preparing for illumination

Practical Outcomes

2009-12-01T15:27:00.001-06:00

Our final evening together was the best session of the entire seminar. I was very impressed by all the ideas that were generated. We all made a commitment to work on our projects and to report back to each other at the beginning of the Pascha Book Study, on Wednesday April 7th, 2010. As is usually the case, our Pascha Study will be a follow-up to our Theological Seminar. During our readings and our discussion, it became clear to me that all the different aspects of community that we were considering converged in a very practical way around the topic of conflict—it is at that point that the authenticity of most communities is tested, and it is at that point that most communities disintegrate. So, for our Pascha Study, we will be looking further at the subject of forgiveness. We will start on April 7th by viewing a documentary entitled, Forgiving Dr Mengele, and we will then read a book about the Nickel Mines School shootings called Amish Grace.

In the meantime, here are the assignments we are undertaking. Please continue to pray for our parish and for this on-going project. Thanks to each of you for your participation in this work, and I look forward to seeing each of you during Bright Week and hearing about the progress you’ve made on your projects.

Father Aidan has committed to helping co-ordinate a Community Meal once a month, to inviting Beck Funeral Home to be available to help folks with funeral planning after two of this year’s Souls’ Saturday Liturgies, and to incorporating the Service of Foot Washing into the schedule for Holy Week.

Baker Galloway has committed to helping our parish work towards a goal of having only Orthros and Divine Liturgy and Fellowship on Sundays rather than the usual round of meetings, rehearsals, and other events.

Rebekah Galloway has committed to helping keep Christ the Lightgiver going—and, eventually, flourishing—and to encouraging others in the parish to develop relationships with monastics.

Linda Taylor has committed to discovering ways to maintain the intimacy of our parish even as we seek to reach out to others on an on-going basis.

Dorothy Stewart has committed to praying for the departed and requesting masses for them as well, and she wants the parish to know that she would like to provide accommodations for people who travel long distances during Holy Week (she has two rooms and private bath with one queen-size and two single beds. Ordinarily she would put a chocolate on each pillow - but not during Holy Week). She also offered her story about Oscar Dew*

Steve Bodnarchuk has committed to start a listing service on the internet (Steve’s List) that will help our parishioners and other Orthodox in Central Texas to help each other with resources and information.

David Morgan has made a commitment to personally greet each visitor after each Divine Liturgy.

Karen Morgan has committed to investing herself in her relationship with her godmother and with other parishioners and encouraging others to do the same by concretely charting the ‘alternative relationships’ that we all have at St John’s and by giving people opportunities to honor those relationships on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Brandon Wilson has committed to locating the graves of all the departed members of our community and to organizing quarterly pilgrimages to those graves for prayer and a meal.

Rigel Thurston has committed to moving closer to the parish in a timely fashion and to helping others do the same through special incentives that he can offer as a realtor.

Joe Wright has committed to do more guerilla art and to explore ways to encourage the arts in our parish and to continue his work with social events in our community.

Father Deacon Basil and Shamassy Josie Long have committed to have gatherings for new people and catechumens at their home twice each year.

Catherine Maclaughlin has committed to continue her work with our parish’s Dedicated Community and her work with the on-going Sunday Morning Book Study and to continue sponsoring speakers once a year.

Becky Thurner has committed to encouraging people to attend the Divine Liturgy on Souls’ Saturdays by putting together a schedule for remembering the departed, to help print up an explanation of the funeral service that can be shared with visitors, and to exploring ways we can help each other with truly weighty issues.

*Perhaps it is because everyone in a small town knows everyone else so intimately, but it does seem that there are more eccentrics per square yard as the population gets smaller in number. My home- town, Canastota, NY, is no exception. One of the most colorful eccentrics, a legend in Canastota, was Oscar Dew. There are many stories about him. One Thursday evening, he showed up at the Robotham home just at dinner- time. Since he made no move to leave, he was invited to stay for dinner. Thereafter, he showed up every Thursday night at the same time, and the family began automatically to lay another place for him. This went on for at least two years. One Thursday night, Oscar, decidedly unhappy over the entrée being served, threw down his fork and stated that he was never coming there again. Not only did he never again come for dinner, he never again even entered the Robotham home. I think it was ham and cabbage which so disgusted him. The most famous story about Oscar is the one I have chosen to tell you today. Oscar was an inveterate funeral-goer. Not only did he attend every funeral service in Canastota and environs but he also managed to get to the graveside service as well. Since he did not drive, it was a given that someone would make room for Oscar in his car. One graveside service was quite a distance from Canastota. Oscar had managed to get a ride to the cemetery but, for some reason, was without a ride home. He approached the undertaker and hearse driver to ask if he could ride back home with them. The only space available was in the back of the hearse, but that was fine with Oscar. He got in and saw that there was a great place to lie down. He did so and promptly went to sleep, rocked gently by the motion of the hearse.

In the meantime, the undertaker and driver noted that the hearse was low on gas and stopped at a gas station. The attendant, joking, asked if they were carrying anyone. They said that yes, they did have a passenger. Chastened, the attendant moved toward the back of the hearse, removed the gas tank cap, and was just inserting the hose when he glanced up. At that very moment, Oscar, straggly-haired, rheumy-eyed, still groggy from sleep and looking frankly cadaverous, pulled back the curtain at the side window of the hearse, to gaze straight into the eyes of the startled attendant who dropped the hose and began to run, ignoring the reassuring shouts of the undertaker and driver. He soon disappeared over the crest of the nearest hill.

The World

2009-12-01T15:17:00.003-06:00

In this session we will be talking about the way in which our community should interact with the world. In Holy Scripture, the world is understood to be the broader culture within which the Church exists; throughout history, that culture has taken a wide variety of forms, but the overall message of Holy Scripture is very consistent: we are to limit our exposure to the world.

In the texts that we looked at from the Holy Gospels, Christ Jesus draws a clear distinction between His Kingdom, which is “not of this world” (St John 18.36), and the world itself, which, even though our Lord and Master created it, is now ruled by Satan (St Luke 4.6; St John 14.30) and which did not recognize Christ Jesus when He came to save it (St John 1.10). The texts that we looked at from the epistles build on this basic perspective: in his Letter to the Romans, St Paul writes that we are not to “be conformed to this world” (12.2); in his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle states that we should “deal with the world as though [we] had no dealings with it” since “the form of this world is passing away” (7.31). In his letter, St James, writes that we are to keep ourselves “unstained from the world” (1.27), and, in his first letter, St John insists that we are not to “love the world or the things that are in the world,” and he adds that if we do love the world, “love for the Father is not in us” (2.15).

In Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry does a good job of describing the social and economic impact that the world has on the community of Port William. At the beginning of World War II, Jayber observes that

A town like Port William in this age of the world is like a man on an icy slope, working hard to stay in one place and yet slowly sliding down-hill. It has to contend not just with local mortality, depravity, ignorance, natural deficiencies, and weather but also with what I suppose we might as wellcall The News. (p139)

But by 1961, Jayber is able to be more specific about the nature of this News:

The News of the World seemed to have to do principally with The War and The Economy ... The War and The Economy were seeming more and more to be independent operations ... The War, I thought, was just the single Hell that is always astir in the world ... And the nations were always preparing funds of weapons and machines and people to be used up whenever The War did break out in full force, which meant that sooner or later it would…Also, it seemed that The War and The Economy were more and more closely related…The War was good for the Economy…(p273)

He then goes on to chronicle the death of Port William at the hands of The War and The Economy by describing how all of its businesses close, how it loses its physician and school, how most of its young people move away (or are sacrificed to the nation’s armed conflicts), and how the local economies of home and farm are rendered obsolete. The primary symbols of this death are the new highway and, even more powerfully and personally, Troy’s destruction of the Nest Egg. Jayber regards all this as almost inevitable, but he also wonders out loud how “the world is improved by [Port William’s] dying” (p273)

Jayber also spends a good deal of time talking about the moral and spiritual impact that the world has on Port William. The two representative figures here are Troy Chatham and Cecelia Overhold. Troy is the greatest advocate of the military industrial complex and also, through the loss of his son Jimmy and his personal financial ruin, one of its most poignant victims. Cecelia’s dissatisfaction with everything local mirrors our larger society’s need for uniformity to the point that, towards the end of the novel, Jayber can observe that “the world had become pretty generally Ceceliafied” (p274).

The residents of Port William are either swept up in the changes that the world introduces into their community, or they resist by moving to the margins of society. Jayber takes his barbering business down to the river; the Branches make do with second hand gear and subsidence farming. But by the end of the novel, the world has triumphed; the larger society has moved in and taken over, and the Port William Membership no longer exists. Jayber’s faith is intact, and he is able to forgive Troy Chatham; he finally gets that special smile from Mattie, and, in the on-going world of the novel, there are probably grandchildren of Danny and Lyda Branch who are even now making a go of it down on the river, but the world wins. That’s because, as Jayber once succinctly observes, “Hate succeeds” (p249).

That’s a powerful message to those of us who want to see our community flourish. Because what we are up against is not just social forces or cultural paradigms; what is ranged against us is nothing less than the Kingdom of the Ruler of this World. And, on a historical level, socially and politically, that Kingdom is going to prevail. Of course, in the Holy Gospels and in the Book of the Apocalypse, we are assured that the Church will survive this tribulation; however, we are never assured that individual communities will survive intact.

Of course, American Christianity has yet to really come to grips with any of this. In fact, much of American Christianity is still trying to use the world to reach out to people who are without faith. But there is nothing in Holy Scripture to justify such an approach, and the results are plain to see: communities will start out using the world’s music or technology or thought processes in an effort to do mission work or evangelism, but the world always has a far greater impact on those communities than those communities have on the world. Other communities approach social and political issues as if the world was somehow less evil forty or fifty years ago; the thinking is that if we can just go back to living the way our grandparents or great grandparents did then everything would be fine or at least a whole lot better. However, the Kingdom of Satan is still the Kingdom of Satan no matter where it’s located in the course of history.

A relatively new approach to all this is one of almost complete isolation. Down through history, Christians have attempted tried this from time to time, but it has started showing up again in the last couple of decades here in America. However, most of the people who attempt this approach are not consistent. They home school the children—until it’s time for them to go to college. They do without television—but they use the internet. They don’t listen to mainstream music—but they follow less popular, more obscure artists. At least these people are trying to put the teaching of Holy Scripture into practice, but the approach tends to be piece-meal and unsustainable over the long haul since it is hardly ever grounded in a community.

Unfortunately, in this country, Orthodox Christianity doesn’t provide us with a lot of good role models when it comes to dealing with the world. We have very worldly parishes, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, we have monasteries, but there is not much at all in-between. So what should we be doing as a community to limit, as much as possible, our exposure to the world?

To begin with, we should never underestimate the world’s virulence. Historically, politically, socially, and economically, the world is a highly complex system which involves the interaction of all sorts of different factors, but, spiritually, it all belongs to Satan, and he wants to destroy us. So, the world is never, ever a benign or neutral force, and that means that we interact with it at our peril. As in the case of Port William, the nature of that peril may not become clear until decades have passed, but we can be sure that the danger to us and our community is genuine.

However, having said that, we must not be afraid, since, as St John writes, “greater is He that is in [us] than he that is in the world” ( ). If we are motivated primarily by fear, then we will end up with a parish that is controlling and isolated in an unhealthy way—and this is precisely what happened to the community that the Longs were are part of back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. This is what also happens to some of the folks who home school or house church or otherwise band together in order to ward off the evil influences of the world. Of course, the world is full of evil influence, but if a community’s primary reason for existence is a negative one, then it won’t be a community that reflects the divine life of the Most Holy Trinity; it will be a community that reflects the moral, spiritual, economic, pedagogical, and political values of a particular group of anxious people.

We must also get to the point where we no longer think of our interaction with the world in terms of personal life-style choices. On the one hand, we are free to watch any sort of movie or read any sort of book or purchase any kind of car or wear any kind of clothes or eat any sort of food, but, on the other hand, every one of those choices also has an impact, for good or for ill, on the other members of our community. So, for example, the decision to cultivate a relationship with a friend who is coarse and profane and dishonest and cynical is going to have consequences for everyone in our parish because if we are not stronger than this particular individual, if we are not capable of resisting and/or overlooking his or her ungodly qualities—or, worse yet, if we are actually attracted to this person because of those qualities—then we will eventually introduce those qualities into our community. We may regard our friendship with that person as no one else’s business, but we will still infect others with the contagion that we pick up from this individual.

So where do we place the boundaries? And how do we make those decisions? Confession and counsel with our spiritual father is a good place to begin, but that can also lead to an atomized, individualistic approach to dealing with the world, and that is precisely what finished off Port William, because when push came to shove, each person in the town made their own decisions about how to relate to the world. So, if we want to be an authentic community, then we will have to begin working on some of these issues with each other. Right now, we have a number of settings in which those discussions can occur (coffee hour, girls’ night, man night, the Wed Home School group, etc), but the question is whether we are willing to be open with each other and possibly surrender our individual wills and preferences to the will of the Most Holy Trinity as the purpose of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is revealed in our parish (and on this pt we would do well to recall what we said during our discussion about authority). The health—indeed, the very survival—of our community depends on whether we will take this step.

fr. aidan

Toxic Communities

2009-12-01T15:15:00.002-06:00

During this session, we looked at a number of passages from Holy Scripture and then we listened to Father Deacon Basil and Shamassy Josie Long talk about their experiences in a community that disintegrated into a cult. We also listened to Father Aidan Wilcoxson talk about his experiences with the organizational dysfunction of United Methodism. All this led to a good discussion of how to avoid these sorts of toxicity.

fr. aidan

Conflict

2009-11-04T12:07:00.004-06:00

This week’s topic presents us with the seminar’s biggest gap between Holy Scripture and the novel, Jayber Crow. Wendell Berry does a good job of analyzing the lengthy conflicts that Jayber has with Cecelia Overhold and Troy Chatham; however, the way that Jayber approaches these conflicts reflects his southern, small-town culture more than it reflects the teachings of Holy Scripture.

Let’s begin with the biblical texts that we read in preparation for this evening’s discussion. In St Paul’s letters to St Timothy and St Titus, the apostle encourages his younger brothers to avoid conflict and to avoid antagonistic people whenever possible: “Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know how they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone” (2 Tim 2.23-24); “But avoid stupid controversies…” (Titus 3.9). However, St Paul is also clear that conflict must be dealt with in a straight-forward manner; he tells St Timothy that the work of the “Lord’s servant” includes “correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Tim 2.25), and he gives these instructions to St Titus: “As for a man that is factious, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him” (3.10). In the passage from St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians and in St John’s Third Letter, we see both apostles dealing with conflict directly and decisively, and the instructions that Christ Jesus provides in St Matthew’s Gospel contain a four step process for handling conflict—and each step involves person to person interaction.

But it is precisely this personal interaction that is finally missing from Jayber’s relationship with Cecelia and Troy. Jayber has a number of confrontations with Cecelia: there’s the famous rock-throwing incident at the Grand Stand, and then there are years of snubs and slights. However, Jayber never confronts her or tries to heal the rift between them. Towards the end of the novel, Jayber states that he “forgave her easily enough for her dislike of [him]”, but he also admits that “she never asked [him] to do so” (p355). So it’s difficult to see what forgiveness actually meant in this situation apart from the fact that Jayber, at one point, stopped being angry with Cecelia. And Jayber’s relationship with Troy works the same way: Jayber never even tries to speak with Troy about the way he mistreats Mattie, and he never even tries to confront Troy about his arrogance and dishonesty. When Jayber finally is able to forgive Troy, there is some practical content to that forgiveness—Jayber actually becomes Troy’s friend. Nevertheless, there is the distinct possibility that Troy never knew that Jayber was ever anything but his friend.

Of course, to expect Jayber to deal openly and honestly with the conflict in his life is to also step out of the world of the novel. Because in small, southern towns, that’s just not the way conflict is handled. Folks in these communities gossip about conflict—and, of course, there is a whole lot of gossip in Port William—and sometimes conflict even erupts into actual violence—and there is a certain degree of violence in Port William. However, in the south, it is still considered rude to acknowledge a conflict with anyone other than a family member, and even family conflicts are dealt with in other, more nuanced ways. For example, Athey and Della Keith never intervene in Troy and Mattie’s life, but they also leave the farm solely to Mattie. So, in Jayber Crow, culture is more powerful than the specific teachings of Holy Scripture. Jayber does work through his conflicts with Cecelia and Troy, and his efforts are motivated, in part, by his Christian convictions, but those convictions are also culturally conditioned.

But what this finally means is that, when it comes to the real test of community, when it comes to conflict, the membership of Port William fails. In just about every other dynamic that we have considered, the characters in the novel provide us with an example of what authentic community looks like. But when there are strains and ruptures in their community, the individualistic nature of the Port William membership kicks in, and folks regard the troubles of others as something to be observed and commented on, but something that also, ultimately, isn’t their business. Related to this particular failure is the absence of any real spiritual authority in Port William. The clergymen who serve that small town are only there on a temporary basis; everyone knows that they are just passing through, and so they do not have the authority that comes from years of stability and trust and experience. So to expect any of Port William’s preachers to try and intervene in Jayber and Cecelia’s relationship or in the conflict between Troy and his in-laws would be, once again, to step outside of the world of the novel. Nevertheless, it is significant that the inability of the people of Port William to deal with conflict in a straight-forward and proactive way is never challenged by any of the men who are supposed to be providing the town with spiritual leadership.

Of course, Port William is not alone in its inability to deal with conflict. Badly handled conflict destroys a great many parishes and congregations. Most of the experimental Protestant communities that were started in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s fell apart because of conflict, and the book that many of us read about the current crop of similar communities reveals that nothing has really changed in the last thirty years: conflict is a huge problem. In analyzing conflict, Protestant and Roman Catholic thinkers frequently draw on the insights of psychology and the social sciences, and, while there is nothing wrong with that, we must never forget that, as Christians, we have a unique perspective on the subject. For example, the folks who study conflict from a therapeutic or sociological perspective like to say that it is just a part of life, and that is certainly true; however, it is also important to remember that Holy Scripture never regards conflict in a positive way since the presence of conflict presupposes the presence of sin. So even though conflict may be a part of life, we should never interpret that to mean that it is somehow a normal feature of life in community.

So how should we handle conflict in our community? Christ Jesus provides us with the paradigm in chapter eighteen of St Matthew’s gospel. As we mentioned earlier, there are four steps in this process:

1. The offended person is to talk to the person who has caused the offence. In most communities, the entire process goes off the rails right here at the beginning. Most people who are offended would never dream of talking to the person who has offended them—they would rather stew and mope about the situation, or they would rather talk about that person with their friends or family members. Our job in these sorts of situations is to, first of all, model the sort of behavior we want to see in our community by actually doing what our Lord and Master has instructed us to do, and, second, to encourage others to do the same thing, either by pointing out that stewing and moping won’t do them or anyone else any good, or by refusing to listen to their complaints about the person who has offended them until they agree to go and talk to that person.

2. If the initial conversation doesn’t go well—if there is no reconciliation—the next step is to talk to the offender with one or two friends. Again, in most communities, there is no precedent, and there are no guidelines for this sort of thing. But that is all the more reason to actually make sure that we set those precedents and establish those kinds of guidelines. This is the point where people will often ask me to get involved in these sorts of situations, but what that effectively does is collapse the steps that Christ Jesus has laid out for us. In other words, they ask me to go with them to talk to the offending person because they are apprehensive about the conversation, and because they haven’t had the courage to talk to the offender themselves; however, this is skipping step one, and combining steps two and three, because, when the priest gets involved, then the Church is involved, but that isn’t supposed to happen until the offended person has tried to reach out to the offender at least twice, once by themselves and once with a friend or two. The reason we have been given these steps is so that we can take personal responsibility for the conflicts that intrude upon our lives, so that we can take up the cross and offer up our pain and fear and heartache and stress as a sacrifice for the transformation of this world, but that won’t happen if we wimp out.

3. If the second encounter doesn’t lead to reconciliation, then the person who is offended is to tell the Church. The holy fathers interpret this to mean that the offended person is to confide in a clergyman, and then that deacon or priest will attempt to deal with the conflict. Unfortunately, most clergymen not only try to avoid taking sides, they also try, at all costs, to avoid offending anyone. This is a recipe for frustration, misunderstanding, and all-around disaster. In these sorts of situations, clergymen should speak clearly and compassionately; they should be able to tell the offending person what to do; they should be able to tell the offended person what to do. In other words, they should be able to provide caring and decisive spiritual leadership.

4. If the clergyman is unsuccessful in bringing about reconciliation, then Christ Jesus states that the offending person is to “be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (18.17). This is not excommunication. In the Church, only a bishop can excommunicate someone, and that is typically done only as an official acknowledgement of actions the offending person has already taken (for example, leaving a spouse and moving in with a lover; joining a Protestant or Roman Catholic parish; publically and repeatedly rejecting some of the basic doctrines of the Church). What this refers to is the distance that is always a consequence of any refusal of reconciliation/responsibility. Some of that distance is going to be official in nature—for example, I would never ask anyone who refused reconciliation/responsibility to serve on the parish council or to help out with All Saints’ Club or to assist in the altar. Some of that distance is going to be of a personal nature—the tension and the awkwardness that is introduced into relationships whenever this sort of refusal occurs. Unless the offending person is antagonistic or dangerous, there is no reason to exclude them from the worship and fellowship of the community—again, that is what happens when someone is excommunicated; nevertheless, this ‘interim’ distance is real, and it must be acknowledged. In fact, one of the primary dynamics which causes conflict to become embedded in a community is the tendency that most people have to try and ignore it.

But to pretend that nothing has happened—or to act as if the conflict has been resolved when it has not—is dishonest, and this kind of dishonesty only generates even bigger problems. However, as uncomfortable as this last step might be, it is not intended to be punishing or punitive, but redemptive. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St Paul writes that “love never fails”, so even when others have given up on any possibility of reconciliation, we must not. We must always be prepared to try again, if and when the appropriate opportunity presents itself.

And this is something that we can learn from Jayber Crow—the persevering patience and hard hope that is required of us when we are dealing with broken or damaged relationships. Because if we are committed to community, if we accept the requirement of stability, if we don’t simply leave when conflict arises, then there is a good chance that we will have to live on an on-going basis with a lot of unresolved conflict—and, further, we will have to live with the on-going possibility that the conflict will never be resolved. This is where the symbol of the man in the well comes in—and it is such a powerful passage, it’s worth quoting again:

A man of faith believes that the Man in the Well is not lost.He does not believe this easily or without pain, but he believes it. His belief is a kind of knowledge beyond any way of knowing. He believes that the child in the womb is not lost, nor is the man whose work has come to nothing, nor is the old woman forsaken in a nursing home in California. He believes that those who make their bed in Hell are not lost, or those who dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, or the lame man at Bethesda Pool, or Lazarus in the grave, or those who pray, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”. (p357)

Jayber didn’t follow the biblical paradigm for dealing with conflict, but he also didn’t give up on the people with whom he was in conflict. In a sense, he was willing to get down in the well with them and abide their anger and resentment and dishonesty and fear. That kind of faithfulness is not easy, but, in the end, it paid off, both for Jayber and for Troy and, even, in some way, for Cecelia.

If we will follow the biblical paradigm for dealing with conflict, then our community will be healthy, and it will flourish—but that does not mean that all of our conflicts will be successfully resolved; even our Lord and Master does not have that expectation. However, if we will respond to those broken relationships the way Jayber did, with patience and hope, then none of us, not a single member of our community will finally be lost. Because there will be miraculous rescues; we will be pulled up out of the well of despair by something that happens at Forgiveness Vespers or during the Kiss of Peace or even on a Saturday of Souls. Our job is to simply never, ever give up; our job is to put into action, in this specific community and with these particular people, the “love that never fails”.

fr. aidan

Economy

2009-10-22T09:08:00.006-05:00

In the Introduction to this seminar, we defined economy as the way we order life in our community. That’s actually the original meaning of the root word in Greek, which is economia; the term referred to the management of a household, and the holy fathers eventually applied it to the Most Holy Trinity’s providential care for this creation and for the Church. Of course, management is not an end in itself (though it can become precisely that; we will address that specific problem later on), so it’s important to remember the goal of the Most Holy Trinity’s economy: in the words of the apostles, everything that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do in this creation is directed towards the union of heaven and earth (Eph 1.10), and everything that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do in the Church is designed to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2nd Peter 1.4). According to the fathers, the place where all that happens is the Divine Liturgy. So when we talk about ordering the life of our parish, what we should be looking for is a structure that keeps us focused on the liturgy.

However, at first glance, tonight’s scripture passages don’t appear to have a whole lot to do with the Divine Liturgy. When it comes to the material from the Acts of the Apostles, what everyone always comments on is the fact that those people “had everything in common” (4.32); but what St Luke emphasizes—and what is surely more significant—is the fact that “there was not a needy person among them” (4.34). So, whether we follow the example of the Jerusalem Christians or whether we follow the example of the Corinthian Christians (St Paul never suggests that the Corinthians should hold everything in common; he simply instructs them to “lay aside something” each week; 1 Cor 16.2), we should be able to meet the needs of the members of our parish.

St John builds on that point in his first letter. In fact, just before he talks about the obligation that we have to the members of our parish, he states that we “ought to lay down our lives for the brethren”. And then he adds this: “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (3.16-17). So, taking care of each other, to the point of genuine sacrifice and real loss, is a basic obligation for life in community.

But the Church is not a relief agency. There should not be a needy person among us, and we should lay down our lives in order to make that happen; nevertheless, the reason why we should strive to make sure that everyone in our community has what they need is so that they can participate in the Divine Liturgy without distraction; so that they can truly “lay aside all earthly cares”. So when we help others with money for prescriptions or groceries or an unexpected bill, when we share baby equipment or children’s clothing or help to fix an appliance or a car, we are not acting as an informal social service agency, a ‘faith-based’ resource center. We do all that so that the members of our parish can get on with the work of becoming holy people, so that they can participate more fully in the Divine Liturgy and thereby become partakers of the divine nature.

However, it’s important to remember that when we speak of the work of becoming holy people, we are talking about hard work, and we are talking about our primary work. In the passage from Second Thessalonians, St Paul makes it clear that he went out and got a secular job so that he could do his parish work more effectively (3.9-10). The job he had in the world was certainly important—and the apostle expects the Thessalonians who are unemployed to follow his example—but it still was not as important as the work he was doing in the parish. Most of us have precisely the opposite perspective: our secular jobs are the most important things in our lives, and we devote our best energy and resources to those jobs, while our work in the parish is understood to be a seasonal or part-time endeavor which has to compete with hobbies, entertainment, and family events. But if we truly believe that what happens in the Divine Liturgy is nothing less than the union of heaven and earth, if we actually believe that we partake of the divine nature when we share in the Holy Eucharist, if we genuinely believe that what we do on Sunday morning is the expression of the Most Holy Trinity’s providential care for this cosmos, then we should adopt St Paul’s perspective and make what happens in this community the most important job we have and then we should work hard at that job.

So we are to make sure that no one among us is needy; we are to lay down our lives for each other; we are to make our parish work a priority, and we are to invest our time and money and energy in that work. And all of that should find expression in our liturgy which should be beautiful and peaceful and humble and awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, in 21st century America, when we start to think about these scriptural obligations, we almost immediately start to translate them into programs. But programs tend to take on a life of their own, and that’s how parishes turn into job banks and food pantries and sites for after-school care. Those can all be important and effective efforts within the life of a parish, but the main reason we have parishes is not so that we can have programs; the main reason we have parishes is so that we can celebrate the Divine Liturgy and thereby become partakers of the divine nature. That’s the goal of the Most Holy Trinity’s economy, and that should be the goal of any parish economy.

But can we even envision a parish community without programs? In the Branch family, Wendell Berry provides us with a much more organic approach to the obligations which we find in Holy Scripture. Danny and his wife Lyda work very hard, and they live modestly Jayber tells us that Danny “never spent any money he didn’t have to spend” but he adds that Danny and Lyda “were generous people ... tight of pocket ... but free of heart” (p312). They take Jayber into their family as he gets older, and they allow him to stay in the cabin by the river even though they could presumably have rented it out to vacationers or fishermen. So Danny and Lyda lay down their lives for Jayber; they meet his needs, and Jayber finds his place in the economy of their home—and it all happens in a very natural way because Danny and Lyda understood the purpose of their work and the point of their lives. They “were uninterested in getting somewhere or making something of themselves”; they simply wanted “to make the old farm produce as much as it could of the things” they needed (pp313, 312)

Of course, Wendell Berry also provides us with a direct contrast to the Branch family in the hapless character of Troy Chatham. What motivates Troy is pride, “his own wants and his ambitions” (p338). But what fuels Troy’s pride and even gives it direction and structure is the advice of the agricultural experts:

All the way along—from his first adventures into the postwar mechanization, to the installation of the dairy, to the installation of the confinement hog-raising farm that replaced the dairy … he was under the influence of expert advice, first in the form of magazine articles and leaflets and pamphlets, and then in the persons of the writers of the articles and leaflets and pamphlets, who instructed him, gave him their language and point of view, took photographs of the results, spoke of him in public talks as an innovator and a man of the new age of agribusiness, and who simply had nothing to say when their recommendations only drew him deeper and deeper into debt. (p339)

Troy simply forgot what farming was all about. Certainly, it’s possible that he never actually understood the point of farming, but, if he ever did understand, his fascinations with the programs offered by the experts obscured that knowledge. But the very same thing happens to parishes: the clergymen who guide the community or the council which governs the community or the people who are members of the community forget that the concrete, practical purpose of the parish is the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, and then, like Troy, they become interested in all sorts of other things that are only tangentially related to the liturgy.

In Holy Orthodoxy, the things that distract communities from the liturgy are usually pretty obvious: a building program, the preservation of an ethnic culture or, in the case of convert parishes, the desire for growth. But in American Christianity, there are entire industries that are devoted to these sorts of distractions, and some of them are very sophisticated. So it is not uncommon to find large congregations where the main priorities are: 1. running the physical plant 2. managing the staff 3.monitoring the budget 4. conducting meetings 5. resourcing programs.

And each one of those priorities is supported by an entire army of consultants, by an entire library of specialized literature, and by an entire calendar of training events. That may seem completely foreign to our experience in Holy Orthodoxy, but these concepts have a way of trickling down and showing up in jurisdictional magazines and seminary publications—and just because these ideas are ripped-off and warmed-over doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

So, again, we are back to the question—can we even envision a parish community without programs? Looked at from the perspective of history, that is actually a silly and very, very American sort of question, because, after all, this is precisely what parishes have always been. Archimandrite Vasileios has written extensively on what looks like. In this quotation, the archimandrite is writing about monasteries, but I have taken the liberty of inserting the word parish

Thus, every [parish] has a vocation which is the same yet different for each—and this vocation is to help each particular brother sanctify his vessel with repentance, asceticism, humility, and love…The order and rules governing [parish] life are certainly not like the arrangement of neatly stored objects, nor like the organization of an army barracks where certain people are doing compulsory service. They are more like the order and harmonious relationships between the members of a loving family. (“The Meaning of Typikon” p14)

Archimandrite Vasileios goes on to say that a particular community will take its vocation from the character of its founders—that is to say the people who actively constitute the parish. And that would be us—in fact, that is why we are participating in this seminar. So, now that we have acknowledged just how silly and just how American the question is, I think we will discover that it is even more immediate and even more pressing—can we envision a community without programs?

In regards to this question, I would like to offer a few observations, and I hope you will have more to share. To begin with, I believe that, when it comes to ordering our parish in a way that reflects the economy of the Most Holy Trinity, the daily services are absolutely essential. These services do occupy a good deal of time and energy, and others view our commitment to these services as either weird or heroic, but think about the situation that prevails in most parishes: even though the community exists in order to serve the Divine Liturgy, that only occupies three hours on a Sunday morning; a number of parishes will also have a mid-week service of some sort, but even after taking that into account, most communities only spend four hours a week on corporate prayer and worship; they only spend four hours a week doing what is their primary work. The rest of the time either nothing is happening at all or there is a schedule of meetings and social events. But if we are going to maintain our focus on the liturgy, and if the liturgy that we serve is going to be beautiful and peaceful and humble and awe-inspiring, then we need the preparation and the structure and the atmosphere of prayer which the daily services provide.

The second observation has to do with our expectations for how people participate in our community. The old adage is that 20% of the people do 80% of the work, and I think that is probably true in most parishes. Nevertheless, we need to help people understand that their commitment to our community goes beyond showing up on Sunday morning and pitching in to help with coffee hour every couple of months. Certainly, different people have different levels of energy and different kinds of talents and different sorts of resources. But our members need to realize that when they come ‘to church’ they are coming to work, and the work that they do here is the most important work in the world—it’s the work that will, ultimately, change the world and everyone in it, and it should thus take priority over everything and everyone else. And the way we help folks come to that realization is by modeling that kind of life for them. After all, in the back of their minds, most people are convinced that if a parish is the most important thing in your life then you will neglect your family and never be more than minimally employed and never, ever have any fun. However, if we can demonstrate to them that those assumptions are false, then they will begin to see just how rewarding and energizing and meaningful life in community can be.

Third, I want to repeat an observation I made back in our second session. The typical trajectory of parish life in this country looks like this: when a community is small, the members must do things for themselves (cleaning, teaching, caring for the children and for the youth and for each other); that is one of the clear marks of a small parish. However, the larger a community gets, the fewer things the members do for themselves—in fact, it is understood to be a sign of maturity and success when you can hire a janitor and nursery workers and staff people to work with the children and youth and an assistant priest to visit folks in the nursing home and the hospital. However, this approach separates people from what is actually happening in a parish, and community becomes something that they pay for and not something that they do—in fact, the staff people often become a separate community within the larger parish. So, we will need to resist this model at every level.

Of course, that means we will have to work harder, but we’ve already discussed that. It means that we will have to do of things that many parishes eventually turn over to professionals—pastoral care, youth work, Church School, music; it means that we will have to do many things that our culture regards as trivial or demeaning or inefficient—yard work, janitorial work, building maintenance, baking prosphora, providing lamp oil. But that is how our parish will become an authentic community and remain an authentic community. That is also how we can make sure that there is not a needy person among us, because one of the great unaddressed needs that people have is for purposeful work; most people can’t handle too much additional work, but the more we do ourselves, the more we will have to share with the members of our parish, and thus everyone will, each week, have a meaningful, hands-on way to make a contribution towards the Divine Liturgy and the on-going transformation of this cosmos and everyone in it.

Finally, I want to say a couple of things about community charters or statements or rules. These are documents which govern and guide the life of a community, and they have a long history in Western Christianity, especially in Western monasticism. These documents are making something of a come-back among those radical Protestants that have recently started doing some serious exploration of intentional community, but they have never been especially important in the Church. There are, in fact, many Orthodox monastic rules that have come down to us, but most of them are pretty brief and sketchy and none of them has ever attained the almost normative status that the Rule of St Benedict has in the West. We have a parish constitution, and that is a document that we share with all the communities in our archdiocese, but that is more a reflection of the requirements of the American legal system than it is a reflection of the needs of our community.

So, in the Church, there simply has never been a need to ‘spell out’ the specific duties and responsibilities and schedules of everyone in a particular community. In fact, one of the most vibrant and healthiest communities in contemporary Orthodoxy—the monastery of St John in Essex, England—simply has no Rule. The have community meetings and assignments are made on a person to person basis, but there is no over-all, governing document that guides the monastery in it’s day to day life. That’s because Elder Sophrony wanted humble love to be the guiding principle of that community—and, as St Columban once said (and as our community will soon discover)—“Love has no order.”

Thanks again to each of you for your prayerful participation in this seminar. I hope you will continue to share your thoughts throughout the week and on the bookstore’s blog.

fr. aidan

Care for the Dead

2009-10-13T15:29:00.004-05:00

At the end of last week’s meeting, we observed that this session on the Care of the Dead is really just a continuation of our discussion of Fellowship and Hospitality. That’s because the departed are still part of our community; they continue to be present in our parish, and we have responsibilities to them which reflect the obligations of hospitality and fellowship that we owe to the living. We see these dynamics at work all throughout Jayber Crow.

In our last meeting, we mentioned that Jayber has two visions of the departed, and the most comprehensive of these visions occurs one day when he is cleaning the church:

Waking or sleeping (I couldn’t tell which), I saw all the people gathered there who had ever been there. I saw them as I had seen them from the back pew, where I sat with Uncle Othy (who would not come in any farther) while Aunt Cordie sang in the choir, and I saw them as I had seem them (from the back pew) on the Sunday before. I saw them in all the times past and to come, all somehow there in their own time and in all time and in no time: the cheerfully working and singing women, the men quiet or reluctant or shy, the weary, the troubled in spirit, the sick, the lame, the desperate, the dying…I saw them all. (pp164-165)

The people of Port William sustain their fellowship with the dead in many different ways: Burley and Jayber fill in Mat Feltner’s grave; Mattie Chatham spends time at her daughter’s grave; Della Keith brings flowers to her husband’s grave; the entire community visits the cemetery on Decoration Day, and folks clean the graves of their family members and friends. Those are the tangible expressions of Port William’s fellowship with the dead, but Wendell Berry is just as adept at describing grief, which is the way a community maintains it’s emotional and psychological connection to the departed.

During the chapter on World War II, Berry has Jayber make this observation:

New grief when it came, you could feel filling the air. It took up all the room there was. The place itself, the whole place, became a reminder of the absence of the hurt or dead or missing one. I don’t believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure. (p148)

Towards the end of the novel, Berry has Jayber make these remarks about grief:

I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go. Now I am ready. (p353)

So Port William has this organic connection with the members who have gone on before, and Jayber feels this connection and articulates this connection in poetic and powerful way.

Unfortunately, the connection depicted in the novel is no longer at work for most of 21st century America. The social structures which made our connections with the departed concrete have all but disappeared since most of us no longer live in small towns and most of us no longer have access to local cemeteries. Individuals and families may still tend graves or conduct annual memorials, but there is very little in our society that even approaches the kind of community fellowship with the dead that we find in the pages of Jayber Crow. And grief is now understood to be a psychological and emotional state which must be managed and should be worked through. Of course, another reason for the disappearance of this connection is the absence of any theological understanding of our fellowship with the departed. This is actually reflected in Wendell Berry’s novel: Port William is a Protestant community, and that means the membership has lost touch with all but a few echoes of what the Church has historically taught concerning the departed (and this is preserved primarily in hymns such as “In the Sweet By and By”). That is why, when he’s talking about the dead, Jayber relies more on his own personal experience than on theology. But, in 21st century America, there are no longer even any echoes of the Church’s teaching.

In fact, it is common for our brothers and sisters who are American Christians to maintain that Holy Scripture really has very little to say about how we should interact with the departed. I hope that the texts we looked at in preparation for this evening’s session have demonstrated just how mistaken that approach is. The two passages from Genesis are both quite long, and they both deal with funeral arrangements and funeral services: Abraham buys the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite to use as a family burial plot, and Joseph prepares the body of his father Jacob for burial and then takes the body to the same cave that Abraham had purchased. But the two passages from the Holy Gospels also deal with funeral arrangements. These arrangements are interrupted or rendered unnecessary by the resurrection of our Lord and Master, but the women who go to the tomb in St Luke’s Gospel, and St Joseph and St Nicodemus who prepare the body of Christ Jesus in St John’s Gospel, are participating in the concrete expression of our fellowship with the departed. So these sorts of activities are not inconsequential; they are not just cultural artifacts; they are important ways in which we maintain our connection to the dead.

Of course, many American Christians would insist that we have no real fellowship with the dead. But in the oldest piece of New Testament writing, in St Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, the apostle addresses this subject. He assures the community in Thessalonica that the departed are simply sleeping; he tells the Thessalonian Christians that the dead will be awakened by Christ Jesus on the Great and Fearful Day of Judgment. And the use of language here is crucial: St Paul doesn’t say that the dead are gone; he doesn’t even use the word that the Church eventually adopted, which is the verb departed; he uses the word asleep. And while that word implies a separate state of consciousness, it does not require the person to be absent. In his letter to the Hebrews, there is a text which should be familiar to us all but which I neglected to put on the syllabus. In chapter eleven of that epistle, St Paul talks at length about the holy and righteous men and women of the Old Testament, and then, at the beginning of chapter twelve, he observes, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…” Again, there is the clear sense that we are connected to these people, even though the apostle is talking about men and women who lived thousands of years before he wrote his letter.

However, the primary New Testament testimony to our fellowship with the departed is a personal and almost parenthetical remark that St Paul makes in his second letter to St Timothy. In the first chapter of that letter, the apostle prays that the Most Holy Trinity will be merciful to the household of Onesiphorus, and he later also prays that the "Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day” (1.18). The passage does not categorically state that Onesiphorus is dead, but the only objection one could have to such a reading would be that St Paul would not offer a prayer for a dead man. But that would be reading our presuppositions into the text, so what we have in this passage is the apostle praying for someone who has departed this life. That is the most intimate way in which we can maintain our fellowship with the dead, and the Church has followed the apostle’s example by providing us with many opportunities to pray for the departed.

In fact, the Church has taken each of the different aspects of our connection with the departed that we have identified in this very, very brief review of Holy Scripture and developed them in ways that are rich and nourishing. For example, the Church has always placed a great deal of emphasis on funeral services. In fact, in the early second century, many Roman observers thought that the Church was a funeral society—an association of people who would gather together and pay dues into a common fund in order to ensure that each member receive a decent funeral. Further, the Church prays frequently for those who did not receive a proper funeral, thus demonstrating the importance of the preparations and services. In addition, because each member of the Church receives the same funeral, there is not the atomized and idiosyncratic approach to services that we find in society and in American Christianity. And the Church’s approach to funerals requires us to take time and make preparations and actually work hard to pull it off. This makes the whole process much more personal (rather like Jayber digging the graves of his friends) when the entire tendency in our society and American Christianity is to hand the entire effort over to professionals and make everything as effortless as possible.

The Church also provides us with a way to express our grief. There is a specific calendar of activities which accompany the loss of a friend or loved one; there are certain kinds of clothes that should be worn and certain activities which are to be avoided. At first glance, many Americans would regard this kind of structure as oppressive and confining, but, on closer examination, it is easy to see that this framework provides guidance in a very confusing time and a clear, simple way to maintain our connection with a friend or loved one in the weeks and months immediately following that person’s death. Of even greater benefit is the fact that the Church allows us to be sad—both at the funeral itself, which is a somber service, and afterwards. Not only that, but the Church gives us a way to practice being sad in the two annual services of Lamentations—the one for Christ Jesus on Great and Holy Friday and the other for the Mother of God on the eve of her Dormition. This is a gift that is simply unavailable anywhere else in American culture or American Christianity, because sadness is one of the few social sins left in American society, and American Christianity does it’s best to reflect that emphasis (for example, the congregation that is currently the most popular in this part of Central Texas is called simply Celebration Church; so how do you have a funeral at a place that is named Celebration?).

And, of course, the Church provides us with opportunities for prayer: with the exception of the Hours, each and every service of the Church has fixed prayers for the departed (and prayers for the dead can certainly be inserted into the Hours); the liturgy includes prayers for the departed; there are specific services—akathists, memorials—that can be done for the dead; each Saturday is a general day of remembrance for the departed, and there are four Souls’ Saturdays during the year when the faithful are specifically tasked to pray for the dead. So we are talking about more than resources here; we’re talking about more than a schedule; this is a way of life in which our fellowship with the departed is a constant factor.

So, if we want our parish to be an authentic community in the fullest sense of the word, then we must include the departed in the fellowship of our parish. The easiest way to do that is to simply embrace the way of life that has been handed down to us in the Church, but that will require some intentionality, and intentionality presupposes planning. In other words, if we only start thinking about death and our fellowship with the departed after a member of our family or a close friend has died, then we will be over-taken by events and emotions and the expectations of others, and we will end up with an experience and a set of circumstances that reflect the values of our culture. Simply put, we have to let people know what kind of service we want and how we want our body to be prepared and where we want to be buried and what kind of memorials we wish to leave behind. To that end, I have asked the owners of Beck Funeral Home to join us for the first two Souls’ Saturdays in 2010; they will be with us on Sat, Feb 27th, and Sat, Mar 6th, to provide people with information about funeral arrangements and to even provide people with the opportunity to get started on those arrangements.

But, in addition to embracing the way of life the Church has given us, we also need to begin developing social structures within that way of life. Consequently, we need to encourage people to participate in the preparation of the body of their loved one or friend; we need to encourage people to have their funerals at the temple and not at a funeral home; we need to encourage people to be buried in the Cedar Park Cemetery and not in some far away location; we need to encourage people to offer annual memorials for their departed friends and family members. Washing and dressing the body of a loved one or friend is a powerful, final act of hands-on charity; it is a reflection of what the Myrrh-bearing Women and St Joseph and St Nicodemus did for our Lord and Master. Having the funeral in the temple gives the parish one last, tangible opportunity to worship with the departed person. Taking advantage of the cemetery down the road will make it easy for our community to have contact with the departed that is direct and concrete. (Many, many parishes wish they could have a cemetery on their property, but we have something that is almost as good which is a cemetery just a few blocks away. Yes, it’s not an especially attractive location, but what is going to make that cemetery beautiful is the same thing that has made our property here beautiful—our prayers and the presence of a loving, caring, committed community.) Having a local cemetery will also make it easier to have annual memorials: kollyva is offered during the liturgy; the family goes down to the cemetery afterwards for an additional memorial service, and then they all have a meal together. Emphasizing each of these structures will help our community maintain the fellowship it already has with the departed, and it will help us broaden our understanding of what it means to live for others. Wendell Berry has written, “love, sooner or later, forces us out of time”; the apostle Paul has written, “love never fails”; taking responsibility for how we care for the dead will help us put that kind of love into action.

Thank you for your on-going participation in and prayers for this project. Next week we will be talking about the Economy of our community.

fr. aidan

Hospitality / Fellowship

2009-10-07T14:40:00.012-05:00

In our introduction, we defined hospitality as the means by which we welcome others into our community and fellowship as the way we support them in the life of our community. Our first passage of Holy Scripture deals with this dynamic in a very profound way, because, in Genesis 18, when Abraham and Sarah extend hospitality to the three men (and it’s important to note that they go out of their way to do this), those three men—who are a type of the Most Holy Trinity—reciprocate by inviting Abraham and Sarah into their fellowship. The men inform the holy and righteous couple that they will, in fact, have a child, and the men later inform Abraham about the fate of Sodom and actually negotiate with him concerning that city’s destiny. So, by sharing hospitality with the Most Holy Trinity, Abraham and Sarah are actually brought into the fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The icon of this story also provides us with a graphic representation of this principle because the image is composed in such a way that the three men or angels occupy three sides of the table that is at the center of the icon, and the viewer is automatically drawn to the fourth side of the table.

Thus, fellowship and hospitality involve much more than just introducing others into our community and then helping them settle down and feel at home: our hospitality is an extension of the fellowship that we enjoy with the Most Holy Trinity. Just as the three angelic visitors drew Abraham and Sarah into their fellowship, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have included us in Their community, and we, in turn, share that same fellowship with others through the practice of hospitality. That’s the theological context for each of the other texts that we will be looking at this evening—our community is an extension of and a participation in the divine community of the Most Holy Trinity. And it’s important to keep that context in mind as we consider those texts and the instructions that are contained in them, because each of those passages comes from one of the New Testament epistles, and, with the exception of the passage from St James’ letter, each of those passages comes close to the end of the epistle, and it is therefore easy to regard the instructions contained in those passages as the sort of haphazard observations that people often tack on to the end of letters (Oh yeah, don’t forget to bear one another’s burdens. P.S. Contribute to the needs of the saints.) Of course, the fact that the apostles wrote their letters in the same way that we write our letters does not make them any less inspired, but it does mean that we need to remember that the apostles are not just giving us random tips on community building; they are instructing us on how we can more fully participate in the community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and how we can share that participation with others.

Here’s a summary of the instructions that the apostles give us. In regards to hospitality, we are told to

Reach out to strangers
(Hebrews 13.2; Gal 6.10)

Reach out to all without distinction
(St James 2.1)

Reach out especially to each other
(1st Peter 4.9; Gal 6.10)

In regards to fellowship, we are told to

Support ourselves
(1st Thess 4.11)

Employ our gifts and talents for the good of all
(1st Peter 4.10; Romans 12.3-8)

Contribute to the needs of those in the community
(Romans 12.13; Gal 6.10)

Support the leaders of our community
(Gal 6.6)

Pray constantly
(Romans 12.12)

Bear each other’s burdens
(Gal 6.2)

Restore those who are fallen into sin
(Gal 6.1)

Refuse hatred, resentment, and vengeance
(Romans 12.17-21)

Love one another
(Romans 12.-10; 1st Thess 4.9-10; Heb 13.1; 1st Peter 4.8)

Never quit
(Gal 6.9; Romans 12.11-12)

It would, however, be a mistake to think that if we could somehow adopt these behaviors that we would then become an authentic community. That’s the approach that American Christians often take: A program is created for each of these behaviors, a congregation’s administrative structure is reworked so that it supports each of these behaviors, study materials and educational events are used to promote each of these behaviors; nevertheless, while these efforts often generate a lot of excitement and enthusiasm and activities and projects, they simply do not produce genuine community. That’s because, as we noted in the introduction to this seminar, community is not something that we build or construct or assemble; community is given to us.

In our introduction, we said that ‘the basis, the foundation for community is the Holy Orthodox Faith, as that Faith is revealed in Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, and as that Faith is lived out in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church’. But that’s just another way of saying that an authentic community is one that participates in, and is an extension of, the community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So the instructions that the apostles give us in their letters are not the means by which we build community; those instructions are designed to help us learn how to live in the community which the Most Holy Trinity has already given us. That may seem like a really subtle theological distinction, but it is a distinction that is also evident at the level of sociology.

For example, Cynthia and I recently finished reading a book about the Amish school shootings that took place in 2006. The book is by three academics who have been studying Amish culture for many years, and these three professors analyzed the forgiveness that the Amish extended to the family of the man who committed the crime. But the most interesting observations they made had to do with the fact that the Amish response to the tragedy was almost instinctual, that it was an expression of their on-going community life, and, consequently, it was not something that could be easily reproduced in other settings:

If there’s one thing we learned from this story, it’s this: the Amish commitment to forgive is not a small patch tacked onto their fabric of faithfulness. Rather, the commitment to forgive is intricately woven into their lives and their communities—so intricately that it’s hard to talk about Amish forgiveness without talking about dozens of other things…The web of words that emerged in these conversations pointed to the holistic, integrated nature of Amish life. Unlike many of their consumer-oriented neighbors, the Amish do not assemble their spirituality piecemeal by personal preference. Rather, Amish spirituality is a precious heirloom, woven together over the centuries and passed down with care.
(Amish Grace, p174-5)

But what is reflected in those sociological observations is the theological principle that genuine community is not something we can construct: the Amish receive their way of life as a ‘precious heirloom’; in a similar way, we also receive our way of life through participating in the Holy Orthodox Church, but that participation also goes beyond the process of historical transmission, because our life in the Church is also our participation in the life of the Most Holy Trinity.

We see both of these dynamics at work in Jayber Crow. At the level of sociology, there are examples of hospitality and fellowship all throughout the novel: Burley welcomes Jayber back into the life of Port William by taking him home for a meal and helping him get settled in a business and by inviting him to the ‘little worter dranking party’. Jayber provides Mattie with bail money for Jimmy, and he goes once or twice a week to shave Athey Keith when the old farmer can no longer get to the barber shop. Jayber listens as Mat Feltner recounts the dream he had about his dead son, Virgil. Jayber perseveres in his relationship with Troy Chatham and is finally able to forgive him. Danny and Lyda Branch start to cook for Jayber when he gets old. However, all of that hospitality and all of that fellowship are simply expressions of the on-going life of the town, a way of life that each person in the Port William membership has received from previous generations. Wendell Berry conveys this in a compelling way as he describes the role of the women in the town:

You don’t have to know Port William long before you see that whatever coherence it has is largely owing to certain women … it is the women more than the men who see to it that cooked food goes where it is needed, that no house goes without fuel in the winter, that no child goes without toys at Christmas, that the preacher knows where he should go with a word of comfort…Margaret Feltner was one of the women who saw to such things; so was Della Keith; so, as she came into her time,was Mattie Chatham. (pp189-190)

At several points in the novel, Jayber makes it clear that the community of Port William and its life included “the church rather than the other way around” (p190). Nevertheless, there are quite a few moments in the book where Jayber’s participation in the Port William community transcends history and blood lines and the normal boundaries of the membership to reflect a participation in a much larger, more comprehensive community. There are, for example, the two powerful dreams that Jayber has involving the departed: In the first vision, he falls asleep in the church, and he sees “all the people gathered there who had ever been there” (p164); the second dream is even more personal—he joins Athey and Art Rowanberry and Burley and Elton Penn and sits on the porch with them while the sun stands still, and watches while, in one exquisite moment, “Elton pick[s] up Art’s hand and kisse[s] it” (p 333).

But the portion of the book which most clearly communicates Jayber’s participation in a transcendent community is his relationship with Mattie Chatham. What begins as romantic love mixed with jealousy and hatred is transformed through a conversion experience (“But I was thinking too, as Troy winked at me and raised his sign: “We’re not alike!’ And that was what sickened me, because I wasn’t sure.” p238) and a long, ascetic commitment (“But to be a keeper of a solemn, secret vow is no easier that it sounds.” p259)to become a profound, genuinely spiritual friendship (“Though I remembered a time when it seemed to me I would gladly have died even to touch the back of her hand, now I was not disturbed” p349).

Wendell Berry conveys the depth and majesty of this friendship through those beautiful scenes where Jayber and Mattie walk together through the Nest Egg like the First Man and Woman in the Garden of Paradise:

We walked and looked about, or stood and looked. Sometimes, less often, we would sit down. We did not often speak. The place spoke for us and was a kind of speech. We spoke to each other in the things we saw. As we went along, ways would open before us, alleys and aisles and winding paths…We saw warblers, wood ducks, thrushes, deer. Around us always were the passing graces of moving air, lights and shadows, bird flight, songs, calls, drummings. Each of us knew what the other saw and heard. There was no need to ask, no need to say. (p349)

And, in fact, it is this relationship that redeems Jayber’s entire life and the lives of many, many others in the Port William membership:

It seemed to me that because of my vow, a possibility—of faith, of faithfulness—that I could no longer live without had begun leaking into the world. (p259)

The day would come…when I would be, in the small ways that were possible, [Troy’s] friend…I would listen to him and talk to him, ignoring his self-pity and his lapses into grandeur and meaness, giving him a good welcome and a pat on the shoulder, because I wanted to. For finally he was redeemed, in my eyes, by Maggie’s long-abiding love for him, as I myself had been by my love for her. (p361)

What we gradually come to realize is that this strange relationship actually contains within it the paradigm for all our relationships. Thus, if we can learn to do what Jayber did, if we can learn how to live for someone else and persevere in that commitment, then we will actually begin to see that other person the way they are meant to be seen, and then we will eventually begin to see all people they way they are meant to be seen—the way the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit see them. This is how Wendell Berry puts it:

But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier ... It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity…And then I saw something that a normal life with a normal marriage might never have allowed me to see.I saw that Mattie ... was a living soul and could be loved forever. Like every living creature, she carried in her the presence of eternity. (p249)

So the central irony of the novel is also its brightest truth: this quirky and eccentric ‘marriage’ reveals the pattern for all our relationships.

But as Orthodox Christians, we also must come to grips with the fact that, Jayber’s ‘marriage’ isn’t as strange as it might have appeared to the rest of the Port William membership, because, in the Church, we have a long history of alternative relationships. In fact, what Jayber stumbled on through a romantic attraction is what we have specifically been given in and through the life of the Church. This network of relationships parallels those that we have through history and blood lines, but this network of relationships is also an expression of our life in the Kingdom. For example, in the first three gospels, Christ Jesus specifically tells the apostles that, in the kingdom, they will receive new brothers, sisters, parents, children, and spouses (St Matt 19.23-30; St Mark 10.23-27; St Luke 18.24-27).

In addition, when our Lord and Master is told that His mother and brothers are waiting to see Him, He responds by saying that whoever does the will of His Father is His mother and brother and sister (St Matt 12.46-50; St Mark 3.31-35; St Luke 8.19-21). In St John’s Gospel, when our Lord and Master is hanging on the cross, He tells the Evangelist and the Most Holy Theotokos that they are now mother and son (19.25-27)—and the Holy Fathers understand that passage to mean that we are all now children of the Mother of God. We also find references to these alternative relationship systems in the epistles: In his first letter to the Corinthians, St Paul tells the Christians there that he “became [their] father in Christ Jesus through the gospel, and, in his letter to the Galatians, he writes to his “little children” that he is “in travail until Christ be formed” in them (4.19). St John frequently uses the phrase “little children”; St James and St Paul both use the term “brethren”, and St Peter uses the word, “beloved”.

In 21st century America, talking about alternative relationship systems almost immediately brings to mind cultic organizations and their methods, because one of the classic signs of a cult is the insistence that members sever all ties with biological family and regard the members of the organization as their ‘true’ family. But that is not what we are talking about. What we find in Holy Scripture—and what we see in the ‘marriage’ of Jayber and Mattie—is not the rejection of history and biology, but their transformation. Thus, if our family relationships are healthy and holy, then, through the Church, we will be able to broaden that network of relationships, and our family will actually expand. On the other hand, if our family relationships are dysfunctional and diseased, then, through the Church, we will be able to supplement those relationships and get them healed. But in both cases, we end up with additional fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and, yes, spouses (See Note A). So the alternative relationships that we have in the Church are not intended to compete with or replace the relationships that we have with our biological families; these alternative relationships should transcend the relationships we have with our relatives and transform those relationships by drawing them into the Kingdom and grounding them in the divine community of the Most Holy Trinity.

But the problem is that we do not take these alternative relationships seriously. Most American Christians regard the language that Holy Scripture uses to describe these relationships as figurative or metaphorical, and that is understandable. After all, unlike the Amish and the residents of Port William, most American Christians no longer inherit a way of life that involves any sort of community, so they tend to regard their relationships even with their biological family as subject to all sorts of redefinition and reconfiguration. Consequently, it’s easy to see why they would regard biblical terms such as father and brothers as mere imagery. However, in Holy Orthodoxy, even though we have inherited a specific way of life in the Church, we often trivialize that inheritance. Thus, in a great many parishes, being a godmother simply means buying a candle and standing next to someone during a ceremony; being a brother just means going out for a beer every once in a while and sharing lots of back-slapping hugs; having a sister merely means an additional friend for shopping or gossip; having a spiritual father means little more than knowing someone who can dispense you from the Friday fast if there is a party you want to attend. But when we reduce the way of life we have inherited in the Church to a social system, then we lose sight of what fellowship is actually all about, and those relationships that were meant to be redeeming and transforming become, at best, empty traditions, and, at worst, expressions of various exotic ethnic cultures.

Ultimately, fellowship is what Jayber did and what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do—it is living for the sake of others. And that is why we need to invest ourselves in these Kingdom relationships. Because this network of alternative relationships has been given to us so that we can learn how to do what Jayber did and what the Most Holy Trinity does, so that we can learn all ten of the behaviors that the apostles mention in their letters. Also, when we talk about living for others, we are immediately reminded of the fact that all this has ramifications which go beyond our own needs and our own lives. Because if we don’t know what true fellowship is, if we don’t see our participation in this community as the way we share in the very fellowship of the Most Holy Trinity, and if we don’t have a commitment to this community that reflects that perspective, then we won’t be able to practice genuine hospitality—because, ultimately, the only thing we will have to share with others is the life of an organization or the life of an ethnic enclave.

So how to go about all this? I have two practical suggestions, and I’m hoping that you will have more. First of all, I think we need to continue to emphasize the catechumen process because that is how people are first introduced into this alternative network of relationships: we extend hospitality to them over several months, and then they choose or they are given a godparent, and that relationship should provide them with their first opportunity for participating in the genuine fellowship of our community. Hopefully, by that time, they have had fun hanging out at coffee hour, and they have been blessed by participating in the services, and they have met lots of people, and they have attended some classes and visited with the priest, but starting out with a godparent should represent a new level of commitment and intimacy. And the decision to become a godparent should be approached in the same way we would approach an adoption—with the utmost seriousness and with the understanding that this is a relationship that we undertake for the sake of someone else.

The second suggestion I have takes us back to the opening scripture passage for this session, Genesis 18, and the iconographic representation of that passage. As I have noted, when we view the icon, we become the fourth person at the table; this represents, first and foremost, our partaking of the Holy Eucharist, our ultimate participation in the life of the Most Holy Trinity. But, as social scientists frequently observe, close families are the families that eat together frequently. So, when we move into our new facility, we are going to start having community meals on a regular basis. Some of these meals will be on the Sundays which are feast days; some of these meals will simply be on regular Sundays; the will average out to be about once a month. But this will not merely be an expanded version of coffee hour. During coffee hour, we go through a serving line and get our food and then we scatter all over the property. At our community meals, the food will be placed on the tables; we will sing the troparia for the day and bless the food; we will all sit down and eat together; when we are done, we will sing the closing blessing together. So, while it will be a personal and relaxed and fun time, it will also be something of a formal meal. And to emphasize that formal aspect, we are going to use real plates and silverware and glasses and napkins since paper products communicate impermanence and also have unfortunate consequences for the environment. Finally, to highlight that this is a community meal, we will have prayer request cards on the tables, and, at the end of the meal, we will gather up those cards and briefly review them as a parish. We will then take those requests and use them in the prayer list that we read through at the liturgy and the daily services and that we also send out to the parish via email.

However, neither of these suggestions should be understood as means by which we can build community. As we have pointed out time and again, we already have access to the divine community of the Most Holy Trinity; continuing to emphasize the catechumen process and starting these meals will only provide us with further opportunities to invest ourselves in the life that has been handed down to us in the Church and through the network of relationships that we have in this parish community.

Thank you again for your participation in this seminar. I ask that you continue to pray for our work together. Next week, we will continue our discussion of fellowship as we consider our Care for the Dead.

Note A: Some people will be creeped out by the idea that we might somehow have alternative spouses in the Church. But what we are talking about here is what already happens in our parish: A single mom needs help moving, and the men of the parish pitch in to get that done; the men of our community are acting, in that instance, as husbands; they are filling in for the man that single mother does not have. So this does not involve anything that is sexually inappropriate. And it’s not just something that happens in connection with folks who are divorced or widowed, because the men of our community have been known to take up the slack for a husband who is less than responsible, and the women of our community often provide support for a wife who is overwhelmed.

fr. aidan

Authority

2009-09-26T16:25:00.003-05:00

Tonight we are going to be talking about authority. In the introduction to this seminar, we defined authority as ‘knowing who’s in charge and what that means and how that works’, and, for Orthodox Christians, there’s simply no question about who’s in charge—that would be Christ Jesus. In fact, our Lord and Master spells that out in tonight’s first scripture passage: just before His ascension, Christ Jesus tell the apostles, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…” (St Matt 28.18). So, the head of each and every parish community is none other than Christ Jesus Himself, but we still need to consider what that means and how that works.

What that means is expressed in the next three scripture passages; each of those texts is from one of St Paul’s epistles, and, in each of them, the apostle describes the nature of our Lord and Master’s authority. In his letter to the Philippians, St Paul writes:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. (2.5-11)

The authority of our Lord and Master is thus sourced not in power and prestige, position and privilege, but in humility and obedience and a willingness to suffer. And it’s important to notice, that this authority, this “mind”, this way of life, belongs to all of us; it is ours “in Christ Jesus”. So, when we talk about authority, we’re not just talking about something that is given to leaders and wielded by leaders; we’re talking about something that is given to the entire community and is consequently the responsibility of everyone in the community.

This perspective finds dramatic expression in the next two passages from Second Corinthians. In these texts, St Paul is defending his work as an apostle, and what he emphasizes more than anything else is his voluntary abasement and his willingness to suffer “for all the churches” (11.28):

... as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger ... (6.4-5)

Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a day and a night I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.(11.24-27)

But, in these passages, St Paul is doing more than just defending his apostolic calling; he is also showing the Corinthian Christians, and each one of us, the true nature of authority; he is showing the Corinthian Christians, and each one of us, that we participate in the authority of Christ Jesus to the extent that we are willing to share in the humility and the suffering of our Lord and Master. So, when St Paul models this kind of authority, when he specifically calls on the Corinthians, and each one of us, to “be imitators of [him] as [he] is of Christ” (11.1), he is demonstrating how we should take responsibility for the authority that is ours “in Christ Jesus”; he is calling on us to embrace the humility and the suffering of our Lord and Master.

And what that meant for the Christians in Corinth is what it means for most of us; I doubt any of us will ever be shipwrecked; chances are slim that any of us will ever be beaten with rods; however, we can share in the authority of Christ Jesus through obedience. In our society, authority and obedience are usually set in opposition to each other—if you are obedient, that is typically understood to mean that you just don’t have any authority. However, that is not the “mind that is [ours] in Christ Jesus”. Christ Jesus was given all authority “in heaven and on earth” precisely because He was obedient; therefore, if we want to share His authority, then we must also learn how to be obedient. And that requires humility; that requires suffering; that requires us to lay aside our own perspectives and preferences and plans.

St Paul talks specifically about obedience in the next two scripture passages: he tells the Thessalonians to “respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you” (1 Thess 5.12); he tells the readers of Hebrews to “obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls” (13.17). Now in the Church, there is no question as to who our leaders are; there is no question about who is ‘over us in the Lord’. There is a specific and detailed hierarchy of leadership that goes all the way back to the apostles, and that hierarchy begins with the bishops and includes the priests and the deacons and the lesser clerical orders. However, authority is not limited to the Church’s hierarchy of leadership. In Orthodox America, that is often the way things work, but that is clericalism; that is a tragic distortion of what we find in Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. Thus, authority does not belong solely to the clergy; obedience is not simply the role of the laity. Rather, Christ Jesus gives His authority to the entire Church, both clergy and laity, and we access that authority together, but only to the extent that we are willing to follow His example of humility and obedience and suffering.

But rather than opposing clericalism with an authentic understanding of how authority works in the Church, what most American Orthodox have tried to do is oppose clericalism with the values and procedures of the democratic process. But it doesn’t do any good at all to replace privilege and position and power with petitions and elections and open assemblies. We may feel that the democratic process is more equitable; we may feel more comfortable with that way of doing things; however, approaching authority as an expression of politics is only a very slight improvement over clericalism, and, furthermore, the democratic process simply has no foundation in Holy Scripture or Holy Tradition. That doesn’t make democracy somehow evil or illegitimate, but it does mean that it is not essential to the life of the Church.

Ironically, what this means on a practical level is that Orthodox Christians are often just as confused about authority as American Christians. And American Christians are, indeed, confused when it comes to this subject. Since Protestants no longer have a hierarchy of leadership that is organically linked to the apostles, most Protestant congregations and denominations work with one of two models for authority: either there is a charismatic kind of clericalism that focuses on one individual who is talented and compelling and, therefore, powerful, or, there is a quasi-corporate model with committees and boards who do their work in accordance with the guidelines contained in a foundational document such as a constitution. Roman Catholics have maintained a hierarchical leadership that can be traced back to the apostles, but that has not provided American Catholics with any more clarity when it comes to the subject of authority.

Fifty years ago, American Roman Catholicism was essentially a vast exercise in clericalism, and, while that has changed significantly, the changes have largely been in the direction of the Protestant quasi-corporate model. At several points in this seminar, we have referred to a radical element in contemporary Protestantism that is working hard to explore what community should look like in 21st century America, but when I have looked at the literature this small movement has produced, either there is no discussion of authority at all beyond a rejection of the examples that are currently available in American Christianity, or there are vague references to ‘getting together to talk about things’ along with similarly vague references to ‘the process of discernment’.

That’s the big picture when it comes to authority in American Christianity and American Orthodoxy—lots of confusion, very few answers. So what does the local Orthodox picture look like? What are individual Orthodox Christians and particular parishes doing when it comes to the issue of authority? The only evidence that I have to offer on this subject is anecdotal, but I have been listening carefully and watching intently for the past twelve years, and the unfortunate generalization that I have to make concerning parishes is that most communities simply reflect the broader tensions over hierarchy and democracy that are at work within American Orthodoxy: you’ve got a priest, and you’ve got a parish council, and either there is out-right conflict or there is an uneasy, working relationship, or the priest and the council simply ignore each other. I only know of a few communities where the priest and the parish council have a close, working relationship. As to individual Orthodox Christians, I think most receive guidance from a number of sources: friends within the parish, godparents, homilies or classes, the ‘overheard’, collective wisdom of the community, their own prayers, and direct conversations with their spiritual father. And this is how it should be. Nevertheless, I think most Orthodox Christians long for more direct guidance from the Most Holy Trinity; they want to experience the personal authority of Christ Jesus at work in their lives. And this desire often finds expression in two ways: through the search for a clairvoyant elder or eldress, and through the exploration of various procedures for what is called discernment.

The search for an elder or eldress is the more traditional route. And there are, in fact, in the Church, holy men and women who can look into the heart of another person and talk to that person about what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit want to do in his or her life. Most of these people are in monasteries, and I think that many people visit monasteries with the hope of finding one of these holy men and women. Occasionally, people will go to great lengths to meet a clairvoyant elder or eldress and will either re-locate to be close to that person or will do a lot of traveling in order to receive guidance from that person on a regular basis. There is nothing wrong with any of this, but the implication that often accompanies this sort of activity is that those people who stay in their parish communities and don’t seek out these holy men and women are not going to really be able to experience the personal authority of our Lord and Master. The suggestion is that people who stay in their parish communities simply have to make do with guidance that is second-hand or with guidance that is generally available and generally applicable to just about everyone.

However, a genuine parish community should be able to directly convey the authority of Christ Jesus in the very same way that a clairvoyant elder or eldress communicates that authority. To suggest otherwise is to deny that the Church is, in fact, the Body of our Lord and Master. Many parishes may not be living up to their potential; many parishes may be less than faithful to their calling; nevertheless, in an authentic parish community, the members should have access to the personal authority of Christ Jesus because that community is the Body of Christ; it is the living presence of the Risen Lord.

Let’s think for a moment about how that might work. We are all familiar with the stories of people who go to see a holy man or woman, and that man or woman reveals the innermost truth about that visitor. I would submit that the same thing happens on a regular basis in a healthy community. Let’s say someone shows up in a parish community where a high value is placed on direct and honest communication. However, this new person has a long history of hiding behind a carefully constructed façade, a front which gives the impression that their life is essentially problem-free. Eventually, the members of the parish will realize that this new person is not who they claim to be, and, while the parishioners will continue to be polite and caring and kind, the new person will also, sooner or later, figure out that everyone has seen through the façade, and, at that point, the new person will either quietly drop out or loudly act out, depending on their particular personality. Nevertheless, if that new person continues in the community, they will also have to change, and that change will be in response to the personal authority of Christ Jesus, as that authority is expressed in and through the parish. That process of change will, most likely, be gradual, as the new person gradually realizes that their façade is unnecessary and that communicating directly and honestly with others is not as complicated nor as frightening as they thought. There will also probably be some dramatic and even confrontational moments in that process through, say, the Mystery of Holy Confession or through some revealing and insightful interactions with friends. But the sum total of the entire process is the very same thing that our hypothetical new person would have received from a clairvoyant elder or eldress—the experience of the authority of our Lord and Master.

So how does a parish become the sort of community where that kind of encounter can take place? A parish becomes holy in the same way that a man or a woman becomes holy; a community participates in the authority of Christ Jesus in the same way that an elder or eldress participate in that authority—through humility and suffering, through obedience. Now this does not mean that parishes must become monasteries, but it does mean that clergymen and other leaders have a responsibility to model this kind of life in a ways that are very specific and very intentional, and it does mean that all parishioners are called to be humble and obedient and to embrace suffering according to their measure, as their situations and circumstances will allow. And once all that has begun, the rest just happens—the authority of our Lord and Master begins to be experienced in the community in a way that is positively organic.

But a few minutes ago, we also said that, in their desire to access the authority of Christ Jesus, some Orthodox are starting to look into the process of discernment. This process is something that Roman Catholics began developing during the Renaissance, and it is a procedure whereby individuals or entire communities can determine how the Most Holy Trinity is at work in a particular situation. In the last thirty years, this process has become popular among Protestants, and, of course, if there is something that both Protestants and Roman Catholics are using, then, sooner or later, there are some Orthodox who feel compelled to also give it a try. However, it is important to understand that discernment is, in fact, a process; there are specific steps to be followed; there are procedures to be observed, and these steps and procedures are now often combined with insights gleaned from the social sciences. But, ultimately, what makes discernment so appealing is the fact that it is a technology, a technology which, if used properly, claims to provide an individual or a community with access to the authority of our Lord and Master.

Of course, we should be as suspicious of spiritual technology as Wendell Berry is of agricultural technology. In Jayber Crow, it is, ironically, agricultural technology which ruins the local agriculture, and the character who buys whole-heartedly into this technology is, not surprisingly, Troy Chatham:

Troy would answer [his critics] by talking about man-hours, efficiency, economy of scale, and volume. He was attending meetings, listening to experts, and he had their language. (p 278)

What attracts Troy to the technology of farming is the illusion of control, and that desire for control is just an extension of his pride. All of this is in direct contrast to the approach that Athey Keith takes to his work. The Keith Farm flourished because Athey was humble enough to know his own limitations, because he was obedient to the natural cycles of the land, and because he was willing to suffer the hard, slow, relentless pace of the work:

A day, to Athey, was measured by daylight and by the endurance of living bodies; it was divided in two by dinner-time; it ended at supper time. Athey work at a gait that in his time some had found to be too swift, but which was now revealed as patient. (p 186)

Athey was not exactly, or not only, what is called a ‘landowner’. He was the farm’s farmer, but also it’s creature and belonging. He lived its life, and it lived his; he knew that, of the two lives, his was meant to be the smaller and the shorter. (p 182)

And because of Athey, because of his humble, obedient leadership, because of his willingness to suffer, the farm simply did what farms do:

Its patterns and cycles were virtually the farm’s own understanding of what it was doing, of what it could do without diminishment. This order was not unintelligent or rigid. It tightened and slackened, shifted and changed in response to the markets and the weather…Its cycles of cropping and grazing, thought and work, were articulations of its wish to cohere and to last. The farm, so to speak,desired all of its lives to flourish. (p 182)

Troy’s agricultural technology was designed to do was enhance and exploit these natural cycles and patterns, but, ultimately, technology could not control the farm’s instinctive life; it could only destroy it.

And there is a direct application here to the way a parish community should function. As the Body of Christ, each parish has access to the authority of our Lord and Master just by virtue of its very existence. And, as we have already seen, we participate in that authority by acquiring the mind that is ours in Christ Jesus, by imitating His humility and obedience, by joining Him in His suffering. But there is no need to organize or structure that participation; in fact, if we try to turn that participation into a process or a procedure then that means we are looking for control, it means we are looking to replace the authority of Christ Jesus with our own authority. So, rather than apply a technological solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, all we have to do is what genuine communities have always done--we should strive after humility and seek to be obedient and embrace the suffering that comes our way. Then our parish will just do what parishes naturally do, and we will know what Christ Jesus is doing among us and how He wants us to share in His work, and that will not require any technology. To paraphrase Wendell Berry, that knowledge will simply be part of our community’s own understanding of what it is doing.

A good example of this sort of thing is the way our parish council functions. When the members of the council find themselves at odds—either through a heated discussion or a surprisingly close vote—or when the members just can’t figure out what to do about a particular situation or problem, what the council usually does is postpone the whole matter until the next meeting. But this is done with the understanding that everyone will be praying and thinking and talking about the issue. So, in the weeks between the meetings, the members of the council attend the divine services, they keep the fasting days, they stay up with their giving, they say their prayers and read the Holy Scriptures, they make their confession, they exchange a few emails on the subject at hand, and they talk about it a couple of times during coffee hour. And the following month, when the council convenes, a solution or a strategy simply presents itself, and everyone can see that it is clearly the best approach to take. That is the natural way that we experience the authority of Christ Jesus—through the organic life of the community.

But we want that to be true for our entire community, and not just for the parish council. The council plays a key part in helping our entire community to experience the authority of our Lord and Master since the members of the council are leaders in our parish, but the particular responsibility for this work falls on the clergy: they must model a life of humility and obedience and a willingness to suffer. Practically speaking, that means they must be the first to show up for events and among the last to leave; that means they must fast more fervently and give more generously and spend more time in prayer and spiritual reading than other people in our community; that means that they should be willing to do just about anything for the sake of our parish—yard work, teaching Church School, taking out the trash, cleaning the bathrooms, shopping for supplies. Of course, ultimately, we want everyone in our parish to do these sorts of things. However, the more our clergymen invest themselves in this way of life, the more the other members of our parish will be moved to follow their example, and the more our community will be able to naturally access the authority of Christ Jesus.

This is why our parish council does an annual priest evaluation. As far as I have been able to tell, this exercise may actually be unique to our community. The parish council has put together a job description which is a combination of material that is contained in the Priest’s Handbook that is published by our archdiocese and material that reflects the unique needs and expectations of our parish, and, every fall, they go through this job description with me. But this exercise is not designed to be some sort of check on the authority of the priest; it is designed to encourage the priest to model the kind of life which will enable our entire community to acquire the mind that is ours in Christ Jesus.

Another important thing we can do to symbolize and thus encourage all this is to begin offering the Service for the Washing of Feet on Great and Holy Thursday. This service commemorates the episode in St John’s Gospel where Christ Jesus washes the feet of the apostles; the service is done in connection with the Vesperal Liturgy of St Basil, but the priest carries a reminder of this with him throughout the year as part of his vestments, because the square of cloth that hangs at his side is a symbol of the towel that our Lord and Master used to wash his disciples’ feet. Restoring this important service to its proper place will renew that symbolism and help our clergy model the life to which we have all been called.

But we also need to work constantly to help the members of our community understand that the spiritual disciplines are not designed to simply enhance our own personal relationship with the Most Holy Trinity. Rather, when we fast, pray, give, serve, and study, those activities also help everyone in our parish because we are creating the kind of community where each and every one of us have access to the mind which is ours in Christ Jesus; we are building the kind of parish where each and every one of us has access to the personal authority of our Lord and Master.

We’ve covered a lot of material already tonight, but there are still two passages of Holy Scripture that we haven’t considered: Romans, chapter 13, and 1 Peter 2.13-17. Both of those texts speak about how our community should interact with secular authorities, and what is most striking about those passages is that both St Paul and St Peter understand the secular authorities to also be participants in the authority of Christ Jesus: We are to “be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution” because “there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (1 Pet 2.13; Rom 13.1). Of course, the secular authorities that St Paul and St Peter are urging us to respect are those who worked for the Roman Empire, and it is that very same empire which would eventually claim the lives of both apostles—so adolescent, oppositional radicalism and uncritical, devout patriotism are both excluded. Thus, the modern, all-encompassing nation-state is not an instrument of the anti-Christ, but neither is it going to bring about the Kingdom of God. So we should always obey the law, short of sin; we should be respectful in all our dealings with the secular authorities; and, if we are somehow required to sin, then we should humbly refuse and be willing to suffer the consequences, demonstrating our obedience to the One to Whom all authority, both in heaven and on earth, has been given.

fr. aidan

Stability

2009-09-19T16:24:00.004-05:00

Tonight we are going to be talking about what is, perhaps, the fundamental dimension of community; tonight we are going to be talking about stability. In our first session together, we defined stability as simply staying put and working things out where we are; we also noted that it is the basic condition for growth in the spiritual life. And I want to begin our discussion of tonight’s scripture passages by building on those insights.

Two of the texts we looked at are parables: St Matt 13.1-30 is the parable of the sower, one of the central stories in St Matthew’s gospel; St Luke 13.6-9 is the lesser known parable of the fig tree. However, what’s significant about both of these stories is the fact that they compare spiritual growth to the organic growth of plants—and, of course, plants have to be planted; they have to stay in the ground in order to mature and produce fruit. That may seem like a pretty dull insight, but it’s one that is often overlooked or completely neglected in modern American Christianity. In the gospel parables, Christ Jesus compares life in the kingdom to many, many things—a net full of fish, treasure in a field, an especially valuable pearl, a misplaced coin, a mustard seed, a shepherd searching for his sheep, a repentant son returning home. Some of those stories involve traveling, but the image of pilgrimage or journeying is not central to any of the parables. And that’s not an accident; our Lord and Master simply assumes that we are going to stay put and stay together because spiritual growth just can’t happen any other way.

But while the image of the pilgrimage or journey is not at all prominent in the Holy Gospels, it is very, very popular in contemporary American spirituality. People frequently speak about their own personal spiritual journey, and Christians have also adopted this same language—sometimes this represents a conscious attempt to reach out to spiritual seekers (for example, there is a congregation here in Cedar Park that is known simply as The Journey); sometimes it’s just unconscious cultural baggage. However, American Christians do move around a great deal, both physically and spiritually. We all know that we live in a very transient society, and, for several decades now, we’ve known that the average pastor stays in the same parish for a bit over two years (that’s the average, mind you), but, in a recent Pew Forum Survey, we also learned that over half of all American Christians currently belong to another denomination than the one in which they were raised.

Of course, Orthodox Christians are part of this mix as well. Orthodox clergy tend to stay in parishes longer than their Protestant or Roman Catholic counterparts, and that’s a good thing; however, it is also true that most children who are raised in the Church either end up in other Christian groups or they end up with little or no connection with Holy Orthodoxy. Even converts tend to be fairly restless: I’m not aware of any data on this subject, but anecdotal evidence suggests that people who are received into the Church from other Christian communions often have a hard time staying in one place; they are often on the look-out for just the right parish or just the right priest, and they typically refer to that quest as their journey.

Now, to the casual observer, there often appears to be some biblical warrant for this sort of language, and there appear to be some traditional models for this perspective. Certainly, many contemporary writers use this material for all that its worth. For example, folks who write and speak on the subject of spirituality often refer to the wilderness sojourning of the people of Israel or to the journeys of Celtic monks like St Brendan the Navigator, and the message is that the life of faith requires risk and uncertainty and the ability to let go of old and settled ways in order to launch out into the unknown future to which the Most Holy Trinity is calling us. However, all of this represents a modern misreading and misuse of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. After all, the only reason the people of Israel were out in the wilderness in the first place is because they disobeyed the Most Holy Trinity, and the point of that sojourning was not the journey but the eventual entrance into the Promised Land. Likewise, the pilgrimages undertaken by men such as St Brendan were either evangelistic in nature or they concluded with the travelers returning home in order to inspire their companions to renewed fervor in the spiritual life. Thus, neither in Holy Scripture nor in Holy Tradition are journeys regarded as especially valuable exercises; they might be necessary and even beneficial, but the necessity and the benefit is always a reflection of the destination, and open-ended wandering is never understood to be anything but an exception to a regular, normal, stable life.

So we are back to what we find in the parables of Christ Jesus: a healthy spiritual life, a life that is lived out in the kingdom, requires stability. We have to stay in the same place; we have to deal with the same people. And this is precisely what we find our Lord and Master doing. In St Matthew’s gospel, St Joseph and the Mother of God take the infant Christ to Egypt in order to escape King Herod, but, in 2.19-23 we read that

When Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” And he rose and took the child and His mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he learned that Archelaus reigned over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

Nazareth is where Christ Jesus lives until He begins His public ministry; in fact, in one of the passages that we read from St Luke’s gospel (2.39-40), the Evangelist refers to Nazareth as the Holy Family’s city. So our Lord and Master had a home town. And, in the passage quoted above, St Matthew sees that specific location as part of the Most Holy Trinity’s plan for the salvation of the world. Now, it is true that Christ Jesus later moves His base of operations to Capernaum, but that city is less than thirty miles from Nazareth, and that shift is also understood to be part of the providential workings of the Most Holy Trinity:

Now when He heard that John had been arrested, He withdrew into Galilee; and leaving Nazareth, He went and dwelt in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled…(4.12-14)

During the three years of His public ministry, Christ Jesus moved around Galilee quite a bit, and He also made several trips to Jerusalem, but most of His life was not spent as an itinerant rabbi; most of His life was spent in one specific city. And it’s not as if our Lord and Master didn’t have options when it came time to begin His ministry. In fact, at one point in St John’s Gospel, His enemies speculate as to whether He might leave Palestine and begin working with the Jews of the Dispersion at Alexandria or Antioch or Rome (7.35). Nevertheless, Christ Jesus spent His entire life in an area that would fit nicely between Dallas and Austin.

We Americans tend to place a great deal of emphasis on the fact that Christ Jesus led a very transient existence during the last three years of His life, but that overlooks the almost three decades of stability which were the foundation for that work. Also, we often forget that our Lord and Master spent all of His life with a relatively small group of people. The Holy Gospels speak of vast crowds and first-time encounters with all sorts of folks, but in the background of all this activity are the people who were truly committed to Christ Jesus, and a surprising number of these were His relatives: four of the Twelve were His cousins (St John and St James, the sons of Zebedee, St Matthew, and St James, son of Alpheus), and one of the Twelve may have been His half-brother, St Jude; St Cleopas was His uncle and one of the Seventy; St Cleopas’ son, St Simeon, was also one of the Seventy, and a half-brother of Christ Jesus, St Joseph or Justus, was also one of the Seventy; in addition, St Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and, of course, the Most Holy Theotokos actively supported our Lord and Master in His work. So the stability that Christ Jesus models for us not only operates on the level of geography, it should also be operative in our relationships.

Of course, the majority of the New Testament was written by one of the great religious travelers of all time, the apostle Paul, but it’s easy to forget that his letters were written to specific communities in specific places. Also, he saw his work as an extraordinary calling; in fact, when he outlines the norm for ministry in his letters to St Timothy and St Titus, itinerancy is simply not part of the picture. And this is the picture that we receive from the earliest descriptions of church life in works such as the Didache: stability is the assumed norm, and very specific instructions are given for dealing with wandering teachers or prophets in order to make sure that they don’t disrupt the community. But what is probably most surprising to modern sensibilities is the fact that a community’s or a saint’s location in a particular place is understood to be part of the Most Holy Trinity’s plan for the salvation of the world. We are perhaps accustomed to seeing this in the Holy Gospels in connection with the life of Christ Jesus, but the same perspective is applied to the life of faithful men and women throughout history—geography matters. Thus, as Wendell Berry has written in one of his poems, “there are no unsacred places.” To be sure, the Church early on understood and emphasized the unique status of those sites which our Lord and Master frequented during His earthly life, but she has also always made it clear that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are at work everywhere and in all places. St Jerome had this to say on the subject:

...the spots that witnessed the crucifixion and the resurrection profit only those who bear their crosses, who day by day rise again with Christ…access to the courts of heaven is as easy from Britain as it is from Jerusalem ...

And, since I’m writing this on my Name’s Day, I’ll quote a passage from a hymn for St Aidan of Lindisfarne in order to further illustrate this principle:

O Lindisfarne, thou Holy Isle, washed everlastingly by the waves of the sea, as thou didst behold the spiritual struggles and feats of the holy hierarch Aidan, thy very stones bear witness to the glory he hath won for Christ. Wherefore, as thou art exalted above the tides, raise us up to praise Him.

So when the Church refers to St Gregory Nazianzen or St Hilda of Whitby, we need to understand that this link between a particular person and a particular place is not just an ancient catalogue technique; it’s a profound theological statement about the way the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are at work in this world—not in a general, vague, and abstract way, but in specific places and with specific people.

The great distance that exists between us and this perspective can be easily summed up in the fact that we simply can’t imagine someone from our parish becoming St Paula of Cedar Park. It just sounds silly; it just makes us laugh; and what we find incongruous, and, therefore, humorous about that idea is the suggestion that Cedar Park might actually produce a holy person and that Cedar Park might thus be revealed to be a holy place. But, in this case, we are confusing the world’s standards with the standards of the Kingdom. In the eyes of the world, Cedar Park is a really, really dumpy place; it’s a suburb that only exists because of it’s close proximity to the much more exciting and much more hip city of Austin. But from the perspective of the Kingdom, Cedar Park is just as important and just as capable of nurturing saints as Optina or Athos or the Thebaid. So perhaps one key to stability is the realization that the place where we are right now is at the very heart of the Most Holy Trinity’s plan for the salvation of the world.

But when it comes to stability, we not only have to be convinced that this particular location is key to what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are doing, but we also need to understand that this specific group of people is essential to that work. Just as the world only pays attention to important places, so the world only respects those individuals who can draw a crowd. In fact, nothing so discredits a leader as the observation that most of his or her followers are relatives or close friends. According to this criterion, our Lord and Master would not merit any serious attention from our culture; nevertheless, He was content to invest Himself in a small, core group of followers that included a number of family members. So perhaps another key to stability is the realization that what legitimizes community is not an ever-expanding number of relationships; what will make our community an authentic expression of life in the Kingdom is the degree to which we are willing to invest ourselves in the relationships that we already have.

This dual investment in a particular place and a particular group of people is what enabled Jayber Crow to finally forgive Troy Chatham. We mentioned this last week, but it’s a wonderful example of the kind of spiritual work that can only take place through stability: Jayber’s forty year struggle to overcome his hatred of Troy is a powerful dramatization of what Christ Jesus means when He tells St Peter that we are to forgive seventy times seven, but it would never have happened if Jayber had not stayed in Port William and in close contact with Troy. Of course, Wendell Berry also provides us with a character who acts in direct contrast to Jayber, and that character is Cecelia Overhold. After years of wishing she were somewhere more important, after years of wishing she were with different people, Cecelia finally makes it to California only to be placed in a nursing home by her nephew, and, in Jayber’s words, she dies “forsaken”. Cecelia is never at peace with herself or her husband or the people of Port William because she never embraces stability; she never just accepts where she is or the relationships that she has.

Of course, Jayber is, in a very real sense, ‘from’ Port William. And one of the most compelling scenes in early chapters of the novel occurs when he is attending classes in Lexington and gradually realizes that, apart from his connection to Port William and its people, he has no true identity:

That old life had come to be like a little painted picture at the bottom of a well, and the well was getting deeper. The picture that I had inside me was more real than anything outside, and yet it was getting ever smaller and farther away and hard to call back. That, I guess, is why I got so sad. I was not living my life. So far as I could see, I was going nowhere. And now, more and more, I seemed to have come from nowhere. Without a loved life to live, I was becoming more and more of a theoretical person…(p72-3)

But an equally compelling scene occurs towards the end of the novel as Jayber speaks of the community to which he now belongs and the identity that community has given him:

I am an old man now ... My life lengthens. History grows shorter. I remember old men who remember the Civil War. I have word-of-mouth memories more than a hundred years old. It is only twenty hundred years since the birth of Christ. Fifteen or twenty memories such a mine would reach all the way back to the halo-light in the manger at Bethlehem. So few rememberers could sit down together in a small room. (p352-3)

But none of us are actually ‘from’ Cedar Park, and our parish is less than twenty years old—so how can we hope to have the same sort of connection with this community that Jayber had with Port William? If we don’t have biological and historical ties to this place or these people, then what exactly does stability mean?

It means that we acknowledge the fact that our parish is less than twenty years old and that none of us are Cedar Park natives and that most of us are converts to Holy Orthodoxy, but that, nevertheless, we do not want to be “theoretical people”, so we have decided to stay put in this community and with this group of people. It means that whereas Port William has deep roots which enabled it to weather many seasons, our parish is a new planting, and it is therefore fragile and requires careful nurturing. It means that we should enjoy the irony of a group of nomadic Americans finally wanting to settle down, and we should cherish that humility since it can keep us from ever becoming proud or judgmental or legalistic. It means that we shouldn't try to second-guess the past and the choices we previously made. But what, specifically, does it mean to ‘stay put’? Wendell Berry’s novel gives us two helpful and concrete suggestions. One of the most important things that Jayber does when he returns to Port William is that he buys property; it happens without much fanfare and fairly quickly, but the purchase of the barber shop gives him a tangible connection to the town. However, later on in the novel, there is something else that Jayber does which is just as important as his decision to acquire property: he gives the Port William Zephyr to Clydie Greatlow. He intentionally gives up his ability to move around at will, and that forces him to deal with the Port William membership and not seek distractions elsewhere.

How does all that apply to our community? We should encourage people to buy property and settle down within close proximity to our parish. Of course, some folks are not financially able to do that; others are financially committed to locations that are quite a distance away. But there are still things that we can do to make our relationships with this parish more permanent: for example, most people in our community do not yet have cemetery plots, and there’s a nice little cemetery just down the road. A cemetery plot is something that everyone will one day need; it’s something that just about everyone can afford, and, even if they currently live a long way from the parish, it will still give them a concrete connection to this place and this group of people. We will talk more about this on Oct 7 when we consider how our community should care for the dead. But we should also encourage people to intentionally give up their prerogative to move around. People in our culture move for all sorts of reasons: jobs, schooling, climate, boredom, but a congregation or parish rarely factors into that decision making process, and, if it does, folks tend to regard that as more than a bit odd. But we need to question that perspective and encourage others to do so. After all, it actually makes more sense to decide where you will live based on what a parish can do for you than based on what a company can do for you: Is a company going to stick with you in all sorts of different economic climates? Is a company going to love you and accept you despite your personal shortcomings and failures? Is a company going to visit you in the hospital or provide you with marital counseling or pray for you after you’re dead?

But, of course, when we talk about encouraging people to buy property and encouraging people to give up their ability to re-locate, the key word there is ‘encourage’. After all, life in community must be feely chosen, and our stability must be an expression of that free choice. When stability is accompanied by legalism, the results are oppressive, cultish, and tragic. So how can we encourage people in a way that enhances their freedom? By teaching about stability in venues such as this; by modeling stability through our own choices. For example, many of our young couples are buying property close to the parish. Many people who live a considerable distance away are praying for the opportunity to move closer. On a personal note, this past spring, Cynthia and I went ahead and bought two plots in the Cedar Park Cemetery, about a mile down Park Street. As an Orthodox priest, I do not have control over where I will live; I cannot canonically refuse a new assignment if my bishop thinks that is best—though I can refuse to actively lobby for a new assignment, and that kind of activity is more of a factor in most re-assignments than most laypeople are aware and most clergymen would like to admit. But even if Cynthia and I end up in another parish, we will always have ties to St John’s because, once we have departed this life, we will be coming back here, and it will be up to the folks in this community to host our funerals and pray for us. And the more people in our community who are willing to make those sorts of choices, the more stable our parish will be. And the more stable our parish is, the more this place will be revealed as the heart of the Most Holy Trinity’s work on this planet. And the more this place is sanctified, the more holy we all will become.

fr. aidan

Jayber Crow

2009-09-11T19:14:00.005-05:00

Tonight we are going to be discussing Wendell Berry’s book Jayber Crow, and I want to begin by talking about why we are even bothering with a novel in the first place. After all, if Holy Scripture is the record of the Most Holy Trinity’s revelation to us, then why waste time with what someone else has written—especially if it is a work of fiction?

We touched on the answer to this question at the end of last week’s session:
The reason we always begin these seminars with a novel is the same reason Christ Jesus told stories. Stories help us experience the truth in a way that engages not just our rational equipment but our whole person. The only way most of us have ever studied Holy Scripture is with a list of questions, but stories help us get at the same issues in a way that is more profound and more immediate.

I want to build on that with an extended quotation from Eugene Peterson’s study of spiritual writing, a work entitled Eat This Book. Rev. Peterson writes:

What is surprising today is how many people treat the Bible as a collection of…verses or phrases without context or connections. This is nothing less than astonishing. The Scriptures are the revelation of a personal, relational, incarnational God to actual communities of men and women with names in history ... bringing about legible, coherent writing that has continuities from generation to generation, a narrative with plot and characters and scenery.

Rev. Peterson continues:

The practice of dividing the Bible into numbered chapters and verses … gives the impression that the Bible is a collection of thousands of self-contained sentences and phrases that can be picked out or combined arbitrarily in order to discern our fortunes or fates. But Bible verses are not fortune cookies to be broken open at random. (p 101)

So rather than using the fortune cookie approach to Holy Scripture—looking up all the possible references to community in a concordance and then using those verses as an outline for our study (or, worse yet, going out and purchasing a series entitled Ten Principles for Building Community, a kit that comes complete with ice breakers and discussion questions)—what we are doing is immersing ourselves in the story of a particular community—the town of Port William. As we grow old with Jayber, as we listen to him look back across the years, we enter into his community, and since Jayber’s story has, in the words of Eugene Peterson, “continuities from generation to generation”, since his story is “a narrative with plot and characters and scenery”—in other words, since it works precisely the same way that the Bible does—once we are finished with this story then we are much better prepared to listen carefully to what the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are saying to us, to our “actual communities of men and women with names in history”.

But, as I also said in our last session, it’s important that we understand that Jayber Crow is not an instruction manual; it is not a blueprint for community. The novel is, after all, an idealized depiction of rural life in Kentucky during the mid-20th century. Wendell Berry does a masterful job of describing the joys and hardships and the conflicts that were part of that life, but he also completely ignores other, very important issues. To pick just one example, racism is never really a factor in the book. There is an elderly African-American couple that appears briefly in the early chapters of the novel; there is a reference to an African-American man at the beginning of chapter eleven, and, finally, there is a memorable incident in chapter twenty where Athey Keith scolds Hiram Hench for making racist comments. However, during the mid-20th century, Kentucky was ground-zero for the Ku Klux Klan, and that organization is only mentioned once, briefly, as part of the background for an extended bit of humor in chapter twenty-one. Of course, all writers make choices, and Wendell Berry chose not to focus on racism. That doesn’t make Jayber Crow a badly written book; it certainly doesn’t make it an immoral book, but it does mean that, like all books, it has limitations.

And, for our purposes, those limitations are especially obvious when it comes to the subject of religion. Towards the end of the novel, Jayber has this to say about his spiritual life: “I am, maybe, the ultimate Protestant, the man at the end of the Protestant road” (p321). That is not at all an understatement, because, while Jayber lives in a community that is, in many ways, intensely interdependent, his relationship with the Most Holy Trinity is intensely individualistic. For example, during his time as a “pre-ministerial student” at Pigeonville College, and, to some degree, throughout the entire novel, Jayber wrestles with how Holy Scripture is to be interpreted. The questions that he asks are profound, but, apart from a few conversations with the faculty at the college, he is content to simply mull the issues over in his mind and heart; in other words, it never occurs to him that the historic Church may have had already addressed those questions. And, while Wendell Berry’s description of religious life in Port William is a spot-on depiction of a typical rural Protestant parish in the middle decades of the last century—rotating pastors, absence of male leadership or even men in general, religion understood as a feminine undertaking—Jayber also has only a distant relationship with the flesh and blood congregation, as a congregation. He cleans their building; he rings their bell; he digs their graves; he dreams about the communion that they all share, but he never truly is a part of that parish. In fact, at the end of the novel, he admits that he feels “more religious” down by the river, “and yet every Sunday morning [he] walk[s] up there, over a cobble of quibbles” (p321).

So the Christianity that is available to Jayber is not the historic Faith of the Church. Nevertheless, there is still a great deal that we can learn from this character and from the community of Port William. What I want to do with the rest of this presentation is to briefly touch on the various dimensions of community that we will be talking about in the weeks ahead, and I want to demonstrate how this novel came help us think about those dimensions in some really compelling ways. We will, of course, be talking about the book throughout this entire seminar, but, tonight, I want to provide you with an over-view of some of the key issues and some of the most important passages.

Next Wednesday night, we will be talking about stability. Last week, we said that stability means staying put and working things out where you are; we said that it is the fundamental condition for growth in the spiritual life—both our own personal life and the life that we share. In fact, without stability, there are certain things which simply will not happen. For example, if Jayber had not spent his entire adult life in Port William in the close vicinity of Troy Chatham, one of the novel’s most powerful, concluding scenes would never have taken place:

So there he was, a man who had been given everything and did
not know it, who had lost it all and now knew it, and who was
boasting and grinning only to pretend for a few hours longer
that he did not know it…And there I was, a man losing what I
was never given, a man yet rich with love, a man whose knees
were weakening against gravity, who needed to go somewhere
and lie down. I stood facing that man I had hated for forty
years, and I did not hate him…If I could have done it, I would
have liked to pick him up like a child and carry him to some
place of safety and calm. (pp360-1)

Jayber could have packed up the Port William Zephyr and moved to Louisville, but he consciously chose to stay in his small town, and that choice of stability gave him the opportunity to do some profound and transforming spiritual work. In the same way, if we are willing to make the choice of staying put in this particular parish with this particular group of people, we will give ourselves and others the opportunity to do similar kinds of work. But if we only see this parish as a stopping point on the way to somewhere else, then we will never make any real spiritual progress, let alone do the sort of transforming work Jayber did.

On Wed, Sept 23, we will talk about authority. Authority means knowing who’s in charge and what that means and how that works. Jayber Crow provides us with both positive and negative models when it comes to authority. One of Jayber’s life-long fears has to do with “the man behind the desk”; it’s an image that arises from his experience at the Good Shepherd Orphanage, and it becomes incarnate in the polite and foreboding (and anonymous) state inspector that appears in Jayber’s shop at the end of the novel. Thus, contrived authority is always going to be impersonal (“He was—I believe he said—Mr. Mumble Something of the Forces of Health and Sanitation) unaccountable (He did not speak for himself but for a man behind a desk who spoke for a man behind another desk, who also did not speak for himself) and implacable (“If they don’t bother me, I surely won’t bother them” “I understand. But they are in the business of bothering you”). But the book also contains a powerfully positive model of authority in the character of Athey Keith. Athey has authority in Port William not only because he is a virtuous man, but also because he knows his place in the cosmos; he is respected because he respects the basic realities of life. This is clear in the way Jayber describes Athey’s approach to farming:

The law of the farm was in the balance between crops (including hay and pasture) and livestock. The farm would have no more livestock than it could carry without strain. no more land would be plowed for grain crops than could be fertilized with manure from the animals. No more grain would be grown than the animals could eat … This was a conserving principle; it strictly limited both the amount of land that would be plowed and the amount of supplies that would be bought. (p185).

The application to community life in our parish should be obvious: in order for authority to be wielded properly in our parish, it must be grounded in a larger, more comprehensive matrix of authority, and that matrix must be an organic, creative expression of scripture, tradition, spiritual experience, and personal direction. Authority that operates apart from that matrix is illegitimate and unhealthy.

On Wed, Sept 30 we will talk about hospitality and fellowship; it is how we welcome others into community and support them in the life of community. Jayber Crow contains many scenes of what we traditionally think of as hospitality and fellowship (for example, Jayber is part of an on-going game of rummy in Jasper Lathrop’s store throughout the Second World War, and he is welcomed into the family of Danny and Lyda Branch when his age begins to limit his ability to care for himself), but, essentially, hospitality and fellowship have to do with love, and there is no better example of love in this novel than Jayber’s vicarious marriage to Mattie: he becomes the man that Mattie needs in her life. All this is explained to us in the dialogue that Jayber has with himself as he is trudging home from the Riverwood Christmas Dance:

“So her need, then, you’re saying, is to have a faithful husband?”
“Yes, that must be what I’m saying.”
“Well, where is she going to get one?”
“Well, I don’t know. It seems a stupid question. She has already got a husband.”
“But is he not unfaithful?”
“Yes, he is unfaithful.”
“And she needs a faithful one.”
“Yes, she does.”…
“But where could—how could—she get one?”
“Well, if she is ever going to have one, I’m sure, of course,
it will have to be me.” (p242)

That is how love works in the community that we call the Church: we form new relationships, not to replace, but to supplement and support and, ultimately, redeem and transform the relationships that we have out in the world. Nurturing people into those relationships is what we call hospitality; living within those relationships is what we call fellowship.

On Wed, Oct 7, we will talk about Care for the Dead. After Jayber becomes the grave-digger for the congregation, a good deal of the novel takes place in and around the Port William cemetery. This plot development gives us a graphic feel for the passing of the generations, but it also demonstrates how a healthy community interacts with the departed. Jayber first discovers this when he has settled once again in Port William:

Another new thing happened to me after I came back to Port William was the feeling of loss. I began to live my losses … The place itself and all its conversation surrounded me with remindings. Aunt Cordie and Uncle Othy and the Thripples and Put Woolfork … all the people of that early world I once thought would last forever, and then thought I had left forever—[they] were always coming back to my mind because of something I saw or heard … The grief that came to me then was nothing like the grief I had felt for myself alone, at the end of my stay in Lexington. This grief had something in it of generosity, some nearness to joy. In a strange way, it added to me what I had lost. (pp130-2)

As Orthodox Christians, we have something that many Christians no longer have because the Church provides us with a framework for interacting with the departed. We have unique liturgical responsibilities to and for the dead, but we must also find concrete, practical ways in which to ‘live our losses’; we must develop the relationship that we have with those of our community who have gone on before us; we must find ways to extend hospitality and fellowship into the next life.

On Wed, Oct 14, we will talk about the Economy of our community. We will talk about how we order our life together. Towards the end of the novel, Jayber describes how Mattie organized her home life:

Through all the time and troubles of her marriage to Troy, she held as well as she could to the old ways. She never let the economies of her household sink down. She was a woman of great energy, whose movements always had a certain force and momentum and resolution, as well as grace. She kept house, kept a flock of chickens, gardened, canned, and peserved food, made clothes, practiced every sort of ingenuity and frugality. (p341)

In discussing this particular dimension of community life, I am not suggesting that all the members of our parish should learn to be self-sufficient and live off the land. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, but, what we do need to be thinking about—and what I want us to talk about on Oct 14th—is the typical trajectory of parish life in this country: when a community is small, the members must do things for themselves (cleaning, teaching, caring for the children and for the youth and for each other); that is one of the clear marks of a small parish. However, the larger a community gets, the fewer things the members do for themselves—in fact, it is understood to be a sign of maturity and success when you can hire a janitor and nursery workers and staff people to work with the children and youth and an assistant priest to visit folks in the nursing home and the hospital. But is that truly the way we want to order our life together?

On Wed, Oct 21, we will talk about conflict. The novel is full of conflict, from the first chapter when Jayber talks about Fee Berlew, the “only man [he] ever had to (so to speak) throw out of [his] shop” (p7), to the on-going, antagonistic relationships that Jayber has with Cecelia Overhold and Troy Chatham. In fact, towards the end of the book, Jayber has this to say about his life in Port William:

This is, as I said and believe, a book about Heaven, but I must say too that it has been a close call. For I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell—where we fail to love one another, where we hate and destroy one another for reasons abundantly provided or for righteousness’ sake or for pleasure, where we destroy the things we need most, where we see no hope and have no faith… (p355)

So this novel is not going to provide us with a blue-print for conflict resolution any more than it is going to turn out to be an instruction manual for community. However, Jayber’s honest assessment about his life in a small town ends with the story of the man in the well, which is one of the most beautiful and hopeful passages in the entire book:

A man of faith believes that the Man in the Well is not lost.He does not believe this easily or without pain, but he believes it. His belief is a kind of knowledge beyond any way of knowing. He believes that the child in the womb is not lost, nor is the man whose work has come to nothing, nor is the old woman forsaken in a nursing home in California. He believes that those who make their bed in Hell are not lost, or those who dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, or the lame man at Bethesda Pool, or Lazarus in the grave, or those who pray, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”. (p357)

The key, then, to conflict in community is not so much the techniques we use to manage it or even resolve it as much as whether or not we are, ultimately, willing to suffer on behalf of others, whether we are willing to enter into and bear up under the pain and loss and fear that this world generates, the way Christ Jesus did on the cross.

On Wed, Oct 28, we will talk about toxic community. Jayber is honest and gracious in his assessment of the various communities that he has been a part of at different times in his life. Even when he is thinking back on his time at the Good Shepherd, he observes that, even though he “dislike[s] the life of institutions and organizations,” “if confronted with a hundred or so orphan children of two sexes and diverse ages and characters all to be raised and educated together…I can’t say with confidence that I would do better” (p33). However, at the end of the novel, Jayber visits the Keith farm, and he has nothing good to say about what he sees:

Every scrap of land that a tractor could stand on had been plowed and cropped in corn or soybeans or tobacco. And,yet, in spite of this complete and relentless putting to use,the whole place, from the house and garden all the way back to the river, looked deserted. It did not look like a place where anybody had ever wanted to be. It and the farming on it looked like an afterthought. It looked like what Troy had thought about last, after thinking about himself, his status, his machinery, and his debts. (p340)

The poison at work in Troy’s soul has had a tragic impact not only on his wife and children, but on the land itself. And the older he gets, the more Jayber sees evidence of this same kind of toxicity throughout the broader culture that is beginning to intrude on Port William:

The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither to the left nor right. (p331)

We often think of toxic communities solely in terms of cultic behavior and the abuse of authority, but Jayber’s observations remind us that, when communities begin to sicken, then the impact of that dysfunction is going to be felt not only at the level of our relationships with each other and the Most Holy Trinity, it will also be felt throughout society as a whole, and even in our relationships with the natural world.

On Wed, Nov 4, we will talk about the world, how we interact with our culture, and how that interaction affects the life of our community. In Jayber Crow, the world is symbolized by The War and The Economy:

…The War and The Economy were seeming more and more to be independent operations. The War, I thought, was just the single Hell that is always astir in the world…And the nations were always preparing funds of weapons and machines and people to be used up whenever The War did break out in full force, which meant that sooner or later it would … Also, it seemed that The War and The Economy were more and more closely related…The War was good for the Economy…(p273)

Jayber’s on-going descriptions of how the world changes the community of Port William are very poignant, but we must not let that obscure the ugly fact that, in the end, the War and the Economy win: the local school is closed, the town’s stores all fail, the highway arrives, the cemetery is filled with the patriotic dead, and, finally, the Nest Egg is cut down. As we talk about the life of our parish, we need to keep in mind the fact that our hope is an eschatological one: All communities eventually lose to the War and the Economy, so we are not talking about this subject in the hopes of sustaining our parish indefinitely; we are talking about this subject because what we do in this life extends into the next. Our faithfulness may not make an appreciable difference at the level of history, but it can have a transforming difference on eternity.

On Wed, Nov 11, we will finish up by talking about Practical Outcomes. As I said last week, this will be the most important session of the entire seminar, because we will be talking about specific things we can do in our parish to live out true community. That takes us beyond the scope of Jayber Crow, but I hope that tonight I have demonstrated that this novel can be a tremendous resource for us in our work, and we will certainly be referencing the book throughout the rest of the seminar. Let me encourage you to keep this project in your prayers and to carefully read through all the scripture passages before each session. I look forward to being with you again next Wed night when we will be talking about the importance of stability.

fr. aidan

Introduction - Community

2009-09-08T16:28:00.011-05:00

Welcome to our 2010 Fall Theological Seminar. This is the fourth such seminar our parish has hosted; in the past, we’ve focused on apocalypticism, men and women, and suffering, but, this year, we will be talking about community--and this topic has generated more interest than any of the others. I think that is because community is something that we all long for, and I think that is a longing that we share with American society (see Note A). We want to be part of a network of caring relationships; we want to have friendships that last a life-time; we want to belong to a fellowship that will support us and nurture us and hold us accountable; we want our marriages to flourish; we want families that are loving and strong.

However, all of this eludes our culture, and many Americans have given up on the whole idea of long-term community. What these folks now hope for is a series of temporary communities that come together through their neighborhoods and work places and schools; nevertheless, the expectation is that these communities will, at some point, dissolve—and marriage and family are increasingly viewed in the very same way. A lot of American Christians now approach community with similar expectations: they develop relationships within a small group or a congregation, but they don’t expect to stay in that group or congregation for very long; and since American Christians get divorced and remarried at the same rate as the rest of the culture, Christian marriages and Christian families have now become very transient arrangements.

Now there is a radical element within American Christianity that is attempting to nurture long-term community in a very intentional way. This past summer, here in the parish, we’ve been passing around a book which is an anthology of articles by folks who are involved in this ‘movement’. Some of the communities that are featured in this book have been around since the late sixties; some of them are only a few years old, but none of them is very large, and, what is even more significant, none of these communities understand themselves as a worshipping congregation; none of these communities see themselves as a parish. A few of these communities have developed relationships with established parishes, but most of these folks have consciously set themselves apart from the more traditional models for Christian community, and several of the writers who are featured in the book wonder if true community is even possible in a typical American congregation.

Unfortunately, in this country, Orthodoxy pretty much mirrors the experience of American Christianity. There are large, historically ethnic parishes where folks come together for liturgy on Sunday and an occasional activity during the week, but, generally speaking, apart from their own relatives/extended families, the members of these parishes are every bit as (or, actually, more) invested in the lives of their co-workers and friends than they are in the lives of their fellow Orthodox Christians. There have been convert parishes which have experimented with an intentional approach to community, similar to that of the more radical groups within American Christianity, but the results have been mixed, and, at times, downright tragic: in fact, a surprising number of these parishes have come very close to becoming cults. You would think that monasticism would provide at least a model or a template for what community should look like in Orthodox parishes, but, for a variety of reasons, monasticism is having a hard time getting off the ground in this country—and, unfortunately, the monasteries that have been established are sometimes represented as the only context within which genuine community (or, for that matter, real Christianity) can occur—as if a parish can never provide folks with more than just a distant approximation of the fullness of the Christian life or what that life looks like in community (see Note B).

Of course, there are, I am sure, Orthodox parishes like ours where people want to live in community, and those folks are undoubtedly finding ways to make that happen. The Holy Spirit is, after all, at work among us, and it is my hope that one of the practical outcomes of this seminar is that we will be able to form close relationships with some of those parishes so that we can support and encourage one another. However, what we need to do now is begin our work, and the first point I want to make is one that we will be returning to each time we get together: Community is not something that we construct or achieve or manufacture; it is given to us. During this seminar, we are going to be talking about seven aspects of community life—stability, authority, fellowship or hospitality, care for the dead, economy, how we handle conflict, and our relationship with the world. I’ll be providing you with a brief overview of each of those elements in just a moment. But it’s extremely important that we understand that those elements, those dimensions, those aspects of community life are not a foundation for community. In other words, it’s not the case that if we work really, really hard and come together and find a way to care for the dead and practice hospitality and figure out how authority should be wielded and how the economy of our parish should function and how all of that can be lived out in a stable way that we will somehow then become a community. It just doesn’t happen that way; if you somehow need to be convinced of that, then all you have to do is look at the sad and, in some cases, spectacular, wreckage generated by groups that approached community in that fashion.

But here’s how it does work; this is how we will become a genuine parish community: the basis, the foundation for community is the Holy Orthodox Faith, as that Faith is revealed in Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, and as that Faith is lived out in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Nevertheless, we have to learn how to live out that Faith, we have to figure out how to be the Church, and we do that in community, as we learn how to be a community. In the prayer that we say about two-thirds of the way through each of the services of the Hours, we ask that “we may attain unto the unity of the Faith and unto the comprehension of Thine ineffable glory”; so, while the Faith is given to us, but we must strive to “attain unto” its fullest expression—which is unity—and that is how we will all together, in community (notice, the pronouns in the prayer are plural), arrive at the goal of the Christian life—which is deification, the “comprehension” of the “ineffable glory” of the Most Holy Trinity. Another, more central example, comes at the very end of the anaphora, the long prayer that forms the very heart of the Divine Liturgy: the holy gifts have been consecrated, the prayers have been offered, and then the priest concludes with this exclamation:

And grant us with one mind and one heart to glorify and praise

Thine all honorable and majestic Name of the Father and of the

Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages.

At this point in the liturgy, we are offering up, we are expressing our highest aspirations, so, as Orthodox Christians, what we want more than anything else is for everything that we do and everything that we are to be an expression of community, of one mind and one heart that glorifies the Most Holy Trinity for ever and ever.

That is what unites us; that is what makes us one; that is the life that is the foundation of all true community. So, during this seminar, whenever we refer to any aspect of community, we need to remember that this all-important truth is the context within which we will be working. In this regard, our seminar will be a bit like some of the epistles of St Paul; for example, unless we have read and understood the breathtaking exposition of the Faith that the apostle provides for us in the first four chapters of his Epistle to the Ephesians, then we will never be able to figure out why he tells wives to be “subject to their husbands” in chapter five. And it works the same way when we are talking about community: in order for the details (stability, authority, etc) to make any sense at all, we must constantly have the big picture in mind, and, for our purposes, the big picture is nothing less than the fullness of life in the Holy Orthodox Church.

Let me re-emphasize all this in another way. Think back just a moment ago to the very brief and very general survey we did of how our striving for community is expressed here in America. What we are left with are some interesting and ironic extremes: On the one hand, we have some American Christians who are hard at work trying to determine how to do hospitality and what the economy of their fellowship should look like; however, because their efforts are not grounded in the historic and living Faith of the Church, the results will be, at best, really inconsistent and, quite probably, really impermanent. On the other hand, we have a great many Orthodox Christians who have been part of the historic and living Faith of the Church for many generations who simply have no desire to be part of a genuine community; they are not at all interested in discovering how the Faith should be expressed in and through their particular parish.

So, as we said at the beginning of this presentation, community eludes us. But that is one of the things this seminar is designed to address, and here’s how we are going to go about it: We’re going to use the same basic format that we’ve used in past years. We will start with a novel—in this case, Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry—and then we will follow that up with several weeks’ worth of Bible study; each Wednesday evening, we will consider a specific selection of texts. However, in this year’s seminar, there will be two new dimensions to our work together. In the past, whenever we have considered passages of Holy Scripture, we have always provided you with some commentary from the Holy Fathers to go along with those texts. It was not practical to do that this year simply because of the sheer number of passages that we will be considering; also, most of the commentary that is readily accessible on these passages does not deal with the issues that we will be discussing. In previous years, our primary resource for the Fathers has been the Ancient Christian Commentary series, and that is a fine publication, but most of the material that is available there is strictly theological in nature, and we will be focusing primarily on practical or ascetical issues. But please feel free to consult the ACC series or any other patristic commentaries, and please feel free to share that material with the rest of the seminar participants.

Also, in the past, our time together has been taken up primarily with what was often a very open and free-wheeling discussion. We will still have plenty of opportunity for that kind of discussion; however, because of the direct practical impact that this seminar will potentially have on our parish, I will be making a formal presentation at each session. I’ve always made lots of notes for myself before leading these seminars, but, this year, due to the absolutely critical nature of this material, I’ve decided to discipline myself and write everything out so that we will have a more structured context for our work. Also, after each session, I will post these presentations on our bookstore blog so that folks can re-read them (or, in the case of folks who live some distance away, read them for the first time), and so we can continue the discussion on-line.

What I want to do now is give you a quick over-view of the topics we will be considering. Next week, we will spend the entire session talking about Jayber Crow. I’ll say more about this next Wednesday evening, but the reason we always begin these seminars with a novel is the same reason Christ Jesus told stories. Stories help us experience the truth in a way that engages not just our rational equipment but our whole person. The only way most of us have ever studied Holy Scripture is with a list of questions, but stories help us get at the same issues in a way that is more profound and more immediate (and so let’s pause for a moment and offer a silent prayer of gratitude to the Holy Evangelists because they did not include study guides along with the gospels). And let me also add (and I’ll say more about this as well next Wednesday evening) that Wendell Berry’s novel is not, in and of itself, a blue-print for community—as if we could somehow achieve true community if we all relocated to a small town and started farming or cutting hair. Again, community is not something we achieve; it’s something given to us whether we live in a city or a small town, whether we farm or sit at a computer all day.

The subsequent eight Wednesday evenings will each be devoted to one aspect of community. Each of these dimensions of community is addressed in Jayber Crow, and each is dealt with in Holy Scripture. So, on any given Wednesday evening, I will make a presentation which ties all that together, then we will process any questions or concerns or outrage that you may have, and then we will also consider what it all means for our parish as we strive to actually live out the community that we have already received. Here are the aspects of community that we will consider; they are listed on your syllabus:

1. Stability- We will talk about this on Sept 16; it means staying put and working things out where you are. As we shall see, this is the fundamental condition for growth in the spiritual life—both our own personal life and the life that we share.

2. Authority- We will talk about this on Sept 23; this is one of the aspects of community life that is consistently missing from the discussion that American Christians are having; it means knowing who’s in charge and what that means and how that works. Of course, obedience is closely tied to this dynamic.

3. Hospitality/Fellowship- We will talk about this on Sept 30; it’s how we welcome others into community and support them in the life of the community. There’s more to this dimension than just having folks over for dinner.

4. Care for the Dead- We will talk about this on Oct 7; this is another aspect of community life that American Christians don’t address, but it goes right to the heart of who belongs in the community and how long our relationships with others actually last.

5. Economy- We will talk about this on Oct 14; this is the most misunderstood aspect of community life. It has to do with how we order our life together and only tangentially with how we participate in the commercial life of our culture.

6. Conflict- We will talk about this on Oct 21; unfortunately, most of us are all too familiar with this dimension of community life; however, we don’t have much experience in dealing with it in a way that is healthy or hopeful.

7. Toxic Community- We will talk about this on Oct 28; sometimes the level of dysfunction in a particular fellowship becomes poisonous; we will not only consider what that looks like, we will actually hear the testimonies of some folks who have lived through it.

8. The World- We will talk about this on Nov 4; this is how we interact with the broader society and how that interaction impacts our life together.

9. Practical Outcomes- We will talk about this on Nov 11; this will be the most important session of the entire seminar. After all, we don’t just want to talk about community; we want to become a true parish community, and this is where we will decide what the next steps will be.

I’m thankful that you’ve chosen to participate in this seminar. I hope that you will do the reading and share your thoughts either in this setting or on-line. But most of all, I want to encourage you to pray for our work together, because our goal in all of this is to become a true community, to actually live into this dimension of what St Paul refers to as “the riches of [our] glorious inheritance in the saints” (Eph 1.18).

Note A: If community is so important to us and something that we all want, then it’s worth asking why genuine community is so very rare. To be sure, there are major cultural dynamics that work against community: the transient nature of our society prevents us from settling down in one place, the compartmentalized nature of our society means that we don’t worship with the same group of people that we work with, and there are lots of other cultural factors that make community very difficult or, in some cases, even impossible. Nevertheless, I think that the main reason why true community is so rare is because it requires a whole lot of hard work and a great deal of commitment. We do want to be supported and nurtured and held accountable, but only up to a certain point, and once that support or nurturing or accountability becomes too burdensome, or if it begins to threaten our comfort zone, then it’s just much easier to move on. So we find new friends or we form a new family or we get a new job or we find a new parish, and we start the process all over again. So, you could make a good argument that what we actually want is not real community but pseudo community—all the benefits, none of the hassle.

Note B: However, it is worth pointing out that conservative Roman Catholic monastic communities are actually experiencing a revival in this country. Hopefully, that means that Orthodox monasticism will eventually be well received.

fr. aidan

Standards

2009-03-20T15:31:00.003-06:00

I'm taking a class right now at the University of Texas . I like the class and my professor, and my fellow students are just fine. However, since beginning the class, it seems like we are trying to learn about our subject (The Spanish Inquisition) without reference to any fixed standard.

As an Orthodox Christian, my fixed standard is, of course, Christ and His Church. I don't expect a university, especially a public one, to use that as a standard. Still, I find it troubling that the standard most universities seem to choose is "None of the above".

From my perspective, most secular universities have abandoned really dealing with God, thinking that God is an issue of faith and not fact. What has gone in His place is a philosophy that states, “All truth is relative,” which is basically a denial of any absolute truth or standard. Many students seem to have absorbed this philosophy, often without realizing it. Perhaps after years of not dealing directly with questions of truth, many have learned to not regard truth as important.

In the classroom, when we try to learn about something without reference to a standard, we end up learning things “about” the subject. The most interesting and meaningful questions not only go unanswered, they become unanswerable. It is no wonder that many students see college as a necessary step towards a career and little else. Education for its own sake? Does that even make sense if there is no truth?

In the classroom, the standard-less approach is just kind of annoying. If used to guide a person’s life, this approach is tragic. How can we hope for people to seek Christ, the Truth, if they are convinced that there is no truth to seek?

So, should a university adopt Orthodoxy as its standard? I wish all universities would, but I don’t think it is entirely necessary. It would be enough if they would adopt any standard at all. This way students could accept it or reject it and move on towards the truth, rather than having that process stifled before it even began.

matthew

Children & Nature

2009-03-20T13:45:00.005-06:00

Upon reading Richard Louv's article in the March/April Orion Magazine I was struck by a truth that I have tried hard to disbelieve for the past several years:

Most kids do not play outside anymore.

Sometimes there is a larger reason why outdoor play isn't possible ... parents are fearful of the neighborhood, a family doesn't live in an environment where the outdoors are conducive to exploration (urban city apartment, extreme temperatures), or families have competing indoor activities.

Still, I believe that interaction with nature is an important part of a young persons development. It would seem that "a growing body of scientific evidence" would agree. There are certain

"strong correlations between experience in the natural world and children's ability to learn ... Stress levels, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, cognitive functioning ... are positively affected by time spent in nature."

"...it is reported that greener neighborhoods are associated with slower increases in children's body mass, regardless of residential density."

(pg.70, MArch/April Orion)

So how did we get away from the neighborhood or nature-based play? I don't really know, but here are a few of the things I think diminish our outdoor play.

1. Parental fear that their child will be abducted or harmed outside and that there isn't anything on T.V. or in video games that can permanently damage a child, besides its inside and I (as the parent) can control what my kids see and hear.

2. The continuous stream of "news" that infiltrates our lives and fills us with fear about events that rarely take place, but are over-emphasized for affect.

3. Lack of real knowledge about flowers, trees, animals, faming/gardening and water ... once again the flukes are over-publicized making parents and children afraid that flowers, trees, animals, farming/gardening and water will harm them.

4. The belief that sweaty, dirty outdoor work is bad for kids and we gladly hire adults to do work around the house that teenagers in the not so distant past once took care of for the family /community.

When I was twelve years old I started to "work" for the neighborhood association watering and weeding the signs that welcomed people into Tall Oaks IV (in Edmond, Oklahoma). I rode my bike to each of these signs and got my knees dirty in the mud, gouged my fingers open on the thorns of roses, and probably complained to my parents about how hard my job was and how much I hated working, but the independence and freedom that the $100 at the end of the month gave me was worth riding my bike uphill in August.

I am sure my mom worried about my riding around the neighborhood, but somehow it was more important for me to learn responsibility, to grow in time management skills and let her alone for two hours a week that her fear was allayed.

Really I have very little "right" to discuss this topic since I am not a mother myself, but I feel the need to start these conversations in our bookstore community. I want to see the children we all love grow up to be creative, thoughtful, healthful people. Hopefully some of you have opinions about this topic too.

rebekah

Conversion as Immigration

2009-03-18T08:23:00.008-06:00

As we are getting ready for Rod Dreher, I remembered something that I read on his blog several weeks ago; it's a post about whether or not it is possible to 'adopt' a tradition. Here's a portion of Rod's thoughts on the subject:

This discussion reminds me also of something Vigen Guroian, the Armenian Orthodox scholar, once said to me: that you cannot choose a tradition (this, in a conversation in which he expressed skepticism over my conversion to Orthodoxy). I don't think this is true, because if it was, the last Christian would have died on the Cross. Still, he has a good point: there is something phony about promoting tradition in the postmodern world. How can it be anything more than lifestyle advocacy? I see the point, and admit that our historical condition makes recovery doubtful, but I must ask in return: what else is there? Does the fact that I'm something of a phony with all this crunchy-con, neotraditional stuff obviate the criticism I and my fellow travelers make of our rootless society? Is the alternative to just throw up our hands and accept the world as it is, and offer no protest, or try to chart out a more humane alternative? I think not.

That post and the discussion which followed later developed into a conversation about the tensions between those born into a particular tradition and those who later choose to be a part of that tradition. Many of the people participating in the conversation were Orthodox Christians, and the exchange eventually focused on the differences and tensions that exist between ethnic Orthodox and convert Orthodox. Here's an extended quotation from a great response which was written by Richard Barrett, who is Antiochian Orthodox convert:

Hypothetical example: let's say you're a third-generation [fill in the blank] in this country. Maybe your grandfather was the first priest at the church you attend. In the Old Country, your family has been Orthodox as long as anybody can remember. You've never confessed and you've never observed a fast. You've no idea what any of the Ecumenical Councils decided. You probably come once or twice a month on Sunday, and maybe you slide into your pew halfway through the Gospel reading on a routine basis.

Nonetheless, your wife makes sure your boys serve at the altar and get there on time, and you are in a financial situation where you're able to give around $500k a year, at least. When there is a need you happily write a check. How seriously do you take converts, if you're this person? They have shelves full of St. Vlad's Popular Patristics series, they can prattle on and on about theology, they go to every service and usually show up a few minutes early, they fast (and ask you why you're not), but so what? They give maybe $1000 a year and already had to leave something else to become Orthodox (maybe multiple somethings else), so who's to say they won't leave Orthodoxy down the road? You may not go to every service, but you'd never think of leaving the religion of your fathers. You may not believe it all the time, but it's more than what you believe -- it's what you are, in a way it can never be for a person who is there because they picked up a book and on whom the chrism is barely dry. Do you really want to be told how to run your church, or what is Orthodox and what isn't, by those people?

Richard goes on to say that he doesn't believe these folks are right, but he has accurately described the attitude of many ethnic Orthodox Christians. And while I find that attitude understandable in a whole lot of ways, I also find it very, very puzzling and very, very troubling.

It's troubling because in Holy Scripture we are instructed to be kind to the sojouner and to take special care for the alien and to practice hospitality. Watching your parish or archdiocese fill up with converts--many of whom are zealous know-it-alls--may be disconcerting and uncomfortable, but our lives are not to be normed by our natural reactions but by the commandments of the Most Holy Trinity. In fact, that's the specific message of the opening chapters of the Book of Acts when the first (Jewish) Christians had to make room for all those outlandish Gentile converts from places like Caesarea and Antioch. That was a tough transition, but the Church went on to "preach the gospel to all creation".

But the reaction of many ethnic Orthodox is also really puzzling because most of these folks know, at some level, what it's like to be immigrants. They may have been in this country for several generations now, but their families still retain that living memory of what it's like to leave everything that is familiar and travel to a place where you don't understand the language, where just about everything is new, and where very few people are welcoming. That's precisely what it's like for most people who convert to Holy Orthodoxy. And just as most immigrants understand that they will never feel entirely at home in their new land, but they make that sacrifice for the sake of their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, in the very same way, Orthodox converts give up the comforts of familiar traditions and pieties for the sake of future generations.

So even if ethnic folks have a hard time coming to grips with the mandate of Holy Scripture--and who doesn't?--they should at least be able to remember what it was like for Grandpa Sergei and Aunt Hariklia. They should at least be able to welcome all of the spiritual immigrants that arriving in their communities.

fr. aidan

Two Weeks To Rod

2009-03-16T08:50:00.006-06:00

On Saturday, March 28th, Christ the Lightgiver is going to be hosting Rod Dreher. Rod is an editorial columinst for the Dallas Morning News, and he also writes the popular blog, "Crunchy Con", on beliefnet.

Rod is going to be speaking on one of his favorite topics, what he calls "the Benedict Option," and it just so happens that he was blogging about that subject this past Saturday--which was the day when the Church honors St Benedict of Nursia. Here's a bit of what Rod wrote on the subject:

I highly, highly recommend this reflection from Orthodox Agrarian on the relevance of St. Benedict and his Rule to our time, and to the lives we do live, and ought to live. It touches on what I often call The Benedict Option, which is the idea that the times call on those (Christian and otherwise) who wish to live out a life of virtue in community should to some extent separate from the wider world for the pursuit of that life. (Laypeople, I mean). In our parish here in Dallas, I've been talking with a few people about what that could mean for us, practically speaking (versus idealistically; ideally, we'd all live in the same neighborhood, and build some sort a common life, though that is hardly possible now).

The Orthodox Agarian that Rod mentions also had some really good things to say on the subject. Here's a long passage from his blog:

In my final semester of college, I was required to take a so-called "Values Seminar." Quite serendipitously, I happened to choose a course that exceeded my wildest expectations. It was called Classical Values: the Art of Living. The course took as its premise the idea that philosophy should not be a pedagogical exercise or a graduate school discipline but a way of life, and it should (taking a cue from Pierre Hadot) contain spiritual exercises.

One of the books chosen for the course was After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre's spectacular indictment of the Enlightenment experiment. And at the very end of the book, MacIntyre offers his own remedy for any possible reform of the West, writing:

"It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the more misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age . . . and the epoch in which the Roman Empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. . . . What they [those that withdrew from the Roman commonweal, including monastic communities] set themselves to achieve—often not recognizing fully what they were doing—was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. . . . This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers, they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are not waiting for Godot, but for another—and doubtless very different—St. Benedict."

Waiting for St. Benedict

As I said above, St. Benedict's life and his Rule offer an important example to the Christian family, what Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons, calls the Benedict Option... we should devote our time to the construction of new communities, adapting the methods and means of St. Benedict to the realities and difficulties of contemporary communal and family life. Like St. Benedict's monasteries, these new communities must always be organic developments, not decreed from on high and ordered by a centralizing authority. It will look much like the new growth around Clear Creek Monastery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the slow but steady stream of families that have chosen to settle around the monastery, where access to the sacraments in the traditional rite are readily and openly available, where families have access to rural farmland where they can grow their own food and raise their own livestock. These families are choosing a lifestyle that's both revolutionary and reactionary, a life in tune with both the natural and religious cycles. St. Benedict must surely be smiling. A similar example is the Eastern Orthodox community of Eagle River, Alaska, gathered around St. John's Antiochian Cathedral.

I think to develop this monasticus sensus in the greater Christian community must be one of the great tasks of the future, and the ones who must naturally lead the way are the clergy, and more specifically, the episcopacy. The large bureaucracies and centralized chanceries that characterize most churches (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant) are no model for the kind of de-centralization and sacralization that's needed for American churches. Orthodoxy, in particular, is still a small, if growing, population in this country; the Orthodox Church in this country also has an inordinately large number of bishops (owing to the multiplicity of ethnic jurisdictions). The de-centralization of church bureaucracy, with its concomitant decrease of ecclesiastical paperwork and ecclesiastical committees, will allow for greater episcopal-laity contact. It will also decrease the rather relentless flow of money back and forth between parish and chancery. Like the Christian home, let the parish be as self-sufficient as possible. There's no reason why a parish church cannot provide for much of its own needs if the practice of Christian stewardship is honestly preached and practiced. The homeless within a parish's boundaries should be fed, clothed, and sheltered with the resources of that parish. National collections, or even diocesan-wide collections, can serve a noble purpose, for instance, in collections for particularly baneful disasters, like the Asian Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina, but they should be rare.

Of course, all of this is what we are trying to foster through our community at Christ the Lightgiver. We want the store to be a place where people can gather and get to know one another, a place where people can find support for a world view and a way of life that is increasingly at odds with the prevailing culture. And this isn't at all a marketing ploy: we are all aware of those bookstores and coffee houses and restaurants that are part of large corporate enterprizes, and those bookstores and coffee houses and restaurants often bill themselves as places where people can gather--many times, they even refer to themselves as communities. And, someone, somewhere in the corporate structure may, in fact, want to see that actually happen, but, ultimately, the reason these establishments describe themselves as gathering places and communities is because their market research has indicated that's what folks want to hear.

But at Christ the Lightgiver, we actually are in the community building business. Yes, we sell books and icons and tea, but we do that as a way of providing folks with the best resources available for living a traditional Christian life (we don't believe that beauty and truth are optional); we also want to provide folks with access to some of the pleasures that are a natural part of life ( intelligent discussion, good movies, great tea). And, thankfully, we don't need to make lots and lots of money--we just need to pay Matt and Rebekah and Vickie.

As we get ready to host Rod--he'll be speaking at 4pm on that Saturday, and there should also be plenty of time for him to answer questions and sign books--we'd like to hear about your ideas on community and "the Benedict Option". What would you like to see at Christ the Lightgiver? What could we do to help foster community? What kind of support would help you?

fr. aidan

It's All Connected

2009-03-12T11:15:00.009-06:00

I haven't been blogging for a while.

Let's pause there for a moment.

Now that's a sentence I've never written before.

But it is, after all, 2009.

So, let's start over.

I haven't been blogging for a while. I've got this day job as an Orthodox priest, and last week was the first week of Great Lent which means lots of additional services and lots of fasting, none of which leaves much time for messing with technology and none of which leaves much energy for sustained thought. But now it's the second week of Great Lent, and there are a couple of things that I want to write about. The first is the Jan/Feb Touchstone. Of course, you can read the entire issue and enjoy a couple of great cups of tea just by stopping by the bookstore, but, if you don't have time to get through the entire magazine, be sure and read the article "Phony Matimony" by Christopher Oleson. Mr Oleson teaches philosophy at the Pontifical University Regina Apostolorum in Thornwood, New York. His article is about the current controversy over the definition of marriage, and he has some really important things to say about the way most conservatives approach the debate. Like this:

What traditionally minded defenders of life-long heterosexual couple hood are left to object to (when it comes to same sex marriage) is either that (1) homosexual behavior is "yucky" (an instinctual and, by itself, subrational repugnance) or (2) that the Bible simply happens to anathematize such behavior (as through God arbitrarily thundered prohibitions without reason and without reference to the goods which human nature is meant to realize). Neither one of these objections provides a rational understanding of why such behavior could be morally problematic or why God would forbid it. They are therefore not only justifiably open to the charge of being intellectually hollow, but constitute a recipe for a public routing in the marriage debate.

The truth of the matter is that the ultimate reason why homosexual acts are contrary to human nature--namely, that the violate the generative purpose of sexual union--is the same reason why contraceptive heterosexual activity is unreasonable behavior. They stand or fall together.

In other words, by embracing contraception in the 1960's, American Christianity paved the way for same-sex marriage in this century.

Of course, there's a whole lot more to the argument, and I'm still thinking about the import of it all, but I've seen this dynamic of unintended consequences at work in another issue that is troubling American Christianity--the ordination of active homosexuals. I was a United Methodist pastor for twelve years, and I was what was then called an evangelical or conservative. Like most conservative pastors in that denomination, I was fully supportive of women's ordination. I wasn't thrilled about the biblical gymnastics that it took to support such a view, but, without the resources of a broader tradition, it was almost impossible to construct a reasonable objection. But then the issue of the ordination of gays and lesbians came along, and I began to realize that the one issue was dependent on the other. That is, if sex wasn't an issue when it came to the ordination of women, then sex shouldn't be an ordination issue at all. Just about all of the conservative pastors I knew were blind-sided by that one. A lot of them eventually gave in on the issue of homosexual ordination; a few, like me, left the denomination (although I would hasten to add that the issue of gay and lesbian pastors was not at all the main reason for my decision); but most of these conservative pastors continue to fight a losing battle against the proponents of homosexual ordination. And they will eventually lose because they cannot remain United Methodists and oppose the ordination of women--but if they can't/won't oppose the ordination of women, then they cannot, with any degree of logic or even good conscience, oppose the ordination of gays and lesbians.

So, like I said, I haven't completely thought through all the implications of Oleson's article, but the dynamic he identifies is a real one: Truth is a unity, and you can't begin to tinker with it in one spot without eventually bringing down the entire structure.

fr. aidan

Cheerios & Christmas

2009-03-05T09:23:00.005-06:00

This morning I had a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast, and it wasn't that exciting.

In my younger years Cheerios were the highlight of my morning, but the floating little O's just tasted bland and their ability to pop back up to the surface just seemed blah. I don't think floating marshmallows or Fruit Loop colored milk could have cheered me up.

Christmas too has been sub-par. I think of how bright and beautiful that day is, but it has not held that special sweetness of bygone years . I thought it might be that I was sick and unable to travel to be with relatives, or getting used to a new job, or I wasn't in the "mood" for Christmas last year, but now I am starting to think it is something else:

I am getting old.

Now I know all of you octogenarians and forty-somethings are giggling to think of me aging, but I am! (just look at all my grey hair) In my last year of teaching my students thought I had lived through the seventies, rather than just knowing about them.

It seems that somewhere along the line I let go of my ability to be amazed and I want it back again. I turned into one of those stodgy people who think about why Cheerios float instead of just laughing all morning while I try to dunk those little rings. I got too wrapped up in the stuff of Christmas rather than the silent wonder. I never really believed in Santa Claus, but making cookies with my parents and brothers has always been my favorite tradition, but that hasn't happened since 1999!

Perhaps I need to make the effort to find fascination in minuscule things, but who has the time? Anyway, the disappointing cereal has got me thinking about what an adult I've become and I do not like it one bit.

rebekah

Leaning In

2009-02-24T22:07:00.006-06:00

After some searching I finally found the blog that Anna picks at from time to time. Being a fairly new friend I spent a few extra minutes looking over what topics appeal to her in the hopes that I might learn something new about her. I was somehow comforted at the end of my perusal to not know anything new.

Anna is a beautiful person whose eyes are constantly sweeping through a room, awaiting a place to land. (at first this habit made me think she was shy, but now I think she is simply a person who drinks in her environment slowly through a deliberate search.) She is a bit shorter than I, but her movements are long, leisurely, with almost a bit of a hop or a skip to them. I've noticed that she flips her hair over her right shoulder more than her left.

These are the things I've learned about her from being around her about once a week for more than three years. It is possible that I could count for you the number of times we have had a personal conversation, but she is still in my heart.

When I think of Anna, I see her in my mind: leaning in. She might be in the kitchen hugging the blue counters close under her folded arms as she listens and sweeps through the room. Anna could be standing just to my left, but I catch her silhouette in my vision; she is angled forward looking always for what it next.

I would rather get to know a person through years of proximity, than months of digital conversation. I confessed to Joe and David on Saturday night that I feel somehow voyeuristic reading the blog of a person I do not know well, or looking at the facebook page of a friends friend.

Here I am blogging, so I obviously see the live journal as a valuable tool, but if I am not known to a person through the sharing of physical space, I am afraid my writings will not make much sense to them.

rebekah

Some Conclusions

2009-02-20T13:09:00.005-06:00

Last night we got together for our Disputation. There was a good mix of folks, and, even though we all agreed that we are pretty new to the practice of sustained discussion about serious topics, we did all right. Rather than try to summarize everything that was said during the evening, I thought I would share with our readers some of the conclusions that emerged from the discussion.

1.Technology is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. For sure, there is a whole lot of it; not only that, but, nowadays, it comes at us pretty fast, and most of us are only familiar with the very basics of these devices that play such an increasingly big part in our lives. Nevertheless, we could all give lots of examples of the good things that recent technologies have enabled us to do.

2.However, we also agreed that there are many aspects of these technologies that bring out the worst in people. In the book, Bauerlein talked at length about how these technologies foster and support perpetual adolescence. But we also discussed the economic pressures that these technologies produce, and the other evils they suborn, such as gambling, pornography, and anonymity.

3. We spent a good deal of time considering what impact these technological and social dynamics will have on the Church. Everyone who participated in the discussion was Orthodox, and everyone expressed relief that the Church does not automatically embrace each new technological development and the social configurations that emerge from those developments. But many of the people present voiced concern over how the Church would be changed even when apparently benign technologies are adopted for apparently good motives.

4.While everyone agreed with Bauerlein's analysis in regards to our culture, no one was especially impressed with his solution—basically, he calls on older people to encourage younger people to interact with the larger culture and to find their identity within the greater traditions of our culture. However, as several of our disputants pointed out, that involves suffering—delayed gratification, hard work, and humility—and one of the main characteristics of adolescence is an aversion to any sort of suffering.

5.In spite of our pessimism about Bauerlein's solution, the overall tone of the disputation was positive. Just about everyone present agreed that we are being inundated by a wave of technology and that a good deal of the energy behind that wave is coming from what Holy Scripture calls 'the world'; eventually, that wave may, in fact, wash us away, but we all agreed that greater is He that is in us and in the Church than he that is in the world.

If you weren't able to participate in the discussion in person, then please join us on-line (and, yes, we are completely aware of the irony in that invitation; but, then, part of the joy of the Faith is embracing the absolute and irreducible absurdity of our life in this world). We would love to hear what you think about all these issues, and we would love to have you show up in person for our next disputation. Check the web-site calendar because we'll be posting the date there in the next few days. Or just wait until your spring issue of The Lamp Post arrives; we will be putting the finishing touches on that number in a week or so.

fr. aidan

IQ

2009-02-17T10:48:00.003-06:00

This coming Wednesday night, February 18th, we are going to have our first Disputation. The subject will be this winter’s featured book, The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. One of the most interesting sections of the book is Bauerlein’s discussion of the Flynn Effect. James Flynn is a political scientist from New Zealand who has pointed out that IQ scores have been climbing consistently over the last seventy years. So, Bauerlein asks, why haven’t we arrived in “an era of genius”?

His answer is, in part, that IQ tests focus primarily on “abstract problem-solving ability” and not on “learned content” such as “vocabulary, math techniques, and cultural knowledge”, and we are thus not actually getting any smarter. However, I got a completely different perspective when I read Neil Postman’s book Technopoly (it was a Christmas present). Postman has this to say about intelligence testing:

After a lifetime of working in the field of intelligence measurement, EL Thorndike observed that intelligence tests suffer from three small defects: “Just what they measure is not know; how far it is proper to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and compute ratios with the measures obtained is not known; just what the measures obtained signify is not known”. In other words, those who administer intelligence tests quite literally do not know what they are doing.

Bauerlein admits that “IQ tests are controversial”, and his discussion of the Flynn Effect is reserved and appropriately skeptical—and, as I noted, he doesn’t buy into it anyway. But Postman’s outright rejection of such testing has left me thinking about the assumptions that our culture makes and how much work it is to continually counter those assumptions.

But work is easier in groups, and that’s why we are going to have our Disputation. I hope many of you can join us.

fr. aidan

Community

2009-02-14T11:23:00.005-06:00

I’ve been thinking about community and everything that concept implies. Community is going to be the subject of this fall’s theological seminar, and we’ve already started working on that, but I got a real-life example of someone who just makes community happen this week when Cynthia and I were up in Ft Worth, and we went to visit our Albanian friends, Anesti and Rifi.

Which actually always leaves us exhausted because, even though ‘Nesti and Rifi are a few years older than we are, they are full of energy and constantly on the move and always talking and unbelievably gracious hosts—Would you like something to drink? Would you like something to eat? Please sit over here; this chair is much more comfortable. Would you like to lie down and rest—I can turn down the bed for you?

It has been a couple of years since we had seen our friends, and so they showed us their home—which ‘Nesti had remodeled (he’s a plumber) and Rifi had decorated (she works at Target). ‘Nesti then proceeded to tell us about all his neighbors; he and Rifi have only lived in the house about a year, but ‘Nesti knows everyone on the street, and he’s already done free plumbing for several of them.

This is how he described one of those encounters.

“Ah, this man, he is good man, I think, but he knows nothing about the plumbing, you see, so he ask me if I can look at his bathroom. I look and see right away what is the problem; I go and get my tools and (here there are several swift gestures, a big smile, and then arms raised in the air) all done. This man, he want to pay me money, but I say, No, No, we are neighbors. I love you. And he look at me funny, but I tell him I do it for the God and for him.”

‘Nesti sometimes has trouble with the language, but his inability to speak well often means that he cuts to the heart of the matter. Like saying ‘I love you’ instead of ‘I care about you’ or ‘We’re friends’. Which is what community is finally all about. People loving each other and loving ‘the God’, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

fr. aidan

The Dumbest Generation

2009-02-12T12:10:00.002-06:00

On Wednesday, February 18th, we will have our first-ever Disputation. We will gather in the bookstore at 7pm; we brew up some tea; we’ll spread out some refreshments, and then we will have a real, old-fashioned, face to face, person to person, discussion. And the topic of our discussion will be this winter’s featured book, The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. The book is about the impact that technology is having on our culture—and, in particular, on the youngest people in our culture. I thought it would be fun to go ahead and kick off the discussion on-line. This approach may simply prove Bauerlein’s thesis, but I’m hoping it will help us identify some issues that we can zero in on during our time together.

For example, I thought one of the most interesting ideas in the book was Bauerlein’s take on cultural warfare:

Culture wars break down the walls. They don’t stop sectarianism, and they can aggravate group commitments, but they also pierce the insulation of each group. Insiders may grow more polarized, but they have to face the arguments and strategies of outsiders. If they ignore them,keeping to themselves and shoring up turf, not articulating values, they lose the war, for the theater has spread to the public square, and combatants can’t rely on the rhetoric that sufficeswithin familiar niches. (p. 220)

That’s not exactly the way most people feel about cultural warfare—in fact, the recent election was supposed to be all about ‘transcending’ these sorts of divisions. But Bauerlein maintains that cultural warfare is an important democratic dynamic, and he worries that we will soon be incapable of generating that sort of interaction or participating in that kind of conflict.

For example, a week ago, our parish community participated in the annual March For Life through downtown Austin. As the march formed up, a small group of counter-demonstrators appeared, and one of them climbed up on a bike rack and began to address the crowd. But the marchers wouldn’t even let him speak—they began to chant slogans in order to drown him out. When I think of culture wars, I think of this sort of clash—either that or those ridiculous television show where commentators and guests interrupt each other and shout at one another.

Apparently, Bauerlein thinks there is another way. Or maybe these are simply the more ‘exciting’ aspects of what he feels is a valuable cultural dynamic.

So what do ya’ll think?

fr. aidan

Presentation

2009-02-12T11:58:00.008-06:00

We’re getting ready for the Feast of the Presentation of Christ Jesus in the Temple. Our featured book this past fall was Churchly Joy, a collection of sermons by Father Sergius Bulgakov. Here’s a passage from Father Bulgakov’s homily for the Presentation:

In the nation chosen by God, a blessed elder had been prepared for the meeting with the Lord. This elder had devoted an entire life of ascesis, prayer, and faith to waiting for this encounter; and now his prayer for his peaceful departure from the world merged with his prayer for this meeting. And this prayer was heard, and it was promised to the righteous Simeon by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord…And having met the God-Man, he took Him in his arms, blessed God, and said “now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.” The hour of his departure from the world had struck, for his eyes had seen the salvation awaited by him. His farewell hymn was a divinely inspired confession of faith in the Savior, a confession that had never before been pronounced on earth, and, thus, according to the Evangelist, Joseph and His mother marveled at the things Simeon said about him.

I don’t know about you, but writing like that just makes me want to pray. It’s that good.

Speaking of prayer, the other day, I was reading a nice article in the current issue of Orion. Orion is one of the magazines that we keep on hand, so, the next time you are in the store, grab a cup of your favorite tea, pick up the January/February number, and read the piece by Anthony Doerr; it’s called “Am I Still Here? Looking For Validation in Wired World”. Here’s an excerpt:

Yesterday—and this is embarrassing—I checked my email before leaving for work and after I got to work, and I checked it every now and then during the day at work, and, after bicycling home from work, a total distance of two miles, I checked my email again…It’s disconcerting,It’s shameful… but checking email or tinkering around on Facebook or reading snippets about Politician A on Blog B is…about asking the world a very urgent question: Am I still here?

Like I said, the article is quite good—and very funny—but it starting me thinking about how Christians should validate themselves. In his letter to the Colossians, St Paul states that we are “dead” and that our “life is hidden with Christ in God”. So that means we aren’t going to get what we need from a blackberry or an iphone or the internet. Because when we ask that basic human question, “Am I still here?”, we’re not asking primarily about our presence in this world (which is only temporary, anyway); what we are asking about, what we really want to know, is whether or not we are present in the Kingdom.

And the way we gauge that is through prayer. In the Holy Gospels, Christ Jesus says we should “pray always’; in his epistles, St Paul says we should “pray without ceasing.” So I’m thinking that we should be praying at least as often as Mr Doerr checks his email.

fr. aidan

Independent Bookstores

2009-02-06T10:57:00.010-06:00

In his recent letter to us, Eugene Peterson had this to say about books and the future of independent Christian bookstores:

I think you have a daunting task: to provide good,
solid books and at the same time keep the book-
store financially viable. American Christians
have horrible taste in literature, maybe especially
religious books. The junk is so prevalent, and the
good stuff usually requires more attention than most
are willing to give it.

He’s certainly right about the junk: All you have to do to verify that observation is stroll through the aisles of any of our local big box bookstores. Fortunately, though, we also don’t have the kind of financial pressure those operations do. We have to make enough money to pay Matt and Rebekah and Vickie, our heroic employees, and we have to make enough money to replenish our stock of good books, but we don’t have to make big profits.

As to whether American Christians have horrible taste in literature: That may, in fact, be true, but, ultimately, I’m just not sure that makes much of a difference when it comes to our mission. Because what we are doing at Christ the Lightgiver is what the Church has been doing for centuries and centuries—preserving the very best from the past, cultivating what is most beautiful in our contemporary culture, and creating a community which encourages learning, artistic expression, thoughtful discussion, and, above all, contemplation. That’s what St Columba was doing on Iona; that’s what St Aidan was doing on Lindisfarne; that’s what St Benedict was doing at Monte Cassino; that’s what St Sabbas did in the Kidron Valley—it’s what the monks are still doing at St Catherine’s on Mt Sinai, and it’s what we are doing at Christ the Lightgiver in Cedar Park, Texas. It is slow, quiet work, but it is also transforming.

So, thanks, Eugene, for taking the time to share your observations with us. We are counting on your prayers, as well.

fr. aidan

a fall into community

2009-01-31T21:45:00.014-06:00

This morning I had a temporary loss of gravity and effectively smeared most of my back half on the stairs in our home. Probably I deserved it because I was laughing at my beautiful husband for one of his more ridiculous morning rituals. Typically I would have dusted myself off and gone on with the day, but my aforementioned husband finally made me promise to TELL him when I hurt myself or felt nauseated, because for three years he found out too late about some of my setbacks. (once my decision to keep my ill-feelings to myself led "setting my breakfast free" all over the windshield and dashboard while driving 70 miles per hour on Interstate 35)

It was clear that I had hurt myself, so I waited until I knew Baker was in the hallway and informed him that I had taken a spill ... he ran down the stairs and began quizzing me about broken bones, loss of consciousness and other concerned spouse questions. My fall, much to my dismay, awoke our housemate Crystal and she came down the stairs to check on me as well.

All of this attention made me regret my promise to Baker that I would TELL when I hurt myself or felt nauseated, so I stood up brushed off my backside and assured my kind husband and concerned housemate that I was fine.

The day went on from there, and somewhere along about 1:30 I started freely sharing with anyone within earshot that I had fallen down the stairs and was starting to feel it. Two nurses were around and started asking my questions about body parts I did not even know I had, and one sweet friend, Carol, asked if I needed to go get it checked out that instant to be sure all was well.

All of this attention made me regret having said a word about it to anyone, so I ignored the warning signs and continued on with my chores and tasks without noticing the ever-increasing burning in my lower lumbar. Soon the pain was such that I started feeling nauseated and could not pay attention to what I was doing.

It was clear that I was going to need some kind of medical attention, so we called a dear friend who we knew would work me in for an appointment on Monday afternoon. Baker already has plans on Monday, so we called Lindsey to see if she could cart me around and listen well at the doctor's office. Amazingly Lindsey was free and very willing to help us out. Joe called to see how I was doing and Karen came over to keep me company while I sat around grunting and complaining about "my back, my back".

This evening I am exhausted by all of the attention, but also overwhelmed by the sweetness of the people around me. Everyone was willing to help in whatever way they could ... so as I settle into bed and hopefully drift off to sleep I will dream about the way my community surrounded me today, like the mountains surround Jerusalem. I remember the wings that King David talks about in Psalm 91 that give hope to the ones in pain.

rebekah

It's my day to work in the store.

2009-01-30T10:56:00.007-06:00

I’m sitting in the office—which is crammed with all the stuff that it takes to run Christ the Lightgiver—but just over to my right is a spot on the wall where we’ve started posting our Letters from Famous People. As you probably know, we’ve started inviting various people to speak at some of our bookstore events—and we’ve sent some invitations to some really high-caliber folks. A few of them have accepted; a few of them haven’t; a few of them told us that they would have to get back with us. But, so far, those who have declined our invitation have responded with some very nice letters. Rebekah posted part of a note that we received from Wendell Berry a couple of weeks ago. And just this past week we got a long, personal letter from Eugene Peterson explained why he won’t be able to stop by the store this summer (I’ll share some of that letter with you in another entry).

So what makes us think that a tiny little independent operation like Christ the Lightgiver could possibly get people like Wendell Berry and Eugene Peterson to show up for a speaking engagement?

Because we believe in the Norman Wilson principle. Norman was one of my father’s high school buddies. This was back in the late 1940’s in Farmersville, Texas, so there were only, like, 25 people in my father’s graduating class, and Norman was, by far, the shortest. But one day this new girl moved to town; she was really tall and really good-looking, and the first day she showed up at school, my father and Norman and a few of their other friends just happened to be standing out on the front steps of the building. The young lady walked by; the young men stood there, admiring her, but, then, Norman suddenly walked away. My father asked him where he was going. Norman turned, and, with a big grin on his face, said, “I’m gonna find me a step ladder and ask her for a date.”

I actually don’t know if Norman ever went on that date, but we approach our potential speakers the very same way: we just get out our step ladder and crawl up there and ask them if they’ll join us at the best bookstore in Central Texas. So the next time you’re in the store, ask to go back in the office and check out the Letters from Famous People. You’ll be amazed at the folks who’ve been corresponding with us—and, who knows? They may still end up speaking at one of our events.

fr. aidan

culture of tea

2009-01-28T14:53:00.010-06:00

I remember sipping black tea out of a tiny shot glass in Muhammad's Persian Carpet Gallery in Old City Jerusalem. My friend Michael and I sat with our knees squeezed in tight around our stools for the "great gallery" was no more than six feet wide and eight feet deep.

Along with us was Muhammad, the shopkeeper and Haans, a Czech tourist whose English was really bad. Every color of fabric you can imagine stacked all around us in twelve-foot high towers leaning in as if to listen to our conversation about land, love and politics. Above our heads hanging from the twenty foot ceiling were thick chains adorned with jewelry, oil lamps and pitchers. Everything metal would click, clank every few seconds which gave the feeling of being aboard an enormous yacht; the thousands of people swarming along the souk in black, blue and white completed the experience, almost making the three visitors seasick.

The tea was hot and sweet with three twigs of mint stems poked sideways into the glass floating capsized in the clear cup. About an hour later Michael bought a Persian rug that weighed half as much as I did, and Haans went on to find his wife and children somewhere among the millions.

Muhammad invited us to stay for a second round of tea. We gladly accepted this small delight and ate greedily cubed sweets that came along with the tea. We continued to talk on about our families and cultures. Once our glasses were empty the little shopkeeper asked us to share a third cup of tea with him that evening in his home.

Initially the tea was Muhammad's thanks for coming to rest awhile with him, or maybe a courtship of us as his customers. The second cup of tea was for the hospitality of friendship and the standing offer for tea anytime we were in the Old City again. The third cup of tea was like a deeper contract of kinship. I feel sure that Muhammad would recognize me now, ten years later if I stopped at the Persian Carpet Gallery.

It makes me happy that we offer tea to our friends when they stop in to the store. I am glad that we even offer it in a clear glass with plenty of sweet. Sometimes people cannot accept this free gift ... they are afraid of committing to stay, they think there is some hidden cost, they feel awkward receiving a gift from a complete stranger. Maybe they are wondering about sanitation or or just had a cup of coffee in car.

Eventually I hope people will stop in for just a visit and a cup of tea. No need to worry about what gift they need to give to their brother, or what version of the Bible to read. Next time you are around, come in and sit for awhile; enter our culture of tea.

rebekah

Sophie Scholl

2009-01-24T12:25:00.011-06:00

So we had our first Movie Night this past week at Christ the Lightgiver.

We screened the 2005 Indie film "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days", and we had a nice turn-out with tea, popcorn, chips, and cookies--and Chris Lewis even turned up with Sour Skittles. Anyway, we had gone partners with Rigel Thurston on a new projector and screen and speakers, and the set-up was looking really impressive until we popped the DVD into the computer and nothing happened. Fortunately, the room was full of tech people, so Baker Galloway and Father Deacon Basil and Winston Chapman and Rebekah Galloway (who isn't a tech person, but she was helping out anyway) went to work and rigged up some sort of arrangement which appeared to involve the store's computer and several extension cords and the Exit Sign over the door and the Christmas lights that we had left up outside. When they fired it up, there weren't any sparks, and none of the lights in the neighborhood appeared to flicker or go dim, so it all turned out well.

Unfortunately, by then, it was almost 7:45, and the movie was two hours long, so, by the time it was over, it was pretty late, and we weren't able to have our discussion. Which was a bummer until the other day when Rebekah was bugging me about getting started on this blog, and it occurred to me that we could have our discussion here at Preparing For Illumination--and this won't even require all the crawling around under the furniture that we had to go through in order to get the movie started. So, here are my observations, and I hope that all you folks who were with us on Wednesday night--or who wanted to be with us on Wednesday night--will weigh in.

I thought that one of the most effective aspects of the movie was the fact that, while the heroine's moral choices were clear, the context in which she made them was very murky. Her finance, for example, was an officer in the German Army and, apparently, a loyal Nazi--yet she clearly loved him and hoped to spend the rest of her life with him. Several of the male conspirators had also served in the armed forces--and Sophie herself had once been part of a Nazi youth organization. Our view of Nazi Germany is often pretty black and white--implying that, if we had lived back then, we would have know precisely what to do. But the fact that the heroine was very much a part of German society made her choices even more compelling.

I also thought there were profound parallels between the ways in which the Nazis went about their genocidal work and the ways in which our society deals with abortion. When Sophie talked about the fact that mentally challenged children were being killed, and when her brother, Hans, talked about the fact that he had witnessed German soldiers killing women and children, the response from the authorities was that these were just rumors and lies or that these people were better off dead. In other words, the Nazis redefined what it meant to be human, and they relied on the fact that few people had actually witnessed the atrocities they were committing. And it works that way in our culture in regards to abortion--because we do not see unborn children being killed, and because we have labeled these children as something less than human, then we can go on with our lives while millions of unborn children are put to death. Of course, viewing this movie the week before our participation in the Annual March For Life through downtown Austin, and the week when our new president has overturned the Mexico City Policy and has promised to promote abortions in other, more dramatic ways has kept all this front and center for me.

Cinematically, I loved the film's spare qualities and the use of sunlight as a powerful symbol. I thought the attempt at a happy ending--or, at least, a significant ending--was really forced, though. The film would have been much more forceful had it ended with the breath-taking execution scene.

Those are my thoughts--at least at this point. You guys let me know what you think and what we can do to make our next movie night even better (though, I'm sorry, Chris, I'm not endorsing Sour Skittles).

fr. aidan

Wendell Berry

2009-01-21T13:22:00.004-06:00

We invited Mr. Wendell Berry of Kentucky to come to visit our store and speak to us sometime soon. We wrote the letter in early December and received this as the bulk of his response back, dated December 23, 2008.

Thank you for your very kind letter. I am honored of course by your wish to have me come down and speak, and I am sorry to say that it is very unlikely that I will be able to accept in the foreseeable future. Because I am needing increasingly to be at work here at home, I am now traveling only to help out two or three causes that I have been long committed to.

Yours sincerely,
Wendell Berry

Now it is unlikely that we will see Mr. Berry anytime soon, but somehow it is encourage to know he knows about us and we know about him.

smoking

2008-12-11T11:34:00.009-06:00

In college I was a little more than a social smoker. I stopped smoking cigarettes when I started working with high school drop outs who needed to quit worse than I did. I didn't want to be like my eighth grade P.A.L. teacher who always harped on “the dangers of smoking” but smelled like a pack a day. I was also outside the stresses of University life, so I did not think much about it.

When I was a full-time student a year later I began to smoke a beautiful pipe that my boyfriend gave to me for Christmas. Dad really let me have it when he found out I was smoking a pipe. I was so ashamed that I stopped again.

Since then I smokes about once a year, usually with John or Lindsey. Baker knows I used to smoke and doesn't seem to mind too much when I have a drag.

I woke up this morning to one of those clear crisp days when you know it is December. I had a bit of a cough and a scratchy throat and the tea kettle was singing its mournful hymn and I wished I had a cigarette. Not just any cancer stick, but an American Spirit ... I even giggled thinking about it.

Soon I was reminded of all the times when I rolled my eyes at my friends who were smoking or coughed dramatically in the direction of strangers who I thought needed to quit. Then the one line from the last section of St Ephraim's three stanza prayer “grant me to see my own sins and not condemn my brother” floated into my head. Have I only been awake for 30 minutes and already messed up?

If I kept always a memory of the joy smoking provided me, I would not be so judgmental of folks who just cannot seem to quit. Should I be mindful of the litany of sins that I cannot seem to conquer I might be a bit more gracious to my brother man.

rebekah

prayer at daybreak

2008-11-19T14:47:00.007-06:00

O Lord Eternal and Creator of all things,
Who of Your inscrutable goodness did call me to this life;
Who did bestow on me the grace of Baptism
and the Seal of the Holy Spirit;
Who has imbued me with the desire to seek You;
the one true God: hear my prayer.

I have no life, no light, no joy or wisdom;
no strength except through You, O God.
Because of my unrighteousness I dare not raise my eyes to You.
But You did say to Your disciples,
'Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer believing, ye shall receive'
and 'Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do'.
Wherefore I dare to invoke You.
Purify me from all taint of flesh and spirit.
Teach me to pray aright.

Bless this day which You do give unto me,
Your unworthy servant. By the power of Your blessing
enable me at all times to speak and act to Your glory
with a pure spirit, with humility, patience, love,
gentleness, peace, courage and wisdom:
aware always of Your presence.

Of Your immense goodness, O Lord God, shew me the path of Your will,
and grant me to walk in Your sight without sin.

O Lord, unto Whom all hearts are open,
You know what things I have need of.
You are acquainted with my blindness and my ignorance,
You know my infirmity and my sou;'s corruption;
but neither are my pain and anguish hid from You.

Wherefore I beseech You, hear my prayer
and by Your Holy Spirit teach me the way wherein I should walk;
and when my perverted will would lead me down other paths
spare me not, O Lord, but force me back to You.
By the power of Your love, grant me to hold fast to that which is good.
Preserve me from every word or deed that corrupts the soul;
from every impulse unpleasing in Your sight and hurtful to my brother-man.
Teach me what I should say and how I should speak.
If it be Your will that I make no answer,
inspire me to keep silent in a spirit of peace
that causes neither sorrow nor hurt to my fellow.
Establish me in the path of Your commandments
and to my last breath let me not stray from the light of Your ordinances,
that Your commandments may become the sole law of my being
on this earth and in all eternity.

Yes, Lord, I pray, have pity on me.
Spare me in mine affliction and my misery
and hide not the way of salvation from me.

In my foolishness, O God, I plead with You for many and great things.
Yet am I ever mindful of my wickedness, my baseness, my vileness.
Have mercy on me.
Cast me not away from Your presence because of my presumption.
Do You rather increase in me this presumption,
and grant unto me, the worst of men,
to love You as You have commanded,
with all my heart, and with all my soul,
and with all my mind, and with my strength:
with my whole being.

Yes, O Lord, by Your Holy Spirit,
teach me good judgment and knowledge.
Grant me to know Your truth before I go down into the grave.
Maintain my life in this world until I may offer unto You worthy repentance.
Take me not away in the midst of my days,
nor while my mind is still blind.
When You shall be pleased to bring my life to an end,
forewarn me that I may prepare my soul to come before You.
Be with me, O Lord, at that dread hour
and grant me the joy of salvation.
Cleanse me from secret faults,
from all iniquity that is hid in me;
and give me a right answer before Your judgment-seat.

Yes, Lord, of Your great mercy
and immeasurable love for mankind,

Hear my prayer.

archimandrite sophrony