Review of Avatar

It’s the connections of things. That’s what it is about Avatar, the James Cameron film. And I don’t mean in a Gaia, goddess, neo-gnostic, pagan kind of way. But it’s something else. The way they interacted with animals – the metaphor of actually plugging in – and what it suggests about how animals are. The way they plugged into the earth and with each other to the trees, not because they’re trees, but because it’s creation – it’s the same as with the animals. It situated them in creation. I really don’t respond other than with delight to the trees being connected as a network. All creation derives its meaning through man. But the fact that they were connected to the network too, that’s the story. The real story of us. That we are situated in creation by the economy of Christ – by God becoming a man, flesh of the womb of the Virgin, Adam’s flesh and Eve’s. Avatar gets it – the network is a network of trees sharing human memories – human souls, as well as their own. It isn’t connectedness that matters, but interconnectedness, of all things.

Image by marcotruiz via Flickr

This has always been huge for me, but because it’s huge for mankind. When I wrote my first critique of environmentalism, this is what I was aiming at. When I write about the Economy of Christ and a lot of people don’t understand me outside our Faith, and some within don’t, this is what I mean too. The economy is all that is not God – all that is created – there’s nothing that is not God that is not created, including time – including history. And all that is created – all things that are not God – are created with one purpose, the salvation of man. The deification of man. The entire creation is God’s salvific act. The Economy is God’s action toward creation, and is the creation itself. And it culminates in God becoming part of creation, entering creation, entering time and history, taking flesh of our flesh – “plugging in” – but much more than that, by becoming us – the only act that would save. And by becoming us, he took in his body all minerals, plants, all elements, all history, all categories in which all creation participates. By becoming one of us, he summed up all creation, and brought it all together in one. His salvation is salvation of the animals, and of the plants, and of rock and stone, and of all things. Nothing is abandoned, nothing lost, nothing without participation in the glory. All things will be deified. All that is created or ever has been will become God. And by participation in him, by our own deification, we participate in that recapitulation of his.

People often don’t realize what this means. Simply saying that death will end, so we will not eat animals in the kingdom, is greeted with surprise. But saying that all things are being deified – everything – anything conceivable – anything that ever was or will be – that can shock and scare people. But it is our Faith. It is the meaning of existence, the very definition of creation. Creation *is* the Economy of Christ. Creator becoming creation *is* the gospel. And of course, if you ask the priests or the scholars, the decent ones who are not arrogant asses pursuing their own exaltation by trying to pick apart the holiness of this, they will all agree, of course. They will tell the people who don’t know, yes that’s right, of course, didn’t you know that is our faith?

But then to point out that this means that when we look at animals, we see, not in the same depth as we see in man, but still see Christ. We see them being deified. We see that they are not fodder, not machines. And then again, when we look at other living things, all living things, plants, trees, algae, we see deification, we see that which will become God. And then even, finally, in perhaps a wider radius, that which is inanimate matter, though we don’t really know as much about that as our scientific dogma pretends when it talks to us – I prefer to listen to the high level scientists talking to each other – they’re less dogmatic and arrogant about “the facts” that always turn out to be just the bare intelligence of public school science dogmatics and popularizers of Darwinism.

That which is rock and stone and mountain is not, as we may think, “dead” if by “dead” we mean it will be lost, has no value, or can be disregarded as profane or not sacred. All the earth, and all that is beyond it is sacred. The skies, the sun and moon, the mountain, the trees, the earth, and all that lives on it, and we – we are connected to it through Christ our saviour, the saviour of all creation, the deliverer of animals and trees from death, the redeemer of mountains and stars and stones and algae and insects and all that is, not merely all that lives. That, this kind of talk, at least in US circles, scares people of presumably “christian” faith. But theirs is not a “christian” faith, if they deny this.

To deny it is to deny that God became man. It is to say “not really”, “not in fulness”, “not entirely”. It is to deny as surely as the heretics and gnostics of old that Christ is one person with two natures. It is to “protect” Christ by insulating him from creation, and so severing our line to creation too, our ability to plug in, it is to separate and alienate us from creation so that we abuse it and do not consider it in our salvation, it is to set us against it and embrace death, not salvation from death, as the natural norm. It is to make distinction the basis of opposition. It is the heresy of all heresies. It is the language of hell. Francis Schaeffer’s book Pollution and the Death of Man is fantastic on this.

That’s why I put together my earlier essay on the topic – the pagan environmentalists are simply trying to defend the sanctity of creation by suggesting that “god” made it “out of” himself (or herself) – that it is deified in that way. But that’s not the only avenue to take. It’s damned close. We insist that God’s creation is through his energies (energia), which are uncreate, and are God. Not God’s essence but, still God. In that sense, yeah, God could be said to have created the cosmos out of himself, if you can also allow that he created it out of nothing, meaning that there was no pre-existing material that co-existed alongside God – because then, he’s not God at all, which is why the gnostics have to cook up a creative “demiurge” alongside him – where did the demiurge come from? What the pagans are not prepared to accept, partly from the influence of Darwinism corrupting their paganism, and making it pseudo-paganism, is Death, and how it came upon the world. They consider Death *part* of the natural order, not an alien infection upon it. And that’s their undoing. But the sanctity of creation *is* protected in the deification of all creation, as we insist. Paganism is a left turn into theoretical invention to accomplish something, unsuccessfully, which is already accomplished from the outset by the Creator. It’s just that a lot of people passing themselves off as “christian” and representing “christianity” aren’t really offering a Christian understanding of the Economy at all. What the pagans are really running up against is gnostics in “christian” media.

All of creation is sacred. We are saved through water, and through wine, and through bread, and through oil, through fishes and loaves, and through all things that participate in Christ. All things around us, everything that is, is a vehicle of our salvation and co-participant, and to be one with us, and one with God, so that all are one. This is the only Christian faith. Anything that detracts from it is a different “christ” – one who is either not God or not man, not creator or not creation, and then we are all lost, and all is hopeless and despair. It is Christ who joined creation and Creator, deifying the one by the other, in his one person by the two natures. To be of Christ at all is to participate in this joining – this interconnectedness.

Or else they make him creation but not God, and so then we are just men among men trying to be wise, and nothing has the power to connect us to all things or connect us and all things to God. And then creation is futile, because that which was created is not to be redeemed, and creation and redemption are irrevocably torn apart, and the Enemy is right that death is all that will be forever. And no faith is then true. All is nonsense, even disbelief becomes madness, and we are lost to chaos with no ground for our minds, and no ground for our bodies, and no ground for anything.

When I watch the blue movie, as I call it, I see it showing me how we are connected, but not insisting that I fall down and worship a god who did not become man, which cannot make all things one, or worship a god who is just a man, and can therefore give nothing meaning. True, it’s full of religious references, but not offensively. They’ve asked more than preached. And for this, I can live in the film.

And do you know what it means to someone who is alien even from aliens to be connected to all things? “No longer strangers. No longer aliens. Now, we are citizens with the Saints in the Kingdom of God.” For someone who has searched for meaning, for meaning all over, to find in Christ’s Incarnation that all things have been joined, united, put together? And for someone who suffers at the suffering of the world, the cosmos, the “groaning and travail” that is the slaughter, disease, warfare? It is a profound deliverance. Not that Avatar has given me that meaning – this is our Faith and always has been – but that I feel an immense and abiding joy when it is articulated visually.

Anyway, if you’ve seen it, see it again. And again. There’s so much detail, if you look. And do see it on the big screen. You have to be immersed in it, not spectating from outside when, at the end, they are all plugged in to the earth, to the roots of trees, and are seeking a transformation.

Oh, and yeah, if you were expecting the standard review with commentary on special effects, you can get that anywhere, so no.

Notes on Pleasure

Someone yesterday was saying that Aristotle’s idea of pleasure is doing something well. I think that’s one good definition. Contemporary man treats pleasure as stimulation, but without other purpose or meaning. Constant stimulation that we get from video games, sex without love, or mindless dissipation in simulated pleasures – which might be rehashed TV or music, or reading crappy magazines.

Image by Lorika13 via Flickr

I think pleasure is always other-related, it’s always outward, not merely auto-erotic or entirely in the self. I’m not knocking those things, but I’m saying there’s a distinction between pleasure and stimulation, and that pleasure is derived, ultimately, from meaning, like all other human qualities. I just got back from conducting a 2hr training, and then another appointment for 2hrs of consulting. I left knowing I did well, and deriving an ongoing attitude of pleasure from it. My experience suggests that Aritstotle, as we may interpret him, has this right.

But how does one evaluate doing “well”? Lots of people on American Idol think they sing well, when clearly they don’t. You’ll see someone belting it out, but it’s awful. Some will say it doesn’t matter, that it’s singing “well” if you derive pleasure from it. This is fundamentally backwards. It’s a heresy against man’s energies, against the order of creation, to say such a thing. No, it is possible to seem to derive pleasure illicitly – pleasure from acclaim, from attention, from an illusory self-image, but these aren’t actually pleasure – they’re merely the stimulation of the passions. In such a case, meaning is alien to the activity, in that meaning is an interaction with others, not merely a presentation of an image to others or the receiving of a stimulation from others. To act “well” implies an interaction with others that is more substantive than self-gratification alone. Actual pleasure is derived from doing well in the sense that meaning, external to the self, but thereby residing in the self, is the source and fruit of one’s activity.

It’s not writing a poem that only you understand. That may have “meaning” to just you, but it’s not Meaning, in a universal or cosmic sense. By definition, that which is utterly autonomous is not a source of cosmic meaning. Doing something well is doing something that benefits or enriches creation, and you as part of it. Meaning is that which is derived from acting in coordination with creation as a whole. And genuine pleasure is derived from meaningful activity.

If you cook well, it is well when it provides comfort, nourishment, and peace to yourself or to others. If you made an intricately detailed casserole and then just threw it away, that’s not cooking “well”. You can claim all you want that you showed expertise, skill, and creativity, and that may be true in the barest sense, but those things only derive their meaning by finding a place in the grand (cosmic) scheme of things – in conjunction with creation. Autonomy from meaning is the curse of pleasure. And nothing is done well that is devoid of meaning.

So, in the quest for meaning, which all people are on, whether it’s to find for the first time, to find what was lost, or to continue to find what is nearby and identified (the quest for meaning is, in this way, like the quest for food), it may be helpful to distinguish pleasure from stimulation, doing something well from doing it with mere technical skill (again a chef who makes a souffle for the garbage is not doing well in the same way as a mother who makes scrambled eggs for breakfast), and to distinguish between meaning and self-gratification (what people erroneously refer to as “meaning to me” – as though we all live in separate cosmoses and get our own cosmic meaning – meaning is meaning precisely because it can be shared in by all of creation).

It is an opinion, but taking a queue from Aristotle, I believe this is some of what our Faith would say about it. As ever, I don’t speak for the Orthodox in this, because it’s just an opinion (we would say “speculation”), and I acknowledge with the fathers that speculation is dangerous and to be avoided where possible. One reason for this journal is to remove from my mind through expression those things that, if I hold them inside it too long, can become an endless source of speculation that will surely lead me to the pit. Sometimes people will pick up something off the ground and run with it. Please keep in mind, if that’s you, especially if you are not of the Faith, the one, holy, and true Orthodox Faith, this is trash. This is not a gem. It is cast off here for a reason. It is only the byproduct, the emission of a mind that is striving to obtain union with the source of meaning, the most holy Trinity.

Christ and the Feeding Tube

My wife and I have an understanding. Resuscitate, revive, and sustain life as often and as much as possible. Neither of us will accept any prodding to pull the plug, sign DNR orders, or any such thing.

Image via Wikipedia

We do this, not only because we love one another, and want to live together forever, as we shall in paradise, but also for religious reasons. And we know full well there are those who claim it is Orthodox thinking to “let people go”, to refuse to use “artificial” machines and techniques to save or sustain life. And we think many of these people have imbibed deeply of the spirit of the world, and are not espousing Orthodox thought at all. Some, we allow, have simply misunderstood technology and medicine, or have not thought it through. The prevalence of thinking doesn’t indicate good thinking.

Now to sustaining life: What we’re talking about, quite often, in real terms, is food, water, oxygen, etc. So much of removing “life support” is quite literally what it sounds like – it is removing the things needed to support life. In fact, the most common causes of death in this way, are starvation, thirst, and suffocation. Not only are they painful forms of death, but grotesque and violent, however ironically the very technologies being removed are replaced with technologies to make these less painful or less grotesque – more presentable.

But these are the very things that we are bound by Christ to provide for our families, our brethren, indeed those who have need of them. Feed them. Give them Drink. Etc.  “If anyone doesn’t provide for his own, he is worse than an infidel.” and “If one has the world’s goods, and seeing his brother in need shuts his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” “If anyone’s son asks for bread, does he give him a stone?” “I was hungry, and you fed me. I did thirst, and you gave me drink. Therefore…”

You will hear the religious pundits and armchair religious philosophers tell you that technology has extended life beyond what God intended (as though they know what God intended), and that therefore we have to ask “new questions” about when to stop sustaining life. This is gnostic thinking. I won’t expand on that here, but it is, and this is our response:

The questions aren’t new. The ancients dealt with very real issues of the responsibility to sustain life, or to let it expire. Indeed, the early Orthodox established the first convalescent homes for the elderly, not to mention all of their hospices for the homeless, abandoned, and those dying of leprosy and disease. And they fed them, clothed them, and cared for them with whatever means they had. Once you say that we will give this much care, and no more – this much we will sustain your life, but no longer – under these conditions, but not those, you are engaged in a kind of philosophical relativism that has nothing to do with the love demonstrated by the Church. The testimony of the lives of the Saints stands in stark contrast to and repudiation of the decadent, murderous lives of these contemporary religionists. Denying the Saints, they are neither Catholic nor Christian, nor Orthodox and partakers of our holy tradition.

Raising the dead and healing the sick, those who were not of the Faith prompted the apostles to protest to Christ, and Christ told the apostles to let them be – these were doing their good work in Christ’s name. Even greater things would eventually be done in his name. The parable of the Good Samaritan is a similar  example.

And so now to the question of saving life. Left for dead, without care, the Jew would have died, but the Samaritan, the one with love, says Christ, provided care and feeding, sustained and revived him.

Image via Wikipedia

What technology has done is made it possible to do that better, for longer, perhaps more expensively and with more finesse and precision, but it hasn’t changed the questions. Who dares say that Christ needs to come and preach a new gospel, and address the questions that he forgot or couldn’t forsee. Who dares to say they will do this for Christ, with their religious philosophy? Gnostics. Gnostics every one. Denyers of the gospel. Repudiaters of the Incarnation. Blasphemers of the Holy Spirit.

What is “artificial” is their philosophies, their contrived gospels. Medicine, using the tools and techniques at hand, has been around forever. And Christ himself, sanctified the concept of medicine, by himself accepting the attribution “Great Physician.”

Honour a physician with the honour due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him: for the Lord hath created him. For of the most High cometh healing, and he shall receive honour of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head: and in the sight of great men he shall be in admiration. The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them. Was not the water made sweet with wood, that the virtue thereof might be known? And he hath given men skill, that he might be honoured in his marvellous works. With such doth he heal men, and taketh away their pains. Of such doth the apothecary make a confection; and of his works there is no end; and from him is peace over all the earth, My son, in thy sickness be not negligent: but pray unto the Lord, and he will make thee whole. Leave off from sin, and order thine hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all wickedness. Give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour; and make a fat offering, as not being. Then give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him: let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him. There is a time when in their hands there is good success. For they shall also pray unto the Lord, that he would prosper that, which they give for ease and remedy to prolong life. He that sinneth before his Maker, let him fall into the hand of the physician. - Sirach 38

We hear so often, “for all practical purposes they are dead.” Practical purposes? What does life have to do with practical purposes? And you rail against machines? You’ve just declared that a human life is nothing but a machine.

Did not even the Lord raise one who had died? Was already dead. Was long since dead. He raised him, “Lazarus, come forth!” Indeed, Christ raised all the dead, and when Christ died, the dead rose and walked around and were seen by those who knew them. Christ is the antithesis of these theories of life which are hostile to our history, Faith, and tradition. Christ is the one who goes far beyond the stench of the grave, descending even into Hell to retrieve those who have long since reposed.

Speak against the Lord, Gnostics, if you dare. You repudiate the very one who can save your life, now and forever. But you Orthodox, who are you to decide with the philosophies of the Protestants, the metaphysics of the heretics, who should live and who should die – who is kept alive and cared for too long, and who should be abandoned and their care removed? When you mouth their vanities, you are not my brothers, when I or my wife are sick. Don’t come near our bedside. Stay out of our hospital room. Keep the bony fingers of your heresy from our lives. You are not our brothers; the Samaritan is. Give us the Samaritan. The pagan that saves our lives is the Christian, and the Christian that says, “let them expire” is the pagan, and we will not pray with you.

I have even seen one blasphemer’s “Orthodox” web site that is offering up these “withhold treatment” orders for his congregation and others, as he preaches his vain personal philosophy as though it were the truth. Schemer. Ideologue. There’s one frock in which I cannot find life, one stole under which I cannot find shelter.

Now, I’m not interested in debating this with anyone. Above all else, I see our religion as a religion of life. Did not Christ say as much? God is God of the living. All the enemies of life can offer is religious philosophy – they have no appeal to the one that created life, not recourse to our Holy Tradition that is not polluted with the whispering of others. It is true that some holy men held varieties of opinions on varieties of things. No doubt someone can easily find such an opinion. In the end, I will forgive an opinion, as you must forgive mine.

But if you come near us with your gleaming knife of sacrifice, I will call you “pagan”, which is what you are. Keep away. May God curse the knife that is raised over our living bodies, the testament of his greatness and power. As much as you do not sustain us, you do not sustain Christ. As much as you do not save our lives, you do not save the life of Christ. As much as you withhold treatment from us, you withhold treatment from Christ. And what will the Physician say to you in the Judgment? That you were philosophically right? “Physician, heal thyself!” He has already spoken.

And may God preserve the physician that shows forth the glory of God, with machines, with mixtures, with tubes and tools, with wires and computers, with whatever means he may have. As the Samaritan gave from what means he had, so in the case of my family, give, and you will be rewarded by the Most High God who created us both, who made Heaven and Earth and put it into your hands for this purpose. You are the instrument of the Almighty. Save us, by the prayers of all the Saints.

And even if we babble insanities, “Kill me. Let me go. Starve me. Suffocate me. Abandon me. Go away. It’s my time. I want to die.” What friend hides from his own friend in time of need? What suffering person calls out, “leave me be” that you shrug and leave them be? Who are you? What kind of friends are you? What friend sees his friend on a ledge saying “I don’t want to live,” and thinks, “all right then. To each his own.” If you’re my friend, you will ignore me if I plead for death. You will give me life, because in life is the Spirit of God. Because I get old, you want to abandon me? How is my life less valuable than an infant’s? Who are you to decide which lives have more or less value? Or if I’m unconscious? Is the infant able to tell you his preference for life or death? If you are knocked out, shall I wait until you wake up to ask if you’d like treatment? Try to get around it all you want. Good people, like the Good Samaritan, care for those who are sick and dying. Bad people offer up philosophies over their sick beds.

And to hell with your religious arguments. Christ healed even on the Sabbath. Your argument is with him; you won’t find it here.

Anonymity & Christian Tradition

I love the anonymity the web provides. And sometimes I confess a perverse sort of pleasure in how some of the most abusive and presumptuous critics are discomfitted by it and scream for more controls, more exposure, less privacy, etc. All in the name of an honesty and accountability they don’t actually model except in quickly offering up their ‘papers’ to anyone who asks – which is more a lazyness and surrender of soul than anything truly decent and honest.

In the religious realm, especially: One has to dismiss the rantings of people who never met an ad hominem they didn’t like – people who’ve never heard of an ad hominem in the first place. People who care not about truth but credentials. People who don’t like dissent, don’t like questions or speculation they can’t attribute to an authority figure, people who want to carry books with the rules spelled out and the authors’ names next to the rules. It’s part of the fundamentalist impulse.

Truly, there are only two reasons that the identity of the author matters:

One reason is so you can accept or dismiss the ideas based on the identity. It’s dishonest, it’s a logical fallacy, and it’s a form of worshipping heroes on the one hand (idolatry) and dismissing those we don’t like or strangers on the other (pride and inhospitality). It is to follow persons, not the truth. The assumption is that the ‘right’ people are usually correct, and the ‘wrong’ people usually aren’t. But it has always been the case that good people with good credentials have offered up swill in place of truth – and our very tradition depends upon the words and deeds of the ‘wrong’ people. Uneducated people, tax collectors, Samaritans, women, and Gentiles. Speaking of the “right” people:

“If I, Paul, or an Angel, or anyone comes to you claiming to be Christ, and preaches any other gospel than the one you have received…”

The other reason is so that those who express ideas we don’t like can be punished for them. I’ve been called a “coward” by people who were angry with my ideas. Such claims imply that there’s actually something to be afraid of, and that the person making the claim actually has it in mind. In other words, he’s validating the reason he wants the information – to punish the offender. Why not just come out and say, “If I find out who you are, I’ll do x to you.” The critic relies on dishonesty, chiding the anonymous writer for being afraid, but withholding acknowledgement on what presumably fearful thing he has in mind.

“The owner of the vineyard sent servants to the keepers of the vineyard, to speak to them, but they did not listen and killed them instead.”

I’ve seen priests act like this. I’ve seen people talk of virtue and honesty and dignity and then act like this. Truly it is said, “there will come a time when your own brethren will deliver you up, and think they do a service to God.”

On the one hand, the zealots will persecute others in the name of Christ, always seeking justification in the fact that it’s “those people” – it’s not the correct people – it’s not us. To any such “correct” people reading this, I am with all the incorrect people. I am with the wrong people who are dangerous and a threat to the world you want to create. I am with the people who are making it worse. Do to me what you would do to them. But don’t expect me to hand my head to you on a platter.

On the other hand, the effeminate weaklings who follow names and approved leaders are just as bad. Those who cannot listen to anything without checking the speaker’s credentials – “he’s part of the such and such school” – “he’s one of so and so’s disciples” – “he used to be one of those people”. For these wishy washy relativists, an idea is not actually true in itself – truth is a subjective thing that depends on who says it. They have committed the fundamental theological and anthropological heresy and fallacy of conflating subject and object, person with operation, who I am with what I do. In the tortured confusion of their own minds, they cannot but be led about by whoever is holding up the golden calf as easily as whoever is wearing the mitre.

Personally, I like to point out to those who lecture the anonymous about responsibility and integrity (usually the mouthiest are US citizens – always lecturing the world on how they should live), that their own political, social, and cultural traditions are rife with elegant anonymity – indeed depend on it entirely. From Publius to Samuel Clemens. Of course it’s not necessary to cite religious examples, as these are more interested in asserting their own culture than in following Christ. Christ for them is the Christ of culture. He is not the Christ who could have said:

“Tell no one who I am.”

To those who talk about where they stand religiously, and cite nebulous principles that they interpret against the moral status of the anonymous, I like to mention the many anonymous saints who left anonymous works, did anonymous deeds, and wrote ikons anonymously, and toiled and gave and lived anonymously. If they look closely, they will find some of them in their scriptures. Indeed, the books of scripture are quite often written anonymously. In fact, the entire monastic tradition is like this – the monks give up their family names when they receive orders. It is so obvious that, failing to take stock of the fundamental liberty within their own tradition, the advocates of exposure want dossiers and ID checks and tracking systems and all the apparatus of the worship of the modern state. They have sold their birthright for the pottage of contemporary personalism and tacit depersonalization. For them, persons and ideas have become inseparable. They would make good officers of the state.

“Welcome strangers, for some have entertained angels unawares.”

In any case, originally this site was anonymous by default, because I never saw a reason to add my name. When I found people making such a big deal about it, and listened to them, and looked at my suffering brethren and how others are wrongfully persecuted or simply dismissed, I decided out of solidarity to refuse to add my name. And when I took stock of how the clamour for putting not ideas in the dock but personalities is a clamour for crucifixion, a clamour for illicit trial, I found that I would not add my voice to those who cried out:

“Tell us plainly who you are. Who do you say that you are?”

Instead, I decided to let them squirm, and do with their ignorance what they like, since they do so very little good with what they know.

“Then neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”

If you don’t like my ideas, don’t read them. But you don’t own them, visitor. Nor do you own me. Nor anyone else. Nor is your inconvenience at doing something fundamentally illogical at best (ad hominem) if not illicit, a claim on my activity. And if you are merely curious, then the answer to your question is that I have decided not to comment upon it. I don’t answer the merely curious.

For those of you out there who are considering writing anonymously, I encourage you to be accountable to your Confessor. Tell him about the place you write. Go to confession. Live in such a way that your life can change and is subject to ideas other than your own. And then be free. Perhaps your pride will want to put your name on everything, and anonymity will help you overcome it. Whatever you decide, some of the others of us are holding the line, and hope that makes it easier for you.

Christ on the Tree

Someone asks how we speak in our hymnography of Christ being crucified on the tree, and do not confine our language to describing specifically the cross. One answer is that, for us, the matter is intensely important. In other words, there is significance in that it was wood and that it was a tree. By a tree man fell and by a tree man was lifted up. By a tree man was deceived, and by it he was illumined and given sight. The serpent was lifted up on a pole, and the nation was healed, foretelling the one who, lifted up did cast down and defeat the serpent, healing all men. The deification of all creation requires the participation of all creation in Christ’s incarnation – and vice versa. The tree is one such thing. The gnostic – modern or otherwise, can never accept this. For him, material must be secondary, irrelevant, or even disruptive to salvation. For the Orthodox, there is no salvation without matter. As St. John of Damascus has said, I will not cease to venerate the matter through which my salvation has been effected.

And so water, and so oil, and so many other things are means of salvation for us. When we see one kind of material, we do not see it as disconnected from all other things of that kind, or indeed from any thing or anyone, but related, connected, indeed redeemed, recapitulated, and communicated, joined to us, because all matter is joined to Our Lord. He in His Incarnation and in his very flesh summed up and redeemed all matter, and now all things groan waiting for our redemption, that finally all things may be complete in us.

Deconstruction and Proof Texts

From a comment posted to another blog:

Indeed: How could we Orthodox base our authority on the scriptures, when we wrote the scriptures? Rather, the reverse is true. The scriptures derive such authority as they have from us. Indeed, were it not so, the Ecumenical Councils would have no meaning, for in them we articulated the canons of the scriptures. But in reality, the scriptures are the icon of Christ, and so we’re not concerned so much with ‘authority’ in some quasi-Roman-Catholic sense, but with the Incarnation, with the Scriptures as revelation of the Incarnate One. For us, the Scriptures are in this sense an interactive call to theosis, to deification, to union with God. This is their purpose and their significance to us, as indeed are all things in Holy Orthodoxy, but a means to that one end. For us the question is not “what is true?” as much as “how may I be deified?”, because Orthodoxy is not a belief system – it’s an asceticism.

How could we Orthodox base our authority on the scriptures, when we wrote the scriptures? Rather, the reverse is true.

On your last point, concerning those who do not follow Orthodox epistemology nonetheless trying to cobble together proof texts from our writings to refute that very epistemology, it is indeed parasitical. Pure invention would be better suited to their underlying assumptions – why don’t they write their own books? The question is a historical one, as much as an ecclesiological and epistemological one. Fundamentally, they consider themselves the heirs of the apostles and so of holy writ, and attribute therefore to their own tribe and mentality those holy men who had no such notions as they hold, and then position them to try to reconcile them or admit confusion.

We are debating with people who first begin with the notion that the Church is something general and non-specific, and then proceed to claim historical continuity with it’s fathers and texts. Their history, and indeed historiographical method is bunko. If that falls through their fingers, nothing they say now about doctrine or theory matters at all. Theirs is, at it’s heart, the error of the literary deconstructionist. It’s as if one of us wrote an epic poem, and they think they know better than the author what it means. We write books, and they take those texts and presume to tell us what we mean. And we say,

Orthodoxy is not a belief system – it’s an asceticism.

No, we also have the original author’s letters, and his disciple’s letters, and the continuity of discussion (e.g. the liturgy) in which they lived and breathed, the very tradition into which they were writing and the language of metaphors and references and history they were speaking – the grammar of their faith, and we have their prayers, and their lives, and their disciples prayers and lives, and their mentors’ prayers and lives and letters and books, and we have the decisions of the councils in which they participated, and the succession in which they participated, and even the languages in which they wrote and spoke and prayed, and indeed the very physical churches in which they served and prayed and did works, and their childrens’ childrens’ children unto ages that they sired in the faith, and the testimonies of holy men to the meaning and significance of their teachings in their lives, and miracles, appearances, visions, visitations, healings, and answered prayers following the veneration of these men, which follow upon and proceed because of this understanding of their thinking, and our homes are filled with their icons, and their names upon our calendars and our lips – indeed our children are given their names and keep their name days as the days of their new birth, and indeed Bishops are tonsured in their names, and Churches consecrated in their names, and monastic brotherhoods proceed in their names and go ahead before us into glorification and return to us with answered prayers and signs and wonders bidding us follow still, so that we see the line of our people stretching back to Him who made us and ahead to those who live in his uncreated Energies, deified and divinized.

But here they offer, “yes, but we know what the writings really mean”, which is nothing else than what the gnostics of old offered up against the Orthodox: that they were wiser than the apostles, and possessed the higher intuition, the illumined insight, the greater connection to the spiritual thread of God, and had no need of the Incarnate Christ in whom all these fathers subsist, since the secrets of their minds are superior. This is the character of those who offer us the ulterior wisdom of their own minds, and bid us look away from the path of light to their own ‘enlightenment’.

But we are the elder brother. They cannot speak of Christ or Christianity or fathers or Church or scripture except by us.

But we are the elder brother. They cannot speak of Christ or Christianity or fathers or Church or scripture except by us. Ours is the language and history of heaven come to earth, and so it’s nonsense for us to reverse this order – or rather it’s Babel, the attempt of earth to attain heaven, as if to own it and possess it and situate it within our own religious framework and assumptions and culture. God forbid. And God save us by the prayers of the fathers who led and lead us still, who are not dead, and not silent, and not impotent, but continue to save us, and speak to us, and teach us, as we listen to their voices and receive grace through them, drowning out the distortions of their false followers who presume to tear them away from this unbroken tradition – what you call our epistemology, which is really much more – and so to sever us as well.

How can we listen to the heterodox prattle about writings and teachings when, regardless of all else, they are not of us, not of those whose writings they handle so roughly? As the one who led me said, “If they say they follow the Apostles and the Saints, then let them join their Church.”

Key excerpts from the [Original Comment Source]:

You believe that the Pope, the Apostles and the Bible are somehow “infallible.” I believe that the prophets, Apostles, and saints of all ages, up until this exact minute, have experienced revelation, which is glorification.

I follow the Orthodox Church, whose authority is based not upon Scripture or Liturgy per se, but upon real revelation, which is direct, noetic experience of the divine.

Without glorification, Christianity becomes a “religion.” A set of rules and maxims which are dictated to man by mere men.

The [scriptures are] written by those who are inspired by their experiences of glorification to write words that lead (in the context of the Church and individual spiritual fatherhood) others to the selfsame experience of God.

The Rush to Qualification and the Danger of Orthodoxy

You’re coming within earshot in the middle of this conversation…

Gregory: … well, one hopes we’re actually making progress in theosis, otherwise what are we doing?

Basil: Sure, but how do you measure that? I mean it’s not like notches on your belt.

Gregory: No, but the fathers do speak of increments to enlightenment, though I think those are helpful ways of discussing it, where it’s actually quite fluid.

Basil: Enlightenment? I don’t know that I’m comfortable with that word.

Gregory: That’s the word they use. fairly frequently, from ancient times. It’s used that way in the scriptures.

Basil: But I think you have to qualify that – explain what you mean. Otherwise, it’s dangerous. People might misunderstand.

Gregory: I think if you have to immediately qualify something, you can’t really hear it. Its meaning gets systematized, defined, lost amid all the qualifications. I prefer to listen to the fathers than perhaps misunderstand because I qualified them

Basil: Sure, for you and I, that’s fine. But you have to be careful about talking about these things around people who can get easily misled.

Gregory: But that’s just it, I think we’re the ones likely to be easily misled, thinking we understand something better than people who can hear it without qualifications.

Don’t worry: This conversation didn’t actually happen, nor does it mirror a recent one in which I’ve changed the names or the topic. It’s just an amalgam of discussions I’ve been in (often involuntarily) or witnessed (and from which I’ve quietly walked away – like a ticking package).

We like our religion as white meat. Pretty, and well-behaved. It sits up straight; it doesn’t chew with its mouth open, and it doesn’t smell.

I think, though, it’s illustrative of two approaches to understanding. One tries to hear, and one tries to explain. One tries to understand, and one tries to make it understandable to the public. One is looking to learn from the fathers, even if they’re speaking about radical things that challenge our understanding of what the basic questions are, and the other is looking for how to “balance” the fathers, so our basic questions remain answered to our satisfaction.

I fully expect someone will wish to “balance” this post as well, kind of illustrating my point. The rush to qualification precludes us really hearing anything – the intent of the author, the reality to which they’re speaking… what we end up with is the Protestant impulse to classify things, immediately upon hearing or encountering them, as “true” or “false”, “right” or “wrong”, “extreme” or “balanced” (whatever that means). We like our religion as white meat, pretty, and well-behaved. It sits up straight; it doesn’t chew with its mouth open, and it doesn’t smell. Like a dutiful son, it’s got one hand in our cultural mother’s lap. In other words, it’s Protestant.

Who of us presumes to “balance” the fathers who attained enlightenment and achieved theosis? It is they who would “balance” us, if we even presumed that “balance” is a Christian objective.

But that’s not the true religion we Orthodox have received. Not at all. Our religion, very often, quite literally doesn’t bathe. Our Faith has stubble – a bit more than stubble, actually, if we keep it whole. It isn’t a neatly-defined set of categories. We don’t carry around “study bibles”, with glossaries in the back (despite recent Quixotic attempts to adapt them to us). We have messy religion. Not Anglican-messy – I don’t mean that (and no offense meant to you Anglicans, but you couldn’t exactly get offended unless you already know what we’re talking about. Here we don’t buy the: “We can say the N word, but you can’t!” reasoning.). But we have religion that says repeatedly, “you’re not able to understand, no matter what you do, and you may have to live with that.”

The rush to qualify is the rush to make truth safe, even before it can be understood. To make it fit the pre-existing conception of the puzzle – the mental picture on someone’s cognitive box. And as such, it means we can never learn again, not really. We can never sit at the feet of the holy fathers and learn, because we are not willing to go back and question the shape and structure of the puzzle, once we started filling in the pieces. The rush to qualification blinds us, so that our initial assumptions become unaccountable absolutes, and we are no longer subjecting our own thoughts to the rigours of Christian thought and the pedagogy of Christian ‘thinkers’, but now are the makers of our own Faith. Again, Protestantism.

Our religion, very often, quite literally doesn’t bathe. Our Faith has stubble.

The rush to qualification is a Protestant impulse as surely as the rush to fragmentation and, indeed, they are causes of one another. The attempt to nail down a definition of all religious understanding and experience, a thoroughly Protestant approach, to afford a unified theory of Faith (Sound Roman Catholic? That’s where it came from.), is ironically the very creator of factions that, by that same Protestant impulse (defining the “church” and the “faith” by acceptance of definitions of other doctrines) spawns tens of thousands of denominations. In other words, the rush to qualification is the genus of denominationalism. It is the beginning of the crumbling of that authentically catholic understanding of Christendom that we begin with when we read the fathers in the first place, and from which Christendom fell (read Western Christianity), when it proclaimed itself sole arbiter fide.

As to the particular form of qualification we’re calling “the rush to balance” – who of us presumes to “balance” the fathers who attained enlightenment and achieved theosis? It is they who would “balance” us, if we even presumed that “balance” is a Christian objective, which we don’t. Yes, I’m aware of various proof texts that one may like to cite when trying to fashion Christianity into an expression of the culture – into Christendom, but we’re Orthodox, not Episcopalians (OK, you can fault me for that one). That’s just the thing, you see, arranging a bunch of texts so they say what we want them to say is itself a form of qualification, definition – it too can, if we haven’t really listened first, mitigate actually hearing the fathers teach. And hearing the fathers teach is NOT a safe thing. Not at all.

Talk about unsafe… union with God, becoming God, theosis, deification… what we Orthodox mean when we say the word “salvation”… that’s not a safe thing at all.

This is why the one ‘qualification’ that is commended to us by the fathers themselves, is having a guide in our Father Confessor, one who imitates the fathers and follows in their path, so that in reproducing in ourselves the teachings of the fathers, we find we are reproducing the behavior of those who follow them. That’s not safe, either. If you’re an amateur logician, like me, you’re already seeing how this could be subjective, how it could go astray – how, frankly, it’s a fallible source of knowledge and understanding, and even a dangerously reproductive one. Yup. Indeed. Let me say again, yes, you’ve got it. It’s not safe.

It comes down to whether you believe, like the heterodox, that reason can take you all the way (or that you need a religious component, too, but you really mean religious reason – that scripture, tradition, and faith produce an ever evolving succession of agreed statements or more religious philosophy), or whether you believe that the Holy Trinity must work with you in synergy to save your mind, and it can’t all be nailed down, even in trying to define what constitutes a “mystery” (wow – if you succeeded, you’d fail, because they wouldn’t be mysteries anymore). You can’t prove synergy in a logician’s “laboratory” – you can only demonstrate the need for it. Nor can you get by with a “leap of faith”, as you might hear from Rome (might as well give your credit card number over the phone). It’s an activity, though, and one that’s embarked upon as a path into the fullness of Orthodox experience, and not as reducing all these questions to matters of religious philosophy. We are an asceticism, not a belief system.

The attempt to nail down a definition of all religious understanding and experience, to afford a unified theory of Faith, is ironically the very creator of tens of thousands of denominations.

It is certainly true that any one father does not speak alone, but speaks within the consensus patrum. And if you wanted to call that the fathers “balancing themselves”, it’s hard to object. Though, personally, I think you’re reducing patristics then to a discussion of emphases and feelings and missing the point. Once you’ve got an entirely pliable discussion of emphases, you can pretty much mold what you want, and we’re just as easily back to fashioning the puzzle each according to our own cognitive maps, whether priest, layman, or monk. Flesh is something – there is a form to it – an Orthodox attitude, if you will – it’s neither in the glossary and the index, on the one hand, nor in the ever-mutable amalgam on the other. We’ve seen that argument play itself out on the field of Western religion, and it’s not our argument. Our thinking has a body. But the point being, it’s not a safe body. As C.S. Lewis would say, Aslan is not a tame lion.

Talk about unsafe… union with God, becoming God, theosis, deification… what we Orthodox mean when we say the word “salvation”… that’s not a safe thing at all. God is a consuming fire, we have said – by which we mean that we don’t know him – not from without, and we cannot define or explain him – his essence is incompatible with any understanding, but that union is possible in the unsafest of ways. It is as if to say, in great danger and mortal threat lies your union with the one you don’t know. How do you qualify that? Some will try, but they’ll really only be qualifying words, and not the thing itself, which cannot be grasped, understood, dissected, defined, or nailed down. It cannot be carried under the arm or explained in a podcast or a blog post or a meeting with a dynamic guest speaker. It is beyond safety, beyond qualification, cannot be balanced, since no other thing can be compared to it or set beside it. Welcome to the entirely dangerous world of the Orthodox Faith.

The creation groans and is in travail. The demons believe and tremble. Angels long to look. The mountains quake. And God walks around in our midst. It’s a dangerous place, a place that’s difficult to qualify and looks much different when you don’t.

Altogether on the Dirge

The other day I drove by a sign announcing the upcoming topic at a United Methodist Church: “This Wednesday…. TEAMWORK!” Wow. Thanks for that – it makes an ideal example. That’s the epitome of religion – translating the standards, values, and assumptions of the dominant culture into liturgical contexts (in this case in the form of corporate soft skills training). Otherwise known as idolatry, which is the importing of the gods of the world (e.g. Canaan or the various organs of the United States) into the altars of “churches”.

I like this better, though, than the subtlety with which it’s carried in the rest of the time, under a cloth, as it were. Might as well just be open about it. One would like to say it shows balls; unfortunately, what it really displays is completely giving up – a total loss of uniquely Christian content – the mix of rubble (of Christendom) and detritus (of the world) that comprises the interests of churchgoers. It’s post-Christian Christianity. It’s Postianity. Altogether now on the dirge…

Knights of the Desert

Increasingly, I find dissidence and social resistance are considered, among the religious, to be either un-Christian, or somehow an unpleasant aspect of Christianity that is best swept under the rug along with keeping the fasts. Actually, fasting and resistance to the world, in fact open warfare with the world, are related. The very purpose of asceticism is to save us – from the world and unto God. So often, you’ll find those who don’t do one (e.g. fasting or resisting the world) don’t appreciate the other. I’ll be called judgmental for that, but I really don’t care – I only care, at this point, if it’s true. But what is true religion? To relieve the poor and keep oneself unstained by the world. Increasingly, I’m thinking that all of orthopraxy (or orthopraxis for you misguided sticklers) is summed up in that statement.

The other day someone asked a personal question at coffee hour – namely, why I tendered my resignation at a particular company. I explained that I’m not a big fan of corporations and what they’ve done to the culture, the world of work, and people. I find they tend to create a climate of fear and compliance that’s antithetical to what I value. My boss tried to make me afraid and, when faced with an invitation to fear, I tend to break it. So I broke it; I handed in my resignation. You should have seen how people stiffened. You’d have thought I smacked the Bishop. Literally.

So what’s so radical about this? Before you go nitpicking it, I’m not an idiot – this is just one of many examples I could cite, across the interactions of many different kinds of people in many different religious environments. I’m not taking it personally, nor is it about anything personal. Not really. What I’m talking about is the perception that true religion is Mitt Romney, or at least religion should allow for it.

But I see genuine religion quite differently. I see it as much more similar to the placing of a Crusade on laymen-knights who have before them both an ascetic quest in the desert and a moral and ethical battle in the cities of the world. [Just to be clear, ethics is a science, based on those principles necessary to the survival first of the individual and, second, of the species. Morality is a revelation, something that requires a personal source and standard, a person or persons that are of the same image as the species or, more to the point, vice versa.]

Placed on us is not a commission to go forth and blend in, or go forth and adopt the world’s way of life, or go forth and invest your primary energies and essence into the world. Ours is a commission to go forth and do battle, call people out of the world while remaining within it (live in the desert in your own backyard), and defend the downtrodden, the exploited, the weak, and the oppressed. Religion (the kind I would criticize) is simply the translation of the world’s principles into liturgical language. True religion, the kind that is focused on relieving the poor and keeping oneself unstained by the world, is an ascetic warfare on the world and an ascetic conquest of the self, by which in both cases, we overcome the Evil One. True religion is not a sigh of frustration and defeat but a horn of challenge. As C.S. Lewis has said, Christianity is not defense but attack. We defend the weak, but we attack the dragon.

One of the most basic forms of attack, that helps us solidify our sense of resistance and rejection of the world (imo), is boycotting. You can boycott fear in a workplace (like I did), or you can do it in defense of others.

Recently, I was at a restaurant and the manager was yelling furiously at an employee, taunting and threatening him. I walked to the cashier, canceled our order, and explained that I won’t do business with someone who abuses workers, tries to make them afraid, and attacks their dignity. The manager came up and apologized for doing it in public, and I explained that it’s even worse to do it in private, where he’s free from accountability. I cut them off for six months, because it is the duty of Christians to defend the weak, the poor, and the dignity of work and of mankind, and to resist evil and work toward its downfall.

Some months later, I was in a supermarket, and the manager was pacing the front of the store, screaming over a cell phone at an employee who wasn’t coming to work, telling her she was fired. I stepped to the counter and informed the clerk, in the full hearing of all, that the behavior was illegal and immoral. The manager had not only violated the rights of this worker, but had tried to use shame and fear as weapons, and to exude toughness and volatility in the midst of a culture that is already overflowing with it and awash in the resultant blood and violence.

A while back, Yahoo was handed a request by the Chinese government for information that would identify dissidents contributing to internet discussion that was critical of China’s government or form of government (i.e. corruption, abuse of power, exploitation, and a history of genocide, torture, and untold agony). Without the slightest fuss, Yahoo offered up these people, who were then taken from their families (where they were breadwinners) and imprisoned for the best years of their lives. Google, so you know, was given the same request and not only completely refused, but moved their data servers offshore, where they could not even be seized by force. Google’s stated attitude (on this and other repeated occasions), is that there are some things you just don’t do. A common slogan at Google, posted around facilities, used in boardrooms, and guiding the decisions of decision-makers is “Don’t be evil.” That’s not the kind of organization Google wishes to be.

Frankly, I sent a gmail invite to every yahoo user in my contact list, suggesting they upgrade to a provider with better features and superior intangible benefits. I realize it’s a greed-based grabbing culture, and people flock to Walmart (one could write books on the evil giant) for a few dollars and change, helping sentence its workers, and all employees of companies who follow their model, to low wages, laughable insurance and benefits and, essentially, a shorter lifespan and poorer health, inadequate medical prevention and care, and all the attendant ills of chronic poverty. For a few dollars, we don’t care if we deal with the Devil himself. But we should.

You start talking boycotts, and the apostles of the dominant culture in our midst will pull out every “bible” verse about compliance and meekness they can lay hands on, not caring if it really adds up to the Christian worldview or just a bundle of proof texts that help prop up the world with religious stakes and servants. Expedience rules, just as it does at the checkout counter. Why would we expect any other kind of behavior from those in the line? It’s quite predictable. They’ll conjure up shibboleths of evangelical radio or left-wing newsletters, but in fact they’ll never talk of St. John Chrysostom and scores of other Saints who publicly denounced illicit behavior and worked diligently and openly to have it stopped. This will either have escaped their notice or be dismissed as the very proof-text piffle they’re offering at the outset.

Amazingly, you’ll even hear that boycotts is ‘participation in the world’ instead of resistance to it! You’ll hear it in the car on the way to Walmart, ironically, but that’s what’ll be said. In the end, the lines are drawn not between those who attend our churches and those who don’t, but rather between those who worship at the altars of the world and those who smash them, because they’re altars of human sacrifice. You’ll hear all kinds of “but we should be tolerant” until you realize they’re chewing on human bones.

The question is the same question Google asked, to our shame: What kind of people do we choose to be? The Walmarts of the world would dress up expediency as virtue: “Do something for your family, save money at Walmart.” If you haven’t heard the ad their running, you should. They ask you to look only at the surface, think only of instant gratification, consider only the end and ignore the means. The very basis of the conversation is anti-Christian.

Pretty it up, dress it up in a cassock, and lay it on the altar, but it’s still excrement with the stench and stain of the world. And we’re still facing the question of whether, as more and more people are gobbled up, pressed down, turned into means to an end that all good men must reject, we will get up off our lard asses and fight back, for ourselves and for them. For the very dignity of being human beings, made in God’s image, and for the sanctity of even the basic quest for goodness. If we can’t save the world, and deliver it from The World – the dominant culture – the world system – the evil artifice and Babel of principalities and powers, can we at least get up the gumption to get off the sofa and chuck a spear at it? And refuse to eat its dead.

That’s what it is. Eating the dead. And when the apostle said to at least stay away from blood and from strangled things, I see in that exhortation a command to correct, admonish, and resist the world’s edifice that it builds on the backs of the poor, the minds of all men, and the souls of the weak. It is hard to be a knight in the desert. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Remember the 80/20 rule, and hold the line. And I for one will be made stronger and more likely to stand, because you’re standing.

The Marxist Menace (is it us?)

We inherit so much from the dominant culture – it’s in the way we talk, think, behave, are afraid to behave… I work with someone who has serious problems with common swear words – heck and darn are all right, but not the words for which these are euphemisms. She’s likely unaware of the origin of so many of the ordinary idioms in use in casual conversation. If you’ve tended to add the word “action” to some of your nouns, in slangy speech, welcome to the porn industry. Far more significant, in my view, is the inheritance from anti-human sentiments like Socialism. I think it was Ludvig von Mises that pointed out how many of our ordinary concepts in casual conersation are predicated on socialist ideas.

One key legacy of socialism is how we perceive conflict as almost inherent to any set of distinctions. Distinction = opposition – that’s the insane formula. It’s not new, of course. Dr. Joseph Farrell, in his monumental God, History, and Dialectic, quite effectively traces this assumption throughout human history (from gnosticism to the Great Schism and into modern philosophy). Socialism gives it to us (as part of the same revolutionary tradition that gave us the French Revolution and the Terror, and the Revolutions of 1848 – see James Billington: Fire in the Minds of Men) as class conflict – conflict wherever anyone is distinct from anyone else. This is where we get deconstruction in literary criticism , for instance. Indeed, the implicit, oft concealed ideal in this framework is a non-specific human amalgum, a monist proletariat of one-ness but, since this is impossible (logically as well as historically) – however much you claim we’re moving toward it as a new spiritual age or utopia – it yields a perpetual source of agitation (and revolutionary fervor) in the meantime.

And what has this to do with Orthodoxy? Well, quite frankly, Orthodox people are just as good at bringing in the idol of Baal and setting it on the table during coffee hour as your local masonic lodge. In other words, we can be quite religious. Religion is the importation of the world system and its assumptions, all dressed up in religious garb – it’s the attempt to make the world compatible with the Faith.

And where do we do this with socialism? Well, how, really, does the pseudo-issue of cradle vs. convert, ethnic vs. anglo-saxon, (perhaps even traditionalist vs. modernist) differ from the social conflict approach in your average university gender or racial studies program? How does it differ from the rantings in The Socialist Worker? Different content, but same methodology. Same assumptions.

And, frankly, we have NO BUSINESS indulging in it or indulging it. We have no business legitimating the social order and presuming to reify its methodologies in the guise of Orthodox “issues”, mimicking the lost with our own version of class consciousness. We are the people who have no Jew nor Greek. We are those who venerate Saints baptized as infants and Saints baptized as adults. And the moment we start ranting in the blogosphere, or the parish hall, or (God forbid) from the pulpit, about this group or that group, reified in terms of divisive conflicts, we’ve become a social club. A religious expression of the world order. Might as well pin on some lapel badges, wear berets, and go marching over to the “other” Orthodox Church to stage a protest. Might as well create pamphlets about it. What piffle. And yes, the fathers warn us about piffle.

We are not of this world. We do not follow after the philosophers of this world, or the intellectual systems it raises up against the Church, which will prevail against it, though the final battle take place at the gates of Hell itself. Marxism. Socialism. Deconstructive conflict-theory. It doesn’t belong in the temple and among the pieties of the faithful.

So when you hear “the converts are messing it up” or “the ethnics just don’t get it” or someone rolls their eyes over the “cradles”, besides sounding like a bunch of ridiculous kids factionalizing into “geeks”, “jocks”, and “stoners”, we’re repudiating the Faith, denying the Incarnation, and embracing the world – and not just the world, the failed, detritus of their philosophical cast-offs. The trash of the world. The children of God shouldn’t play with the trash.

The Eschatology of Food

We just finished the Dormition Fast. As one writer said in The Dawn, our Matriarch was on her bed of repose, and so the whole family ceased its celebration and stayed by her side. Theotokos, save, by thy prayers.

I’m interested in the eschatological aspects of fasting. I see fasting, and the life of the monks, who don’t touch meat, as a foretelling of the end of Death. What the quasi-Darwinists hold is what we Orthodox must reject (you don’t have to “believe in evolution” to accept the basic assumptions of the Darwinists) – namely, that Death is natural – that it’s a normal condition of the natural order. We repudiate this. There is no middle ground. Death is an attack on man and the created order. It has entered the natural order as an invader, and is therefore a negation of the normal (nor do we confuse, conflate, and substitute the concepts of “natural” with “normal” as do the Darwinists).

And so our eating of meat is made possible only through Death, a thing which is passing away, a thing over which we live to triumph and die to defeat. When we fast from flesh, just as the monks always do, those who go before us on the path, we recall that “every green thing” was given to us in Eden, but that we are no longer the veegans we were – because of Death, and we foretell the fulfillment of the Kingdom, in which the “lion will lie down with the lamb, and a little child will lead them” and neither will there be any more Death or sorrow. We look to a heaven in which the enmity between creatures is replaced with the reign of peace. The alienation, the fragmentation, that is Death itself, is replaced with life that destroys Death.

So often, the cultural religious response is suspicious of Veeganism and Vegetarianism, and reaches quickly for heterodox hermeutics and the first council in the New Testament, in which nothing is forbidden to eat except strangled things and blood and (elsewhere), in the advice of the Apostle, things sacrificed to idols. But this is to miss the point, and indeed to Protestantize our thinking, using one point over against another, as though ours is a religion of proof texts and a debate over contradictions – a faith in this not that – either/or rather than both/and.

It’s like talking about fasting at all: “Are you judging your brother? Are you prideful about your fasting? Love is more important than fasting.” One cannot answer these attitudes, because they’re formulated on a Protestant mentality in the first place. A religious psychology predicated on hashing out dialectical conflicts. When one even begins to question our consumption of meat, the immense suffering – both human and animal – brought about my the meat processing industry, etc. – it’s immediately treated as suspect. So be it. But the Orthodox response is ultimately a destruction of death and, yes, a taking away of that hamburger and that pepperoni pizza. What is permitted during the feasts is with equal truth and fervor forbidden during the fasts, and moreso will be extinguished and nonexistent in the fulness of the Kingdom. If we cannot take full stock of that truth, the problem is in our own prejudices, and not in the Faith or in those who articulate it. The Incarnation itself is null without the end of Death, so it is the very Faith itself that is vain if this is not true.

No, we don’t go around pointing fingers, but neither is it necessarily an expression of pride, arrogance, or judgment to be veegan – and to be veegan precisely as a piety – as a devotion – as an expression of Faith. “Keep quiet about it, then,” we are told. No. The same people who say this are busy writing articles on all kinds of topics – how can they say this one is forbidden, and on what basis? On the contrary, if we can’t have a free and open discussion on it, then perhaps that very religious psychology – the very “piety” being suggested – is itself an even more important topic for conversation, and this issue is just a catalyst, a useful example, for bringing it to light.

Anthony Campolo once said, “My theology is best expressed in elevators.” By which he meant that, contrary to the demands and assumptions of the dominant social order, he wouldn’t turn, and he would also sing on elevators, which you’re not supposed to do (people don’t get on, when the doors open). This kind of mundane warfare with the world is simply the every day expression of our all out campaign against the world system – the ascendant societal framework. It’s the Ghandi-esque expression of small, continual acts of repudiation, rejection, and rebellion in the face of an all-consuming overriding social system. It is the brief ignition of joy in the darkness of the way things supposedly are.

In the same way, I like to challenge the social order’s assumptions about meat, in small continual doses. I live in a part of the country in which it’s just not considered a meal w/o copious portions of carcass. Vegetables are, at best, a garnish. Animal products constitute the primary fare, and ridicule of vegetarians and religious vehemence about “liberty in Christ” and privacy in fasting (which means, typically, not fasting at all), is generally a cover for decadent gluttony – the kind of gluttony that causes immense health problems, not to mention pain and discomfort waddling away from the table (irrational, almost insane gluttony). I’m a flexitarian – which means sometimes I’m veegan, sometimes vegetarian, and sometimes I eat hamburgers – it’s a long story, but it’s part of an ongoing process. Often, I’ll order toast and eggs at local diners. I almost always get a bewildered query from the waitress, “No meat?!?” And I always have the same response: “Eggs *are* meat.” Usually I get a moment of hesitation and thought and a “Hmm. Guess so.”, but it can range anywhere from a hrrmph to laughter. The point is that we need to question the assumptions we’ve absorbed with our mother’s milk and taken from the very air of the world into which we were born. And one of those key assumptions is that Death is a given – it’s a normal, natural, native part of the created order – and our lives aren’t complete without depending on the death of others. There are implications for attitudes about war, capital punishment, abortion, and what have you. Food is just an entry point.

The thing is, being afraid to talk about it, or ask these questions, or keep the topic open, or think about it – think through the implications of our doctrines, and our relation to the assumptions embedded in the culture’s behavior, attitudes, and ideas, is itself a non-Christian attitude. An anti-Christian one, in fact. And if we can’t do it about food, we can’t effectively do it about money, about human relationships, about work, or about any other significant area of human endeavour. Food is a crucible issue for us, which is one of the reasons we fast. It’s that important, it’s a capsulized representation of our religious attitudes about creation, the world, the Incarnation, and all else that we consider a matter of Orthodox interest.

So frankly, here’s talking about it.

Being frustrated with our Brethren

Response to a Friend:

Don’t be discouraged by your fellow Orthodox. Think as highly of them as you can manage. Whenever you have faith, it attracts religion. With religion, you get a spectrum, with the libertines on one end, those who prefer infinite diversity but don’t really care about the Faith at all – they’re just taking up space and purifying it of everyone else, and the jailers on the other end, those who care about absolute homogeneity but don’t really care about people at all – they’re just holding their own and purifying it for everyone else. But neither of those tendencies is really what we mean when we’re talking about Orthodoxy. Sure, they may be Orthodox, but so are a host of people who were merely born into it, and spend the rest of their time selling it out. The Faith is not the collective of what all Orthodox believe; rather, it’s the duty and priviledge of the Orthodox to learn and adhere to the Faith, and to transform it into reality in our lives by deification. There are still those Orthodox who cling to the Faith when it’s opposed by religiosity; I know lots of them. You can hang out with one religious camp for the freedom (but you’ll give up the substance) – you lose the “believe” in “I believe”; you can hang out with the other for the tradition – the Faith itself (but you’ll lose your sense of self – the “I” in “I believe”). Or, you can find the place that admits both kinds of religious people, but doesn’t give them a way to take over. That’s what I’ve done; It’s not perfect, but neither am I.

On the adage your brethren throw at you that something is “merely human”: I like to ask them what they have against humans? Christ became human, and that’s the mystery of our salvation. I’m merely following in his footsteps, He who Alone can enable me to become fully human, and also deified. In fact, it is in Christ’s humanity that ALL creation is deified, for he is the Recapitulation of all categories proper to human beings, and therefore all categories proper to all creation, and therefore the Creation groans and cries out for the Revelation of the human beings – the sons of God – the deified ones. If what I do can only be called human, I will have achieved all I can achieve.

I don’t see them swearing off money and all possessions; they still gas up and go to the store. When they’re wearing the only habit they own, then I’ll consider what they’ve said. The monks are far more reasonable than the people you’re dealing with. That’s because, again, it’s Faith not religion. The monks are the center of our Faith; without them, we can’t understand anything. The ultra-correct jailers are merely being religious, and if you follow them, you can’t understand anything either. The Desert is a friend – to us, not to the Death in us, which it will carve out, and even we lay-ascetics who are not monastics, must cross into the Desert with help, with an appropriate guide, when we can and are permitted. By contrast, the religious offer either a night in Vegas or a night in the penitentiary. It’s neither the Desert nor the Font of Paradise they really offer.

So guard your soul, forgive those who wrong you, consider those who oppose you better than yourself, do not pay attention to your own acts of goodness or you will have already lost them and become a Pharisee, and remember that Orthodoxy is not a belief system; it’s an asceticism. It cannot be defined, only lived. You’ll hear that from people offering it as the justification for libertinism, or as the “correct” doctrine of the jailers, but ultimately you must find it as an experience of continual warfare with the passions and with the world, from which there is no reprieve – no going home and not fighting – and no quick end. Life is war, in this regard. Not war on our ‘wayward’ brethren, and not a matter of setting the infidel straight, but the conquest of self, the last and greatest warfare. And by this, we will overcome the Evil One, and Paradise, which is opened to us, will call out our true names.

What’s the difference between a week and a year?

If this week 40 people would give $25 each to New Futures Orphanage, instead of that same amount spread out over a year’s time, the children could buy chickens, fish, plants, and other sustainable food sources that would last over a long time, and wouldn’t have to eat the small increments of money coming in, while they’re waiting, so that they have no future. If 20 of us could give $50 this week, instead of spread out over a year, they could eat all year, instead of just on the weeks that someone gives.

Choose a child from the orphanage photo below, hold him or her in your mind, and picture what eating all year long might do for his mind, his health, and his opportunities. Now picture him wondering every day if there will be rice today. It’s easy to do the right thing: give directly, so 100% of the funds go to the orphanage, which is run by volunteers, take it as a tax deduction (they email you a receipt automatically), and you break even, but their lives are changed. Christ reward you according to you charity.

Christ is an orphan. “Who are my mother and my brothers?”

Christ became an orphan for our sakes, “Lord, Lord, why has Thou forsaken me?”

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.

---

Will you help? Please?

They are [ here ].

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