dissipation of noble things

.... World history is more of a rake's progress than a conservation of 'goods'. It is a criminal dissipation of noble things.... We must admit in our own age the possibility of serious and possibly uncorrectable deprivations, and the clearer we see where they reside the more we shall be alive to our achievements in other directions, or even if we don't like the look of things at all, at least we shall be less easily deceived by this false scent and that, which is something, when there is much to deceive us.

- David Jones, Art in Relation to War in The Dying Gaul and Other Writings (1978)

no manifest destiny

From the Pastoral Common Room group, written in 2008 and still applicable in many ways:

The coming week is the week of the 15th All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America. In light of the fact that ours is actually a continental church, with an Archdiocese of Canada and an Exarchate of Mexico, some in the church are calling for these gatherings to have the title 'All North American Council'. While this may be a better turn of phrase in some ways, you might think, as I do, that there is a certain grandiose quality to whichever title is used. We might do well ask ourselves: in what way does our Council represent 'All America' or 'All North America'? The fact is that our OCA is a smallish church, with perhaps - just perhaps - 150,000 faithful. We might barely - just barely - represent about one fifth of the total number of Orthodox in America. Not only are we just a fraction of Orthodoxy in America, the truth is that many, many of the most interesting and exciting and dynamic things going on in North American Orthodoxy are going on outside the Orthodox Church in America. The wind seems to have gone from our sails. The recent administrative scandals of which we have been made aware have not only been a big blow, but the ramifications of the scandals have revealed a sort of deeper cultural problem in our church life and history. By culture I mean our lived spirituality, the typical ways in which we think and act, how we express our sense of self. It is a question of identity. One the one hand we have generated from within a narrative that places our church on the canonical high ground. We have talked about 'the vision of St Tikhon' as if it were our unique patrimony. We have claimed the mantle of autocephaly (but seem unable to wear it!) We have acted as if we were the unique, priviledged, enlightened bearers of Orthodoxy in America - and as if the Greeks and the Antiochians and the Russians and others were somehow not really a part of what it truly means to be Orthodox in America. We have inflated our numbers - as in the claim of a million or more members! - and we attempted to sustain ourselves as an autocephalous church in the image of the very ancient or very big autocephalous churches, with ruinous financial - and I am afraid ruinous spiritual - consequences. Why couldn't we have modeled our sense of what being autocephalous means on, for example, the modest Church of the Czech and Slovak Lands, rather that the extremely impressive Church of Russia? On the other hand, while all this was going on and pumped up by our leaders and church press, we just accepted it. We just accepted the many distortions and half-truths, the improbable claims and assertions, the presumption of some ecclesial 'high ground', the 'vision' and all that it assumed and called for. Why? Probably because these things flattered us. It feels good to be part of the cutting edge, to have the high ground, to think oneself more and better than one really is. We did not like to hear criticism, let alone rumblings and hints of rot. And thus it is a spiritual problem, a problem in seeing ourselves clearly and honestly for who and what we really are. It is my fervent prayer that a deep and genuine spiritual impulse will, at our Council in Pittsburgh this week, cut through all the boosterism and hoopala to a clearer grasp of what is real and true and worthy and possible. There is no 'manifest destiny' for the Orthodox Church in America, or even for Orthodoxy in North America. There is only our destiny 'in Christ'.

In his commentary on the Song of Songs, the ancient church writer Origen has the Lover (Christ) saying to the Beloved (the Church; you and me): 'I adjure you: awaken the love which is in you, and after you have woken it make it rise up! When the Creator of all things created you, he planted in your hearts the seeds of love. But now in you love is asleep...'

Origen goes on to say that the Word of God is asleep in those who do not believe and in those of doubtful heart, while it is awake in the saints. It sleeps in those who are shaken by storms, but it awakes the moment they cry out - those who want to be saved and who are looking for this...

What I would like to say is this. Everyone wants to be loved. To give and receive love is the most wonderful exchange possible. Where love is given and received it is a source of joy and peace, even in the most difficult and troubling circumstances. It is possible to bear wars and poverty, tragedy, illness, old age, and approaching death - if only there is love. Where love is not given and not received there is only pain, a sort of hell, even in the midst of prosperity.

Love is like an oasis in the desert, an enclosed garden in a bustling city, a precious secret the joy of which is doubled by being shared.

Is it possible that this love is simply the product of biochemistry and biological imperative?

Everything we are given in the Church - the Mysteries, our worship, Scripture, prayer and the spiritual disciplines and opportunities - are given to us to awaken the love - the capacity to give love and receive love - that the Lord has planted deep in our inmost being. Our love needs to be wakened and re-awakend, for it is as if our distractions, and so often our fears and the hardness of heart that comes from fear, work as a narcotic, drugging our love of God and one another, putting our love into an unnatural and artificial, unrefreshing sleep.

The Coming of Christ - in the Incarnation and in our encounter with Him in our baptism, in repentance, in the eucharist, in the many spiritual renewals that make up our life in Christ - is the basic reality, the pattern and theme of this awakening of love. God loves us and has made us to be lovable and loving, in the image and likeness of His love. And when we fell away - and when we fall - and when our love was stilled - and is stilled - in an unnatural death-like slumber, He sent - and sends - His beloved Son to enter into our dreary unreality and the darkness of our dream-world, to awaken us, to renew love in us, to bring us into the light.

St Andrew, Fool for Christ

Who was this Andrew, this blessed chosen one, to who the Mother of God manifested herself? In the great city of imperial Byzantium, St Andrew seemed to be the most miserable, poor, and lowborn man. Beneath the appearance of voluntary holy foolishness he had hidden from men his radiant spirit and gracious wisdom.... Following the inner call, reinforced by a miraculous vision, he laid all his gifts at the foot of the cross and clothed himself with a strange and laughter-provoking madness. But the poor man's rags concealed rich robes; the sores and filfth concealed spiritual beauty. He accepted the ascesis of holy foolishness together with the disciplines of fasting, poverty, homelessness, and unceasing prayer. And it was this mad and strange holy fool to whom the Mother of God chose to reveal herself in the church at Blachernae. She did not choose the patriarch or anyone of the rank of bishop, priest, or monk; she did not choose the emperor or his court; she did not choose any of the wise and learned men who were so abundant in Byzantium; she did not choose any of the notables of the imperial city. Instead, the Mother of God chose this Andrew, who had abased himself beneath all other men, who had made himself more foolish than all other men.

- Adapted from Fr Sergius Bulgakov, The Radiant Protection over the World ( in Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions for the Church Year, translated by Boris Jakim; William B. Eerdmans, 2008)

in a predicament and on the move

What distinguishes Judeo-Christianity in general from other world religions is its emphasis on the value of the individual person, its view of man as a creature in trouble, seeking to get out of it, and accordingly on the move. Add to this anthropology the special marks of the Catholic Church: the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, which, whatever else they do, confer the highest significance upon the ordinary things of this world, bread, wine, water, touch, breath, words, talking, listening — and what do you have? You have a man in a predicament and on the move in a real world of real things, a world which is a sacrament and a mystery; a pilgrim whose life is a searching and a finding.

– Walker Percy, “The Holiness of the Ordinary,” in Signposts in a Strange Land

Warren: God is in the Details

God is in the details

My Gaelic, Calvinist ancestors (on my mama's side), were very clear about the meaning of Labour Day. As they said, that is the day when we work especially hard, to prove how much our efficiency has improved over the last year.

Now, I will tell you a secret about them (if you promise not to tell my mother). I learned this as a child, visiting their native Cape Breton. These people were droll, on the edge of mischievous. My maternal grandmother, somewhat over the edge. "Post-moderns" since time out of mind, they tended to communicate in layered irony. Often as not, the ironies doubled or quadrupled, which is to say, cancelled out, and the truth is they were very hardworking.

On this stock of Scotchmen, and similar cultural materials (Norman French; Methodist English; escaped Irish; relocated American) Canada constructed her work ethic. By any broadly accepted statistical standard, we are among the world's most productive people, and this despite the fact that, at any given moment, most of us don't know what we're doing. (Imagine if we did!)

But what is work, the more philosophical may ask. We know what it is in physics (a scalar quantity, measured in joules), but what is it for a human being?

It can be slavery. When a contemporary urban office worker describes himself as a "wage slave," he is intending an irony. But back up, and look at the building in which he works, or even the arrangement of furniture within his department, and we may detect aspects of a double irony. (Two negatives make a positive.) He really is a slave to the wage. How long, after winning the lottery, would he continue to work there?

The shocking answer is, many do not quit their jobs immediately. I have gleaned this by reading actual accounts of lottery winners. Some angel has told them it would be imprudent. They wait until the reality of unearned wealth sinks in, to let the life of irresponsible leisure begin to undermine them.

Am I doing this only for the money? And for myself, alone? Or out of laziness, since it would be much harder to earn a living in a more satisfying way? Do I love my job, or am I self-indentured?

My late father checked out of industrial design promptly on his 65th birthday. Or rather, he checked out of being paid for it (or for teaching it). He continued to take on design work - tasks which seemed worth doing - but refused to charge for his services. This way he could do only what he enjoyed, and tell clients who annoyed him to progress, hell-ward.

That, at least, was the theory. In practice, services obtained for free are valued at nothing, and dear papa found clients who just wasted his time. That is why, incidentally, true voluntary work is almost thankless, in this world. And why it is so noble. And such thanks as may be obtained - in the hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, refugee shelters - are the very gleam of Heaven.

Most of us will not win the lottery. And few are born to great wealth. Yet as a dear Czech friend put it, once, when asked if a certain unusual person was independently wealthy: "No. He is independently poor."

My own view is that we should pursue what is noble, and that work is ennobling. Or rather, potentially ennobling. When I look at the urban world around me (and I am unambiguously a city boy), I find examples of it everywhere. But that may be because I don't own a car, and get from A to B mostly by walking.

On a more analytical view, it seems to me, the great majority of jobs involve very little skill or craft or moral stamina. They involve the production of goods and services which the average human being would be better off without. I see even relatively poor people, struggling back from the malls with consumer goods that are tawdry, and joyless - yet which advertisers have persuaded them they cannot live without. They worked (or collected welfare) for this?

Statistically, our economy is a great success; morally, it is a catastrophic failure. For an economy that was broadly successful would not only feed, clothe, and shelter every one, but make available to each real joy in labour (both paid and unpaid), and in consumption, too. Not "rewards," as a union boss would understand the term, but intrinsic rewards.

"God is in the details." A true craftsman works even on the details that are invisible to his customers. He works, as it were, not only for them, but in the sight of God, who sees everything. Conscience and self-discipline inform each movement of hand and eye. He takes his pleasure in doing a job well; in exceeding every regulatory standard. Each object is made, each task performed, as if it were his last. He has a calling.

And the strange thing is, behind all the garbage heap of statistics, and the pace and stress of "getting by," people long for this. We were made to be craftsmen.

David Warren

begins as a representation, soon becomes a substitute

In a wide-ranging study (L’image interdite, 1994) the French
philosopher Alain Besançon has argued that the fear and suspicion of
images has influenced the development of religion and philosophy
throughout recorded history, and has not disappeared merely because we
are now surrounded and distracted by images on every side and at every
moment of the day. Indeed, much of what disturbs people in our
image-saturated culture is what disturbed the theologians of Islam:
namely, that the “graven image,” which begins as a representation,
soon becomes a substitute. And substitutes corrupt the feelings that
they invite, in the way that idols corrupt worship, and pornography
corrupts desire. For substitutes invite easy and mechanical responses.
They short-circuit the costly process whereby we form real
relationships, and put mechanical and addictive reflexes in their
place. The idol does not represent God: it defaces Him, in something
like the way pornography defaces love.

Roger Scruton, From Christ to Coke, Prospect 187 (24 August, 2011)