I’m asking for your help

I first got involved with direct giving to the poor because of the New Futures Orphanage. I was scouring the net, looking for just, real, and direct ways to impact the lives of the poor, with small funds. I came across a [ blog ] kept by an English teacher backpacking through Cambodia.

She’d come upon an orphanage there that needed volunteers to teach some English to the children. Teachers would come through, and some would stay a while and do this, and she was captivated and decided to stay for much longer. I was captivated too, and I looked, and they needed $900 in small gifts – that’s all they were asking for last year, and it was being given in small gifts ($25, $35, $45 at a time) through [ givemeaning.org ] a site that serves as the vehicle for giving directly to such small charities.

They finally met their fundraising goal, which was used to provide some basic things to the orphanage, like cinder block walls and a roof to enclose the toilet. I read the updates from Claire, who was giving her time there. She reported on how the children were doing, their improving skills, what this means for their future. I read what the children thought about their situation, and their hopes for their futures; each one is an individual. I knew I had to help.

The poor are Christ to us. They are the icon, the image. They are the means by which we are saved, by being filled with love. Apart from them, I know I at least cannot be saved. They are the ones of whom Christ said, “inasmuch as you have done with your riches to the least of these, who are my brothers, you have so done to me in my impoverishment”.

Recently, the landlord sold the orphanage and the children had to be taken to a facility that doesn’t have electricity. So they need to raise money to get 12volt battery-powered lighting installed and survive with the soaring food costs. The project has established a funding goal of $1000. I’m asking you to help me help them. Take the cost of a night out, or a new video game, or a month of cable TV, and give directly to them, for this need.

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Will you help? Please?

They are [ here ].

Direct Giving defined: Give in reality, not in theory. Give to people, not to ideas.

Transvaluation of Ethics

It astonishes me – the casualness, the callousness, the stupid matter-of-factness with which people can discuss euthanasia. People discuss putting their family members to sleep with only slightly more gravity than putting a pet to sleep. Why is abortion given a greater level of discretion in conversation than “pulling the plug”? Because starving someone to death and taking them off life support is considered a more humane way to kill them than vacuuming off their limbs and crushing their skull?

Let it be known that I don’t want anyone deciding when it’s time for me to die. I’ll fight to the last moment, thank you. And the same goes for my family. There’s all kinds of pious crap put out by religious fanatics (and they are fanatics, when we’re talking about neglect and murder) — all kinds of garbage about not using extraordinary means to save us. Who decides what’s extraordinary? The world? By this logic, why use CPR on a drowning victim? It may be their time, right? I hate this with my whole heart. I will fight to the end, I will sustain my family with everything in me, and I will not set an example of pushing myself out on an ice flow so as not to be a burden. That’s the culture of savages, not of Christ. People are not burdens, they’re not expendable, and they’re not ‘in the way’.

In fact, when I hear the words of Christians justifying the Culture of Convenience, the Culture of “Don’t get in my way” (to borrow from Franky Schaeffer), of “Don’t burden me”, I breathe and spit. This is the Enemy we’ve known from of old, and it has infected the minds of the faithful with the silky foulness of the demonic.

It’s worse, of course, to kill someone or abandon them or neglect them to death than to talk about killing them. But the fact that there’s no shame, that’s it’s considered a normal part of polite conversation makes me want to vomit. And I’m supposed to express condolences at their loss? That kind of “sensitivity” is the same kind that would congratulate someone for fornicating, because they’re now in a meaningful relationship.

Human life is an absolute value. I really hate this culture, its transvaluation of ethics, and all it represents. Most of all, it represents a culture of sacrifice, as Rand pointed out. A culture of expending some for the sake of others. You see it in our resource wars, in the way we drive on the freeway, and in the institutionalization of medical care not as a saving charity but as a kind of semi-benign curse. After all, we’re the only country of this level of wealth where you can go bankrupt from receiving medical care, and die when the last pennies run out. Every other society with this much money, considers that barbaric. Here, we figure the laws of the market outweigh the cost of sustaining your existence.

Scorn, derision, excrement upon this culture.

Adjectives as Idols

Orthodox thinking doesn’t pair adjectives with the word “God”.

As I watch a spokesman for a group of fundamentalists talk about how “God is not a condemning god”, I realize that a simple way to express our apophaticism is to respond: Orthodox thinking doesn’t pair adjectives with the word “God”.

God is incomparable, indescribable, beyond understanding, not susceptible to analogy, and even these words cannot be considered attributes of God, but only descriptions of our unknowing.

The temptation in the culture is strong, to personalize and customize God, to make a god that does not worry or scare us, a god we understand, that fits our ideas, and fits our expectations. But there is no such deity. As surely as a stone idol, the god of our imagination is just that – imaginary. In regard to that, we can only be atheists.

People feel uncomfortable not being able to say “God is loving” or “God is just”, despite the fact that their own scriptures contradict them constantly, because they are referring to created concepts that exist only in their minds. But God cannot be expressed in Dixie Cup sayings or Hallmark sentiments.

The word “God” is not a name, but refers to our inability to know – to the impossibility of attaining to knowledge of God. The word “God” is a confession that there is something that doesn’t even share what we think of as existence. If God exists, then we do not, and vice versa.

If God could be contained in created human concepts, then he would be a small “god”, less than the concepts that contain him – he would be a homonculus, not God. But we reject as heresy the very attempt to approach knowledge of God through religious philosophy, which can only sculpt idols from ideas that were once carved out of wood.

God is so unknowable, that we cannot even refer to God as unknowable. God is so beyond the possibility of human knowledge, that if God were there, real, existed (all words we cannot use of God), it would be irrelevant to our understanding.

In fact, the only way for God to be known is to make Himself known, on his own initiative, and then to be known, since God cannot be contained in human thoughts, God would have to become man, and indeed make possible the union of God and man without the reduction of one or destruction of the other: The Incarnation, which only the Orthodox hold to in its fullness. Even then, we would have no understanding of God’s essence, but rather union with God through the person of the Incarnate One. We would know love, as God’s uncreated energy, which is God, but we would not know the essence. Rather, we would know love through the person, through Christ. The same is true of justice. And mercy. And so on. We would know God by grace, through grace, and in a particular person, Jesus Christ.

We would no then claim to “know God” the way it is common to do among the heterodox, proceeding to describe God’s attribues. We would, however, recognize the activity of God toward us, through Christ. God loves us, God has mercy on us, God chastises us, and so on.

This is why when many heterodox begin a conversation with “Do you believe God exists?” or “Do you believe God is a loving God?” or “Do you believe God is love?” I say “no”. Given what and how they’re asking, I prefer to swear off the wrong thing so we can talk about the true thing. Even when we Orthodox write that “God is love” we do not believe this refers to God’s essence, nor is this the name of a person. Rather, we refer to the energies of God, in humility, believing even then our understanding is neither comprehensive nor perfect. And any significant knowledge occurs only by interaction – synergy – and deep knowledge comes only to very advanced ascetics.

I guess I’m a ethikotrogo-flexitarian

I was on the verge of coining a neologism: ethikotroge (or ethikotrogonist) when I discovered that I’m a flexitarian. I still might keep the overall neologism, since there is more than one reason for being a flexitarian. Someone looking at this in a public journal is likely to ask “What’s a flexitarian?”, so I’d better define it. A flexitarian is someone who eats a diet mainly without meat, but uses meat occasionally.

My reasons are ethical overall, and include reasons of good health. I’m a decided latitudinarian when it comes to being flexitarian.

• Often it’s just a matter of eating a much smaller portion of meat, and more vegetable matter, on the European mode, refusing to make meat the center of the meal. It’s a more balanced approach.
• Sometimes it’s leaving meat out of some meals altogether, refusing to treat it as less than a meal if it lacks meat. The hegemony of meat is irrational, and is repudiated, along with its basic contribution to the passions.
• Sometimes, it’s refusing to eat certain kinds of meat (like poultry), or any but free-range eggs. It has to do with ethical treatment of animals.
• It’s often refusing “meat products” that aren’t whole cuts of meat. No processed lunch meats, hot dogs, etc. Occasionally, though, I’ll do sausage as a cultural concession to Italian food.
• It includes avoiding establishments that specialize in particularly heinous use of meat, such as restaurants that serve shark fin, dog, lobster, or specialize in high-production poultry farming, or are McDonalds.
• It’s refusing meat when there’s a choice between low grade meat and high grade vegetable matter. For instance, Taco Bell is out (as essentially garbage-meat), but I’ll eat a steak on occasion.
• It’s refusing to eat meat that comes from severe environmental disruption, such as Brazilian beef.
• It’s refusing to over-complexify food (e.g. with processed food) with too many ingredients at once and, even in gourmet cooking, specializes in a form that uses few ingredients at one time.

It’s an attempt to reduce harmful impact on nature, some of the agony caused to animals, over-use – the gluttony of production, subterfuge – the mythology of ethical animal product production, subordination to passion-bearing foods that captivate and dominate the soul and senses and lead to various social ills as well as personal failings, an attempt to reduce negative health impacts from harmful feed and hormones (including natural feeds and hormones), an attempt to avoid excess and irrationality, and a repudiation of the basic assumptions of the dominant culture (which is always a good and healthy thing – in that regard, I tend to share the opinion of some fathers that even when the culture does good, it’s doing evil). Finally, I believe all death to be the result of my sin, and so to be evil, and want to keep this in mind, and keep an eschatological attitude, looking to the end of death, for which creation groans, and the peace between lion, lamb, and child.

At the same time, I have certain dietary needs tied to my own chemistry and physiology that generally require animal products, especially dairy. And there is a sense in which, unless it’s a fast, I think it can be a conditional good to participate in the feast (e.g. kill the fatted calf). I think, in fact, there’s a general duty to feast (on fish, at least), when it’s a Feast, in the same way it’s a law of the Church to fast during the Fasts. For these reasons, I eat some animal products.

The ultimate reason I’m a flexitarian is to assert, with action, and keep in mind always, that eating is not a n ethically neutral endeavour. Ethics are just as necessary and important there as in driving, investing, etc. So I’ll keep my new word, too, as the overall explanation.

Meanwhile, this also does two things in regard to Great Lent, Little Lent, and the other fasts. It means that it’s not such a horrible impact to “switch”, because it’s not switching, it’s a slightly more severe modification. And it carries the meaning and purposes of the Fasts into the rest of life and time, including the Feasts. So, I think there’s a strong religious benefit.

So that’s it, I’m either a very liberal flexitarian or a strict ethikotrogue.

References

• Wikipedia Entry
• About.com Entry
• Medicine.net Entry
• Associated Press
• American Dialect Society

Note to self: next entry is on ethical shopping (or non-shopping).

Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

I know people deeply immersed in one or the other, and just a few immersed in both. The thing is, non-fiction gives us a direct dosing of ideas, seemingly without setting or apparatus. Fiction often doesn’t pay off what it promises, in terms of meaning. And our reading, really, is either a search for entertainment or a search for meaning.

Non-fiction, though, really does come with a substantial apparatus. In place of the normal aspects of fiction – plot, characterization, setting – we get the author’s presuppositions (e.g. about what the important questions are), his unaccountable absolutes (the unchallenged assertions inherent in his ideas), his biases, and the emotional impact of his own convictions, if any. In other words, there’s more weeding and processing to do than some readers acknowledge.

I’m a fan of both forms, but I confess I prefer fiction when I can get it. The thing that unites both forms is theme. If we refer to the theme of “the union of all men”, someone can suggest a non-fiction work, and I can suggest a work of fiction. But frankly, I find there are more subtle themes available in fiction that are as yet unexplored in non-fiction, and that would force me to look there, in any case.

One is not more important or significant than the other, but I think it’s easy for non-fiction lovers to deprive themselves of the real value of fiction by, if not careful, seeing everything as a prosaic proposition. There’s a kind of communication of through the whole soul available in fiction that seems only rarely accessible in its counterpart.

For me, sci-fi and fantasy are the unparalleled repositories of soul in modern art.

The Imperial Death March

You know, the fundamentalists are deluded about the public schools. They constantly complain about anything sexual, but they let the schools decide to do mandatory ASVAB testing, and otherwise turn these kids into good little patriots and citizens, without batting an eyelash. You can’t sell part of a soul.

Finding Important Things in Charity

A friend and I were recently discussing what’s important in charity or, more specifically, charitable giving. And we came up with some key elements:

• consistency: it’s better to give consistently than to splurge once in a way you can’t sustain, and in fact give less, and nothing over time. The same is true of prayer rules. Better to pray 5 minutes morning and night, than two hours once, that doesn’t get repeated until you feel guilty and defeated. Besides, $75/month over 12 months is three times as much as $300 in a one-time splurge.
• avoid pride: it’s better not to try to slam dunk a problem you can then be proud of; instead, give also to causes for which the world says there’s no hope
• diversify: same as with any investment, scatter your seed abroad: it’s often claimed that charity should start at home – which usually means, actually, that it should remain at home – in fact, there’s no real justification for easing the mere discomfort and inconvenience of those who are most like you while neglecting the life-threatening and soul-destroying need of those who are least like you. Remember the Good Samaritan who gave his money for the infidel. Something useful may be to lend to the working poor (e.g. through microloans), give to the very and desperately poor (e.g. orphanages), and give to an organization (like Oxfam) for relief of the most devastatingly impoverished. Also donating to a local food bank may be a good idea for charity in one’s own community.
• [avoid delicacy]: there’s already an article on this (click the link) but, in brief, it means avoid the paralysis of not doing much because you can’t find the perfect thing to do.

The Heresy of the Supermarket

The TV news programs are drumming up the seige mentality again, for the nation of gluttony, over the growing starvation with which it has afflicted the world.

It blames high fuel costs, and blames those costs on China’s industrial growth rather than on America’s wars, before which fuel was reasonaby priced. It omits the fact that all US aid is required by federal law to be purchased from US farmers (at prices inflated by exports to wealthy countries), shipped on US carries (mega-conglomerates who charge a heady premium), and then (at high cost) transported inland for distribution. In other words, instead of supporting the local economies, buying local food, local transportation, creating local jobs, and unlimately distributing 80% or more on the dollar, we’re content through this graft to give all but 16% or so on the dollar, as a boost to the US economy while claiming it aids the poor of starving nations. In other words, the bulk of the charity makes US rich richer, and the US economic climate more comfortable, prices lower, access to goods easier, all on the backs of those dying every day from starvation.

This is the corrupt nation, beyond all corruption. The whore of history.

And now, too, biofuels are being blamed for sucking up grain (which is true to some extent, you eco-warriors!), but there’s no mention of where the lions share of grain goes – namely into high fructose corn syrup and syrup solids and other such products that now make up the bulk of the American food supply – from its corn-fed cattle, who would die from their diet if they weren’t slaughtered after being artificially fattened, to its corn-fed butterball children, crunching on McDonalds fries cooked in that oil, hamburgers fed on it, bread made from it, and so on. The majority of grain that could be used to feed the world, in other words, is going into pseudo-foods to fatten the already fat of the fattest nations – the ones that can afford such complex products.

So the truth is, this nation is starving the peoples of the world, the poor, the powerless. And it is this nation that possesses the guns needed to protect that hegemony. It is the law of the jungle, the law of baboons, sitting on top of food hordes, luxuriating in food products, and freely, intentionally starving its brothers, who could eat forever off our waste.

The processed food industry and the national obsession with meat is just part of the sickness. Warlike, militant posturing is the other part. And national pride and patriotism is the hellish doctrine at its root. We don’t see ourselves as part of everyone else. Christian doctrine is that we are. And so, ultimately, this behavior is heresy, apostasy, blasphemy.

That’s the truth about global starvation. And I don’t apologize for uttering it.

Make the Valleys Smoke

What they’re doing to the Mormons is a national crime. It’s wrong. It’s done in all our names, and we’re all guilty. Texas may be violating human rights, but the nation is supposed to protect against such things, under the Constitution. And it is the “homeland security” mentality that has brought this to be.

They’ve rounded up all the families of a particular religious group and separated children from parent and parents from children, and jailed the children in a coloseum, and the parents elsewhere. Then they presume to run DNA tests on everyone to decide whether, if, and who has “custody” rights. They’re getting away with persecuting a few, with little outcry from us, because of the sensationalized abuses of the even fewer. And the search for the “anonymous callers” bears striking resemblance to the search for “weapons of mass destruction.”

And we are letting this happen, because those people live sufficiently differently from us. It’s no different than the bigotry that justifies bombing “gooks”, “towel heads”, and others who are not like us.

May God punish the nation for this. May he chastize her for her arrogance. May he make the valleys smoke for her disobedience and because she has torn the suckling babe from its mothers breast, and stolen the daughters and sons of her people. I’ll gladly go down, in my unworthiness, if the Lord will but sink this ship with me.

Come quickly with the fire and make things clean.

Writing as Religious Defiance

“My parents taught me to believe that through the creative act, we’re able to transcend and give a response to desecration.” – Atom Egoyan

Akathist Hymn

A Rampart art thou for virgins and all that have recourse to thee, O Theotokos and Virgin, for the Maker of heaven and earth prepared thee, O Immaculate One, and dwelt in thy womb, and taught all to cry out to thee: Rejoice, Pillar of virginity. Rejoice, gate of salvation. Rejoice, Leader of spiritual restoration. Rejoice, Bestower of divine goodness. Rejoice, for thou didst regenerate those conceived in shame. Rejoice, for thou didst admonish those despoiled in mind. Rejoice, thou who dost bring to naught the corrupter of hearts. Rejoice, thou who dost give birth to the Sower of chastity. Rejoice, bridal Chamber of a seedless marriage. Rejoice, thou who dost join the faithful to the Lord. Rejoice, fair Nursing-Mother of virgins. Rejoice, bridal Escort of holy souls. Rejoice, thou Bride unwedded.