rod out of the stem of Jesse

... Christ Himself is the real Tree of Life; the prototype of that wondrous tree from whose salvation-bringing sight and enjoyment mankind had been removed in consequence of sin, without ever being able to lose the memory of it. He is called indeed in the Old Testament "as the eternal, heavenly Wisdom of God " a "Tree of Life" (Prov. iii. i8) ; even as, with regard to His human nature and origin, He is called a "rod out of the stem of Jesse," and a "branch out of his roots" (Isa. xi. i). And He calls Himself in the New Testament the " true Vine " (John XV. I ff.) ; He speaks of Himself as the "green tree," which must suffer instead of the dry wood, properly destined for fuel (Luke xxiii. 31). The green wood, the gloriously blossoming fruit-laden palm tree (Psalm i. 3 ; xcii. 12), is hanged upon the dry bare tree of the curse (Gal. iii. 13); He consecrates this precisely thereby as a place of blessing, grows into one with it, as a gladdening, world-renewing Tree of Life, at whose roots gushes forth the fountain of everlasting life, whose fruit affords to every one the true and ever satisfying food, and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations (Rev. ii. 7 ; xxii. 2). All that which had expressed itself in the pre-Christian world in efforts after the ideal or real [i.e., by means of types] representation in religious symbolism of the Tree of Life as the compendium of all blessedness, finds here its fulfilment, its Divine ratification, in a blessing extending exceeding abundantly beyond all previous dimly realised conception and even longing.

- Otto Zöckler, The Cross of Christ (1877)

He loved miracles

.... His interest in the divine was more instinctive than formal. He loved miracles. For him, as for a medieval monk, they were everyday possibilities. He was quite capable of embellishing perfectly mundane conversations with the sudden memory of a saintly body, long buried, which had been disinterred uncorrupted and with a fragrant smell. When we were considering which Cavafy poems to use he rang in great excitement to say that the volume had leapt off the shelf and fallen open at the perfect choice.

The Greek sun, taken with some retsina, was good for his spirit in moderate doses; and there was something more generally about the Greek world that played into an intensely emotional side of his thinking. The references didn’t have to be to God — his Sappho Fragments of 1981 are among the most refined things he wrote. He could have gone further with that style, but equally enthralling to him was the mystical world of Greek (and Russian) Orthodoxy, ultimately to him a mood, a kind of scented picture, from which so much of his output flowed.

He said recently that the image of him as a joyless old hermit, surrounded by candles, had been imposed on him by the media. I’m not sure I entirely buy that either, as anyone who has seen the exquisite chapel he created out of a stable at his home may agree. But in the end this was his official look, which only conveyed a small part of his character. It also tended to play down his sheer technical ability as a musician: he was capable of writing some of the most mathematically involved passages available to a composer, known as canons, partly as a result of having studied the music of the renaissance master Josquin des Prez. The last example of this particular knack has yet to be heard. Just before he died he wrote a Requiem (called Requiem Fragments) for me to conduct on some big occasion next year, in order to help celebrate his 70th birthday, which would have fallen on 28 January. Its last 20 pages or so consist of a triple-choir canon, which on paper looks as complicated as these things ever get. If I had been able to ask him how he had conceived this incredible texture — as I did in a similar passage years ago in his Ikon of Light — he would have replied that it just came out like that. It was another miracle.

One of John’s leitmotifs was God as light. He relished the way light could not be contained, as God’s benign spirit cannot. When he was free to express some part of this conjunction he could write masterpieces. Sometimes these were very long and sometimes very short. We’ll hear them all during 2014 — an anniversary year all the more poignant now — and I am certain none will be more affecting, Mozart-like, than this Requiem.

Peter Phillips is director of the Tallis Scholars

http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/music/9082101/remembering-my-friend-john-tavener/

Christ the Wisdom of God

.... so that Wisdom building herself a house within her undefiled body, the Word became flesh; and the form of God and the form of a slave coming together into one person, the Creator of times was born in time; and He Himself through whom all things were made, was brought forth in the midst of all things.

 

- Leo the Great, Letter 31 (to Pulcheria Augusta)

From stbenedictstable.ca, conversation with the late Robert Farrar Capon:

He spoke quite powerfully about learning from that, and of having to work through something of a faith crisis. Several times, he made reference to mortality and to the reality of our all dying; something which has long been a big part of his theological horizon but which had now become personal. “This has been a year for me to realize that I am not ‘getting’ this,” he said. 

I am not called upon to ‘get’ this, I am not called upon to improve, I am not called upon to get better. And in the toils of the medical establishment you are always told that you will get better, you must get better, you can get better and so on. And I don’t have to. I know I’m not going to get better permanently; nobody is. I’m going to end up dead permanently. Because life after death is a blind alley, in terms of an existence somewhere else than here. My life is in Christ, and therefore in life and in death I am in him. It’s all him. That’s all we know.

“That’s all we know,” and after a year that he characterized as being marked by a “black depression,” he had to decide “if I believed any of this stuff.” He most surely did. “We are not saved from our sins,” he told me. “We’re saved in our sins. We’re not saved from our deaths, we’re saved in our deaths. My death is my salvation. Physically, it is the moment of my salvation, if you want to pinpoint a moment. That’s why we’re supposed to die daily to sin. Sin is always there, and we’re supposed to die daily to it. That doesn’t mean that you have to improve. That’s the mistake of religion.”

That’s the mistake of religion; to replace the radical proclamation of death/resurrection with a set of practices by which to try to improve, progress, or otherwise convince the Divine Fox that we’re worth the bother. Robert Farrar Capon spent the better part of the last forty years trying proclaiming death/resurrection, and many of us are the better for it.

People should not have to fuss

Vladyka Zenobius said that if you are guest, never try to explain fasting rules to your hosts. Eat what they have cooked and then go to confession. People should not have to fuss around you and ask, "Are you allowed to eat this or not? What about this?"

- Elder Zenobius: A Life in Continuity with Pre-Revolutionary Russia (Holy Trinity Publications, 2013)

adapts to our weaknesses

The Saviour provides for our needs, for each in a different way. For those who lack joy, he is the Vine; for those who need to enter, he is the Door; for those who need to pray, he is the Mediator and the High Priest. Again, for those who are sinners, he becomes the Sheep to be slain on their behalf. He becomes 'all things for all men', while remaining what he is by nature. For while continuing to hold the unchangeable dignity of the Son, he adapts to our weaknesses like a skilled doctor or a sympathetic teacher.

- St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 10.5

the good old spaciousness of Orthodoxy

I rather like the remarks of a well-known English Dominican when asked a question following a retreat at St John's Abbey in Minnesota concerning the Roman Catholic Church in America.  Changing the changeable they would amount to this, in Orthodox terms:

The Enlightenment insisted on a fundamental dichotomy between tradition and progress. Freedom lay in our liberation from tradition - which as we all know is represented above all by the Orthodox Church, its dogma and liturgy.  But this dichotomy is essentially alien to Orthodoxy. For us, authentic progress always implies a return to tradition, and authentic tradition pushes us forwards towards the Kingdom of God. America is *the* country of the Enlightenment and I suspect that some Orthodox have bought into a way of thinking that is alien to our tradition, and so identify themselves as traditional or progressive. I refuse to accept to be placed in either box. I am just an Orthodox Christian, which means that I am both deeply conservative and utterly progressive! A wise commentator said that he feared that American Orthodox were becoming Puritans, sectarians. They were losing the good old spaciousness of Orthodoxy.

the great solvent

Capitalism is, after all, the way of life based on the principle that the most important activity is profit-making. That activity led the wealthy in the direction of continentalism. They lost nothing essential to the principle of their lives in losing their country. It is this very fact that has made capitalism the great solvent of all tradition in the modern era. When everything is made relative to profit-making, all traditions of virtue are dissolved, including that aspect of virtue known as love of country.

- George Grant, Lament for a Nation

A Last Stroll

23. A Last Stroll

Our tours have now taken us through nearly every part of the city and to most of its historical monuments. But, as we have perhaps learned on our strolls, Istanbul is much more than just an inhabited museum, for the old town has a beauty and fascination that go quite beyond its history and its architecture. One is apt to feel this when seated at a çayevi or meyhane in a sun-dappled square, or while taking one’s keyif in a vine-shaded café beside the Bosphorus. Little has been said of the Stamboullus themselves, but the visitor will surely have experienced innumerable examples of their grave friendliness and unfailing hospitality. Much of the pleasure of visiting or living in this city derives from the warm and relaxed company of its residents. “Hoş geldiniz!” (Welcome), they say to the stranger who arrives in their city or their home; and when one leaves one is sent off with a “Güle Güle!” (Go with Smiles), as if to lessen the inevitable sadness of departure. But how can one not feel sad when leaving this beautiful city.

But before we leave let us take one last stroll through Stamboul, to visit an enchanting place which we have somehow missed on our earlier tours. This is the venerable district of Kum Kapı, which lies at the foot of the Second and Third Hills along the Marmara shore. There are no monuments here of any historic or architectural importance, just a wonderful old Stamboul neighbourhood. The harbour of Kum Kapı, the ancient Kontoscalion, is the last of the Byzantine ports still left on the Marmara coast of the city. It is always filled with  picturesque caiques and the quayside is often carpeted with brilliantly-dyed fishing nets spread there to be dried and mended. The fish market there is one of the liveliest and most colourful in the city; the shouts and cries of the fishmongers are liable to be in any of several languages: Turkish, Greek, Armenian and even Laz, raucous and ribald in all four.

From the port a cobbled road leads down under the railway line and through the now almost vanished remnants of the ancient Porta Kontoscalion. In Turkish times this was known as Kum Kapı, the Sand Gate, whose name now survives in that of the surrounding neighbourhood. Up until the beginning of this century one could still see on the tower to the left of this gate the imperial monogram and coat of arms of Andronicus II Palaeologus (1282–1328).

A short distance along we come to the picturesque village square of Kum Kapı. (Another discovery of our strolls is that Istanbul is really a collection of villages, usually clustering around a mosque or a market square such as the one we see here.) The square has an old street fountain in its centre and is surrounded by the stalls and barrows of a fish and fruit and vegetable market, as well as several excellent fish restaurants. (Up until the early 1970s one of these restaurants was called Cansız Balık, the Dead Fish, but its one-eyed owner has apparently been persuaded that the sign frightened away customers and so he has changed its name.) Our own favourite is Yorgo's, where one can enjoy huge bowls of delicious fish soup while being serenaded by choirs of birds that nest in the vines clambering along the walls of this paradisical taverna. When we have had our fill and more we can sit by the window and watch the infinitely varied procession of local life passing through this most colourful square. At times like this we feel that the old town, for all its faults and flaws, has managed to retain some of the humane qualities of communal life and rich connections with the past that have been lost in most modern cities. In that mood we think of our own strolls through Stamboul and of the dear friends who were our companions here, many of them now departed and some gone forever. We think too of Evliya Çelebi, who has been our companion-guide for so long, and wonder what he might say if he could once again walk through the streets of his beloved town, so changed but so much the same. Knowing him as we do, we imagine that he might repeat the words of his contemporary, the historian Solak Dede, whom Evliya quotes in the Seyahatname: "'Oh, my God,’ said Solak Dede after finishing his Description of Constantinople. 'let this town flourish tell the end of time!'"

- Hilary Sumner-Boyd and John Freely, Strolling Through Istanbul: A Guide to the City (Redhouse Press, 1973)  2nd edition