can buy a home and not have to move every time someone decides to raise the rent out of my range. Or perhaps (and I feel like this is more likely) I will somehow learn to feel rooted while commuting long hours to work and to church. But more likely still (it seems to me) is that the search for a more stable life will take us out of this area and closer to family. And if God provides what we're looking for, I'll happily move that one last time.

more from The Pillar of Fire

A couple of months ago, I reflected on some of the early material in Karl Stern's The Pillar of Fire. I didn't cover much ground after that, as I spent most of the Nativity Fast reading Orthodox literature. Thanks to President Ford's death last week, I ended up with an extra-long weekend and had time to rush through the remainder of the book. It's very good--I would like to have had the leisure to digest everything in it, but I was able to get the gist and devote significant attention to the more religiously-focused parts. I found interesting his assessment of Jewish racism:

Now I was shaken out of my inner sureness by the following fundamental and indisputable facts. Firstly, there were two parties who unanimously and in perfect agreement maintained the racial wall around the God of Sinai--these were the Nazis and the Jews. Let there be no mistake. Jewish religion up to this day is based on the axiom that Revelation is a national affair and that the Messiah to the Nations has not been here yet. Do not be misled by the fact that Jews in their personal ethics are anything but exclusive and racist. Do not be misled by certain noble Talmudic principles such as "The just of all nations have a share in the world to come." This latter idea has no bearing on the question discussed here; it deals with what to Jewish antiquity was the "invisible church." Do not be misled by fine cosmopolitan sentiments and actions of reformed Judaism which are often prompted by noble hearts but at the same time by much vague thinking and by a lukewarm dilution of the most profound and world-shaking elements of the Judaic treasure. No, there is no getting away from it. Revelation was still contained within the precious vessel of the Nation; I only had to look at our liturgy to see that this was so. Jewish religion was racial exclusiveness. Mind you, it was racial exclusiveness in its noblest, most elevated form--in its metaphysical form, so to speak. It was a racism exactly opposed to that of the Nazis, but it was racism just the same. It was racism with the highest, divine justification--as long as its one basic premise was correct, namely that the Anointed One was still to be expected (172-73).

I've seen this sort of analysis before (interestingly, from another Jewish-Christian convert), but it was interesting to see it repeated here.

Also interesting was his perception of continuity between Judaism and Christianity:

It was really the spirit of Judaism I rediscovered in this strange [Christian] setting, enriched by remote peoples, and cleansed of its purely ethnic elements. . . .

Christianity confirmed and believed everything which Jewry believed but added one fundamental assertion which Jewry rejected. Heresies are based on denials. In this sense Christianity was no heresy from Judaism; it rejected nothing essential but made a new positive claim (177). . . .

Today I know that there was actually nothing I had to give up. On a spiritual plane Christianity is Jewry. It is Jewry led to its fulfillment. There is no essential truth of the Old Testament which the Christian denies. . . .

I saw then that the fate of my people was intimately associated with the fate of Christ in the world, that there were people around me who held in their hearts the God of Israel, although they were not Jews; and in the intensity and profundity of their lives I saw the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah fulfilled. This was the beginning of a new outlook on life. Something old had burst, though I did not want this fact to be true. Something new had sprung up. I did not know where I was being led. But I felt that insight meant obligation. I knew that there would come a time when I would have to make the big jump into the unknown (188-90).

One of the struggles I have had to deal with in my own story is how I seem to have bounced around from one viewpoint to another--first Evangelical, then agnostic, then Orthodox Jewish, then Messianic Jewish, now Orthodox. More than one Evangelical friend has suggested that this too might be a passing phase. But as I see it, there is an underlying continuity in the path I have taken. Stern's observations about Judaism and Catholicism resonate with my own reflections.

Stern also relates his struggle over the disparity between Catholicism as he saw it portrayed in books and in the lives of isolated acquaintances and the less appealing form that he saw around him:

The Catholic Church is a church of the multitude. Consequently the outsider, approaching her, faces a thick layer of mediocrity. We have associations of thought built chiefly on magazine articles, radio items and newspaper headlines. Whoever has experienced supernatural charity during the persecution on the Continent may stumble across a bigoted or anti-semitic priest--and with one such experience the vision of the Church seems forever gone. . . .

Thus, it took us some time before we saw the immense hidden treasure of anonymous sanctity in the Church; the spiritual power that flows to and from thousands of unknown souls every day. The stream of sacrifices made, for supernatural motives, by a multitude of working-class people, by religious in their communities, by priests and lay-people alike. In one superficial respect there is again a strange resemblance between the Jewish people and the Church: the misdeeds of one member are more broadcast than the sanctity of a hundred others (247-48).

I think very much the same thing could be said about Orthodoxy, and it is a particular issue coming from Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism tends to be about constant reform, constant reinvention, constant purification or separation from what does not fit. It can be difficult to adjust to the look and feel of a catholic tradition, where the Church is truly for everyone.

Finally, Stern relates the way in which the Church contains all that is good in other religions, philosophies, etc., without requiring that one add anything repulsive:

I have said that in entering the Church one does not have to give up any single positive value one has ever believed in. You think of yourself as a traitor to your past. You think you have to leave Goethe behind, or Tolstoy, or Gandhi, or Judaism, or what-not. But there is nothing which is good in all these things which you do not find again in the Church. Now it is ordered and synthetized. It is molten in Christ. Moreover, you do not have to accept anything which is repulsive to you in the Church, on a political or social plane. Nobody wants you to accept a totalitarian politician, or a priest who is obsessed by racial prejudice. All you have to accept is Christ and His Sacraments (261).

I appreciate this remark, as I find it to be true not only of entering the Church from another religion like Judaism but also of entering Orthodoxy from Protestantism. I wish Julie could see, as I do, that all that is best about our Evangelical past is only augmented in Orthodoxy.

mark the date

The specifics of the reunification ceremony between ROCOR and Moscow have been released. In less than five months, it will be official!

leave me hanging

We're back from Pittsburgh. It was good to see family, and the trip went largely without incident, but I can't say I'm entirely happy with my experience of the holiday. I knew, of course, that I wouldn't be attending an Orthodox service throughout. I also knew that I was planning to be lenient with fasting. We haven't discussed Orthodoxy with my aunt & uncle or grandfather, and we did not plan to do so on this visit. (They're very loosely Christian--at least, that would be their professed affiliation, but none of them attends church with any regularity or exhibits much personal devotion.) I knew it would be difficult to explain my fasting to them, and since we were there to observe the holiday, I figured I would just go along with whatever happened. If I had the opportunity, I would fast to one degree or another. So, for instance, Friday morning I ate dry toast for breakfast. Most other meals, we all ate together, and there was little opportunity to avoid meat or dairy, at least not without drawing attention to the fact. I tried to watch how much I ate, but that was about the extent of it. Since my grandfather was there only on Saturday, we ate our Christmas dinner then and exchanged gifts. Essentially, that was the holiday in our observance this year, so I considered it the formal end of my Nativity Fast.

It was disappointing that the holiday itself got lost in the shuffle. By that point, we were on our second day of leftovers. Ian opened his stocking stuffers in the morning. Otherwise, we just hung around and watched TV throughout the morning. In the afternoon, Julie and I caught a movie. Ian didn't get much of a nap and freaked out at bedtime. He was way too goofy and wouldn't cooperate when we told him to undress. I ended up forcing him into his pajamas, which then created a new battle of wills, as he wanted to undo everything and do it himself. Too late for that. Finally, Mommy left the room, which gave him something new to lament. He was still pretty torn up when I finally got him to quiet down and prayed over him. He went to sleep after that and seemed better in the morning. It was time to go home, though, and get things back to normal. ("Normal"--on top of her morning sickness, which has been running pretty much 24/7, Julie came down with a cold on Christmas that only got worse yesterday--I still don't know how she managed to catch it, since no one else in the house was sick.)

At least we did get to a Christmas Eve service of some type. My aunt, who at times has gone to church with more regularity, wanted to go somewhere for Christmas. Originally, she wanted to check out a big, new church that was just built around the corner from them, but when she sent us the URL for their Web site I discovered that they were charismatic. There's a section that explains stuff you'll see in the service--speaking in tongues, falling to the ground, etc. She didn't want to go there after we mentioned it, but she found another church not too far away. It's very much in the same tradition as Bethany, where we've attended since our second year in MD. The singing is led by a praise band, the preaching is topical, oriented toward the lifestyle of white-collar, white-bread Americans; they're big on visual aids, but utterly iconoclastic--this one didn't even have a cross on the wall. They had decorated the auditorium for Christmas--or at least for winter holidays. There was fake snow all over the place, a bunch of evergreen trees with lights, and a big snowman front-and-center-stage. Off in the corner, there was a tiny manger scene--a vestige of some distant, less aural tradition, for which I should be thankful. The singing was a mixture of popular praise songs and traditional Christmas carols.

The sermon was a fairly standard evangelistic message. (Any good, Evangelical Christmas Eve service should target the heathens who show up on this day and no other.) I don't want to sound too cynical here. I really do think, in general, that God uses Evangelical Christianity in important ways. More specifically, the service seems to have had a positive impact on my aunt, and when the invitation was given at the end, the pastor indicated that several people had raised their hands. (For those unfamiliar with the format, it's typical of much Evangelical preaching to end with an invitation where everyone is told to bow their heads and close their eyes, not just to show reverence, but for privacy. The preacher leads a "sinner's prayer" and asks those who prayed along for the first time to raise their hands. This is the kinder, gentler approach that has widely replaced the old "altar call," where those making first-time professions are supposed to come forward. Some churches do both--raising the hands first, then an optional altar call for those brave enough to come. It's common practice for the preacher to acknowledge the hands that are raised, which signals to the individual that they can put their hand back down and also registers for the rest of the group how much positive response there was.)

When I was in college, I used to work in evangelistic outreach--talking to people on the street and going door-to-door. The philosophy is that, while it may not be the ideal way to do evangelism, it may reach some people who otherwise would never hear the gospel. It's an accepted fact that few will respond and even fewer will make a genuine, lasting commitment. Measures are taken to follow up, but there's a lot of disappointment. There are some parallels with evangelistic preaching. The audience is presumably more disposed to listen (since they came in the first place), but there is still a strong tendency for people to respond in the emotion of the moment but never really show any lasting commitment. I say this not to downplay the possibility that some real life change began that night, but even many Evangelical churches accept that such momentary decisions might not be real. For this reason (and others), some churches almost never give a public invitation (even the "raise your hand" kind). They might extend the opportunity for people to talk with someone if they have questions about what they heard, but that's about it. Room is left for the individual to reflect and choose on their own whether they really want what's being offered.

So I do hope and pray that those who raised their hands were sincere and made a real decision about following Christ. More than that, I hope that they have people in their lives who can be a continuing influence on them. Salvation in any case is a process, and it would be a shame to see real desire die without the nurture of a faithful community. There may be a lot more to Christianity than Evangelicalism has to offer, but everyone has to start somewhere. It's a constant call to come further in and further up.

At any rate, we both felt like Christmas was lacking something this year and decided that we'll probably stay home next time. As for me, I'm looking forward to Theophany. I guess I'll just have to be old-fashioned and lump the two back in together :-)

St. Ignatius vs. Evangelicals

Today is the commemoration of Ignatius of Antioch, which provoked me to go back and read some of his letters. Ignatius was bishop of Antioch around the beginning of the second century. In fact, he was martyred so early in the century, that for all practical purposes he can be called a first-century Christian. He's one of several known as Apostolic Fathers--the generation of Church leaders immediately following the Apostles themselves. He was a disciple of John and barely outlived his master. Short of Scripture itself, this is about as close as we get to the beginnings of Christianity. I'm sure I must have read at least part of his letters sometime in college or seminary, but I wasn't particularly interested at the time. I'm noticing some interesting things in them now:

• He clearly assumes a governing structure of one bishop in the church of each city over several presbyters. (The English word "priest," incidentally, is derived from Greek "presbyter," and apart from Protestant tradition translates the same. Protestants prefer the term "elder.")
• He articulates a sacramental or salvific view of the eucharist (communion), calling it "the medicine of immortality," an "antidote to prevent us from dying," causing our eternal life.
• He advises complete spiritual submission to the bishop and speaks of him as the representative of Christ (and the presbyters in the place of the apostles). For him, the bishop is the center and source of unity for the Church. Indeed, without the bishop and presbyters, there is no Church.
• He hints at the salvific nature of the Church by indicating that not only heresy is to be avoided, but schisms in general, and that anyone who follows schismatics out of the Church is in danger for his soul.
• He warns against heretics who (among other things) deny that the eucharist is the body and blood of Christ.
• He invalidates communion or baptism that is not performed by the bishop or his agent.

And that's to say nothing of the intense devotion to the Virgin Mary that appears in the so-called "spurious epistles." (I make no judgment one way or the other about their authenticity.)

I find these points interesting, because they highlight the historical problem for Evangelicalism and Protestantism in general. These are elements with which Evangelicals I know would take issue, and in so doing they would have to say that a disciple of the Apostle John himself--not just any disciple, but one entrusted with oversight of the Church at Antioch--departed significantly from the true, biblical model of the Church and its ordinances. I don't think most Evangelicals quite realize the seriousness of the charges they must bring. It's easy enough to feel comfortable with some vague idea that over centuries of gradual deterioration and corruption the Church turned into Roman Catholicism and subsequently needed to be reformed in a big way. But the evidence of St. Ignatius's letters points to a Church situation so dramatically different from what many Evangelicals would expect, that they're faced with a difficult choice. Either admit that the Church rapidly plunged into serious error from the first generation after the Apostles, or re-think the picture of early Christianity that has become popular.

Personally, I think the latter is the better option. (Of course, I would.) When faced with this kind of conflict, doesn't it make more sense to re-think our interpretation of Scripture (which admittedly provides very little explicit support for the Evangelical model) than to suppose such a radical departure in such a short time?

my son, the deacon

The other day Ian broke one of Julie's Christmas decorations--a snowman hanger that we had on one of the dining room door handles. Apparently he thought it looked enough like a censer to walk around swinging it until the wire broke. When that attempt was foiled, he found a box of dinosaur puzzles with a string handle and resumed censing.

I'm also pleased to report that he seems to be adjusting to the new routine of attending different churches. Last week was the first time we got a ride to Holy Cross, and although I went over the day's agenda with him several times that morning before we left, and he seemed OK with it at the time, when it came to walking out the door, he started freaking out about parting from Mommy. He'd calmed down by the time we got to where Julie was dropping us off, but the goodbye was still pretty tearful. Fortunately, he regained composure before we got to the door, and he was fine the rest of the morning. (It's a typical pattern, reminiscent of King David, who mourned in agony and fasted and prayed while his son was dying, and stopped once he was gone.) This week, he took things much better. He wasn't exactly excited about the hand-off, but he didn't cry, and he went under his own power. I don't know if the hope of seeing kids dressed as animals for the Christmas pageant helped.

As for me, I had my first rejection this morning from a homeless person. I normally give only to those who are actually asking--holding a sign, asking out loud, or whatever. I suppose it's possible that I jumped to conclusions about this guy. More likely, he didn't want to be seen taking anything on a bus, since I'm sure they're not supposed to panhandle there. In any case, I'm glad I at least made the offer. There are a lot of times when I feel like I ought to do something and fear keeps me from acting. I thought this was going to be another of those occasions, but at the last minute I worked up enough courage. I ended up thanking God that I had the chance to feel rejected. Once I got over the initial shock, it felt a whole lot better than regret over having done nothing. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's just how far I have to go. I'll take what I can get, but I have so much more growing to do. God, be merciful to me a sinner!

That's probably going to do it for me until after (Western) Christmas. We're heading out of town to spend the holiday with family. (One of these years I'll get to a Christmas service at Holy Cross!) I expect my next time in Church will be Theophany. In the spirit of anticipation, I'll say it now: Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

Hail Mary, ordinary?

I really don't intend to respond to every message in the Christmas series at my wife's church, but I guess so far it's shaping up that way. Perhaps it's inevitable that I would have something to say about a message on Mary, regardless of which Evangelical is giving it. I want to say first of all that I think there's a lot of good in the message--Mary is significant for her response to the annunciation, she herself was all about pointing others to her Son, indeed she would have been embarrassed by the kind of attention given to her since then, and what made her response unique had to do with her unique spiritual preparation. All are excellent points, and all would be affirmed by the Tradition of the Church. (I suppose that might surprise a lot of Evangelicals.) I also appreciate his application point, that young people should be encouraged to emulate Mary in their own walk with God.

On the other hand (there's always another hand, isn't there?), I do take some serious issue with his overstated argument about how ordinary Mary was, and the resulting failure to make some important connections. I guess I would sum up my challenge with this question: Was it coincidence that God chose someone with such a unique spiritual life? You see, he acknowledges a uniqueness, when he brings up the question he and the other staff discussed earlier in the week--how could Mary have had that kind of faith in response to the angel's message? When you think about the implications--the life it would mean for her, for her son--how could she trust God so completely? Their answer was that it was her connection to Scripture. Her song exhibits an exceptional degree of both knowledge and internalization of the Old Testament, particularly for a girl in that culture. He says that she must have had amazing parents and an amazing local rabbi, to have gained such intimate knowledge of Scripture. He even refers to the tradition that her parents were named Joachim and Anna and says he'd like to meet them someday.

But Tradition could also tell him that Mary was devoted to God as a child, that as with Samuel in the Old Testament, Mary was born in answer to prayer and was dedicated to service in the temple. She grew up surrounded by the liturgy of Israel. She developed a strong walk with God and chose a life of virginity, but because there was no place for adult women to serve as virgins in the temple, and because her parents had already died, she was betrothed to the elder kinsman Joseph. Tradition could also remind him that God chooses people when they are adequately prepared for the task at hand. Yes, Mary is important for the way she responded, but her response did not take God by surprise. He did not luck out with the choice. Her life to that point had been her preparation, and God was in that process as much as he was in the miraculous event of her virginal conception.

It seems to me that more than our image of Mary suffers when we go out of our way to make her seem ordinary--when we think that her longings consisted of things like being pretty, or getting a puppy for Christmas, or finding a husband. This is not to say that she had no ordinary human interests, but what is there about her that would lead us to think she was so distracted by the mundane concerns of ordinary teenagers (particularly ordinary teenagers today, who usually get to delay even the normal responsibilities of adult life much longer than their ancient counterparts)? How do we look at her extraordinary intimacy with God and with Scripture, her extraordinary faith, to accept in a moment such a profound message for her life, and conclude that she must have been like any other young woman her age? Don't we believe that intimacy with God makes a difference in our priorities, in our longings? Do we imagine that with such preparation in her life, there was nothing visibly different about her until this one, pivotal moment?

I would submit that such a view lowers our expectations of what God can do in each of our lives. It is symptomatic of a deficient respect for the saints in general. Is any greater evidence needed of why saints are important in our worship and spiritual growth? Without seriously grasping their success, we have no reason to expect that we could ever be seriously different from our fallen selves. Sure, there might be improvements here and there, but a truly successful spiritual life? That is little more than a nice idea. Without saints, we idolize ordinariness. Much like the historian who says miracles in the Bible must not have happened, because we don't normally observe such things, or the biologist who says creation must not have happened, because we see only these ongoing processes around us, the principle of ordinariness starts from what we observe here and now, and explains away anything that doesn't conform. We see a bunch of ordinary people around us, so that must be all there is. It's all there ever has been, and all there ever will be--so don't expect too much. The alternative works the other way around--look to the saints who have gone before. Countless people have lived radical lives for God. If you don't see any around you, get on your knees and repent. It's possible, it's what he wants for us, and it's the only life worth pursuing.

humbugs of the world unite!

An interesting little article in Christianity Today highlights the return of "Christmas" among retailers this year. (Frankly, I hadn't noticed a difference, but maybe that's because I still have to do my shopping.) Perhaps more interesting are the last couple of paragraphs:

Those who engage in combat to remind others of "the reason for the season" would do well to remember that the Christmas season as such has only existed for about a century and a half. The 1,500-year-old Christian season that precedes December 25 is Advent, a time of fasting, penitence, and somber waiting. Protestants who eschew Advent because of an association with Rome have precedent for doing so. But the Reformers, Puritans, colonial Baptists, and others who gave rise to modern evangelicalism either passed Christmas Day with a simple worship service, or strongly opposed such a "popish" observance.

But please, the next time you're in Wal-Mart and the clerk wishes you "Merry Christmas," don't get an angry look in your eye, poke your finger into the clerk's chest, and say, "It's Advent! Christmas isn't until December 25!" That would be really annoying.

I'm reminded of a book I read (can't recall the title) a couple of years ago, about the history of Christmas celebration. It highlighted the way in which commercialism went hand-in-hand with the shift to the family-centered holiday that we know today. Back in the days of serfs and lords, the season was a time to celebrate the harvest and enjoy the newly-brewed alcohol and newly-slaughtered meat. Agricultural life naturally slowed down in the winter, so people had more free time, and it was part of a good lord's responsibility to his underlings to give them a chance to share in what they'd produced. In the wake of the industrial revolution and associated urbanization, the system broke down. Nameless, faceless employees still saw job prospects suffer in the winter months, but their relationship to the wealthy had become more detached. In place of the more congenial celebrations of an earlier time, roving bands would barge into the rich neighborhoods, demanding handouts. (Sort of like trick-or-treating for adults, but louder and scarier.) Needless to say, the upper classes weren't happy with these new holiday traditions.

The book goes on to explain how the season was re-shaped into a more friendly, less class-conscious occasion. It looks at literary evidence, like Dickens's A Christmas Carol, where the lead poor guy and the lead rich guy (who didn't start life that way) are both white-collar. The closest Scrooge comes to the truly indigent is when he is solicited for a charitable donation by noblemen, who are themselves even richer than he is. And this marks one of the shifts, as the idea of the well-off giving charitably moves from the arena of direct contact to that of giving to an organization. Another shift in giving patterns focused the giving on parents to children--still paternalistic, but it redirected the exchange to a more socially palatable setting. This is where commercialism came into play, because obviously children already had ready access to their parents' kitchens. Now, it had to be about the novelty of the gifts they would buy for them. The book also looks at "The Night before Christmas" (I don't think that was the actual name of the poem--"A Visit from St. Nicholas," maybe?), which replaces the night-time visit of obnoxious workers with that of a cute little elf (notice that at this stage, he was little and non-threatening), who gives gifts instead of taking from those he visits. Now everyone could be on the receiving end of the Christmas spirit (consumption, not giving). And of course, he quickly became a commercial icon.

Anyway, the shift took Christmas celebration from something more akin to Mardi Gras, and made it about charitable donations, family, and of course shopping. I thought it was a very interesting take on the season, and I think it highlights the complexity involved. Can we de-commercialize Christmas and still keep it a prominent holiday in our society? And if so, what kind would it be? Back to something like its raucous ancestor? One thing the book notes is that there's always been some kind of religious observance involved, but it tends to exist on the fringes. It's not what really gets people going, and if that's all there was, it wouldn't be much of a holiday in the scope of society as a whole. Is it possible to redeem Christmas without taking it apart? Do we want it purified as a churchly event, if that means it becomes irrelevant to the rest of society?

In a sense, the questions run along the lines of New Calendar vs. Old Calendar. When you boil it down, the only thing that's significantly gained (in my opinion) by following the New Calendar is the opportunity to celebrate Christmas with everyone else around us. Assuming, of course, that that is a gain. Which do we prefer? keeping Nativity separate from the "corrupt" holiday that Christmas has become (and taking advantage of post-Christmas sales to boot), or engaging with our culture, to sanctify the holiday where it stands (perhaps in the same way that we got Dec 25 in the first place, as an existing holiday that was suitably close to Theophany)? I'm not sure I have a good answer.

children sitting in the market

I came across some interesting remarks in Bl. Theophylact the other day. He writes regarding Matt 11:

16-17. But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the market, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. It is the malcontent nature of the Jews that He is speaking of here. For as they were cantankerous, neither John's asceticism nor Christ's simplicity pleased them. they were like foolish little children who are never satisfied--whether one cries for them or plays the pipe for them, they are not pleased.

18-19. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a drunkard, a friend of publicans and sinners. He compares John's way of life to mourning, for John showed great severity both in words and deeds, and His own life on earth He compares to piping, that is, to the sound of the flute. For the Lord was most gracious and pleasing, condescending to all that He might win all, bringing the good tidings of the kingdom, and He was not severe in appearance as was John. But Wisdom is justified by her children. . . . For I, on My part, have done everything, yet you, by your refusal to believe, prove that I Who omitted nothing am justified.

What interests me here is how the idea can extend (cautiously) to the response I've seen in some Evangelicals when confronted with Orthodox theology. Now, I want to say up front that I'm not trying to equate any Evangelical's response to Orthodoxy with the response of the Jews to Jesus. There is at least a quantitative difference, if not a qualitative one. But I do think there is an analogy that's worth teasing out. The response I've sometimes seen is this. When faced with Orthodoxy's emphasis on a changed life, judgment according to our deeds, etc., they say it is too legalistic and demands of humans what they can never do--to earn salvation by their own efforts. On the other hand, when faced with the suggestion that a person who was never Christian, never part of the Church, perhaps explicitly disavowed Christianity in life, could get to the judgment, stand before Christ, truly know him for the first time, respond with love, and be allowed into heaven, they say it smacks of universalism and leaves things too wide open.

It seems to me that there's some kind of correlation between these divergent responses and those outlined here. John showed a life of severity and asceticism--the need for radical repentance before God's judgment. The Jews looked at him and saw a demon-possessed man. Jesus showed a life of condescension and radical fellowship--loving everyone who came to him, regardless of their background. The Jews called him a glutton and friend of sinners. With our human perception, we might look at the situation and say, they were sensible, balanced people who realized moderation is necessary in all things. They didn't take up with extremists, whether wild-eyed lunatics of the desert or lax, liberal, touchy-feely reformers. And in so doing, we would get the whole situation backward. The truth was not to be found in the safe, middle ground. It was in the living tension between radical asceticism and radical love. Like so many other things about God, we can't be reductionist on this issue. We have to accept the mystery of the apparent contradiction. Sure, one extreme or the other by itself is imbalanced. That's precisely why we need both.

Now let's come back to the Evangelical response to Orthodoxy. A sensible, balanced human might say, extreme legalism is not good, nor is extreme openness to let everyone come in, and search for something in the middle. But in this case, as in the other, the outcome would be wrong. It is the tension between the two poles that leads us to the truth that otherwise eludes our grasp. Orthodoxy is not too legalistic, although if it spoke only of works it would be. Neither is it too loosey-goosey, although if it spoke only of love and welcome it would be. The two apparent extremes actually complement each other. Radical obedience is expected, but only when a loving God has already opened his arms wide to receive those who love him. He redeems them so that they can change into the people they were meant to be. Radical welcome is extended, but only to those who have lived in love toward Christ, whether they knew who he was or not, and who respond accordingly when they meet him face to face.

This might seem like a harsh indictment, to associate Evangelicals (at least, those who respond to Orthodoxy in this way) with what Jesus says here. And when I first noticed it, I was hesitant to follow up on the correlation for fear of going too far. I think it's safe enough, though, if you keep reading into Bl. Theophylact's remarks on chap. 12:

31-32. Wherefore I say unto you, Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in the age to come. . . . When the Jews saw the Lord eating and drinking, associating with publicans and harlots, and doing all the other things He did as the Son of Man, then they slandered Him as a glutton and drunkard; yet for this they deserve forgiveness, and not even repentance will be required. For they were understandably scandalized. But when they saw Him working miracles and were slandering and blaspheming the Holy Spirit, saying that it was something demonic, how will this sin be forgiven them, unless they repent? So, then, know that he who blasphemes the Son of Man, seeing Him living as a man, and says that He is a friend of harlots, a glutton, and a drunkard because of those things which Christ does, such a man will not have to give an answer for this, even if he does not repent. For he is forgiven, as he did not realize that this was God concealed. But he who blasphemes the Holy Spirit, that is, the spiritual deeds of Christ, and calls them demonic, unless he repents, he will not be forgiven. For he does not have a reasonable excuse to slander, as does the man who sees Christ with harlots and publicans and then slanders.

So their reaction in chap. 11 was bad, but it was understandable, and they will be forgiven, even without repentance. In the same way, I take comfort that Evangelicals who find Orthodox theology scandalous on this point will also be forgiven their failure to grasp what it all really means. There may be other things that are more obvious, for which they must give an account, but their objection here is understandable. That doesn't make it any less real an obstacle, of course, and we who accept Orthodox teaching should do what we can to help them understand the truth. We're maximalist on obedience anyway. We don't ask what is the least we can do to get into heaven, and neither should we be satisfied with knowing that a particular mistaken idea isn't quite so bad, because it will be forgiven.

Daniel needs a few more beasts

There's a cool visual representation of Middle East ruling powers throughout history. It stops short of the current era of U. S. colonialism, but perhaps it is too early to draw the borders on that one. I suppose it doesn't have that much to do with Orthodoxy, except of course that it generally shows what happened with the territories of the ancient patriarchates.

Zechariah and Gabriel

This morning I went with my wife to the evangelical church. The pastor was starting his Christmas series of sermons, called My Christmas Prayer! which will cover passages from Luke's nativity narrative, with a focus on God answering prayer. (It's subtitled The Christmas Story by Dr. Luke, which I suppose gives the Evangelist some credibility in our modern, expert-focused culture, but leaves him safely in the realm of academia without any troublesome notion of personal holiness, as in Saint.) This first segment comes from the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth, where God supernaturally provides them with a son. The preacher understood Gabriel's reference to Zechariah's prayer in the way that I have always heard it (and thought about it myself)--that he and Elizabeth had spent decades praying for a son, and finally God was answering them. (And poor Zechariah just wasn't ready for an answer after so long with no response, which led him to respond skeptically and end up mute for the next nine months.) After coming home, I decided to read Bl. Theophylact on this passage and found a somewhat different take: "Surely Zacharias was not praying for a son. Was he not praying for the sins of the people?"

Theophylact's "surely" comes from the traditional understanding that this was in fact the Day of Atonement, and what would have been foremost on Zechariah's mind as he offered in the temple was not his own desire for a son, but the sins of the people. Even putting that thought aside, if one should question whether it was necessarily the Day of Atonement, he was in fact serving in the temple, and something important was going on, because everyone was outside praying while this was going on. That much is clearly stated in the text. What kind of priest would have been thinking about his own personal needs under such circumstances, rather than those of his people? Furthermore, when you stop and think about it, if Zechariah and Elizabeth were clearly past childbearing age, it's unlikely that they would have been praying regularly for a son even then. Being righteous people, they would have accepted that God had chosen not to give them children and moved on with their priorities.

So, Theophylact goes on to give two possible readings of what's going on here. Either way, the answered prayer is the prayer about the sins of the people. One option is that John will be an answer to that prayer, because he will call the people to repentance and prepare the way for the one who will take away those sins. The other is that Elizabeth's pregnancy and the child to come are a confirmation that God has in fact heard Zechariah's prayer. Either way, the birth is not the object of the prayer, but the unexpected means of its fulfillment or the confirming sign that it will be answered. This makes a great deal of sense to me. It reinforces the notion that God answers prayer in surprising ways, but it turns the emphasis to prayer for bigger, deeper spiritual issues, particular when offered for the sake of others, rather than prayer for our own desires. And God answers the prayer by providing what Zechariah and his wife couldn't even bring themselves to hope for. How cool is that?

Another interesting reading from Bl. Theophylact comes in v. 20, where he understands siopon to mean "deaf" rather than "mute." He doesn't seem to address any question here over what the word might mean. It is the participle form of a verb meaning "to be silent," and is usually translated "mute," which makes what follows ("and unable to speak") redundant. If it means here "to be in silence," i.e., unable to hear, the two afflictions are different but complementary. Perhaps it is only the desire to avoid redundancy that led to this interpretation, but it would also explain why they signal to Zechariah rather than ask him vocally what to name John. I've understood it as a misunderstanding--that because he couldn't talk, they assumed he couldn't hear--but it would fit quite nicely if he was in fact struck deaf and mute. And Theophylact's point is well taken, that it was a fitting response, that "for not giving heed, he was chastened with deafness; and for speaking back, he was chastened with muteness."

I find it a particularly interesting interpretation, in light of the fact that he finishes out his days of service in the temple. When I was at the Society of Biblical Literature conference, I attended a session on deafness in the Bible, in which one of the presenters argued that it was possible for a priest of Israel to serve while deaf. He looked at the priestly literature (mostly Leviticus, with some other material from the books of Moses) and found that while for instance blindness would disqualify a man from being a priest, deafness would not. He also noted that the rituals performed in the sanctuary were for the most part done without any need to speak, even to the point of including several hand gestures, which may suggest that they had a whole system worked out to maintain a "holy silence." It would fit that Zechariah was able to finish his service, even if he was deaf and mute.