the Lord's Prayer

The pastor at Bethany has a habit of referring to common Christian practices as more or less universal, except that we don't practice them--not with as much regularity, at least. Perhaps the most frequent example is communion. Hardly an observance goes by without his mentioning that people are doing the same thing all around the world. Aside from the obvious problem that most of those people around the world have a different view of what communion really is, the reason he can assume that so many others are taking communion is that they do it every week (at least). Bethany, like many Baptist churches, observes communion about once a month (some do it less). I guess when it's only a remembrance, it doesn't make that much difference how often you remember.

Yesterday, his message was from Matthew 6, about the Lord's Prayer. Before he started, we did a completely uncharacteristic thing--we recited the prayer together. He then began:

All around the world today, people have prayed [the Lord's] Prayer. . . . in a cathedral in Europe . . . . in a little village in Tanzania . . . all over America in little white churches that say "First" something-or-other . . .

And for some reason, which I suppose he'll get to, today we decided to join in this otherwise universal practice. He went on:

When we pray this prayer, it's a beautiful moment; it's comfortable, it's familiar, it kind of knits our heart with God, but frankly, we often don't think about the words, and more pointedly, some of them we don't mean when we say them.

It's an important observation, no doubt. We should, ideally, always pray with our heart, mind, and will. Whether praying in our own words or in Christ's, we should know, believe, and mean what we're saying. Presumably, this is why reciting the prayer regularly in services has no place in so many Evangelical churches. If it were said too often, it might lose its meaning. As he went on, he elaborated the point--living out our salvation should be about a personal relationship with God, not about keeping rules. Prayer should be an intimate conversation with God. We shouldn't repeat the same prayers over and over again. No special tone is necessary.

It's a fairly standard treatment of the prayer in Evangelical circles. Jesus gave it as a model--not as something to be repeated verbatim, but as a pattern to inspire our own, original prayers. When we pray, we should talk to God from the heart, using normal language, and including the aspects that we see in the Lord's Prayer or in some other aid. (A common one is ACTS--adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication.) Surely, this is a better way to communicate with God from the heart than by reciting someone else's prayers.

It made sense to me for quite a bit of my life, but as I got interested in language, I began to question the whole line of thinking. Are supposedly extemporaneous prayers really all that original? Are they really more heartfelt? In my experience, Evangelicals tend to pray with some pretty stock language (which they mostly learn from each other). They struggle to vary their prayers before meals, so that they don't become rote recitation, but when you're praying for exactly the same thing three times a day, 365 days a year, how different can the words really get? Their intercessory prayers for friends, relatives, and fellow church members can also become repetitive. If someone's sick, and you're praying for their healing (or for God's will to be done), how many different ways can you say it? They need to be reminded as much as anyone else to focus on God, to worship him with their prayers instead of just asking for stuff. They can just as easily zone out during congregational prayer or pray "in their own words" without thinking about the content.

In the process, by rejecting pre-written prayers, Evangelicals often miss out on the "greatest hits" of Christian spirituality. Although their faith is nominally that of a 2000-year-old community, you'd never know it from their liturgical life. The constant drive to re-invent, to avoid the stigma of tradition, actually impoverishes their language, as they are only free to work with what has been in use for a single generation.

Certainly, it is possible for Orthodox Christians and others with long liturgical traditions to become complacent--to go through the motions of reciting their standard prayers without thinking about them. But there's no reason they have to. And in fact, there are distinct advantages to having learned prayers. When you don't feel like praying, forcing yourself through morning or evening prayers can be therapeutic. Sure, you can just rattle through them without thinking about what you're saying. But it's also a great tool to cultivate an attitude that you don't already have. Trying to jump-start a prayerful heart with whatever words you find inside you seems counter-productive. Granted, you might achieve similar effects by writing out your own prayers when things are going well and reading them back when they're not. But even then, you're still limping along with only your personal best. What's the point of being saved within the body of Christ, if that's as good as it gets?

By all means, it is good to stop every now and then and really think about something like the Lord's Prayer. It is certainly better to pray with fuller understanding. It is good to slow down and pay attention to the words and what they mean. The same sort of advice can be found all throughout Orthodox literature, about some of the most frequently repeated prayers. But that does not diminish the importance of repeating them.

Here's a challenge for Evangelicals and anyone else who thinks prayer must always be extemporaneous. Find the balance between genuine, personal prayer from the heart, fully internalized, fully intentional, pouring out one's soul directly to God, and prayer that is unceasing. Scripture tells us to do both, but it seems to me that the usual means of addressing the first one inevitably prevents the second. To pray naturally, spontaneously, in one's own words, and without repetition, and to pray constantly, can only reduce prayer to the whole stream of consciousness that we experience as we go through life. Every random thought in my head, every word I speak, must somehow qualify as a prayer. Perhaps it is possible to do so, but how does one get there without becoming lost in a sea of meaninglessness? How does one draw the line between "everything is prayer" and "nothing is prayer?" The answer of Orthodox asceticism is to train the heart through long discipline of repetitive, incessant prayer, until it can only act in communion with Christ. If Evangelicalism has a viable alternative, I've never heard of it.

As regards a better understanding of the Lord's Prayer itself, it's interesting that the preparation for next week's message has led me (back) to some insights from an Orthodox perspective. For this series, we were given a list of recommended Scripture readings to prepare each week, and the reading for next week is from the final chapters of the Apocalypse. There's not much patristic commentary on that particular book, so I went to the one Orthodox resource that I happen to have--a copy of Fr. Thomas Hopko's lectures. I mentioned them a while back, when I used the last lecture as an example of how Orthodox approach questions related to salvation, first with Julie, then with the elders at Bethany. It's been a while since I listened to them, so I figured now would be a good opportunity. In the first lecture, he talks about the Lord's Prayer in light of its relationship to kingdom issues. The obvious part is "thy kingdom come," but in Orthodoxy this coming happens every time the Eucharist is served, which ties in with "give us this day our daily bread." "Lead us not into temptation (tribulation), but deliver us from the evil one" he refers to the tribulation of this age and the domain of the Antichrist.

Finally, I would recommend Fr. Stephen's blog entry today on "fellowship with God," which touches on this issue of a "personal relationship"--a vague concept that tones down the usual biblical language of communion.

what kind of "friend of God?"

After church at Bethany yesterday, I was thinking about one of the choruses we'd sung and how much it bothered me. I was debating in my head bringing it up to Julie, when she said, "I don't think I like that song, 'Friend of God.'" Whew! Now perhaps I can give my opinion without seeming like some bitter, formerly-Evangelical-convert-to-something-else, outside observer. If you're not familiar with the song, here are the lyrics:

Who am I that You are mindful of me?
That you hear me
When I call?
Is it true that You are thinking of me?
How you love me--
It's amazing!

I am a friend of God.
I am a friend of God.
I am a friend of God.
He calls me friend.

God Almighty,
Lord of Glory,
You have called me friend.

It looks deceptively short, because there's a lot of repetition. Part-way through it, I got bored and stopped singing, so I had time to think a while about the message. To my knowledge, there's only one passage in Scripture that uses the term "friend of God":

But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only (James 2:20-24).

In one of the strongest arguments for faith fulfilled by works, James calls Abraham the Friend of God, not because God loved him, but because of Abraham's tangible response, as he worked out his faith by willingly sacrificing his own son. But this chorus says nothing about obedience or sacrifice or works of faith. It speaks only of God's love for us. Perhaps if the background is a strong Calvinist view of limited atonement, we could say that it applies only to the elect--those for whom Jesus died, because they alone would be saved--but it doesn't strike me as the sort of song you'd get from that camp. Instead, we have something that verges on universalism--that to be a friend of God requires only that God love me. But if God loves all mankind, that means every person who has ever lived is a friend of God. Are we supposed to bask in this realization while acknowledging that perhaps the majority of God's friends will end up in hell, or is it more logical to conclude that all these "friends" will be saved? In a song that doesn't even seem to require faith as a human response, universal salvation seems the only likely outcome.

To be fair, the song hardly has enough content to draw hard and fast conclusions about the underlying theology. Perhaps we should give the benefit of the doubt that it was never meant to say much of anything except that it feels good to know God loves us. And presumably it's enough to know that a person who didn't love God back would probably not sing it. Still, the choice between heresy and contentless emotion doesn't seem very appealing.

cooking

As long as I'm getting back on the horse, I may as well dig in a bit with two posts in one day. Besides, with the random collection of thoughts that I posted a little while ago, I just couldn't resist continuing the trend :-)

We're in the Dormition Fast, of course. I'm feeling a bit intimidated by the three-month gap between now and the Nativity Fast. I've really been struggling to control how much I eat when I'm not fasting. Maybe now that I've read John Cassian twice on gluttony, I'll be a little better armed this time. Anyway, I'm preparing my own food as usual during a fast, and I've tried a few new things.

While I was home, Julie got this cooking show from the library--it's called Oliver's Twist, although I can't remember the guy's full name. He's a young Brit, who does manly things like "bashing" all his spices with a mortar and pestle and using chili peppers in pretty much everything. It's more entertaining than most cooking shows I've been subjected to, and I picked up a few ideas. Mostly it's just made me more adventurous about experimenting with spices.

I've been a big fan of hummus since I started fasting, but never tried making it myself until now. My first attempt wasn't great, but good enough that I don't plan to waste money on store-bought stuff anymore. I figured I'd start simple, with chickpeas, lemon juice, tahini, and garlic. It came out kind of thick--next time I might try adding back in some of the water from the chickpea can. The flavor didn't seem quite right either. The tahini taste was stronger than most hummus I've had, and the garlic weaker. I'll have to play with the proportions a bit. I also want to try some other spices to give it more kick.

Speaking of kick, we've had this Anchor Bar Buffalo wing sauce hanging around for a few years. A while back, someone was moving and giving away a Fry Daddy. I decided to take it so I could make my own chicken wings. It worked well enough, but I couldn't bring myself to throw out the oil every time, so it got pretty rancid. Julie didn't like it stinking up the house, so I eventually gave up. For as often as I eat wings, I can just buy them pre-made. But Julie had got me this sauce, and it's just been hanging around. I tried it on fish last weekend and liked the result. I'll probably do that kind of thing more often. I might even try putting it in a future batch of hummus :-)

The other day, I was browsing through some old posts on my Godmother's blog. (She expresses reservations about calling her sponsor, who's only five years older, her Godmother; but I have no such qualms, as long as she can turn a pumpkin into a car when I need it.) She mentioned some bean enchiladas that looked interesting but too much like work. More useful for my taste was the Frito pie tip--heat up some beans, diced tomatoes, and salsa, pour over Fritos. A dish worthy of my cooking skills! We're still getting meals trickling in from the whole giving birth thing, and someone brought over tacos the other day. I figured it was a good opportunity to try concocting something, so I looked through what we had in the cupboard--a can of black beans, a can of diced tomatoes with green chili peppers, and some plain corn tortilla chips. I threw in some taco seasoning and made a pretty tasty dip, if a bit watery. (Julie told me I should have drained the tomatoes first. Oh, well--maybe I'll have the rest as soup tonight.)

Oh, and I almost forgot--we had some bananas that were getting old. Normally, I'd make banana bread, I don't know of a vegan recipe. So instead I made a dessert dip. I mashed them up, mixed in honey and peanut butter, and dipped graham crackers in the result. It looked pretty ugly, but tasted great. I might have to make some for a fasting potluck one of these days. (Credit goes to Julie for thinking of graham crackers--I was just going to use tortilla chips.)

out of whack

I haven't written much lately, have I? I was home for three weeks after Jenna's birth, and although I only worked a few hours each day, I was busy with family stuff most of the time. I also came up with some projects to putter at, while I had the extra time at home. I re-arranged my library and weeded out some more books. I'm finally down to the stuff that I really can't bear just to give away. I'm not reading it, so I don't mind getting rid of it, but I know these books are worth something, and it would be nice to get something back on them. Selling used books isn't as easy as I would have thought, though. Even when you're not trying to make a lot of money off of them, just the work of listing them and shipping them out is something of a deterrent. And who knows how long something has to sit out there before someone comes along with enough interest to spend money on it? I'm too impatient just to get them out of the house. I got a thing from eBay that let me put up three items for bid without paying the usual charge to list them. Tried that--nothing came of it. Now I've got the whole collection on Craig's List, to see if anyone bites. I'm hoping that someone will come by and pick up a big chunk of them, so I don't have to mess with doing this piece-meal. But so far, no response whatsoever.

I'd been wanting to re-arrange my library for a while. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it, but I knew something had to change. The system I'd been using pre-dated my interest in Orthodoxy, and I wasn't happy with the way most of my more recent acquisitions were arranged. Not only did I come up with a more satisfying categorization, but it worked out better than before in terms of where books fell on the shelves.

Since coming back to work, I've spent some time catching up on podcasts, and now I'm trying to whittle away at the reading pile. It's really not too bad right now, but it seems like every time I get a little bit ahead, something else fills in behind. I'm reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Everyone learns about it in school as an example of muckraking; I guess a lot of people had to read it, but I didn't. I'm a bit surprised, actually, that it was assigned so much. It's pretty blatantly socialist, especially in the last few chapters. Anyway, I kept seeing references to it in other stuff--particularly, when reading Fast Food Nation and Voices of a People's History. I figured I ought to see what the fuss was about. It's pretty interesting, but terribly depressing. I'm also reading John Cassian's Institutes and Conferences from the NPNF volume. It's too bulky to carry back and forth to work, so I only read that when I get some spare time at home.

Not much newsworthy in my life. I've made it to some services here and there--taken Ian to a couple of Parakleses and plan to catch some Great Vespers later this month. I was hoping to make some DLs, with the Transfiguration and Dormition during the week, but Fr. Gregory is on vacation for both. They had a morning DL for the Transfiguration, which was the day I went back to work, so I didn't feel right about taking off any more time. No DL for the Dormition, and the alternatives are too far away or in the morning. One thing I've discovered recently--if Ian is getting too distracted during the service, I can bring him back a bit by kneeling beside him with the service book and showing him where we are with my finger. Now, if I could just get him to pay attention when we do evening prayers. He's been pretty unruly lately, in general and especially getting ready for bed. I hate to associate punishment with prayer time, but I'm not sure there's much else to be done.

My parents came up for a short visit two weekends ago--no conversations about Orthodoxy. Julie's parents are coming this weekend--I would expect more of the same. As for Julie and me, we haven't done a whole lot lately. With Jenna's arrival, it's hard to find much spare time. We're still doing devotions together, but she's usually pretty wiped out in the evening. Right now, getting to church at all is enough of a burden, without worrying about visiting any more churches for right now.

I have in mind to work on something about comparisons between Orthodox Christian and Jewish prayer. I can't remember now where the idea came from, but I'd be interested to go back and look through the Jewish prayerbook again, now that I have a few years of Orthodoxy under my belt. We'll see if I ever get to it . . .

of water and spirit

Four months ago, I started something and then quickly dropped it. I said I was going to spend time critiquing some of my own past writings, from my seminary days, when things seemed much more cut-and-dried. I think I got through one paper, on the canon of the Old Testament, and then dropped the project. I think what probably happened was that I just never got around to pulling up other materials. They're mostly stored on a different computer from the one I use to do my blogging, so it's rare that I think about it enough to look for them when I have the chance. The pace of life has slowed down a bit, while I'm taking some time off of work to help out with the new baby. I finally went through everything and decided there's really only one other subject I want to address. (There's certainly other stuff that could be covered, but most of it's not quite so directly controversial between Evangelicalism and Orthodoxy. Besides, I frankly get bored reading my own writing.)

In my first semester of seminary, I took a required class on "methods of biblical research." One of our assignments (I believe it was the big assignment for the semester) was to write a paper on John 3:5 and the meaning of "born of water." As with the other, I have no idea how long I'll leave the paper online; and once again, I apologize for the formatting. I've tried to clean up the Greek and Hebrew scripts (I wasn't doing them in Unicode back then); otherwise, I pretty much left it as Google docs rendered it.

Much like the OT canon paper, a major bias that stands out is that I never really took seriously the traditional view. I paid some lip service to the possibility that the passage could be talking about baptism, but I wrote it off with some pretty flimsy arguments and instead spent most of my attention on the choice between "born of water" as a reference to physical birth and "born of water and spirit" as more or less redundant. The whole discussion has a feel of, since it's not about baptism, what does it mean? The other overriding assumption is the typical bottom-up interpretive ideal of Evangelical hermeneutics. The meaning of the passage can only extend to what was going on at the moment between Jesus and Nicodemus, which can only be based on their shared background in OT Scripture. The life of the Church in which John wrote is more or less irrelevant.

Not to be too hard on myself, I think I was on the right track with the idea that Nicodemus's initial assertion about Jesus was earthly, fleshly, and could only be correcting through a total rebirth. I failed, however, to extend the idea to its logical conclusion, that Jesus was not really explaining things for him (at least, not as he was) but for those who already saw with the eyes of the Spirit. This is, I think, a common flaw in Evangelical reasoning--that although the importance of being born again is emphasized, and particularly in more Reformed circles, the incapacity of fallen man to receive the things of the Spirit prior to regeneration, when it comes to interpreting Scripture, methods are applied that assume clarity is possible prior to the presence of the Spirit. In this case, the contradiction is obvious (once you know where to look for it)--Jesus plainly told Nicodemus that he had to be born again before he could understand, but I assumed with many Evangelical interpreters that whatever Jesus's meaning, it must have been something Nicodemus could grasp.

Toward the end of the paper, I marshaled my specific objections to the sacramental view:

1. If Jesus meant to convey baptism, he would have continued referring to it explicitly throughout the passage. I reasoned that, if this passage was talking about baptism, he was making it a means of regeneration and a condition for salvation. Since this idea is articulated nowhere else in Scripture, Jesus would surely have made his meaning explicit. I assumed, of course, an absurdly strong view of sola scriptura, that whatever Jesus would say here would be done with a view toward the eventual need that every doctrine could be clearly articulated and defended using only statements contained in Scripture. (I don't suppose I stopped to think that this line of reasoning runs counter to the expectation that Jesus's words gain their full meaning in their immediate context.) I also assumed that Scripture nowhere else suggests a sacramental view of baptism and that John's Gospel has nothing to say about Christian ordinances.
   
2. Nicodemus was unlikely to have made the connection with baptism. Again, I missed the point that Nicodemus was not yet ready to receive the truth Jesus was getting at here, and I completely ignored the force his words would have had for the Christian community that would read John's Gospel.
   
3. The topic was not Spirit baptism but regeneration. Perhaps even more absurd than my assumption that Jesus was intentionally constructing the New Testament as one might write a theology book, I also assumed that the theological categories I was studying in seminary had some relevance to the language of the NT. Clearly, Jesus would not have mixed up these two important and distinct doctrines. If he had in mind regeneration, there was no place for him to be talking about baptism, which is an altogether different ministry of the Spirit!
   

I don't know where I thought this silly notion came from, that Jesus was talking here about water baptism. I acknowledged that it was the majority view among commentators (and surely the only view expressed for the first several centuries of the Church, though at the time it wouldn't have occurred to me that such might be worth knowing), but I apparently wasn't bothered by the discrepancy. It wasn't even worth giving much consideration.

"The Church's One Foundation"

Although the norm for Sunday worship at Bethany is contemporary, occasionally they do throw a more traditional hymn or two into the mix. This morning they sang for the first time "The Church's One Foundation." I'd sung it many times before and practically knew it by heart, but this was perhaps the first time since my interest in Orthodoxy. I don't know if it sent shivers down anyone else's spine--probably not--but to me it seemed so out of place, not just stylistically but perhaps more so lyrically:

1. The church's one foundation
is Jesus Christ her Lord;
she is his new creation
by water and the Word.
From heaven he came and sought her
to be his holy bride;
with his own blood he bought her,
and for her life he died.

2. Elect from every nation,
yet one o'er all the earth;
her charter of salvation,
one Lord, one faith, one birth;
one holy name she blesses,
partakes one holy food,
and to one hope she presses,
with every grace endued.

3. Though with a scornful wonder
we see her sore oppressed,
by schisms rent asunder,
by heresies distressed,
yet saints their watch are keeping;
their cry goes up, "How long?"
And soon the night of weeping
shall be the morn of song.

4. Mid toil and tribulation,
and tumult of her war,
she waits the consummation
of peace forevermore;
till, with the vision glorious,
her longing eyes are blest,
and the great church victorious
shall be the church at rest.

5. Yet she on earth hath union
with God the Three in One,
and mystic sweet communion
with those whose rest is won.
O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we
like them, the meek and lowly,
on high may dwell with thee.

I don't recall ever hearing or singing the third verse, but even these five are shortened from the original version, written by S. J. Stone, a 19th-c. Anglican pastor. The hymn was part of a series he wrote, based on the Apostles' Creed, and was originally titled, "The Nature of the Universal Church, and the Fellowship of the Saints." My initial guess was that it was Anglican or pre-Reformation. Evangelicals these days may occasionally affirm the Apostles' Creed, but they
are not likely to sing songs about actual communion with the departed saints.

For me, it's hard to hear this hymn in an Evangelical context without some cynicism. I try to do everything I do in worship in the presence of the saints and with all the Orthodox sensibility I can muster, which is why it was such a moving hymn for me. But even as I sang, I could not make sense of it from an Evangelical perspective. They do not have one faith over all the earth, except in a very stripped-down, absolute minimum. If they partake one holy food, it is without a common understanding of what that even means.

Of course, there is also much in the song that Evangelicals can affirm without reservation, and that's what saddens me most in such situations. It would almost be easier to deal with an altogether non-Christian religion, where the boundaries are more clear-cut. With Evangelicals, I see the truth that they have, and often their enthusiasm for Christ. I see their love, their service, their outreach, and so many other things about their lives that are on the right track. And in their ideals, I see the Church--it's something that they long for, without knowing exactly what it is or why it seems such a distant reality.

Jesus told the parables of the dragnet and of the wheat and tares, where the Church is pictured by various means as including both the true and the false, the good and the bad, and at the end of the age, it will be sorted out. In the wheat and tares, the servants even ask about uprooting the tares right away, but the master explains that to do so would mean destroying much of the true wheat as well. I can't help but feel like Protestantism has been one big failure to heed these words. By trying to uproot the bad, earthly elements that were found in the Western Church, the Reformers threw out much that belonged. Later forms of Evangelicalism have continued this trend of purity through separation. Even the theology that makes the universal church an abstraction, free from any stain because of how it is defined, or relegates the purity of sainthood to the afterlife--these ideas preserve the truth in an ideal but in the process lose its power for the present reality. The result is something so close, yet so far from what the Church was meant to be.

welcome, Jenna Lorraine!

Ian finally gets a baby sister!

Jenna Lorraine was born July 15, 2007, at 7:49 p.m.
Weight: 8 lbs. 10 oz.
Height: 20.5 in.

Mother and baby are both tired but otherwise doing fine.

O Sovereign Master and Lord Almighty, Who heals every sickness and every weakness: do You Yourself heal this Your servant Julie . . . protect her, and this child Jenna which she has borne; shelter her under the covering of Your wings from this day to her last; through the intercessions of the all-pure Theotokos, of the holy Martyr Julia, of the Myrrh-bearer Joanna, of the Hieromartyr Eleutherius, and of all the Saints, for blessed are You to ages of ages. Amen.

if you remember only one thing . . .

Bishop Ignaty has a lot of good advice in The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism. Perhaps one of his most important instructions comes in the short section at the end, on "Rules of Outward Conduct for Novices":

27. In case of necessity, superfluous phlegm should be carefully gathered in a handkerchief and not spat on the floor with an indecent noise. One should not cough and blow one's nose loudly. These and other similar natural needs should be done quietly and decently. Snuff should not be used in church. . . .

It doesn't seem like these remarks need much comment. He does go on to say, "In fact, those entering the monastic order should give up the use of tobacco entirely," lest anyone think that he objects to it only in church.

anathematizing Eutyches

Today on the new calendar we commemorate the miracle of St. Euphemia's relics, which according to Orthodox Tradition revealed the conclusion of the ecumenical synod at Chalcedon in AD 451. The teaching of Eutyches, that Christ has only a divine nature, was condemned as heresy, and subsequently the second ecumenical synod of Constantinople anathematized anyone who does not anathematize Eutyches (among other notable heretics).

It occurred to me last night at vespers, as I was listening to the account of this miracle, that I have never explicitly recanted my own formerly-held heresies in this area. I don't know whether it's strictly necessary that I do so--God knows what I believe now--but somehow it feels important. When I was in Bible college--my first semester, I believe--I studied the great Christological debates for the first time. The professor assigned our systematic theology class a book called Pilgrim Theology, by Michael Bauman. His main agenda throughout the book was to contrast two approaches that he labeled "pilgrim theology" and "fortress theology." In his scheme, pilgrim theology is what theology was meant to be--a journey of discovery, where we're constantly open to learning new things, refining our thinking, etc. Fortress theology is an aberration, where theologians stop exploring, settle down in one intellectual place, and build walls around their position. At the time, and for many years thereafter, it seemed a very sensible paradigm.

The chapters in Bauman's book were basically illustrative. Rather than developing a coherent argument throughout, he laid down the overall idea at the beginning, and then gave several examples throughout the book of how fortress theology rears its ugly head. One of the chapters had to do with the great Christological controversies, where Bauman felt that too much weight was placed on a few key Greek terms, so that the theological conclusions degenerated into absurdity--notably, the idea that Christ has two wills. (Keep in mind that Protestants generally ignore the seventh ecumenical synod, so two wills is basically the end of the line.) He described it as a multi-lane road that keeps losing lanes, and eventually it just ran out of pavement altogether. It was a theological dead-end. The conclusion that Christ had two wills signaled only one thing--that they were backed into a corner where they couldn't say anything else logically. Bauman's contention was that they'd had a good run, but they should have recognized that their method wouldn't take them any further, and moved on to something else. I'm not going to try to pick apart his argument here. I only bring it up to establish the context in which I drew my own conclusions.

At the same time, I was coming through a strong philosophical phase, mostly honed on Protestant apologetics, which (little did I know) had me thinking very much like the ancient heretics. (I'm not trying to make a direct connection here--this is how things played out in my head, not necessarily an accurate reflection of Protestant thinking.) I wanted theology to "make sense." Not that I was prepared to refute Scripture where it didn't fit my ambitions--I simply assumed that true theology, and therefore the true teachings of Scripture, would always conform with human logic. So, when we addressed the Chalcedonian teaching of two natures, I balked at the idea. How could anything have two natures? The nature of something is what it is, and if it doesn't strictly fit into one category or another, it must be something altogether different. So the notion that the two natures would simply merge into one appealed to me. More than that, though, I felt I had to inject some original thought into the debate, so I went on to articulate a heresy of a different sort, which I proudly labeled neo-Eutycheanism.

It went something like this. Paul's Christological hymn in Phil 2 is often referred to as teaching the kenosis--the self-emptying of Christ. This is explained in various ways, but the gist as I understood it at the time was that Christ, who was God the Son, somehow limited himself to become human. Now, if man was created in the image of God, and Christ is called the image of God, then wouldn't it make sense for the kenosis to have produced from actual God the image of God? I wouldn't have said that he actually stopped being God, but he voluntarily limited his divinity to the point that he became perfect man. One thing that I don't think I really processed at the time was what this would mean after his earthly life. Does he remain eternally limited, eternally nothing more (practically) than perfect man? Or does he return to being fully God and no longer man at all? Of course, if I'd pushed very hard on the idea it could have drifted into any number of heresies. Fortunately, I didn't; and fortunately, I ended up dropping the idea over time. I don't know that I ever explicitly decided it was wrong, and in fact when a few years later I encountered Oriental Orthodoxy, I didn't have to give their Christology a second thought. I just didn't feel like it was a very important issue. Whether Christ had one nature or two was all the same to me, in the sense that it didn't really affect anything else. It was an interesting question to play around with, but that was about it.

That was a problem for me with a lot of Protestant theology--it didn't seem particularly relevant. I think it's accurate to say that my wife thought so too, but our reactions were different. She was bored with it, while I turned it into a game. I didn't need it to be relevant, because it was fun to study regardless. In fact, as time went on, I learned to appreciate the irrelevance of theology, because it allowed the subject to become harmless data, available for whatever I wanted to do with it. I think to some degree that was the appeal of more left-wing Protestant varieties. They didn't have to worry about what implications the Bible might have for their theology or theology for their lives. They could just be scholars, playing with data and paradigms. But the fun only lasts so long. Eventually, I sensed something was missing, and the rest, as they say, is history.

One thing I appreciate about Orthodoxy is how theology remains so closely tied to the Christian life. The Orthodox experience only makes sense in the context of Orthodox theology. On the other hand, Orthodox theology is only justifiable on the basis of Orthodox experience. This was the major flaw in my own theologizing back when I started college and years after I'd finished seminary. You can't get there through pure logic. It's not always going to make great sense. That's not to say that God is illogical--it's more that he's beyond what our logic can reach. There's nothing wrong with using logic as part of the process, but we're fundamentally dealing with a personal God who is only known through relationship. Some of what that relationship has produced is in Scripture, more of it is in the whole Tradition of the Church, but until we get in there and live it, we're still just trying to work with data. We're missing the context for all this other stuff. It's the relationship that's key, and that's what the Fathers were trying to protect when they addressed these heresies. I see that now, in a way that never made sense to me as an Evangelical.

Bl. Theophylact on John available!

I don't do too many book promotions on here, and I assure you up-front that I'm not making anything off of this endorsement. (That is, unless someone wants to make it worth my while . . . ) But I just have to say how excited I am that The Explanation of the Gospel of Saint John by Bl. Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria, is finally going to print. Chrysostom Press is in the process of publishing an English translation of Theophylact's (11th c.) commentary on the New Testament. (A very slow process, but what isn't in Orthodoxy?) I mentioned several months ago on here that I'd bought the first three volumes, on Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I suppose a more patient man would have waited for John to come out, since its release was already on the horizon. A more patient man also would have saved some money on the deal, because now you can order all four in hardback for a little more than twice the cost of John by itself. But a more patient man might also have spent less time in Scripture over the succeeding months, so I'm not kicking myself too hard.

I had a professor in seminary who once gave the strongest recommendation he could for a book--"if you don't own it, sell your shoes and buy it." I'm pretty sure I couldn't get $30 for my shoes--for all of them, I mean, let alone any single pair. But if you have $30 worth of used shoes lying around, by all means, sell them! Better yet, if you have $70 worth and don't already own the first three volumes, get busy. (As for me, I wonder if there are still places around that will pay for blood?) Theophylact incorporates the best of Orthodox Tradition in his concise explanation, and the format of alternating bite-sized chunks of Scripture with running commentary makes it easy to use. The translation is in good English, although I haven't read the Greek text, so I can't speak to its accuracy. Even if you have time to plow through John Chrysostom's homilies on every passage of Scripture, you still won't get the breadth of Orthodox Tradition contained here. It's little wonder that Bishop Ignaty recommended to his monks that they read Scripture with Theophylact. Not to disparage the efforts of the good people working on the Orthodox Study Bible, but arguably we've already had one for the past 900 years. It just needs to be translated into English.

MD gets a monastery?

Every now and then I check online to see if I can find any information about an Orthodox monastery nearby. By "nearby" I mean, closer than three hours away. There's none in DC, none in DE, a couple in WV, but too far away to be of much use, a schismatic one in NJ (still pretty far, though), and another in VA. MD appears to have one women's monastery in Baltimore that receives no visitors--nice to have their prayers, but otherwise not of much immediate use. There are monasteries in PA and NY--some in NYC might be a touch closer (and now that I think about it, perhaps easier to get to by train), but otherwise the closest and most accessible are three (women's) to four (men's) hours away in PA. St. Tikhon's falls in this category, and with its long heritage and prominence in America, it's probably the best candidate for any kind of visit (it happens to be where we have our men's retreat each year during Lent), but a four-hour drive does tend to make prohibitive anything more than a once-a-year pilgrimage.

Well, yesterday I checked the usual listings and saw nothing encouraging. As a last attempt, I Googled "orthodox monastery md" and ran across a very brief news item about a monastery ground-breaking. A bit more specific searching brought up a longer piece, but still without much detail. The GOA Metropolitan of NJ broke ground barely two months ago on a monastery and retreat center in Emmitsburg, MD--a little over an hour away! The article talks mainly about the retreat center aspect of it, so I have no idea who's starting the monastic community or when. There are some good Greek monasteries around the country, though, so one can hope that this new establishment will follow a high standard.

St. Joanna the Myrrh-bearer

On June 27 is commemorated St. Joanna the Myrrh-bearer. Her life is recorded in the Prologue of Ohrid:

Joanna was the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward: "Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward" (St. Luke 8:3). When Herod beheaded John the Baptist he disposed of his head in an unclean place. Joanna removed the head of the Baptist and buried it honorably on the Mount of Olives on Herod's estate. Later, during the reign of Constantine the Great, the head of John the Baptist was discovered. St. Joanna is also remembered as being present both at the suffering and at the resurrection of the Lord. She died peacefully.

and with a different emphasis, in the OCA Lives of the Saints:

Saint Joanna the Myrrh-bearer, wife of Chusa, the household steward of King Herod, was one of the women following and attending the Lord Jesus Christ during the time of His preaching and public ministry. She is mentioned in Luke 8:3 and 24:10. Together with the other Myrrh-bearing Women, St. Joanna went to the Sepulchre to anoint the Holy Body of the Lord with myrrh after His death on the Cross, and she heard from the angels the joyful proclamation of His All-Glorious Resurrection. According to Tradition, she recovered the head of St. John the Baptist after Herodias had disposed of it (February 24).

St. Joanna is a relatively minor saint and barely makes it into the list commemorated at the end of vespers, but as a Myrrh-bearer, she gets a full Sunday of hymns each year, two weeks after Pascha. This includes three Stichera in the Second Tone, from the AOA Liturgical Guide On-Line:

Early, at dawn, the ointment-bearing women arose, and carrying ointments, came to the Lord's tomb. And not attaining their desire, the pious women pondered the removal of the stone, addressing one another and saying, Where are the seals of the grave? Where are Pilate's watchmen and the security of his great care? And lo, an angel, radiant as lightning, proclaimed to them that of which they were ignorant, addressing them and saying, Why, wailing, seek ye the Living who produceth life for mankind? Christ our God hath risen from the dead, since He is Almighty, bestowing on all, life, incorruptibility, illumination, and the Great Mercy.

Why mingle ye tears with the ointment, O women Disciples? Behold, the stone hath been rolled away, and the sepulchre is empty. Behold corruption trodden under of Life the seals bearing clear witness, the guards of the rebellious fast asleep, the dead saved by the body of God, and hades mourning. Hasten ye with joy, and tell the Disciples that Christ, who is First-born of the dead, who caused death to die, shall go before you into Galilee.

The ointment-bearers, O Christ, rose up early and hastened to thy tomb, seeking to anoint with oils thine incorruptible body. But when the glad tidings were brought to them by the words of the angel, with signs of joy they proclaimed to the Apostles that the Element of our salvation had risen, leading death captive, and granting the world life eternal and the Great Mercy.

and one in the Sixth Tone:

The ointment-bearing women, O Savior, came to thy tomb; and when they beheld the seals, not finding thy body, they hurried anxiously, wailing and saying, Who hath stolen our Hope? Who hath taken away a naked, embalmed corpse, the only consolation to his Mother? Woe! How hath the dead-reviving One died? And how was he buried who spoiled hades? But arise thou by thine own power after three days, as thou didst say, and save our souls.

Exaposteilarion in the Second Tone:

Hear the voice of gladness, O women; for I have trodden down rebellious hades, and raised the world from corruption. Wherefore, hasten ye and proclaim the glad tidings to my beloved; for I desire that joy shall break forth thence upon my creation, whence first came forth sorrow.

Eothinon in the Second Tone:

They who were with Mary came and brought with them ointments; and as they were at a loss how to achieve their desire, they saw that the stone had been rolled, and a divine young man removed all anxiety and trouble from their souls by saying, The Lord Jesus hath risen. Wherefore, they proclaimed to His Disciples, that they should hasten to Galilee and behold Him, risen from the dead; for He is the Lord, the Giver of life.

Kontakion in the Second Tone, from the OCA Lives of the Saints:

You did command the myrrh-bearers to rejoice, O Christ!
By Your Resurrection, You did stop the lamentation of Eve, O God!
You did command Your apostles to preach: The Savior is Risen!

Troparion in the Second Tone:

The angel came to the myrrhbearing women at the tomb and said:
Myrrh is meet for the dead;
But Christ has shown Himself a stranger to corruption!
So proclaim: the Lord is risen,
Granting the world great mercy!

Lord willing, Julie and I are expecting a daughter sometime in the next month or so. Her name will be Jenna, a later form of Joanna (both derived from Ioann/John). From the time we were first told that she would be a girl and settled on the name, I have prayed for her every night in St. Joanna's name. I know most of my Evangelical friends and family, including my wife, think such things are foolish or downright Satanic. I can't blame them--I used to think the same way myself, and it's still one of those areas where I don't quite feel comfortable yet, but I do it anyway.

I don't really know how to explain it in a way that's going to convince anyone--you either believe in the intercession of saints, or you don't. But something about this particular situation seems logical to me. I've never seen Jenna, other than some fuzzy, sonographic images; never spoken to her in any way that I could know experientially that she hears or responds or knows I exist. But she is part of me--my flesh and blood--and for that reason I love her and pray for her. I've only seen St. Joanna in icons, never met her, never heard a response from her. But we are joined by a bond stronger than biological family--we are both part of Christ; a bond stronger than death, I might add, since he has conquered death. If this communion of love does not result in her prayers for struggling sinners like me, what sense does that make?

shedding some dark on vigils

An article I read recently pointed me to At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, by A. Roger Ekirch. If there's a history of nighttime in Western culture, this book is it. What particularly interested me was the last chapter, "Sleep We Have Lost: Rhythms and Revelations," which discusses the phenomenon of segmented sleep. Following are some highlights from the chapter, although I would recommend getting the book from your local library, if this subject interests you:

Until the close of the early modern era, Western Europeans on most evenings experienced two major intervals of sleep bridged by up to an hour or more of quiet wakefulness. . . . the intervening period of wakefulness bore no name, other than the generic term "watch" or "watching." . . .

Both phases of sleep lasted roughly the same length of time, with individuals waking sometime after midnight before returning to rest. . . .

Men and women referred to both intervals as if the prospect of awakening in the middle of the night was common knowledge that required no elaboration. . . .

. . . the vast weight of surviving evidence indicates that awakening naturally was routine, not the consequence of disturbed or fitful slumber. . . .

At first glance, it is tempting to view this pattern of broken sleep as a cultural relic rooted in early Christian experience. Ever since St. Benedict in the sixth century required that monks rise after midnight for the recital of verses and psalms ("At night we will rise to confess to Him"), this like other regulations of the Benedictine order spread to growing numbers of Frankish and German monasteries. By the High Middle Ages, the Catholic Church actively encouraged early morning prayer among Christians as a means of appealing to God during the still hours of darkness. "Night vigils," Alan of Lille declared in the twelfth century, "were not instituted without reason, for by them it is signified that we must rise in the middle of the night to sing the night office, so that the night may not pass without divine praise." . . .

Although Christian teachings undoubtedly popularized the imperative of early morning prayer, the Church itself was not responsible for introducing segmented sleep. However much it "colonized" the period of wakefulness between intervals of slumber, references to "first sleep" antedate Christianity's early years of growth. . . . as recently as the twentieth century some non-Western cultures with religious beliefs other than Christianity still exhibited a segmented pattern of sleep remarkably similar to that of preindustrial Europeans. . . .

. . . There is every reason to believe that segmented sleep, such as many wild animals exhibit, had long been the natural pattern of our slumber before the modern age, with a provenance as old as humankind. . . . In attempting to recreate conditions of "prehistoric" sleep, Dr. Thomas Wehr and his colleagues found that human subjects, deprived of artificial light at night over a span of several weeks, eventually exhibited a pattern of broken slumber--one practically identical to that of preindustrial households. . . .

After midnight, preindustrial households usually began to stir. Many of those who left their beds merely needed to urinate. . . . Some persons, however, after arising, took the opportunity to smoke tobacco, check the time, or tend a fire. . . .

None were more familiar than the Church with sinister forces in the dead of night. "Can men break their sleep to mind the works of darkness, and shall we not break ours," asked Reverend Horneck, "for doing things, which become the children of light?" . . . Certainly, there was no shortage of prayers intended to be recited "when you awake in the night" or "at our first waking," a time not to be confused with either dawn or "our uprising," for which wholly separate devotions were prescribed. . . .

Most people, upon awakening, probably never left their beds, or not for long. Besides praying, they conversed with a bedfellow or inquired after the well-being of a child or spouse. . . . Sexual intimacy often ensued between couples. . . .

Perhaps even more commonly, persons used this shrouded interval of solitude to immerse themselves in contemplation--to ponder events of the preceding day and to prepare for the arrival of dawn. Never, during the day or night, were distractions so few and privacy so great, especially in crowded households. . . .

In the last section of the chapter, he discusses at length the significance of this sleep pattern for contemplation of dreams. I'm only going to reproduce one small portion:

. . . Clinical experiments at the National Institute of Mental Health confirm that subjects who experienced two stages of slumber were in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep just before they awakened around midnight, with REM being the stage of sleep directly connected to dreaming. What's more, Thomas Wehr has found, "transitions to wakefulness are most likely to occur from REM periods that are especially intense," typically accompanied by "particularly vivid dreams" distinguished by their "narrative quality," which many of the subjects in his experiment contemplated in the darkness.

The gist of the section is that this period of wakefulness provides a unique opportunity to contemplate dreams, which is now largely absent in modern society.

For all you folks out there who find yourselves up in the middle of the night anyway, it might be encouraging to think that you're more normal than most of us. What interests me about the phenomenon is its implication for midnight offices and vigils. What appears to our modern sensibilities as extreme asceticism--to awaken in the middle of the night for prayer--would have been much less demanding when it was instituted. If a wakeful period in the middle of the night was normal, what better way to spend it than in prayer? Indeed, I read somewhere recently that it was considered more rigorously ascetic to abandon the practice in favor of sleeping a bit longer for one continuous block, getting up early in the morning, and staying up. I guess that means we're more ascetic these days than our ancestors were, although I'm not sure how much good that has done us.

a note to my readers (mostly, to Evangelicals)

I want to take a step back for a moment and do some meta-blogging (blogging about blogging). First, an observation--that monologs are dangerous things. They're a poor substitute for communication, in that one person just rambles on about some topic or concern, while others read or listen and draw their own conclusions. Even worse, a written monolog lacks things like intonation, facial expression, and posture, which are a natural part of oral communication. What the reader is left with is a string of words and a headful of presuppositions. Words intended to convey confusion and frustration may be perceived as bearing animosity and resentment, simply because it never occurred to the writer or the reader that in the absence of intonation, we make up our own. And because monolog generally lacks the countermeasures of normal conversation (a perpetually self-correcting process, if it works the way it should), such misperceptions refuse to go away.

I say this post is mostly for Evangelical readers, because I need to remind myself that I speak and write from an increasingly Orthodox perspective. In some instances, this shift may not matter much, but in others, it can have a radical effect on how words are meant and perceived. I would like to think that I can still write naturally and be understood by my Evangelical readers, but this is perhaps becoming less the case. And the problem is compounded with Evangelical readers in particular (as opposed to other non-Orthodox), because it's obvious that I'm engaged in some sort of departure from their side of things, and it's easy to read negativity into that. Let's be honest--there is negativity in that. But there's negativity and then there's negativity.

Consider the word "critical." It's a single word, but try it in different contexts--really, just different phrases. Think of the phrase, "critical mind," and then, "critical spirit." On the surface, it seems like they should mean roughly the same thing, but do they really? When we say someone has a critical mind, we normally mean it as a good thing. This person thinks carefully about things--doesn't just accept whatever comes along, but weighs the issues and forms educated opinions. On the other hand, when we say someone has a critical spirit, it has a more negative implication. This person is judgmental, never happy with anything, and probably looks down on other people.

Now, an assertion about myself--I am critical of Evangelicalism. What does that mean? Should it be understood in the sense of a critical mind or a critical spirit? Am I trying to be discerning and analytical, or condescending and judgmental? I suppose there's a good reason that the same word can refer to both ideas, and it's easy in most cases for someone who does one to slip into the other. But understand the intent, the spirit, the attitude. Yes, you'll find negative statements about Evangelicalism on this blog. You probably won't have to look very far to find them. If I were completely satisfied with Evangelicalism, I wouldn't be pursuing Orthodoxy. That much should be obvious. Something that might not be quite so obvious is that I've always been critical of Evangelicalism in one way or another. I sometimes forget that criticizing as an outsider (now) is different from criticizing as an insider (then). It will always be perceived differently. I'm not convinced that for that reason I should never say anything about Evangelicalism, or only say positive things about it. (And let's not forget that I do say positive things about it--I think and believe positive things about it as well.) Indeed, I'm not sure how much difference this realization can actually make in what I write. I hope it can help to temper my words, but I do have to draw a line somewhere.

The whole idea of a blog is an odd thing. Journals used to be things that people locked up or hid so others could not read them--places where they would write their intimate thoughts that no one else should see. Now we put anything and everything out on the Web. There's something good about this, because it helps us to connect with others. But it creates a confusion about what exactly it is that we're doing. Should I write academically, objectively, avoiding all real feeling so no one will misinterpret my attitude? In other words, is this public communication, to be treated in every way as such? Or is it more intimate? Should it provide some kind of window into my real thoughts and feelings about things? I honestly want it to be the latter. I don't want to retreat into cold objectivity, because that's not even the point. There are plenty of writings out there to inform people about Orthodoxy. I'm not writing about Orthodoxy, but about myself--about my own experience as I go through this process. If it's interesting to others, great! If not, I hope I don't offend, but in the end each person must make their own choice, whether or not to keep reading.

But please--if you read something that you find offensive or just confusing, use the comments feature. I read all the comments posted and respond to most of them. Blog comments are not a great form of communication either, but at least there's some opportunity for clarification. You might find that my intended tone was nothing like what you perceived, or that you were in a sense listening in on my argument with someone else (a source of confusion in itself). Whatever the outcome, I think the whole thing becomes just a bit more human for the interaction, however limited it might be. I can't offer much more than that.

sometimes you can't go back

I reported a couple of months ago that I'd finally reached the difficult decision to drop out of my Ph.D. program at CUA. Now I'm just a little bit tempted never to pray that God make clear to me whether something was the right decision. Saturday night, I received a call from the department librarian, so she could tell me before I saw a general announcement that Prof. Michael Patrick O'Connor, department chair and formerly a member of my dissertation committee, had passed away. I'm not sure exactly how old he was--fifties, maybe early sixties. He was diagnosed with liver cancer sometime pretty recently (in the past couple of weeks, I think), deteriorated rapidly, spent his last three days in the hospital, and gave out Friday morning. It was the first I'd heard any of it, and from what I can tell, folks closer to him than I were also taken by surprise.

Prof. O'Connor was easier to love than to like. I'm speaking as a student here--he was the hardest teacher I ever had, but I never doubted that it was with the best of intentions. He wanted us to be excellent scholars. Often, a question would come up in class (the best of which he thought of himself), and the next time we met, he'd have prepared a lengthy handout on some involved study he'd done in response. When he gave an assignment, he always had a very specific idea of what it should look like; if he didn't always spell that out as well as he might have, he made up for it by requiring an outline or a draft ahead of time. (The one time I was burned on this point was my own fault--I went ahead and submitted the whole paper instead of an outline, and didn't realize until I got it back with a final grade that I'd gone in the wrong direction.) It was easy to suspect that, as a lifelong bachelor (to my knowledge, anyway), he never quite understood the burdens of family life under which his married students had to work. But he was by no means without compassion. It was at his suggestion and advocacy that I registered in absentia after a particularly unproductive year on my dissertation, which helped a great deal in easing the financial burden. I also remember how much he interacted with the kids at a social function we had for the department, and he always asked to see pictures of Ian (which I never had).

Two key memories I have of O'Connor happened in group activities outside of class. The fondest was when our two-year Akkadian class ended about the time that the movie Scorpion King came out in theaters. A couple of us had noticed from trailers that the character played by The Rock was supposed to be the last living Akkadian, and with the perfect timing, it seemed too good to pass up. You could hear O'Connor laughing throughout, mostly because he was laughing at the parts that weren't meant to be funny, when only those of us who saw the wild inaccuracies got the joke. The most significant memory was when he took our Hebrew Poetry class on a field trip to a synagogue service. Of course, we prepared by studying some samples of prayer book Hebrew. It's a funny thing that my Catholic prof at Catholic University would have been most instrumental in my spiritual life for introducing me to Judaism, but there it is. After that outing, I bought a Jewish prayer book and used it for quite some time. Even though I didn't end up becoming Jewish, it taught me the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi, long before I ever learned what it was called. That principle has probably taken me further than any other single element in the journey I've been on ever since.

The hardest thing about O'Connor was his awkward relationship with Prof. Gropp, the other full-time faculty member in ANE studies, and my dissertation adviser. I never knew much more than rumors about the reasons, but they seemed never to talk with each other unless it was absolutely necessary. This was despite the fact that they shared an office suite, and for the most part shared the same students. Usually one could ignore the tension, but then there were those times when they both had to review the same paper or test (usually something particularly important, like a comprehensive exam or a major paper submitted for the non-thesis M.A. requirement). I was always a bit apprehensive about having both of them on my dissertation committee, but I knew I'd benefit from their input, and it was impossible to exclude either one on a Hebrew linguistic topic.

Well, if O'Connor's death wasn't enough shock for one week, this morning, while looking to see what info might be circulating about him in the scholarly community (he seemed to know personally just about everyone in the field), I discovered that Gropp is leaving CUA this summer for Westminster Seminary in Texas. If I had not dropped out of the program when I did, I would have lost practically my entire dissertation committee just a couple of months later. (The remaining member is in Wisconsin and is not affiliated with CUA.) In a way, it reassures me to know that I really did get out at the right time, but I find the very idea repellent. Surely God could confirm my decision through less drastic means! I was already thinking that it would be difficult to fill O'Connor's place by the end of the summer, but if Gropp is leaving, there will be essentially no ANE faculty. And for such a small department, with perhaps the highest faculty:student ratio in the university, might this turn into an opportunity for economic considerations to take over and end the Semitics program for good? I certainly hope not.

bizarro church

So, if you'd told me a week ago that today I would attend services at two different churches, I might have been a bit puzzled. If you'd added that yesterday Julie would ask to attend an Orthodox service with me, I'd have been rather confused. If you'd further said that of the two services, the better liturgical experience would be the Evangelical one, I probably would have laughed out loud. But life isn't always as we expect, is it?

So last night, Julie says she's been thinking about something. (That's ominous enough.) Since next Sunday is Father's Day, she thinks it would be a fitting gift to accompany Ian and me to the liturgy at Holy Cross. The only catch is, she doesn't want to miss services at Bethany two weeks in a row, so it would mean canceling our planned visit to St. Mark's Episcopal Church this week. I ponder her suggestion for half a second or so, and accept the change of plans :-) We pretty much already know that the Episcopal Church is an unlikely option for us. Julie's main objections are the lax attitude toward homosexuality, the role of female clergy, and the ultra-openness of communion. None of these objections has anything to do with the type of service, so from her standpoint another visit can't make much difference.

She's probably right, although I was hoping it would help to narrow things down a bit. Even if we knew we didn't want to attend an Episcopal church, a positive reaction to the service might suggest some other options--various Anglican splinter groups, Western rite Orthodox, or Catholic. On the other hand, a negative reaction to the high-church service would tend to rule out those other options, without wasting our time trying them. She said, however, that I could still visit the service at St. Mark's on my own, if I wanted. It's late enough that it doesn't conflict with the service we usually attend at Bethany. I figured it would be useful to know my own reaction at least, since if I didn't like it, there'd be no point in pursuing it further.

So, at 9:00, we went to Bethany for the last part of a series on Moses. "Holy Moses," they called it, to make the point that for some people this phrase would be a mild form of cursing, but we really mean it. I'm a bit skeptical myself. I tend to think that the title was chosen to play off of the slang term, not because we would ordinarily refer to him as Holy Moses. This may seem like a picky point to bother making, but it introduces what I think is perhaps a bigger problem. It can be framed as a choice between sacred Tradition or marketing gimmick. When an Orthodox person refers seriously to Holy Moses, they mean it, and they mean it consistently, and it falls within the context of an overall theology of saints. An Evangelical instead uses the term as long as it's useful to make a point, and then casts it aside just as quickly as they picked it up.

Let's apply this same choice to another issue in the context of this series--that of images. Ordinarily, Bethany can be characterized as strictly iconoclastic. Its interior walls are regularly bare. It does have a cross in the front (somewhat better than in some churches I've visited), and one side wall is glass, so you can look out at God's creation. But that's about the extent of it. For this series, they've made an exception. An artist in the church has been painting scenes each week, including one week when he was actually painting during the service. As you might guess, he's not painting directly on the walls--just on canvas that can be easily hung up and just as easily taken back down when it's no longer useful. The scenes have contributed something to the effect of the message, although I would say they've had nothing to do with worship, as you might expect in an Evangelical church. But don't expect to see this visual dimension in all future sermons. It's an interesting gimmick to get people's attention, but it won't be a regular thing.

This morning, for the final message, which was about the tabernacle, there was an added dimension. The seating was re-arranged, and in the middle of the room was a skeleton representation of the tabernacle. At the back end of the aisle was some kind of a grill, representing the altar of sacrifice, then a bit further on, a brass bowl, representing the laver. Beyond that was a table with stacked loves of bread, then some burning incense sticks, then this week's painting of the priest performing a sacrifice at the tabernacle. Behind the painting, which was removed after the sermon, were the communion elements. Instead of passing the communion elements around in trays, people came up to pick up the elements and take them to their seats. They were instructed to think as they were walking up the aisle about their sin, their cleansing, their ability to celebrate redemption, to pray, and to enter the holy of holies with Christ. It was certainly moving in its way--a big step up, I would say, from the usual routine. But it will not be like that again. Like the other things, it was a gimmick, to grab attention on this occasion, and then move aside for something else in the future.

After the service, I was talking with a couple of friends who had both visited Orthodox services with me in the past. One was the artist who painted the scenes, and the other said he wanted to take his picture next to them. I said something about striking his Moses pose, and the guy who wanted to take the picture jokingly suggested that we dress up in costume so we could get more of a 3-D effect on the whole thing. I said, if he wanted that, all he had to do was go take pictures of an Orthodox service in progress. He probably missed the point, but it was on my mind throughout the service, that we read these passages about ancient Israel, we recognize and appreciate what was going on at that time, and then we go off and over-spiritualize their application to our own lives. All this stuff in Exodus wasn't just play-acting that people came up with to meet their own religious needs. This was God recognizing that as humans we worship with everything we are. To boil it all down to the idea that we each have our own way to serve, and God wants to use our diverse abilities, and we need to be generous with what we have, is to impoverish what was really going on. Do we think that serving and helping each other is something that belongs only to the New Testament? Those practical issues were there in the Old Testament as well, but they did not replace the Temple rituals. They met two very different types of needs.

So how do we get away with turning these things into mere illustrations? How do we recognize that they were important in the worship of ancient Israel but not see that they are just as important for us today? Aside from a day like this, we no longer smell incense as it rises to heaven with our prayers. Aside from a day like this, we no longer see visual reminders of sacrifice, to tell us how very serious it was for Jesus to die on our behalf. Aside from a day like this, we no longer move through the structure of a temple to emphasize God's holiness. To my Evangelical friends, I have to cry out once again in the words of Charlie Peacock:

Oh, it always amazed me
How someone could come
To the edge of the world,
Drop a stone down the side,
And turn and return
To the very same life.

After that service, I dropped Julie and Ian at home and went over to St. Mark's. I must say, it was a better experience this time than when we went there before, for the contemporary service. Things seemed to flow better (although it still seemed stilted at the beginning), and the music seemed more appropriate to the liturgy. It may be hard for me to see past my preference for Byzantine style, but I still feel like the Western music distracts from rather than highlights the content. At times, it also seemed too rushed, and there were too many points where the flow seemed to stall. A couple of the songs I found really moving (again, without much recollection at all of the words), although unfortunately they seemed to be choir-only selections. Perhaps the impression was exaggerated by the uncharacteristic Bethany service I'd just attended, but the service at St. Mark's seemed comparatively austere. There were things like vestments (which the priest flung over his head when it was necessary to put on something new) and altar rails, but they seemed a thin veneer on a basically Protestant service. In fact, perhaps the biggest disappointment was an impression that I can't really explain in concrete terms--for some reason, the service felt liturgically more like Protestantism plus than Catholicism minus.

I didn't come away with a solid conclusion about much of anything. I wasn't completely turned off by the service, and I could see value in exploring something similar in the future; but I wasn't particularly impressed by it either. In any case, it will probably be a while before we do any more visiting. The baby will be here soon, and it will take a while for things to stabilize after that. It's hard to say what the future holds. For now, next week is enough to think and pray about.

a "wasted trip" and an unexpected discussion

Last weekend Ian and I flew up to Buffalo for a quick visit with Julie's parents. They were selling us their car pretty cheap, which would have been nice as a backup and so I wouldn't have to mooch rides to church. I drove around quite a bit there, and it seemed to run very well; Monday, it did great on the eight-hour drive home. We took it in for an inspection yesterday, and it turned out the bottom was so badly rusted that it would take $2500 to pass. The mechanic didn't advise putting that kind of money into it and urged us not to drive it any more than to get it home, he was so worried the rear brakes would give way at any time. It's all probably a bit exaggerated, since down here they're just not used to seeing as much rust as you get on a car in the north, but all the same, we trust his judgment on the standards involved, so there's no point trying to drive it. Fortunately, they didn't want us to pay them for the car until we knew whether we could use it or not. So we're only out the cost of the trip, the titling, and the inspection. It's still a really good car otherwise; hopefully we can find someone who needs it for parts or something. We're thankful in any case that nothing happened on the way back from NY.

It wasn't a completely wasted trip. Ian got to ride in Opa's boat on Saturday. I annoyed him by singing "Erie Canal," since that's where we were. (He usually doesn't like it when we sing.) Opa likes to go up there, because it's not very crowded; when we were there on a sunny Saturday afternoon, no one else was at the boat launch, and I don't think we saw another watercraft in an hour of tooling around. Some kids were jumping off a bridge into the water, and we stopped to look at a waterfall where a creek of some kind actually flows under the canal. Ian was ready to go by the time we packed up, to head back in time so I could drive back out to Buffalo for a vigil service.

That was the highlight for me. There's not a single Orthodox parish (as far as I can tell) in Genesee County, where Julie's parents live. Buffalo is a bit closer than Rochester, but you still have a 40-minute drive to the closest one. It's a nice little converted something-or-other, with gold onion domes on the outside. The nave is about the same size as at Holy Cross and oriented correctly. The ceiling is rather flat, though, and plain white. I don't recall any icons painted directly onto the walls, but there are a lot hanging, and an extensive collection of relics to the side. It's a ROCOR parish with a solid Russian iconostasis and minimal seating. I didn't take a head-count, but there were maybe 15-20 people there. The priest served alone. There was a three-voice men's choir, with a reader who sounded vaguely like Johnny Cash. I talked with the priest a bit afterward. He and his wife are converts--former Evangelical missionaries. We talked about my experience so far as an explorer and a catechumen, and about the recent reunion between ROCOR and the MP.

I was disappointed that I wouldn't be returning for liturgy on Sunday, but I really wanted to spend the day with my in-laws and figured it would be good to see some old friends from their church (where Julie and I both grew up). Sunday evening, a friend (former youth leader, former boss, now an elder in the church) came over to talk. After we'd told Julie's parents about my interest in Orthodoxy, her dad had asked if he could share about it with this guy. I'd heard a while back that he was planning to call me about it sometime, so I figured it would come up when we got together. It didn't. We talked about just about everything else, but not that. In fact, the whole weekend, aside from asking how the service went after I got back Saturday night, no one talked to me about it at all. Not that I'm particularly dying to talk with them. But people have a habit of talking to Julie about my interest in Orthodoxy, while avoiding bringing it up with me. It's not fair to her, and I really wish they'd come out and say what they're thinking to me.

Last night, our small group from Bethany met for the first time in a few weeks. And it had been even longer since we'd done an actual Bible study together; the previous meeting was in some degree of disarray due to circumstances in people's lives, so we skipped the study. The meeting before that Julie and I had missed while we were on vacation, so for us it had been an especially long time since the last group study. When we went off on vacation, we expected to miss the discussion of John 6, which was part of a rather large section covered in one lesson. In some ways, I was relieved, since I really don't want to come across as trying to convert everyone to my way of thinking. It turned out, though, that questions had come up about the "bread of life" discourse, which the study guide barely touched on. They'd run out of time to discuss it, so decided to delay it until the next meeting. Lucky me.

The study guide brushes aside the whole issue with a one-sentence marginal note, to the effect that eating Christ's flesh and drinking his blood is metaphorical for believing in his death on the cross. (I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but that's the gist as I recall.) The only actual question for discussion simply asks what it means that Jesus is the bread of life. Judging from our discussion, most people in the group at least saw something more going on in the passage. I feel like I was reasonably successful at avoiding argument. I tried to present the Orthodox view and some of the reasons and bases as straightforwardly as possible. For good measure, I explained the spectrum of Protestant views on communion, and highlighted some of the key arguments for the strict memorial view (the standard opinion at Bethany). We have two former Catholics in the group, one of whom commented that having learned as a child that the communion elements were the body and blood of Christ has left her with a high level of respect for the rite; the other one said that since becoming Protestant, he feels like he now takes communion too lightly. Julie shared about her impression of the Episcopal service we visited, where communion was open to anyone and everyone.

Along the way, one of the group members expressed strong reservation about the idea of clergy preventing people from taking communion. It seemed to her too much like the actions of the hypocritical religious leaders in Jesus's day. She didn't see how any human could judge whether another person's heart was in the right place. I pointed out that he'd be in a better position to make that call if we practiced regular confession, but I don't think that really helped :-) At least now we're through the sacrament portions in John. I really don't feel at all qualified to discuss them, since I have no real experience in this area, so it's a relief to put them behind me.

Well, God willing, I'll be back at Holy Cross tonight for the monthly Paraklesis. This Sunday will be our second visit to the Episcopal church, this time to check out their traditional service. I guess that's all the news for now.

Innocents Abroad

One follow-up project that I took away from reading Orientalism was to track down some of the 19th-c. works by American writers who traveled in Palestine. The book focused mostly on British and French sources, so it was little more than a passing reference, but I was especially interested to see what Mark Twain had to say about the place and the people he met there. Over the past few days, I've been reading his book, The Innocents Abroad, which recounts his journeys on one of the first pleasure cruises, specifically commissioned to take a group of Americans around Mediterranean Europe, the Holy Land, and Egypt. I didn't want to take too much time away from reading what I consider to be more important, worthwhile, enjoyable, etc., so I skipped ahead to the latter part of their visit to Greece (which he describes as a bleak wasteland, economically run-down, with a pathetic populace--the worst possible contrast to its ancient greatness) and read through Constantinople, a trip across the Black Sea to meet with the Tsar, Anatolia, Syria, and finally Palestine. I broke off before they finished with Egypt and sailed home again.

As one might expect, Twain pokes fun at just about everyone--his shipmates (many of whom are more zealous pilgrims than he), their guides, the locals, and even the animals and landscapes. His outlook is very American; he measures everything he sees by familiar standards. He finds little of beauty or value in these foreign lands or their inhabitants. Of the parts that I read, he seems most impressed by generous hospitality, particularly when his group meets the Russian Tsar and when they spend the night at "Mars Saba" [sic]. He seems most disturbed by the oppressive conditions he sees throughout the Ottoman Empire.

More than once while traveling through Anatolia and Syria, Twain laments the living conditions of the Arabs and says that if Russia ever goes to war again with the Turks it would be much better for Britain and France to let them alone. On one such occasion, he writes:

If ever an oppressed race existed, it is this one we see fettered around us under the inhuman tyranny of the Ottoman Empire. I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.

He has enough of his own prejudices, but at least he has a heart. It is nothing new for him to criticize the insensitivity of his companions in their zeal to collect relics, but particularly poignant is his account from Nain:

A little mosque stands upon the spot which tradition says was occupied by the widow's dwelling. Two or three aged Arabs sat about its door. We entered, and the pilgrims broke specimens from the foundation walls, though they had to touch, and even step, upon the "praying carpets" to do it. It was almost the same as breaking pieces from the hearts of those old Arabs. To step rudely upon the sacred praying mats, with booted feet--a thing not done by any Arab--was to inflict pain upon men who had not offended us in any way. Suppose a party of armed foreigners were to enter a village church in America and break ornaments from the altar railings for curiosities, and climb up and walk upon the Bible and pulpit cushions? However, the cases are different. One is the profanation of a temple of our faith--the other only the profanation of a pagan one.

From Constantinople the group crosses the Black Sea and is invited to meet with the Czar. Twain is skeptical of the event beforehand, but comes away thoroughly impressed. The Russian nobility he meets are so down-to-earth and so friendly toward the Americans that he even seems to revise some of his general outlook on royalty. It's interesting to see the favorable relationship between the two countries at this stage, which is a far cry from anything we've seen since the start (or end) of the Cold War.

I think it's worth quoting here almost the entire section about their stay at Mar Saba (which he consistently misspells). Twain does not seem to have much respect for the monastic life--not surprisingly, given his American Protestant background. He likewise seems to have little appreciation for the differences between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Although he knows they are different sects--elsewhere he refers to the constant fighting between the various Christian groups over the holy sites in Jerusalem--he seems to consider them all Catholics (which in a sense, I suppose they are). At any rate, for readers who might not know, Mar Saba is a Greek Orthodox monastery in the wilderness between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. They stop there to spend the night on their way back from the latter:

We stayed at this great convent all night, guests of the hospitable priests. . . . The present occupants of Mars Saba, about seventy in number, are all hermits. They wear a coarse robe, an ugly, brimless stove-pipe of a hat, and go without shoes. They eat nothing whatever but bread and salt; they drink nothing but water. As long as they live they can never go outside the walls, or look upon a woman--for no woman is permitted to enter Mars Saba, upon any pretext whatsoever.

Some of those men have been shut up there for thirty years. In all that dreary time they have not heard the laughter of a child or the blessed voice of a woman; they have seen no human tears, no human smiles; they have known no human joys, no wholesome human sorrows. In their hearts are no memories of the past, in their brains no dreams of the future. All that is lovable, beautiful, worthy, they have put far away from them; against all things that are pleasant to look upon, and all sounds that are music to the ear, they have barred their massive doors and reared their relentless walls of stone forever. They have banished the tender grace of life and left only the sapped and skinny mockery. Their lips are lips that never kiss and never sing; their hearts are hearts that never hate and never love; their breasts are breasts that never swell with the sentiment, "I have a country and a flag." They are dead men who walk.

I set down these first thoughts because they are natural--not because they are just or because it is right to set them down. It is easy for book-makers to say "I thought so and so as I looked up on such and such a scene"--when the truth is, they thought all those fine things afterwards. One's first thought is not likely to be strictly accurate, yet it is no crime to think it and none to write it down, subject to modification by later experience. These hermits are dead men, in several respects, but not in all; and it is not proper, that, thinking ill of them at first, I should go on doing so, or, speaking ill of them I should reiterate the words and stick to them. No, they treated us too kindly for that. There is something human about them somewhere. They knew we were foreigners and Protestants, and not likely to feel admiration or much friendliness toward them. But their large charity was above considering such things. They simply saw in us men who were hungry, and thirsty, and tired, and that was sufficient. They opened their doors and gave us welcome. They asked no questions, and they made no self-righteous display of their hospitality. They fished for no compliments. They moved quietly about, setting the table for us, making the beds, and bringing water to wash in, and paid no heed when we said it was wrong for them to do that when we had men whose business it was to perform such offices. We fared most comfortably, and sat late at dinner. We walked all over the building with the hermits afterward, and then sat on the lofty battlements and smoked while we enjoyed the cool air, the wild scenery and the sunset. . . .

When we got up to breakfast in the morning, we were new men. For all this hospitality no strict charge was made. We could give something if we chose; we need give nothing, if we were poor or if we were stingy. The pauper and the miser are as free as any in the Catholic Convents of Palestine. I have been educated to enmity toward every thing that is Catholic, and sometimes, in consequence of this, I find it much easier to discover Catholic faults than Catholic merits. But there is one thing I feel no disposition to overlook, and no disposition to forget: and that is, the honest gratitude I and all pilgrims owe, to the Convent Fathers in Palestine. Their doors are always open, and there is always a welcome for any worthy man who comes, whether he comes in rags or clad in purple. The Catholic Convents are a priceless blessing to the poor. A pilgrim without money, whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, can travel the length and breadth of Palestine, and in the midst of her desert wastes find wholesome food and a clean bed every night, in these buildings. Pilgrims in better circumstances are often stricken down by the sun and the fevers of the country, and then their saving refuge is the Convent. Without these hospitable retreats, travel in Palestine would be a pleasure which none but the strongest men could dare to undertake. Our party, pilgrims and all, will always be ready and always willing, to touch glasses and drink health, prosperity and long life to the Convent Fathers of Palestine (chap. 55).

Readers already favorably disposed toward monasticism will probably have no trouble at all refuting Twain's initial assessment of these monks and can quickly skip ahead to his appreciation for their selfless hospitality. For others, it may help to clarify some things. True, monks spend much of their lives secluded from things we would consider normal parts of human existence. Some of those things we would all do better to avoid; others are a necessary sacrifice in the spiritual struggle these men (and women) have chosen. But not all monks live completely apart from the outside world. Many maintain contacts and regular interaction with family, some are sent out to serve the Church as priests and bishops, and when their numbers were much larger, there were Orthodox monks who engaged in various social services. Keep in mind, too, that the world comes to them, as most of them do practice rigorous hospitality. Mar Saba receives weary travelers in Palestine; St. Catherine's blesses Bedouin in the Sinai wilderness; Mt. Athos in Greece sees so many visitors that it has to strictly regulate the flow to keep from getting inundated.

And of course, the monks themselves are human (whatever Twain's suspicions). Indeed, their primary business in the monastery is not escape but struggle within themselves. If they leave the world, it is so they can focus on the more pressing battle inside. Other elements of humanity also persist--they weep (boy, do they weep!), they laugh, they paint, they sing, and they struggle along in their relationships with each other, more strenuously than do most of us on the outside. Yes, they hate; by God's grace, they learn to love; and although they may not be the greatest of patriots, they are connected with a land, a people, and a faith. One thing he is right about--they are dead men--but it is this that makes them so alive!

night, night, skeleton

I suppose it's probably a common feature of four-year-olds that they're all a little weird. I tend to think of Ian as uniquely weird, but then, he's the only four-year-old I spend much time with.

A few months ago, he latched onto a new best friend. A girl his age might have a favorite doll; a boy might have a stuffed animal or action figure. Ian has "Skeleton." He was invited a while back to an Egyptian-themed birthday party and came away with a couple of little, rubber skeletons. Somewhere along the line, he decided they needed taking care of. It's not unusual for him to take one in the car and insist on buckling it into its own seatbelt. He also puts it to bed when he's getting ready to take a nap or go to sleep for the night. Ian doesn't sleep with toys, so Skeleton goes to bed in our room.

Last night, we didn't notice when he put Skeleton to bed, but Julie found him when we came into the room later on:


Not only does Skeleton need to be tucked in under the sheet (of course), but since Ian now insists on going to bed with a tissue handy, Skeleton needs one too.

We scheduled a tour at the hospital that's supposed to prepare siblings for the arrival of their new baby brother or sister. It said he should bring along a stuffed animal, so he can practice holding the baby. I suggested to Julie that we bring Skeleton, but I guess he probably is too small to serve the intended purpose.

Lest I close this post without making some connection to Orthodoxy, here's part of a funeral hymn, by St. John of Damascus, of all people (currently the prime candidate for Ian's patron):

I called to mind the Prophet, how he cried: I am earth and ashes;
and I looked again into the graves, and beheld the bones laid bare;
and I said: Who then is the king or the warrior,
the rich man or the needy, the upright or the sinner?
Yet give rest with thy Saints unto thy servant, O Lord.