Dormition Fast (August 1 - 14)
In general, in following our "nature" we want only to eat, drink, sleep and enjoy ourselves. However, Christianity calls us to a new birth in the Holy Spirit.... That birth of spirituality is a mystery to us, and that is precisely what scares off people. Christ said to Nicodemus "You must be born from above," and Nicodemus was frightened by those words. A righteous man and a lawyer, he immediately understood that this was more than a talk about the battle with sin, and anyone who has not taken the step, to even the slightest extent, into the supernatural, has not yet begun [the Christian journey]. However, that interior overcoming of nature, the overcoming on which rests all Christian podvig, i.e. of the everyday occurrences in Christian life, is merely "the sun in a tiny drop of water." All Christianity rests in the original, supernatural nature of the Divine Incarnation. The Church sings in the 9th Song of the Canon for the Dormition of the Virgin and Mother: "In thee, O Virgin without spot, the bounds of nature are overcome: for childbirth remains virginal and death is betrothed to life"
- S. I. Fudel, Notes on the Liturgy and the Church
Sergei Fudel notes that Christian life involves not only the struggle against sin - our fallen nature - but a striving for something beyond our nature - a positive transformation, a new birth in Christ. In other words, the path of Christian life has both a moral and a mystical dimension. Or to put it yet another way, the goal of our moral effort is holiness.
In this holiness it is not only sin that we strive to overcome, but also the bounds and limits of our nature, and above all the stark, inevitable limitation of death - the fact of death, the approach of death, the anxiety concerning death, the dying - that so shapes our entire experience in this life. For believers, our life in Christ is not just about becoming good and decent people - as wonderful and challenging a task that is! - but about a longing for purity, for love, for life, for the Kingdom of God.
The significance of the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God is that it gives a personal substantiation of the truth and reality of this deep longing. Our desire is vindicated in what happens to her when she dies: she makes of her death an act of life.
In the icon of Pascha - of the Resurrection, the Descent into Hades - we see Christ pulling Adam and Eve up out of Hades, yanking them hard by the hand out from that spiritual prison that signifies the rule of death. At the center of the icon of the Dormition, the Lord holds the Mother of God, child-like, in His arms, above her earthly body on its funeral bier. To be held by Christ! The truth of the Dormition, and our own hope, is grounded on the Paschal Mystery.
Perhaps our two week effort at keeping the fast should be inspired by this wonderful affirmation...
Monday, July 30, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
These help you on your way
One day the abbot took me to see the monastic library. It was not a very large collection of books. There were a lot of elderly, well-used volumes of the Fathers. 'Here', said the abbot, 'is a book which you give to beginners.' 'This is a work which is useful for someone who is depressed.' 'Here is a book which give very clear instructions about the Jesus Prayer.' Any Westerner showing you round this collection of books, even someone to whom they were of practical use, would have said: 'Here is an interesting sixth-century text.' 'This writer shows influences from the Syrian tradition.' 'Here is a work important in the later development of Hesychasm.'
We look at books chronologically and classify them in terms of influences and development. To the abbot they all had a simultaneous existence and composed a simultaneous order. They were all books which were useful in the life of the Spirit. Their authors were fathers and teachers who had become friends, to whom one spoke in church and at other times; it was of little importance whether they had lived six hundred, twelve hundred or fifty years ago. He showed me his library rather in the way which an expert gardener might show you his collection of books on gardening, or a cook a collection of cookery books. These help you on your way. They are not an end in themselves.
- A.M. Allchin, The Dynamic of Tradition (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981)
We look at books chronologically and classify them in terms of influences and development. To the abbot they all had a simultaneous existence and composed a simultaneous order. They were all books which were useful in the life of the Spirit. Their authors were fathers and teachers who had become friends, to whom one spoke in church and at other times; it was of little importance whether they had lived six hundred, twelve hundred or fifty years ago. He showed me his library rather in the way which an expert gardener might show you his collection of books on gardening, or a cook a collection of cookery books. These help you on your way. They are not an end in themselves.
- A.M. Allchin, The Dynamic of Tradition (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981)
Friday, July 27, 2012
in religion as in love
He continued: ‘I was talking about this to a priest a few months ago.
I said, you fall in love with a girl, visit her often, kiss her, tell
her many times and in many ways that you love her; then you visit her
less and less often, give her an occasional peck, tell her that she
has your esteem. “What has that to do with it?” asked the priest. It
has everything to do with it: it means that what you do in religion,
as in love, is the sign of what you are.’
- David Jones, in a conversation remembered by William Blisset
SEVENTY YEARS WITH DAVID JONES
http://www.flashpointmag.com/blissettjones.htm
I said, you fall in love with a girl, visit her often, kiss her, tell
her many times and in many ways that you love her; then you visit her
less and less often, give her an occasional peck, tell her that she
has your esteem. “What has that to do with it?” asked the priest. It
has everything to do with it: it means that what you do in religion,
as in love, is the sign of what you are.’
- David Jones, in a conversation remembered by William Blisset
SEVENTY YEARS WITH DAVID JONES
http://www.flashpointmag.com/blissettjones.htm
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
survived by about 1000 descendants
.... In 2004, he banned wigs from India made of human hair that were used by Orthodox wives to conceal their actual hair in public. He did so because the Indian hair had been cut off in Hindu ceremonies that he regarded as idol worship, and thus violated the fundamental Jewish belief in one God. Within days, women in Jerusalem were casting their wigs into bonfires, and women in the Borough Park area of Brooklyn were either wrapping their heads in scarves or flocking to stores to buy wigs made of synthetics....
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/world/middleeast/rabbi-y-s-elyashiv-master-of-talmudic-law-dies-at-102.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/world/middleeast/rabbi-y-s-elyashiv-master-of-talmudic-law-dies-at-102.html?_r=1
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Cary Tennis: Thoughts On Guns And Boys
Thoughts on guns and boys
Posted by CT on Jul 20, 2012 in Blog
Raised on cowboys and Indians, detectives, harsh men in suits blazing pistols in the dark, G.I.’s holding off the enemy from trenches or behind rocks, robbers on the lam shooting through the broken windows of splintering shacks … these were the exciting images of gunplay I grew up with. As a boy I did lust after the bang and shoot of a gun, the feel of it, the spinning cylinder, the amazing bullets. I loved the idea of omnipotence, blasting a target or a person, blasting them away, blasting blasting blasting. I did dream of the power of an actual gun, stored in oil cloth, kept in the dark in houses of men, clean and hidden, precious and forbidden, like jewelry to be worn on special occasions, capable of dire effects.
A gun was a bridge to adulthood because it was one of the things not allowed a boy until he was deemed ready; if a boy could not have a gun until he had proved himself, then having a gun meant proving himself. This proposition could be turned around: If the reward could be had without the performance, if a boy could acquire a gun outside of any rite of passage, then he could feel he was proved; he could provide his own passage to psychic adulthood. Thus the totem was detached from its ritual and meaning, set loose in anarchy. The genie was out of the bottle, seducing and bewitching and cursing the souls of men.
Sober farmers used their guns for the occasional killing of a rattlesnake or an animal in need of a mercy shot to the head.
Then there was the broken vessel out of which violence poured, the explosive adolescent in feverish adoration of the gun, for whom the gun slaked a thirst and fed a hunger outside all proportion.
We bred these young men behind the silent walls of suburban houses. They kept their fever secret until erupting.
Posted by CT on Jul 20, 2012 in Blog
Raised on cowboys and Indians, detectives, harsh men in suits blazing pistols in the dark, G.I.’s holding off the enemy from trenches or behind rocks, robbers on the lam shooting through the broken windows of splintering shacks … these were the exciting images of gunplay I grew up with. As a boy I did lust after the bang and shoot of a gun, the feel of it, the spinning cylinder, the amazing bullets. I loved the idea of omnipotence, blasting a target or a person, blasting them away, blasting blasting blasting. I did dream of the power of an actual gun, stored in oil cloth, kept in the dark in houses of men, clean and hidden, precious and forbidden, like jewelry to be worn on special occasions, capable of dire effects.
A gun was a bridge to adulthood because it was one of the things not allowed a boy until he was deemed ready; if a boy could not have a gun until he had proved himself, then having a gun meant proving himself. This proposition could be turned around: If the reward could be had without the performance, if a boy could acquire a gun outside of any rite of passage, then he could feel he was proved; he could provide his own passage to psychic adulthood. Thus the totem was detached from its ritual and meaning, set loose in anarchy. The genie was out of the bottle, seducing and bewitching and cursing the souls of men.
Sober farmers used their guns for the occasional killing of a rattlesnake or an animal in need of a mercy shot to the head.
Then there was the broken vessel out of which violence poured, the explosive adolescent in feverish adoration of the gun, for whom the gun slaked a thirst and fed a hunger outside all proportion.
We bred these young men behind the silent walls of suburban houses. They kept their fever secret until erupting.
Sunday, July 22, 2012
it might save those who utter it
.... On The Modern Cult of the Factish Gods concludes with a brief and brilliant essay entitled “How Not to Misunderstand the Science and Religion Debate”, featuring a notable act of self-outing. There is, Latour confesses, a simple crass label for the kind of thinker he has always been: “I have been raised a Catholic,” he says, and it seems his faith has never wavered, even though – “in my tradition, in my corner of the world,” as he puts it – he could never mention it without embarrassment. “I cannot even speak to my children,” Latour says, “of what I am doing at church on Sunday.”
Abjuring facetiousness for a while, Latour offers a moving comparison between religious words and words of love: their truth, he says, is a truth of transformation rather than a truth of information. Uncomprehending outsiders will assume that the transformative truths of religion are about getting yourself teleported to some other, better world, but for insiders the opposite will be the case: religious truths serve to remove distractions, enabling us to focus on what is taking place in our space and in our time – to attend to incarnation, to the flesh, to a face, a stone, a child, a fly, a tomato or a piece of wood – and to find them replete with significance, and calling for no response except gratitude, reverence and love.
Religious language can be risky (“it requires great care,” Latour says – “it might save those who utter it”) but it is never mysterious: it contains “nothing hidden, nothing encrypted, nothing esoteric, nothing odd”. It has its own robust wisdom, and does not need to beg for “tolerance”, or to plead with tough-minded sceptics to concede that the facts of science are too dry for some tastes, and that a spoonful of “wonder” or “quaint religious feelings” might make them much more palatable. Contrary to what we have been brought up to think, the daring heroes of intellectual escapology are not the religious believers but the practising scientists, going boldly into the unfathomable mysteries of eternity; while religion, properly speaking, is a set of exercises in “breaking the will to go away, ignore, be indifferent, blasé, or bored”, and focusing our minds on the intimate textures of what lies close.
Religion, it seems, is far more intelligent than most philosophers give it credit for, and there is nothing in it that need offend or alarm the intelligent scientist, the intelligent humanist or the intelligent atheist....
- Jonathan Rée reviewing Bruno Latour, On The Modern Cult Of The Factish Gods
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2836/the-cult-of-science
Abjuring facetiousness for a while, Latour offers a moving comparison between religious words and words of love: their truth, he says, is a truth of transformation rather than a truth of information. Uncomprehending outsiders will assume that the transformative truths of religion are about getting yourself teleported to some other, better world, but for insiders the opposite will be the case: religious truths serve to remove distractions, enabling us to focus on what is taking place in our space and in our time – to attend to incarnation, to the flesh, to a face, a stone, a child, a fly, a tomato or a piece of wood – and to find them replete with significance, and calling for no response except gratitude, reverence and love.
Religious language can be risky (“it requires great care,” Latour says – “it might save those who utter it”) but it is never mysterious: it contains “nothing hidden, nothing encrypted, nothing esoteric, nothing odd”. It has its own robust wisdom, and does not need to beg for “tolerance”, or to plead with tough-minded sceptics to concede that the facts of science are too dry for some tastes, and that a spoonful of “wonder” or “quaint religious feelings” might make them much more palatable. Contrary to what we have been brought up to think, the daring heroes of intellectual escapology are not the religious believers but the practising scientists, going boldly into the unfathomable mysteries of eternity; while religion, properly speaking, is a set of exercises in “breaking the will to go away, ignore, be indifferent, blasé, or bored”, and focusing our minds on the intimate textures of what lies close.
Religion, it seems, is far more intelligent than most philosophers give it credit for, and there is nothing in it that need offend or alarm the intelligent scientist, the intelligent humanist or the intelligent atheist....
- Jonathan Rée reviewing Bruno Latour, On The Modern Cult Of The Factish Gods
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2836/the-cult-of-science
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
start thinking on your own
.... But how do we understand the fact that one priest nearly curses the women who dared to enter a church without a headscarf and in pants while the other one does not see a tragedy in that? How do we explain the fact that one priest nearly anathematizes the modern culture and the other one merely puts the facts of modern culture under scrutiny? What shall we do when one says one thing, the other one says another thing? And no matter how strange it sounds there is an answer to all these questions. You should start thinking on your own. The period when we wait for the ready answers is surely the one we all come through. But when we start not just waiting for the ready answers, but looking for the truth we lay the foundation (not without mistakes though) of the main thing for every Christian – for holiness. And the holiness is acquired only through labor. The saints are those who can independently follow the path about which Christ spoke (John 14:6) And if we want to follow then we have to start learning on our own. Antitheses always exist in the Church. On the one hand we have to trust its experience, on the other hand we have to learn how to recognize on our own the real experience of Church as opposed to its imitation. And only those who make efforts will gain the experience. And we can make only our own efforts and God will help and show us which way we shall behave.
- from The Course of Forbearance for the Orthodox Christian by Archpriest Dimiriy Karpenko (Translated by Ekaterina Lebed)
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- from The Course of Forbearance for the Orthodox Christian by Archpriest Dimiriy Karpenko (Translated by Ekaterina Lebed)
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Monday, July 9, 2012
you have pushed with side and shoulder, butted all the weak ones
Thinking about the Prophet Ezekiel, whose feast (July 23) rapidly approaches, or rather reflecting on these words, noting the timelessness of the Lord's judgment upon the shepherds of Israel - and the consolation of knowing that He Himself will be our ultimate pastoral care.
Ezekiel 34
New King James Version (NKJV)
Irresponsible Shepherds
34 And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God to the shepherds: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks? 3 You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the flock. 4 The weak you have not strengthened, nor have you healed those who were sick, nor bound up the broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor sought what was lost; but with force and cruelty you have ruled them. 5 So they were scattered because there was no shepherd; and they became food for all the beasts of the field when they were scattered. 6 My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and on every high hill; yes, My flock was scattered over the whole face of the earth, and no one was seeking or searching for them.”
7 ‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: 8 “As I live,” says the Lord God, “surely because My flock became a prey, and My flock became food for every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, nor did My shepherds search for My flock, but the shepherds fed themselves and did not feed My flock”— 9 therefore, O shepherds, hear the word of the Lord! 10 Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require My flock at their hand; I will cause them to cease feeding the sheep, and the shepherds shall feed themselves no more; for I will deliver My flock from their mouths, that they may no longer be food for them.”
God, the True Shepherd
11 ‘For thus says the Lord God: “Indeed I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. 12 As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day. 13 And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in all the inhabited places of the country. 14 I will feed them in good pasture, and their fold shall be on the high mountains of Israel. There they shall lie down in a good fold and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I will feed My flock, and I will make them lie down,” says the Lord God. 16 “I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick; but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment.”
17 ‘And as for you, O My flock, thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats. 18 Is it too little for you to have eaten up the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the residue of your pasture—and to have drunk of the clear waters, that you must foul the residue with your feet? 19 And as for My flock, they eat what you have trampled with your feet, and they drink what you have fouled with your feet.”
20 ‘Therefore thus says the Lord God to them: “Behold, I Myself will judge between the fat and the lean sheep. 21 Because you have pushed with side and shoulder, butted all the weak ones with your horns, and scattered them abroad, 22 therefore I will save My flock, and they shall no longer be a prey; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. 23 I will establish one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them—My servant David. He shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24 And I, the Lord, will be their God, and My servant David a prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken.
25 “I will make a covenant of peace with them, and cause wild beasts to cease from the land; and they will dwell safely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. 26 I will make them and the places all around My hill a blessing; and I will cause showers to come down in their season; there shall be showers of blessing. 27 Then the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase. They shall be safe in their land; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke and delivered them from the hand of those who enslaved them. 28 And they shall no longer be a prey for the nations, nor shall beasts of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and no one shall make them afraid. 29 I will raise up for them a garden of renown, and they shall no longer be consumed with hunger in the land, nor bear the shame of the Gentiles anymore. 30 Thus they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and they, the house of Israel, are My people,” says the Lord God.’
31 “You are My flock, the flock of My pasture; you are men, and I am your God,” says the Lord God.
Ezekiel 34
New King James Version (NKJV)
Irresponsible Shepherds
34 And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God to the shepherds: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks? 3 You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the flock. 4 The weak you have not strengthened, nor have you healed those who were sick, nor bound up the broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor sought what was lost; but with force and cruelty you have ruled them. 5 So they were scattered because there was no shepherd; and they became food for all the beasts of the field when they were scattered. 6 My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and on every high hill; yes, My flock was scattered over the whole face of the earth, and no one was seeking or searching for them.”
7 ‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: 8 “As I live,” says the Lord God, “surely because My flock became a prey, and My flock became food for every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, nor did My shepherds search for My flock, but the shepherds fed themselves and did not feed My flock”— 9 therefore, O shepherds, hear the word of the Lord! 10 Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require My flock at their hand; I will cause them to cease feeding the sheep, and the shepherds shall feed themselves no more; for I will deliver My flock from their mouths, that they may no longer be food for them.”
God, the True Shepherd
11 ‘For thus says the Lord God: “Indeed I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out. 12 As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day. 13 And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in all the inhabited places of the country. 14 I will feed them in good pasture, and their fold shall be on the high mountains of Israel. There they shall lie down in a good fold and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I will feed My flock, and I will make them lie down,” says the Lord God. 16 “I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick; but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment.”
17 ‘And as for you, O My flock, thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats. 18 Is it too little for you to have eaten up the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the residue of your pasture—and to have drunk of the clear waters, that you must foul the residue with your feet? 19 And as for My flock, they eat what you have trampled with your feet, and they drink what you have fouled with your feet.”
20 ‘Therefore thus says the Lord God to them: “Behold, I Myself will judge between the fat and the lean sheep. 21 Because you have pushed with side and shoulder, butted all the weak ones with your horns, and scattered them abroad, 22 therefore I will save My flock, and they shall no longer be a prey; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. 23 I will establish one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them—My servant David. He shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24 And I, the Lord, will be their God, and My servant David a prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken.
25 “I will make a covenant of peace with them, and cause wild beasts to cease from the land; and they will dwell safely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. 26 I will make them and the places all around My hill a blessing; and I will cause showers to come down in their season; there shall be showers of blessing. 27 Then the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase. They shall be safe in their land; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke and delivered them from the hand of those who enslaved them. 28 And they shall no longer be a prey for the nations, nor shall beasts of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and no one shall make them afraid. 29 I will raise up for them a garden of renown, and they shall no longer be consumed with hunger in the land, nor bear the shame of the Gentiles anymore. 30 Thus they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and they, the house of Israel, are My people,” says the Lord God.’
31 “You are My flock, the flock of My pasture; you are men, and I am your God,” says the Lord God.
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