Benedicamus Domino!
Today is, of course, Halloween. Children in many parts of the world are dressed in costume and will be going door to door to obtain candy from generous neighbours, and if the neighbours aren't so generous, the children may play pranks upon them. I used to indulge in this time-honoured tradition of "trick-or-treat," but I never stopped to think of what lay behind it. All I knew was that Halloween was a magical time which could set my imagination soaring and indulge my creative spirit. It always felt right and proper to celebrate it, and even after I was deemed too old to go trick-or-treating, I still dressed up in costume and enjoyed reading or hearing ghost stories and generally made merry and scary with the best of them.
Then, I found Pagan beliefs, and I researched the origins of Halloween. On one hand, it was said to be a time of unpredictability when the veil between the living world and the "other" world, the world of spirits and undying things, was thin. The celts certainly believed this, and the tradition persisted into Christian times, when those of the "other" world became evil. People had to dress in costume in order to fool the evil spirits so that they wouldn't take them away.
Still, I was certain that even more lay behind this idea than was on its surface, so I probed deeper. I still found the theme of unpredictability running strongly in the traditional stories, but what I also found was that this was a night to honour the dead and to acknowledge the coming of winter. Of course, to a farming and hunting culture, winter was seen as a very difficult time of year, but it was also seen as a time when the land would rest from its labours, and as Samhain (pronounced "sow-win") was said to be a night out of time, when the living and the dead could mingle, it was rife with magic and divination rites. Here, on the eve of the hardest time of year, people would seek counsel of their ancestors and of the gods. Priests would wear the skin of a ritually-slaughtered bull and would allow it to shrink in the heat of a bonfire, and as it shrank, they would go into a trance and would prophecy. This sort of thing was done in many parts of the world, as Pagan beliefs tend to follow similar lines. They take their beliefs from the world around them, and the world as we know it has many similar themes repeated in all its continents.
So here, at last, I felt that I had come to the truth of why Halloween had intrigued me so much. Every year, I felt (and still feel, I might add) a build-up of something--let us say excitement for lack of a better word--surrounding this day. Even though I no longer participate in the getting of candy or even dress in costume, it is still a very interesting time. The feeling in the air shifts and blurs, and one feels that anything is possible. Don't misunderstand me! I am a committed Christian, but it is on days like today when that old feeling returns and I revel in the wildness and the freedom it seems to afford.
When I became a Pagan in name, (I'm more than convinced that I had been one in spirit for many years,) I began to acknowledge Samhain as a time for honouring the dead and for interesting portents and signs. It was on Samhain one year that I and a friend saw two deer performing what we figured was some sort of a mating dance in a local park which had a petting zoo in it. They pranced and pawed and made noises, and not even our proximity would stop them. Well, two months later, I met the man who later became my fiance. What was a Pagan girl to think? It confirmed Samhain in my mind as a blessed and sacred time.
Then, the first Samhain that I celebrated with others was also the first Samhain after my fiance's passing. So, I had a very real reason to honour my dead that year, and it came at a time when I needed a catharsis. It was a beautiful ritual, and I'll never forget it, but the one I will truly never forget came three years later. Someone had brought some water from Chalice Well in Glastonbury. Glastonbury has become a place sacred to both Christians and Pagans, and it has meant a great deal to me, even though I've never set foot within its bounds. Well, so here was some water actually drawn from Chalice Well! I was awed and fascinated, and I decided to place some on my forehead. This is where one's "third eye" is said to reside, the point on the body which corresponds with the faculty of "second-sight." Well, I placed the water on my forehead, and then I got an insight. It was an epiphany, though till some days or weeks later, I didn't know what it meant. I remember thinking: "I am Glastonbury," only those words, but I kept it to myself and we went on with things.
Then, in November, came my realization that Christ truly was who He said He was. I've written of this before in this blog, so I won't dwell on it now, but I began to realize what I had meant when I had told myself that I was Glastonbury. Here was a land (probably an island at the time,) sacred to a people who had worshipped on it for centuries. Then came Joseph of Aramathia who planted his staff which blossomed into the holy thorn. More importantly, he may have been the first Christian to bring knowledge of Christ to these people, and he came as a tradesman. They mined tin thereabouts at the time. Here was I, suddenly having a knowledge bloom and blossom that I had sought for years, but I learned something very important that day. Sometimes, you have to go back to the beginning before you can go forward, and sometimes, your path will lead you where you least expect to go, but if it is a path of truth-seeking, then truth will find you and meet you on the road.
So, in some ways, I still honour Samhain. I cannot call it a day of demonic powers or Satanic rites as some of my Christian brothers and sisters do. For me, the door between the worlds was a doorway into truth, and I will never repudiate its importance or deny its sacred nature. No, I do not celebrate it now as once I did, but I honour those who do, and I stand with them in the knowledge of what it is and what it means. To betray that would be to betray something deep within myself, and it would also mean betraying my own journey. "I am a part of all that I have met," as Tennyson wrote, and I will never deny that I was once a Pagan and a Witch. That path saved me from despairing, gave me comfort and confidence when I needed it, and perhaps most importantly, gave me some wise people to learn from and to bond with. I have sought, ever since I became a Christian, to forget all of this. I have felt that it was necessary to completely divorce myself from my Pagan past. Now, however, I don't feel that way anymore. I am who I am, and I can't pretend to be anyone else. To do so or to minimize that time in my life and call it a mere phase would be petty and mean. Nothing short of Christ's own self could have made me leave Pagan beliefs behind. I was committed and had thought I had found my spiritual home. Then, of course, as He will do, Christ changed everything. Of course, He had been preparing for that day for a long time. I think it would have come in some way even if I had not left Christianity before. It's a day that everyone must have, perhaps even several times in life. It's a day when one's faith becomes less a matter of the intellect and more a matter of the heart and soul. It's a day when one knows who one is, fully and completely, for one instant of time. Everyone has their journey in life, and no one can judge another's path, and so I say: blessed Samhain to all who celebrate it! Here's one Christian who stands with you!
Deo Gratias!
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
So, Who is God Anyway?
Benedicamus Domino!
I've been pondering in my mind for some time now how to deal with this particular topic. First, let me start off by saying that I am not attempting to say anything new or different about God, but I keep mentioning God and Christ and the Holy Trinity in this blog, so I suppose that I owe myself and anyone who happens to read this little corner of the web an explanation (so far as I can give it) of just who this God-being is, and why I seek to grow closer to Him.
First of all, the fundamental thing to remember about God, is that He is. He exists. He exists in eternity, which (so far as I understand it) is a state or mode of existence that is beyond concepts of historical or linear time. These concepts have been given to us (in the form of seasons, cycles of the sun and moon, and the like) as a way to break up reality in to manageable chunks. We, being fallen creatures, now have five senses which do not function very well as a whole. In fact, they are often in competition with each other, so that to perceive reality as it truly is would either drive us mad or cause our brains to explode. So, we state that God has been since before the world began, but for Him, eternity is simply Himself. I mean, it is what He is as well as when or where He is, I guess. You'll notice my language breaking down at several points in this post, but it is necessary for you to see this, because I am trying to put into words something that I know in a very deep place within myself but that is not a matter for simple logic or language to convey.
So, with all this talk of God existing in eternity, is it fair of me to use gender pronouns to talk about Him? Must I call Him 'Him,' for instance? Can't I just as equally call Him 'Her' or 'Them' or 'It?' First, I can't call God 'Them,' because I believe that God is a unity. If 'We' is used, as in the first Chapter of Genesis, ("Let us make man in Our image,") I believe that this is either used as a royal 'We' or as an early expression of the other aspect of God's nature according to Christianity: the Trinity of Father or mind, Son or Word, and Holy Spirit or Breath. The Father is the conceiver, the designer, the begetter, providing the spark of being itself from His own Being. The Son speaks that spark into being, and the Holy Spirit infuses this new being with life and with Himself, but all three are one, all three are together and function as one. So, can I call God 'Him,' or is this too limiting? Perhaps it is too limiting, but it is how we can best understand God. If God were a Mother in analogy, then 'She' would need a begetter. Even the Virgin Mary conceived Christ because God first begot Him. So, whether we find that God is beyond gender when we come to meet God, 'Him' is a good enough way to describe God on this side of the grave.
Now, some may take offense to this, stating that it promulgates an antiquated and patriarchal system which ought to be done away with. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of hearing this argument. I myself am a woman, and I do not feel alienated by having the centre and ground of my faith described in masculine terms. The problems in history have arisen because of fallen humans and their need to dominate anyone whom they either fear or whom they feel are weaker than they are, and historically, men have been the dominators. However, is this a direct result of having God described in masculine terms? I know I'm repeating myself, but I'll say again that I do not believe that this is so. First, we believe that Christ is the Word incarnate, and He took the form of a man. I suppose that He could have taken the form of a woman, but for some reason, He didn't. However, there was no one who respected women more than Him in His time in history, and that's an interesting point. So, there you have it. Orthodox Christianity has consistently used masculine pronouns when referring to God, and it has never referred to the Trinity as "The Non-gender-specific Parental figure, The Non-Gender-Specific Offspring, and The Sacred Non-Corporeal Entity" or anything else.
I chose to mention this question of gender because I feel that it feeds into the central point of my topic, and that is this. People who vehemently deny God's existence invariably describe God as some sort of all-seeing moral judge, or worse, a capricious "fire and brimstone" figure who rains thunder upon a helpless and deluded populus who have somehow tricked themselves into believing that God is love. People who are angry at God, I've found, are more often than not actually angry at other people, or else have not been able to let go of some misfortune which has befallen them, they feel, at God's hands, as though God has let them down or failed to keep some bargain or something. I'm not here to dispell these ideas from peoples' minds. Only they can begin to do this for themselves if this is where they are on their journey through life. We all have our paths to take, and I'm not one to tell you where you should go or what you should do. However, I'm simply trying to think out loud, as it were, about what makes God God, as I've come to understand Him through the lens of Christian belief and teaching. Keep in mind that even this is seeing "through a glass darkly." So long as we are here on earth, we simply cannot know God's true self in a full and unguarded way. Again, our heads would explode.
So, if God seems so apart from us as we are now, then why on earth would I seek to grow closer to Him? How can I, a fallen being with five (well, four in my case, I suppose) warring senses, perceive what it is to grow closer to God? Well, this is where grace comes in. Part of the reason for Christ's coming among us was to provide a way for the Holy Spirit to dwell with us and in us. His wholesale sacrifice on the cross showed us that the 'old man' or the flesh or the ego or the puppet-self that we create to function in this world must be destroyed if we are to participate in His joy, in His eternal life. Once I got this through my head and saw myself at least a little the way that God must see me, puppet-self and all, I realized that this self which loves to be right all the time, which gets angry when it does not get its way, which covets and is envious and is hypocritical, was not my true and abiding self, was not the self that God wanted to make manifest. So, to borrow a Sufi concept, I began to "polish the mirror of my soul," as it were, and this had to begin with the waters of baptism. The body, the self, ought to reflect the state of the soul as far as is possible, and the only way that we can get the strength to accomplish this is by God's grace and with His help.
I've been on this road for almost six years now, (six years since my Baptism I mean,) and I now have another reason for drawing closer to God. I really do trust Him, or at least I want to Trust Him. He really is the fulfilment of all things for me, and though I will always be distracted by worldly concerns and by my own egoistic desires, more and more He seems to be breaking through all this and showing me His presence. He is joy! He is the pathway to true existence! Do I have unanswered questions? Of course! Is my life perfect now that I am a Christian? Not in the least! However, I know where to go to seek perfected love and perfected joy, and how I know it or even why I am a Christian really does remain one of those mysteries of which I stand in perpetual awe! In closing, I'll leave you with a little quote from William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence."
"To see a worold in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a whild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
Or eternity in an hour."
Deo Gratias!
I've been pondering in my mind for some time now how to deal with this particular topic. First, let me start off by saying that I am not attempting to say anything new or different about God, but I keep mentioning God and Christ and the Holy Trinity in this blog, so I suppose that I owe myself and anyone who happens to read this little corner of the web an explanation (so far as I can give it) of just who this God-being is, and why I seek to grow closer to Him.
First of all, the fundamental thing to remember about God, is that He is. He exists. He exists in eternity, which (so far as I understand it) is a state or mode of existence that is beyond concepts of historical or linear time. These concepts have been given to us (in the form of seasons, cycles of the sun and moon, and the like) as a way to break up reality in to manageable chunks. We, being fallen creatures, now have five senses which do not function very well as a whole. In fact, they are often in competition with each other, so that to perceive reality as it truly is would either drive us mad or cause our brains to explode. So, we state that God has been since before the world began, but for Him, eternity is simply Himself. I mean, it is what He is as well as when or where He is, I guess. You'll notice my language breaking down at several points in this post, but it is necessary for you to see this, because I am trying to put into words something that I know in a very deep place within myself but that is not a matter for simple logic or language to convey.
So, with all this talk of God existing in eternity, is it fair of me to use gender pronouns to talk about Him? Must I call Him 'Him,' for instance? Can't I just as equally call Him 'Her' or 'Them' or 'It?' First, I can't call God 'Them,' because I believe that God is a unity. If 'We' is used, as in the first Chapter of Genesis, ("Let us make man in Our image,") I believe that this is either used as a royal 'We' or as an early expression of the other aspect of God's nature according to Christianity: the Trinity of Father or mind, Son or Word, and Holy Spirit or Breath. The Father is the conceiver, the designer, the begetter, providing the spark of being itself from His own Being. The Son speaks that spark into being, and the Holy Spirit infuses this new being with life and with Himself, but all three are one, all three are together and function as one. So, can I call God 'Him,' or is this too limiting? Perhaps it is too limiting, but it is how we can best understand God. If God were a Mother in analogy, then 'She' would need a begetter. Even the Virgin Mary conceived Christ because God first begot Him. So, whether we find that God is beyond gender when we come to meet God, 'Him' is a good enough way to describe God on this side of the grave.
Now, some may take offense to this, stating that it promulgates an antiquated and patriarchal system which ought to be done away with. Frankly, I'm sick and tired of hearing this argument. I myself am a woman, and I do not feel alienated by having the centre and ground of my faith described in masculine terms. The problems in history have arisen because of fallen humans and their need to dominate anyone whom they either fear or whom they feel are weaker than they are, and historically, men have been the dominators. However, is this a direct result of having God described in masculine terms? I know I'm repeating myself, but I'll say again that I do not believe that this is so. First, we believe that Christ is the Word incarnate, and He took the form of a man. I suppose that He could have taken the form of a woman, but for some reason, He didn't. However, there was no one who respected women more than Him in His time in history, and that's an interesting point. So, there you have it. Orthodox Christianity has consistently used masculine pronouns when referring to God, and it has never referred to the Trinity as "The Non-gender-specific Parental figure, The Non-Gender-Specific Offspring, and The Sacred Non-Corporeal Entity" or anything else.
I chose to mention this question of gender because I feel that it feeds into the central point of my topic, and that is this. People who vehemently deny God's existence invariably describe God as some sort of all-seeing moral judge, or worse, a capricious "fire and brimstone" figure who rains thunder upon a helpless and deluded populus who have somehow tricked themselves into believing that God is love. People who are angry at God, I've found, are more often than not actually angry at other people, or else have not been able to let go of some misfortune which has befallen them, they feel, at God's hands, as though God has let them down or failed to keep some bargain or something. I'm not here to dispell these ideas from peoples' minds. Only they can begin to do this for themselves if this is where they are on their journey through life. We all have our paths to take, and I'm not one to tell you where you should go or what you should do. However, I'm simply trying to think out loud, as it were, about what makes God God, as I've come to understand Him through the lens of Christian belief and teaching. Keep in mind that even this is seeing "through a glass darkly." So long as we are here on earth, we simply cannot know God's true self in a full and unguarded way. Again, our heads would explode.
So, if God seems so apart from us as we are now, then why on earth would I seek to grow closer to Him? How can I, a fallen being with five (well, four in my case, I suppose) warring senses, perceive what it is to grow closer to God? Well, this is where grace comes in. Part of the reason for Christ's coming among us was to provide a way for the Holy Spirit to dwell with us and in us. His wholesale sacrifice on the cross showed us that the 'old man' or the flesh or the ego or the puppet-self that we create to function in this world must be destroyed if we are to participate in His joy, in His eternal life. Once I got this through my head and saw myself at least a little the way that God must see me, puppet-self and all, I realized that this self which loves to be right all the time, which gets angry when it does not get its way, which covets and is envious and is hypocritical, was not my true and abiding self, was not the self that God wanted to make manifest. So, to borrow a Sufi concept, I began to "polish the mirror of my soul," as it were, and this had to begin with the waters of baptism. The body, the self, ought to reflect the state of the soul as far as is possible, and the only way that we can get the strength to accomplish this is by God's grace and with His help.
I've been on this road for almost six years now, (six years since my Baptism I mean,) and I now have another reason for drawing closer to God. I really do trust Him, or at least I want to Trust Him. He really is the fulfilment of all things for me, and though I will always be distracted by worldly concerns and by my own egoistic desires, more and more He seems to be breaking through all this and showing me His presence. He is joy! He is the pathway to true existence! Do I have unanswered questions? Of course! Is my life perfect now that I am a Christian? Not in the least! However, I know where to go to seek perfected love and perfected joy, and how I know it or even why I am a Christian really does remain one of those mysteries of which I stand in perpetual awe! In closing, I'll leave you with a little quote from William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence."
"To see a worold in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a whild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
Or eternity in an hour."
Deo Gratias!
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Evil and the Fallen World
Benedicamus Domino!
There are times when I really do believe that I think too much and that my thoughts deal with concepts and ideas which are truly out of my league. However, this doesn't seem to stop me from thinking, and occasionally, expressing them. The following entry is such a collection of thoughts. I may well be writing about things which are way over my head in this post, but I'm going to do it anyway. Sometimes being cut down to size is beneficial, after all.
In my last forray into things spiritual, I discussed the fact that we live in a fallen world and that we are sometimes confronted with tragedies or wrongs done to us that have been caused by another person's clear chain of choices which may be fundamentally irresponsible and unjustifiable. The answer to avoiding the soul-destroying desire for revenge given by the church is to forgive the person, and the path to forgiveness has to begin with our own realization that we ourselves contribute to this fallen world as much as anyone does and that the right to judge rests with God and, on the earlthly plain, with the legal system. It sounds so easy, doesn't it? Would that it were! Being a Christian, or being a person who tries to live to a higher ideal than this world demonstrates, is really hard work! With Christ, there is grace, but that doesn't mean that the path will be easy to tread.
So, what does this mean? Are we trying to live beyond this world? Is this world evil in itself, and are we evil because we are sinful people? The church teaches that we are sinful and that this was the reason for Christ's death and resurrection: to reverse the effects of sin on humankind, and ultimately, in the universal resurrection, to redeem all of creation from its fallen state. So, is sin itself evil? I personally believe that sin is not good, but if it is evil, it is evil in seed-form. Sin begets evil. Sin really is misdirected desire, and it is these desires which, if unchecked, can lead to true evil. We as humans are not born evil, according to the church. Indeed, children who are unbaptized, so Orthodox teaching has it, if they die, do not go to some weird limbo-place. They just return to God from whence they came. They are innocent and have nothing counted against them in the judgement.
As we grow older, and our idea of "me" and "mine" grows, we turn more easily to our misdirected desires and instincts. The idea of worshipping God is replaced by idolatry of the self or lust for the bodies of others. The fire of love and zeal is transformed into the fire of anger and vengeance. The desire for fulfilment in God is changed to fulfilment in this world: overindulgence, acquisitiveness, the need for validation in the eyes of other human beings and the need to get ahead of other human beings. However, is all of this evil? If sin in itself is merely the seed of evil, then what does evil look like in its full flowering?
The conundrum of the fallen world is that there is always a little bit of sin in every merely human virtue, and there is always a tiny bit of virtue in every sin. True evil can only be done when there is no redeeming quality in the deed whatsoever, and it is the demons who tempt us to this kind of action. It was the devil who tempted us to fall in the first place, but he fell first. He used the gifts he was given by God to wage war on his Creator, and after his fall, he tempted man to set himself against God by transgressing the commandment about eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge. Ironically, this was a fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and man would have learned this knowledge in God's own time. However, because the knowledge was acquired in the wrong way, only parts of it were learned by man, and so guilt and shame came into the world. Guilt and shame are not repentance. They are usually barriers to true penitence and remorse. They are forms of pride, actually. All could have been forgiven if Adam and Eve had just taken responsibility for their actions, but instead, they blamed others. Eve blamed the serpent (the devil,) and Adam blamed his wife. This signified that they were now afraid of God, where before they had known Him in a way that we in our current state cannot even imagine.
Now that we are fallen, it is easy for the demons to tempt us. Our carnal desires (as opposed to those of the spirit) are not evil in themselves, but when combined with unrestrained self-interest, then evil is born. Sin is a fact of our world. Evil is when sin is unchecked by any sort of virtue, and I maintain that the greatest evils in this world are committed by people who have become slaves to demonic temptation and whose souls have been ground down by their own fears and ambitions. However, it is said in the gospel that love casts out fear, and the great thing about God is that he loves his fallen creatures even if they commit unspeakable evils. The problem comes when the evil is too much for the human's soul and it causes him or her to be unable to hear God's voice over the rejoicing of the demons. This is where intercessory prayer comes in, because as long as a person is walking this earth, there is a chance for him or her to return to God. Praying for a person who seems lost can cause a beacon to shine in the darkness of that person's life. This is not due to our own virtue or holiness, but rather due to God's grace working through our prayers. Indeed, I rather believe that even at death there is a chance for change, but if the person's soul is mired deep in fear and mistrust, it will be difficult for the person to recognize love, even God's love.
Sin is like a spiritual wound. It weakens our spirits and leaves them languishing. Evil is something else again. If we commit a true evil, we kill our soul, or the devil does it for us. Christ says several times in the gospels that we should not fear the one who can kill the body (either humankind or death itself,) but that we should fear the one who can kill the soul (the devil.) Sin can be healed with mercy and tears of repentance, because these give us access to Christ's redeeming power. Evil must be exorcised, whether literally or figuratively. Evil must be dealt with as a man would deal with a ferocious beast, and its killer must be God. So, this is why we ask Him again and again to "lead us not into temptation," but also to "deliver us from evil," because He is the only help we have against the continuing war which the demons are waging in our world and in our hearts.
I sometimes marvel that more people do not believe in a literal devil or in demons. I know that it may sound naive to do so, but there are some things in this world which have to be brought on by demonic temptation. The kinds of brutal and painful sufferings that we are capable of inflicting upon each other seem to go beyond most humans' ability to comprehend, so much so that we call the perpetrators of said evil "inhuman monsters" or "unfeeling creatures." In short, we cast these people out of our race, deeming them to be animals or worse, when the truth is that they were born innocent. They were born as children of God, but something got twisted inside of them along the way and they lost, or all-but lost, their souls. It is hard to pray for people like this. We want to see them pay for what they have done. We'd rather they did not share our planet for longer than necessary. However, even Christ prayed for his killers. They killed Him simply because they were frightened of Him. The legal system didn't want him dead, but the mob had their way in the end, and He said that they didn't know what they were doing, so they should be forgiven. In the same way, it is Christian to pray for those who have committed great evils, and also to trust to God's judgment. I often say: "May God reward him or her according to his or her deeds." This sounds hateful, but the fact is that I don't know a person's every action or what lies in a person's heart. However, God knows this, and He'll do what needs to be done. The point is that my opinion of the person's actions doesn't really matter. It is my ability to pray for the person that does matter, and if I can't do this, then it's myself that I have to examine.
By the way, I'm not saying that I have reached a stage where I can pray for people who have done acts which shock or appall me without being angry with them, but it's a thing to work on and to ask God to help with. As I said before, being a Christian is not a walk in the park, but the path does lead to something truly wonderful and worth having!
Deo Gratias!
There are times when I really do believe that I think too much and that my thoughts deal with concepts and ideas which are truly out of my league. However, this doesn't seem to stop me from thinking, and occasionally, expressing them. The following entry is such a collection of thoughts. I may well be writing about things which are way over my head in this post, but I'm going to do it anyway. Sometimes being cut down to size is beneficial, after all.
In my last forray into things spiritual, I discussed the fact that we live in a fallen world and that we are sometimes confronted with tragedies or wrongs done to us that have been caused by another person's clear chain of choices which may be fundamentally irresponsible and unjustifiable. The answer to avoiding the soul-destroying desire for revenge given by the church is to forgive the person, and the path to forgiveness has to begin with our own realization that we ourselves contribute to this fallen world as much as anyone does and that the right to judge rests with God and, on the earlthly plain, with the legal system. It sounds so easy, doesn't it? Would that it were! Being a Christian, or being a person who tries to live to a higher ideal than this world demonstrates, is really hard work! With Christ, there is grace, but that doesn't mean that the path will be easy to tread.
So, what does this mean? Are we trying to live beyond this world? Is this world evil in itself, and are we evil because we are sinful people? The church teaches that we are sinful and that this was the reason for Christ's death and resurrection: to reverse the effects of sin on humankind, and ultimately, in the universal resurrection, to redeem all of creation from its fallen state. So, is sin itself evil? I personally believe that sin is not good, but if it is evil, it is evil in seed-form. Sin begets evil. Sin really is misdirected desire, and it is these desires which, if unchecked, can lead to true evil. We as humans are not born evil, according to the church. Indeed, children who are unbaptized, so Orthodox teaching has it, if they die, do not go to some weird limbo-place. They just return to God from whence they came. They are innocent and have nothing counted against them in the judgement.
As we grow older, and our idea of "me" and "mine" grows, we turn more easily to our misdirected desires and instincts. The idea of worshipping God is replaced by idolatry of the self or lust for the bodies of others. The fire of love and zeal is transformed into the fire of anger and vengeance. The desire for fulfilment in God is changed to fulfilment in this world: overindulgence, acquisitiveness, the need for validation in the eyes of other human beings and the need to get ahead of other human beings. However, is all of this evil? If sin in itself is merely the seed of evil, then what does evil look like in its full flowering?
The conundrum of the fallen world is that there is always a little bit of sin in every merely human virtue, and there is always a tiny bit of virtue in every sin. True evil can only be done when there is no redeeming quality in the deed whatsoever, and it is the demons who tempt us to this kind of action. It was the devil who tempted us to fall in the first place, but he fell first. He used the gifts he was given by God to wage war on his Creator, and after his fall, he tempted man to set himself against God by transgressing the commandment about eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge. Ironically, this was a fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and man would have learned this knowledge in God's own time. However, because the knowledge was acquired in the wrong way, only parts of it were learned by man, and so guilt and shame came into the world. Guilt and shame are not repentance. They are usually barriers to true penitence and remorse. They are forms of pride, actually. All could have been forgiven if Adam and Eve had just taken responsibility for their actions, but instead, they blamed others. Eve blamed the serpent (the devil,) and Adam blamed his wife. This signified that they were now afraid of God, where before they had known Him in a way that we in our current state cannot even imagine.
Now that we are fallen, it is easy for the demons to tempt us. Our carnal desires (as opposed to those of the spirit) are not evil in themselves, but when combined with unrestrained self-interest, then evil is born. Sin is a fact of our world. Evil is when sin is unchecked by any sort of virtue, and I maintain that the greatest evils in this world are committed by people who have become slaves to demonic temptation and whose souls have been ground down by their own fears and ambitions. However, it is said in the gospel that love casts out fear, and the great thing about God is that he loves his fallen creatures even if they commit unspeakable evils. The problem comes when the evil is too much for the human's soul and it causes him or her to be unable to hear God's voice over the rejoicing of the demons. This is where intercessory prayer comes in, because as long as a person is walking this earth, there is a chance for him or her to return to God. Praying for a person who seems lost can cause a beacon to shine in the darkness of that person's life. This is not due to our own virtue or holiness, but rather due to God's grace working through our prayers. Indeed, I rather believe that even at death there is a chance for change, but if the person's soul is mired deep in fear and mistrust, it will be difficult for the person to recognize love, even God's love.
Sin is like a spiritual wound. It weakens our spirits and leaves them languishing. Evil is something else again. If we commit a true evil, we kill our soul, or the devil does it for us. Christ says several times in the gospels that we should not fear the one who can kill the body (either humankind or death itself,) but that we should fear the one who can kill the soul (the devil.) Sin can be healed with mercy and tears of repentance, because these give us access to Christ's redeeming power. Evil must be exorcised, whether literally or figuratively. Evil must be dealt with as a man would deal with a ferocious beast, and its killer must be God. So, this is why we ask Him again and again to "lead us not into temptation," but also to "deliver us from evil," because He is the only help we have against the continuing war which the demons are waging in our world and in our hearts.
I sometimes marvel that more people do not believe in a literal devil or in demons. I know that it may sound naive to do so, but there are some things in this world which have to be brought on by demonic temptation. The kinds of brutal and painful sufferings that we are capable of inflicting upon each other seem to go beyond most humans' ability to comprehend, so much so that we call the perpetrators of said evil "inhuman monsters" or "unfeeling creatures." In short, we cast these people out of our race, deeming them to be animals or worse, when the truth is that they were born innocent. They were born as children of God, but something got twisted inside of them along the way and they lost, or all-but lost, their souls. It is hard to pray for people like this. We want to see them pay for what they have done. We'd rather they did not share our planet for longer than necessary. However, even Christ prayed for his killers. They killed Him simply because they were frightened of Him. The legal system didn't want him dead, but the mob had their way in the end, and He said that they didn't know what they were doing, so they should be forgiven. In the same way, it is Christian to pray for those who have committed great evils, and also to trust to God's judgment. I often say: "May God reward him or her according to his or her deeds." This sounds hateful, but the fact is that I don't know a person's every action or what lies in a person's heart. However, God knows this, and He'll do what needs to be done. The point is that my opinion of the person's actions doesn't really matter. It is my ability to pray for the person that does matter, and if I can't do this, then it's myself that I have to examine.
By the way, I'm not saying that I have reached a stage where I can pray for people who have done acts which shock or appall me without being angry with them, but it's a thing to work on and to ask God to help with. As I said before, being a Christian is not a walk in the park, but the path does lead to something truly wonderful and worth having!
Deo Gratias!
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Finding Joy in a Fallen World
Benedicamus Domino!
There are times when the reality of living in a world that is imperfect prevents us from seeing the joy that is Christ's triumph over our fallen state. This has happened to me several times in my life, and it will likely happen several more times. For instance, in the past two months, I have heard of two tragic deaths involving family members of acquaintances of mine and drunk driving. It is sometimes easier to process a death which is due to natural causes, but when you know that someone's choice contributed to the death, any peace you might find over time can be blocked by anger at the person who made the choice to drive while drunk, to take the example I cited.
It is all very well for us to talk about not judging and forgiving those who wrong us, but how do we do this when the rubber really meets the road? How can we find peace when we're confronted with the death of a beloved person which we know was caused by another person's ill-conceived choice? This is a really difficult thing to learn, and it is a learned behaviour, because it involves seeing ourselves as just as culpable for the state of our fallen world as the person who made that choice to drive drunk. If we are truly following the path of repentance, we will, by God's grace, come to a knowledge of our own place in the fallen picture of the world as we find it, and once we really begin to see this, it will be very difficult for us to be angry, even when such a clear wrong has been committed. This coming to terms with our own need for salvation should not include false despair or false humility, but the process we follow likely will include these things as we begin to chip away at our self-assured belief that "I have done nothing wrong." This is our ego talking, of course, for it is very difficult for a human to live in this world without ever doing anything to wrong someone else. This is why forgiveness (both asking for and receiving it) is so important.
Forgiveness is necessary not only to help the person who has wronged us, but also to heal our own souls. Forgiveness is not about condoning someone's actions. It is, instead, about showing mercy, and mercy can only be given to those who do not deserve it, or it isn't mercy. The Old Testament law calls for an eye for an eye, and we often use this to justify our anger and our wish for retribution when a wrong has cut us to the very core. However, as a priest once said in a sermon I heard: "how often do we restrain ourselves only to wish that an eye be taken for an eye? Isn't it more usual that we wish more wrong be done to the person than the wrong they have done to us?" Once the fire of vengeance is lit, it is fueled by the wind of anger, and it is very difficult to stamp it out.
So, what is the answer? Do we just ignore our anger and hope it will go away? Do we pretend to be nice little children when all we really want to do is to hurt the other person in the way that we have been hurt? I believe that anger and grief need to be acknowledged. They need to be voiced, even if it is only God who hears us. He is strong. He can take being yelled at, and just because we're angry with Him or with our fellow humans, it doesn't mean that we're turning our backs on God. It only means that we're looking at ourselves in an honest way and allowing our emmotions to be released. Emotions are a part of us, but we often confuse ourselves into thinking that they're the most important part. They, in fact, are more like the foam on the sea or a cloud which blocks the sun for a while but which passes away later. The problem comes when they infect the will. When emotions infect the will, they can paralyze us and cause us to become tossed to and fro, and this is how emotions can grow into passions.
The important thing is to be gentle with ourselves during times when we find our emotions getting the better of us. Peter, when he wished to come to Christ over the water, found himself sinking, but he did not try to fix it himself. Instead, he called on Christ to save him, and soon, he was walking on the water again. We may feel as though we're drowning, but if we can see ourselves as contributors to the fallen world rather than only victims of it, then there is hope, because we will realize our need for salvation and maybe even the fact that the person who has wronged us is able to be saved as well. I'm not saying that this is a quick process, and I'm not saying that we can do it on our own. However, it is the path that we need to try and follow if we are going to be followers of Christ. May God help all those suffering in this fallen world, and may the souls of the faithful, through His mercy, rest in pease!!
Deo Gratias!
There are times when the reality of living in a world that is imperfect prevents us from seeing the joy that is Christ's triumph over our fallen state. This has happened to me several times in my life, and it will likely happen several more times. For instance, in the past two months, I have heard of two tragic deaths involving family members of acquaintances of mine and drunk driving. It is sometimes easier to process a death which is due to natural causes, but when you know that someone's choice contributed to the death, any peace you might find over time can be blocked by anger at the person who made the choice to drive while drunk, to take the example I cited.
It is all very well for us to talk about not judging and forgiving those who wrong us, but how do we do this when the rubber really meets the road? How can we find peace when we're confronted with the death of a beloved person which we know was caused by another person's ill-conceived choice? This is a really difficult thing to learn, and it is a learned behaviour, because it involves seeing ourselves as just as culpable for the state of our fallen world as the person who made that choice to drive drunk. If we are truly following the path of repentance, we will, by God's grace, come to a knowledge of our own place in the fallen picture of the world as we find it, and once we really begin to see this, it will be very difficult for us to be angry, even when such a clear wrong has been committed. This coming to terms with our own need for salvation should not include false despair or false humility, but the process we follow likely will include these things as we begin to chip away at our self-assured belief that "I have done nothing wrong." This is our ego talking, of course, for it is very difficult for a human to live in this world without ever doing anything to wrong someone else. This is why forgiveness (both asking for and receiving it) is so important.
Forgiveness is necessary not only to help the person who has wronged us, but also to heal our own souls. Forgiveness is not about condoning someone's actions. It is, instead, about showing mercy, and mercy can only be given to those who do not deserve it, or it isn't mercy. The Old Testament law calls for an eye for an eye, and we often use this to justify our anger and our wish for retribution when a wrong has cut us to the very core. However, as a priest once said in a sermon I heard: "how often do we restrain ourselves only to wish that an eye be taken for an eye? Isn't it more usual that we wish more wrong be done to the person than the wrong they have done to us?" Once the fire of vengeance is lit, it is fueled by the wind of anger, and it is very difficult to stamp it out.
So, what is the answer? Do we just ignore our anger and hope it will go away? Do we pretend to be nice little children when all we really want to do is to hurt the other person in the way that we have been hurt? I believe that anger and grief need to be acknowledged. They need to be voiced, even if it is only God who hears us. He is strong. He can take being yelled at, and just because we're angry with Him or with our fellow humans, it doesn't mean that we're turning our backs on God. It only means that we're looking at ourselves in an honest way and allowing our emmotions to be released. Emotions are a part of us, but we often confuse ourselves into thinking that they're the most important part. They, in fact, are more like the foam on the sea or a cloud which blocks the sun for a while but which passes away later. The problem comes when they infect the will. When emotions infect the will, they can paralyze us and cause us to become tossed to and fro, and this is how emotions can grow into passions.
The important thing is to be gentle with ourselves during times when we find our emotions getting the better of us. Peter, when he wished to come to Christ over the water, found himself sinking, but he did not try to fix it himself. Instead, he called on Christ to save him, and soon, he was walking on the water again. We may feel as though we're drowning, but if we can see ourselves as contributors to the fallen world rather than only victims of it, then there is hope, because we will realize our need for salvation and maybe even the fact that the person who has wronged us is able to be saved as well. I'm not saying that this is a quick process, and I'm not saying that we can do it on our own. However, it is the path that we need to try and follow if we are going to be followers of Christ. May God help all those suffering in this fallen world, and may the souls of the faithful, through His mercy, rest in pease!!
Deo Gratias!
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
The Beauty of the Perishing
Benedicamus Domino!
Autumn has come upon us once again here in Canada. Yesterday on a walk with my dog, I felt the leaves crunching underfoot and inhaled their peculiar dead but vital fragrance. There is something about the scent of dry leaves which underscores what Autumn has always meant to me. It is, in fact, my very favourite season of the year, and I have often asked myself why this should be. I have discovered that it is my favourite season, because it feels the most real to me. It assails me with scents and sensations, magic and mystery, blazing sun and cooling air. It is what our world truly is: a thing of transitory brilliance, beautiful in its perpetually-changing being.
When I truly began to reverence Autumn for its own sake, I was a practicing Pagan and Witch. I looked forward every year to the festival of Samhane (sow-wen,) when the end of the harvest would be honoured along with the dead who had gone before us. This is the root-festival for what has become known in our modern culture as Halloween, and whether you approve of the current customs associated with October 31 or not, for Witches (or the Wicca) and other Pagans, it is a time when the dead are honoured and remembered, and when the death of the year is acknowledged. For me, this festival brought meaning and pathos to an already meaning-filled time of the year, and it brought Autumn into focus in a way that no other faith had done for me before. I had always felt Autumn to be somehow holy, somehow sacred, but with the festival of Samhane, there was something more to it, something liturgical about the season, I suppose. The death of nature in Winter led to new life in the spring, and Autumn was nature's last revel, her last dance, as it were.
Yet, though my time for celebrating Samhane is long over, Autumn still has a deeply mystical quality for me, and I think I can now say why. In Autumn's blaze and burn, the world is giving of itself. The fields give up their harvest and the sun lends us its heat. Creation sacrifices itself to allow us to have new life again in the spring. Autumn is a very sacrificial time. I once believed this in a Pagan way, and in a sense, I haven't stopped believing it, or rather, my heart hasn't stopped believing it. Autumn is joyful for me, precisely because it is fleeting, precisely because it will end. Spring is redolent of new beginnings. Summer is luxuriant, almost epicurian in its delights! Winter is hard, but joy abounds amid the hardships because of the new hope of the spring. Autumn alone is unapologetic. It is honest about its direction. It is our world spending itself, consuming itself and preparing for rest. Autumn can show us how to be.
Autumn is like the glory of the sunset. Why is it that we see this glory only at the end of things? It is written in the Bible that all the world is vanity, meaning that everything in this life here is fleeting. Anyone who has lived a few years on this earth and has looked at their lives honestly can agree with this statement. I've seen many posts on Facebook and in other places lamenting the oncoming of Autumn. Whether it heralds the end of summer vacations or the coming of winter, people have tended to view Autumn this year as a negative. This is because we do not want to admit to ourselves that things here on earth change. We seek eternity, but, being fallen people, we seek it in the wrong places.
How many times have you said to yourself: "I wish this hour, day, season, would last forever?" We are averse to change, especially to change which seems to herald death or hardship. We buck against the transient nature of our existence, while all the while knowing that we can't do anything about it. The other extreme in dealing with the notion that all life is fleeting is to live fast and die hard. Is this valid? On the surface, it may seem that Autumn takes this approach, but I see Autumn, as I stated before, as giving of itself to feed the new spring, and it is this giving, this bringing to fruition that we need to look at. Yes, our life here is fleeting. Yes, we will all die! Death is a part of human life in this fallen world, and to deny it is simply to be dishonest with ourselves. So, what of it? What should we do?
Well, just as Autumn shows us that winter is not the end but only the dorrway to another spring, it is the fleeting beauties of this world which show us the doorway to the immortal beauty of Christ. There is a reason that we seek to keep things forever. There is a reason that we do not like to think of death, and that is, simply put, that we were never meant to be weak and mortal creatures. We were meant for eternity, so we desire it. However, because we have fallen, our egos twist that desire, and if we're not careful, we'll seek to make an eternity of a world which is fundamentally transitory, and we will forever be disappointed.
So, I say: take Autumn as a guide! Look to the hope of Christ and of eternity, but realize that life here is fleeting, and make the most of it. Give of yourself, ask God to bring your life to fruition. Harvest the fruits of the Spirit, and truly believe in the eternal joy that is Christ's triumph over death! Die to yourself a little every day, and let Christ live in you! Let changes come and try to meet them with God-given equinimity! Know that change is a necessary part of life, but look to the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever to carry you through it! Oh, and while you can, get out and enjoy the beautiful Autumn that we're having! Feel those crunching leaves and smell their fragrance! Remember your childhood, and be comforted that you are still a child of God! That's what I intend to do!
Deo Gratias!
Autumn has come upon us once again here in Canada. Yesterday on a walk with my dog, I felt the leaves crunching underfoot and inhaled their peculiar dead but vital fragrance. There is something about the scent of dry leaves which underscores what Autumn has always meant to me. It is, in fact, my very favourite season of the year, and I have often asked myself why this should be. I have discovered that it is my favourite season, because it feels the most real to me. It assails me with scents and sensations, magic and mystery, blazing sun and cooling air. It is what our world truly is: a thing of transitory brilliance, beautiful in its perpetually-changing being.
When I truly began to reverence Autumn for its own sake, I was a practicing Pagan and Witch. I looked forward every year to the festival of Samhane (sow-wen,) when the end of the harvest would be honoured along with the dead who had gone before us. This is the root-festival for what has become known in our modern culture as Halloween, and whether you approve of the current customs associated with October 31 or not, for Witches (or the Wicca) and other Pagans, it is a time when the dead are honoured and remembered, and when the death of the year is acknowledged. For me, this festival brought meaning and pathos to an already meaning-filled time of the year, and it brought Autumn into focus in a way that no other faith had done for me before. I had always felt Autumn to be somehow holy, somehow sacred, but with the festival of Samhane, there was something more to it, something liturgical about the season, I suppose. The death of nature in Winter led to new life in the spring, and Autumn was nature's last revel, her last dance, as it were.
Yet, though my time for celebrating Samhane is long over, Autumn still has a deeply mystical quality for me, and I think I can now say why. In Autumn's blaze and burn, the world is giving of itself. The fields give up their harvest and the sun lends us its heat. Creation sacrifices itself to allow us to have new life again in the spring. Autumn is a very sacrificial time. I once believed this in a Pagan way, and in a sense, I haven't stopped believing it, or rather, my heart hasn't stopped believing it. Autumn is joyful for me, precisely because it is fleeting, precisely because it will end. Spring is redolent of new beginnings. Summer is luxuriant, almost epicurian in its delights! Winter is hard, but joy abounds amid the hardships because of the new hope of the spring. Autumn alone is unapologetic. It is honest about its direction. It is our world spending itself, consuming itself and preparing for rest. Autumn can show us how to be.
Autumn is like the glory of the sunset. Why is it that we see this glory only at the end of things? It is written in the Bible that all the world is vanity, meaning that everything in this life here is fleeting. Anyone who has lived a few years on this earth and has looked at their lives honestly can agree with this statement. I've seen many posts on Facebook and in other places lamenting the oncoming of Autumn. Whether it heralds the end of summer vacations or the coming of winter, people have tended to view Autumn this year as a negative. This is because we do not want to admit to ourselves that things here on earth change. We seek eternity, but, being fallen people, we seek it in the wrong places.
How many times have you said to yourself: "I wish this hour, day, season, would last forever?" We are averse to change, especially to change which seems to herald death or hardship. We buck against the transient nature of our existence, while all the while knowing that we can't do anything about it. The other extreme in dealing with the notion that all life is fleeting is to live fast and die hard. Is this valid? On the surface, it may seem that Autumn takes this approach, but I see Autumn, as I stated before, as giving of itself to feed the new spring, and it is this giving, this bringing to fruition that we need to look at. Yes, our life here is fleeting. Yes, we will all die! Death is a part of human life in this fallen world, and to deny it is simply to be dishonest with ourselves. So, what of it? What should we do?
Well, just as Autumn shows us that winter is not the end but only the dorrway to another spring, it is the fleeting beauties of this world which show us the doorway to the immortal beauty of Christ. There is a reason that we seek to keep things forever. There is a reason that we do not like to think of death, and that is, simply put, that we were never meant to be weak and mortal creatures. We were meant for eternity, so we desire it. However, because we have fallen, our egos twist that desire, and if we're not careful, we'll seek to make an eternity of a world which is fundamentally transitory, and we will forever be disappointed.
So, I say: take Autumn as a guide! Look to the hope of Christ and of eternity, but realize that life here is fleeting, and make the most of it. Give of yourself, ask God to bring your life to fruition. Harvest the fruits of the Spirit, and truly believe in the eternal joy that is Christ's triumph over death! Die to yourself a little every day, and let Christ live in you! Let changes come and try to meet them with God-given equinimity! Know that change is a necessary part of life, but look to the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever to carry you through it! Oh, and while you can, get out and enjoy the beautiful Autumn that we're having! Feel those crunching leaves and smell their fragrance! Remember your childhood, and be comforted that you are still a child of God! That's what I intend to do!
Deo Gratias!
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