Introduction - Community

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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