Benedicamus Domino!
It is, yet again, a new year, and while this blog has a few months to go before it reaches its first anniversary, I feel it necessary to go back to the beginning of things and to see where I am now.
I began this blog as a way to find true and sacred joy in my life. It is supposed to be based on the premmice that true joy is only found through both gratitude and charity, through thankfulness and sacrifice. I have based this on the Eucharist: our offering of simple things to Christ and His changing those simple things into glorious and new creations by His grace! Whether you yourself celebrate Communion as a sacrament or not, I think we can all agree that the core of Christian life ought to be the gradual changing of our hearts, souls, minds and even our bodies into something better than we currently are. Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil. However, he also came not with peace, but with a sword, and this sword is designed to cut away the bonds that hold us down: and really, all these passions, sins, vices, selfish desires, etc., all boil down to addiction of one sort or another. Whether we are addicted to food, to praise, to revenge, to things, to lust, it is all about the constant need to have what we had before and the diminishing return on the pleasure that this repetition causes.
So, I began this blog as a way to both discover the bonds holding me from the fullness of Christ's joy and also to look for ways to begin to free myself. I do believe the old saying that "There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves." One has to actually make an effort to move forward, and I feel that in some small way, I have done this. So, I will present the resolutions I made when beginning this journey of mine, and will now discuss how far I have come with each. Needless to say, much work has still to be done.
This is based on the book: The Happiness Project, by Grechen Reubens.
Journey Toward Joy
Method: This journey toward joywill be cyclical. It will not have any specific time-limit, but it will be ongoing.
Materials needed: computer for blogging, exercise equipment, books to read, ideas for writing, musical instruments and ways to use them successfully, friends,
family and anything else which may come up in the process.
Hypothesis: I can live joyfully if I choose to do so. If I do things which bring my deep self joy, I will be able to calm all the little desires of my
more superficial ego
Resolutions: Nine resolutions, each with three aspects.
1. Become more energetic.
A. Body: go to bed earlier and at a regular time and wake up earlier and at a regular time. Exercise and eat better. (Still needs work, but always trying.)
B. Mind: Watch less TV, preferably no more than an hour or so a day. Read when possible and write as much as possible. (Still needs tonnes of work!)
Spirit: Pray regularly and observe the calendar of the church as to season, fast or feast, and any other thing that must be observed. Also, enjoy the natural
world as much as possible. (You guessed it: still! needs! work!)
2. Cultivate relationships.
A. Body: Don't be afraid of the phone and make efforts to visit people more often. (Have done this to some extent, but, say it with me! Still needs work!)
B. Mind: Think of people on their birthdays and other special days and remember to talk to them on those days. (This has been done to largely good effect and will be continued to be observed.)
C. Pray for individuals by name and also listen to them when they speak, because they can be teachers. (Needs work, but has begun to happen.)
3. Develop talents of writing and music.
A. Body: Make time in the day to play music and to write stories and/or poetry. Perhaps find a writing course or a writing group to be a part of. Also
play music in public and market the cd more. (Music thing needs work, but have managed to begin a really good novel which I think would be worth publishing. Also completed the National Novel-writing Month contest for the first time in my three or four years participating. Also, I did enter the international song-writing contest earlier this year and have joined a few sites designed to market the music to a wider audience.)
B. Mind: Think of yourself as a writer and a musician. Learn to be these things in earnest and if this means doing these things professionally, then find
ways to make it happen. (This is really coming along. I am learning not to be afraid of my Bohemian side and to embrace it. I think this will lead to good things.)
C. Spirit: Stop feeling guilty that you have the talents that you have. Let them exist and grow as they will, while all the while thanking God that you
have them in the first place. Also, pay it forward. If you learn things about music and/or writing that will help other people, pass them on. (This too is beginning to change, though guilt about good things in my life will be an ongoing struggle I think.)
4. Become more passionate about life. Don't procrastinate or deny yourself joy just because you think others will think you weird or odd.
A. Body: Don't let aches and pains hold you down. Learn to listen to what your body needs and follow its advice. (This is coming along.)
B. Mind: Don't second-guess yourself too much. A healthy dose of skepticism is good, but not when it becomes a barrier to trying new things or doing what
you love. (This is changing as well, thank God!)
C. Spirit: Pray about the things you want to do with your life. Pray with boldness and humility, always asking God that "Thy will be done" in all things. (I am trying to do this, though I think I've just begun to figure out what it is I want.)
5. Live in a more mindful way. Live in the moment.
A. Body: Remember that you live in this body and that it is the place from which you interact with the world. Treat it with respect and dignity and use
it to reflect your inner self. (This needs work, but then so does the inner self.)
B. Mind: Think about your blessings more than about your woes. Be grateful whenever possible and remember that life only sucks if you say it does. Even
if bad things come, let them come and deal with them, but don't let them colour the rest of your life. (I think this is starting to happen. It's a good way to be!)
C. Spirit: Thank God every time you wake up in the morning and every time you go to bed at night. Thank Him for everything, because everything is a lesson
and a blessing, even if it comes in the disguise of a misfortune. Own your emotions but don't let them own you. Never go to bed angry! (This needs work, but I'm always trying to work on it.)
6. Learn to let go.
A. Body: Learn to let go of cravings, addictions and other things which hold you down, but don't deprive yourself too much. Also, de-clutter your life
and get rid of unused and unnecessary stuff. (This is beginning to happen. I'm learning to value physical things a little differently than I did, and except in rare cases, the value is lessening over time.)
B. Mind: Learn to let go of the past and negative attitudes about yourself. Embrace change. (This sounds so self-help-ish, but it's really true! Be the change you want to see in the world is what Gandhi said, and I think he's right.)
C. Spirit: Learn to forgive those whom you must forgive and don't hold grudges. (This is definitely beginning to happen, and it's a freeing feeling when you can let stuff like that go. Still, it's always difficult.)
7. Lead a more ordered life.
A. Body: Take care of your body as though it were something sacred, because it is. Also, let it live in a peace-promoting and ordered environment. (My environment ordered? Likely never in a million years! However, the chaos is being controlled a little better than it has been, so that's a good thing.)
B. Mind: Calm your thoughts and try to let them flow in a more ordered way. This isn't about logic so much as it is about calmness. (This is beginning to happen. There are many times when I am able to set my emotions (anger generally) aside and let my mind look at something logically and calmly. Unfortunately, the angry outburst still comes first, so this must be dealt with.)
C. Spirit: Don't neglect your spiritual joy. Order your day to promote this. (Yeah. This isn't happening so much in a consistent way, but I know that when it does happen, I am better, less prone to depressive episodes and such.)
8. Make every day an adventure.
A. Body: Get directly out of bed when the alarm goes off in the morning. Arm yourself as though you were going on a quest. Each day is a new adventure,
so act like it. (Totally needs work!!!)
B. Mind: Think of your day in terms of things you get to do rather than things you have to do. Even if they are have-tos, think of them in a more adventurous
way. (This is starting to happen, and it really does make a difference!)
C. Spirit: Don't be afraid to dream a little. Think of new and exciting things around every corner. (Sometimes I think I dream too much, but some of those dreams have come true this year, so perhaps dreaming isn't such a bad thing after all.)
9. Be moderate in all things.
A. Body: Remember that too much of anything can be as bad as too little. Make sure your body doesn't betray you. Treat money in a more mindful and moderate
way. (Still need to work on the body. It seems to demand a balance and when I misuse that balance, it tells me so in no uncertain terms. Money, however, is becoming less of a concern.)
B. Mind: Remember that the middle way is the best. Never let passions trump responsibilities, and never let responsibilities deaden passions. Manage time
appropriately. (This is starting to happen as well. Glory to God!)
C. Spirit: Never forget God in all this self-exploration. Never think yourself on firm footing. Always be journeying towards holiness and remember that
falling and getting up again is a part of life. (By "holiness," I mean healthiness. I mean salvation. I mean becoming a whole person at last. This is the journey I want to be on, and I am trying every day to be on it. However, though the road is straight, the destination is not really a destination. I think Lao Tsu said it best: "A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arrival." If I can let Christ steer my little boat and simply address myself to the rowing, then I know He'll lead me right.)
So, I feel that these resolutions still hold water and are sound, and since they still need work, there's no reason to get rid of them or make any new ones. However, I will say that when I began this blog, I never expected to find that in less than a year of doing this conscious journey both into and out of myself, I would have found a person who has the potential to be a true partner in life. It seems odd to say this even now, but when it's right, it's right, and you know it. I think God is basically breathing a sigh of relief right now that we two have finally cut through all the other stuff and found each other at last! At least, I can see Him being relieved on my part, since I seem to make a career out of running away from the obvious joys in life. "There's no place like home," Dorothy said as she clicked her heels and returned from Oz, and I believe this as well. Sometimes our homes are physical places, sometimes they are family and friends, and sometimes, just sometimes, they are found in the connection between you and another person. I've secretly longed for this for a long time, and I think, God willing and all other things being equal, I've found it!
So, the journey continues, but it is not a solitary one. Indeed, it was never truly solitary, but it feels as though I've gotten a great big "Amen!" from God that I'm heading on the right track. So, I will say as I close this entry on the first day of 2013,
Deo, O Deo Gratias!!!
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Friday, December 21, 2012
Troll The Ancient Yuletide Carol!
Benedicamus Domino!
Well, today is as near as makes no matter to the date of the Winter Solstice, when the sun is the farthest away from the earth, causing both the shortest day and the longest night of the year. I have celebrated it in my time as the ancient fire-festival of Yule. The yule-log was burned at this time during the longest night to keep vigil and to wait for the new day's dawning, for if the sun returned after this longest of nights, then people knew that spring would indeed come again. Of course, when I celebrated it, we had no fears for the longest night as often did the ancient Germanic peoples, for instance, but we still met in fellowship and in good cheer and toasted the new birth of the sun. We spoke our hopes and cast our fears and past sorrows into the fire. We looked forward to the lengthening of the days and the coming of the new spring. It was wonderful!
It is often said that the feast of Christmas was instituted at a similar time of year in order to eclipse Solstice festivals like Yule and to stamp out idolatry and demonic worship. I do not doubt that the timing of Christmas was not a mere coincidence, but was it truly an attempt to stamp out idolatry? First, I'm not completely certain of this, but I believe that when Christmas was established as a feast in the Christian calendar, no Christian could ever have moved the Roman state to do anything in favour of Christ and against its own religion. Christians were being killed at this time and were also being relieved of their careers and ranks and such if they were openly Christian. The Roman religion too at this time was little more than a public observance, and denying it would have meant that you were in revolt against the state. It was a citizen's civic duty to attend the various ceremonies.
And what about the Germanic and Celtic and other people for whom their worship was more than public formalism? Well, Christians did go among them, it's true, but except in very rare cases (St. Boniface cutting down sacred trees comes to mind,) they tended not to simply uproot the peoples' beliefs and plant their own in their place. Anyone who's done that has ended up with a pretty dead religion and very little faith among those they have tried to convert whole-cloth. Instead, a slow process went on, where Christianity and the indigenous faiths were sort of adapted to each other. I don't exactly mean syncretism, but it was amazing how so much of Christianity seemed to be the fulfilment of the beliefs of these people, and I only say this because I myself have experienced this firsthand! The problems come when everything that is not Christ is ipso facto demonized and made to be evil! How can an honouring of the seasons be evil? It isn't Christian, perhaps, but it is people trying to make sense of their world. I have come to the belief that Christ's birth is the fulfilment of the dawn after the longest night of the year, but does that mean that I demand that others believe this too? No! That sort of belief can only come by experience. I will say that it came to me almost against my will, though. It just came and washed over me and that was that, but that was God's doing and did not come at my or any other's asking. For me, though Christ is the baby in the manger, He is also the uncontainable and uncircumscribable God come in the form of man to bring new light to our darkened world. Surely other Pagan people had this same experience! Surely they were not simply herded into churches and made to abandon their bonfires and evergreen boughs! Surely not! Surely they themselves brought their boughs to be blessed and to honour the infant Christ, having sensed Him as the Truth even as I did.
I know that it is difficult for those of other faiths to deal with this season called Christmas. I've heard people describe a "war on Christmas" going on. They cite Christian privelege in the face of their own beliefs, but at least they live in a land where they aren't being killed or taken from their families and imprisoned for what they believe. This must be remembered! As for me, I think that much of Christmas has become about family and gifts and not about Christ, but do I think that all this should be banished? No. It is what it is, and though I wish the consumerism was less, it isn't likely to change any time soon. It is our new public religion, after all, and Santa Claus is our new Sol Invictus! Ah well! So goes the world, I suppose.
However, the light still burns in many forms. There is still hope left. So, on this night of Yule and for this season of many holy days, may all have the best things in life and truly experience hope and joy!
Deo Gratias!
Well, today is as near as makes no matter to the date of the Winter Solstice, when the sun is the farthest away from the earth, causing both the shortest day and the longest night of the year. I have celebrated it in my time as the ancient fire-festival of Yule. The yule-log was burned at this time during the longest night to keep vigil and to wait for the new day's dawning, for if the sun returned after this longest of nights, then people knew that spring would indeed come again. Of course, when I celebrated it, we had no fears for the longest night as often did the ancient Germanic peoples, for instance, but we still met in fellowship and in good cheer and toasted the new birth of the sun. We spoke our hopes and cast our fears and past sorrows into the fire. We looked forward to the lengthening of the days and the coming of the new spring. It was wonderful!
It is often said that the feast of Christmas was instituted at a similar time of year in order to eclipse Solstice festivals like Yule and to stamp out idolatry and demonic worship. I do not doubt that the timing of Christmas was not a mere coincidence, but was it truly an attempt to stamp out idolatry? First, I'm not completely certain of this, but I believe that when Christmas was established as a feast in the Christian calendar, no Christian could ever have moved the Roman state to do anything in favour of Christ and against its own religion. Christians were being killed at this time and were also being relieved of their careers and ranks and such if they were openly Christian. The Roman religion too at this time was little more than a public observance, and denying it would have meant that you were in revolt against the state. It was a citizen's civic duty to attend the various ceremonies.
And what about the Germanic and Celtic and other people for whom their worship was more than public formalism? Well, Christians did go among them, it's true, but except in very rare cases (St. Boniface cutting down sacred trees comes to mind,) they tended not to simply uproot the peoples' beliefs and plant their own in their place. Anyone who's done that has ended up with a pretty dead religion and very little faith among those they have tried to convert whole-cloth. Instead, a slow process went on, where Christianity and the indigenous faiths were sort of adapted to each other. I don't exactly mean syncretism, but it was amazing how so much of Christianity seemed to be the fulfilment of the beliefs of these people, and I only say this because I myself have experienced this firsthand! The problems come when everything that is not Christ is ipso facto demonized and made to be evil! How can an honouring of the seasons be evil? It isn't Christian, perhaps, but it is people trying to make sense of their world. I have come to the belief that Christ's birth is the fulfilment of the dawn after the longest night of the year, but does that mean that I demand that others believe this too? No! That sort of belief can only come by experience. I will say that it came to me almost against my will, though. It just came and washed over me and that was that, but that was God's doing and did not come at my or any other's asking. For me, though Christ is the baby in the manger, He is also the uncontainable and uncircumscribable God come in the form of man to bring new light to our darkened world. Surely other Pagan people had this same experience! Surely they were not simply herded into churches and made to abandon their bonfires and evergreen boughs! Surely not! Surely they themselves brought their boughs to be blessed and to honour the infant Christ, having sensed Him as the Truth even as I did.
I know that it is difficult for those of other faiths to deal with this season called Christmas. I've heard people describe a "war on Christmas" going on. They cite Christian privelege in the face of their own beliefs, but at least they live in a land where they aren't being killed or taken from their families and imprisoned for what they believe. This must be remembered! As for me, I think that much of Christmas has become about family and gifts and not about Christ, but do I think that all this should be banished? No. It is what it is, and though I wish the consumerism was less, it isn't likely to change any time soon. It is our new public religion, after all, and Santa Claus is our new Sol Invictus! Ah well! So goes the world, I suppose.
However, the light still burns in many forms. There is still hope left. So, on this night of Yule and for this season of many holy days, may all have the best things in life and truly experience hope and joy!
Deo Gratias!
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Unexpected Joys!
Benedicamus Domino!
I had a very different entry planned for this evening's musing, but something small has just happened in the last few minutes which simply demands treatment in this blog. It all began with iTunes and a search for a long lost album which I once charished though I never owned it. This album was the original cast recording of Amahl and the Night Visitors, an operetta staged for television in the 1950s and composed by Gian Carlo Menotti. It tells the story of a young shepherd boy somewhere in the east who encounters three strange visitors at his door. They turn out to be kings bearing gifts to a mysterious child for whom they are looking. It is a rather simplistic tale, somewhat moralistic but also miraculous, and well, when I was ten and heard this music and those words, I began to know a little of the true nature of Christ and of His Incarnation!
To have this album is a true joy to me, though it seems but a small thing. It brings back a little of the wonder I always used to feel at this time of year, and though that wonder was tinged with expectation of presents under the tree, once I had heard Amahl, it forever broadened into a deeper kind of wonder: the wonder of a babe born in a manger who contained within his small body the vastness of the Creator of all things!
Joys do arise in very unexpected ways at times, and for this small fount and many larger springs which have arisen in my seemingly barren and thirsty heart of late, I say a fervent and heartfelt,
Deo, O Deo! Gratias!
I had a very different entry planned for this evening's musing, but something small has just happened in the last few minutes which simply demands treatment in this blog. It all began with iTunes and a search for a long lost album which I once charished though I never owned it. This album was the original cast recording of Amahl and the Night Visitors, an operetta staged for television in the 1950s and composed by Gian Carlo Menotti. It tells the story of a young shepherd boy somewhere in the east who encounters three strange visitors at his door. They turn out to be kings bearing gifts to a mysterious child for whom they are looking. It is a rather simplistic tale, somewhat moralistic but also miraculous, and well, when I was ten and heard this music and those words, I began to know a little of the true nature of Christ and of His Incarnation!
To have this album is a true joy to me, though it seems but a small thing. It brings back a little of the wonder I always used to feel at this time of year, and though that wonder was tinged with expectation of presents under the tree, once I had heard Amahl, it forever broadened into a deeper kind of wonder: the wonder of a babe born in a manger who contained within his small body the vastness of the Creator of all things!
Joys do arise in very unexpected ways at times, and for this small fount and many larger springs which have arisen in my seemingly barren and thirsty heart of late, I say a fervent and heartfelt,
Deo, O Deo! Gratias!
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Thoughts upon The Feast of St. Catherine!
Benedicamus Domino!
Today on the Julian Calendar is actually November 25, the feast-day of St. Catherine of Alexandria. She is one of the saints whom I take as a model, for though she was educated in the best Roman fashion, she was also a devout Christian and was able to outwit some of the finest philosophers in Alexandria with both her intellect and God's grace. Of course, one could say that her intellect was also a kind of grace which, when leavened by the Holy Spirit's wisdom, became a true force to be reckoned with. Our treasure is hidden in earthen vessels, as St. Paul says, but I think it is for us to make sure that this treasure does not remain hidden. Whatever talent we have should be nurtured and used for the betterment of our fellow-beings and should always be used, as far as possible, in truth and love.
For me, this was the day, seven years ago, when I made the decision to enter an Orthodox church as more than a casual observer for the first time. I began to make travel-plans for the following Sunday, and I can recall even now the joy which welled up inside me when I realized that things in my life were coming full circle in what could only be a God-inspired and blessed way. While I was contemplating my coming pilgrimage, (from Kitchener to Hamilton by bus on a Sunday morning really was a pilgrimage!) I also read the story of St. Catherine, and I realized then and there that I could be what I was: an educated woman of my own time, but also a pious Christian, and from then on, I worked very hard to achieve that goal. I've had a few setbacks over the years, and these were due to my own zeal occasionally pushing me to let go of things unnecessarily, but I think I am finally learning to be who I must be. I don't think I could outwit philosophers or anything, but I do hope that I have the courage to speak truth to power or even to another human soul when it is needed.
December has often been a time of realization for me. In December of 1999, I found myself a Pagan hardly knowing how I got there. In December of 2005, I literally fell in love with Orthodox Christianity. I recall walking around my university campus actually day-dreaming about what it would be like to be in an Orthodox church with all the music and the swinging of the censor and such. I had experienced Orthodox churches before though only in a limited way, and it's true that I didn't even really know what to expect at the church I was going to attend, but I still was captivated by the thought that something which had been on the edge of my life off and on for so many years was now coming closer to its centre. I've written before about this so I'll not go into it now, but suffice it to say that I have a really good friend who is Orthodox and it was really because of her that I found my way there too eventually, and on that long-ago Feast of St. Catherine, I remember being in sheer awe of how life had led me, little by little, to what I had always wanted but had never seen clearly.
Now, I am having a similar time of realization and I am again planning a trip, but this time, it is a trip not to a church, but to someone's house. I am going in a few days to see someone who has very rapidly become important in my life, and our connection seems equally God-inspired and circular. I have long held a belief about my life that there are things in it which conform to its true pattern and there are other things which are just not right. This doesn't always have to do with whether the events are positive or negative, for there have been some negative events which I cannot help but view as being right and proper for me to have experienced. Well, just as Orthodox Christianity showed up in a very right and proper way, so this man has done, and to whatever end our new connection will lead, I feel it necessary to explore it to its fullest potential. For me to say this takes a great deal of courage, especially since there is a long-distance aspect to things which can be a little problematic, but I do find that being online allows for a more ongoing contact than used to happen when one only had the phone.
I'm writing about this here because it was my intention when starting this journey toward joy to open up more and to connect with people, to allow people to impact on my life in a more meaningful way rather than closing myself off to all drama and all danger while at the same time closing myself off to happiness. I have lived a rather solitary life even among crowds, and I know that this is pretty much all my doing. The time has come to fix that, to venture beyond the narrow limits of my money-changing hole, as Marley's ghost would have it, and to make mankind and certain members of that strange and wonderful collection of personalities my business once again. While I hope I could never become so jaded and cynical as Scroodge, I certainly have been known to walk through the crowded paths of life with my eyes cast down, but that is not what I'm called to do as a Christian or even as a person living among people in this world. So, here goes nothing! I'm lifting my head and looking about me, and you know what? Even with all its sham and drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world, not least due to the fact that Mike wishes to see me just as much as I wish to see him and that we are both completely open to the possibilities that life may afford for a deeper and more lasting connection. For this and for so many things lately, I say:
Deo Gratias!
Today on the Julian Calendar is actually November 25, the feast-day of St. Catherine of Alexandria. She is one of the saints whom I take as a model, for though she was educated in the best Roman fashion, she was also a devout Christian and was able to outwit some of the finest philosophers in Alexandria with both her intellect and God's grace. Of course, one could say that her intellect was also a kind of grace which, when leavened by the Holy Spirit's wisdom, became a true force to be reckoned with. Our treasure is hidden in earthen vessels, as St. Paul says, but I think it is for us to make sure that this treasure does not remain hidden. Whatever talent we have should be nurtured and used for the betterment of our fellow-beings and should always be used, as far as possible, in truth and love.
For me, this was the day, seven years ago, when I made the decision to enter an Orthodox church as more than a casual observer for the first time. I began to make travel-plans for the following Sunday, and I can recall even now the joy which welled up inside me when I realized that things in my life were coming full circle in what could only be a God-inspired and blessed way. While I was contemplating my coming pilgrimage, (from Kitchener to Hamilton by bus on a Sunday morning really was a pilgrimage!) I also read the story of St. Catherine, and I realized then and there that I could be what I was: an educated woman of my own time, but also a pious Christian, and from then on, I worked very hard to achieve that goal. I've had a few setbacks over the years, and these were due to my own zeal occasionally pushing me to let go of things unnecessarily, but I think I am finally learning to be who I must be. I don't think I could outwit philosophers or anything, but I do hope that I have the courage to speak truth to power or even to another human soul when it is needed.
December has often been a time of realization for me. In December of 1999, I found myself a Pagan hardly knowing how I got there. In December of 2005, I literally fell in love with Orthodox Christianity. I recall walking around my university campus actually day-dreaming about what it would be like to be in an Orthodox church with all the music and the swinging of the censor and such. I had experienced Orthodox churches before though only in a limited way, and it's true that I didn't even really know what to expect at the church I was going to attend, but I still was captivated by the thought that something which had been on the edge of my life off and on for so many years was now coming closer to its centre. I've written before about this so I'll not go into it now, but suffice it to say that I have a really good friend who is Orthodox and it was really because of her that I found my way there too eventually, and on that long-ago Feast of St. Catherine, I remember being in sheer awe of how life had led me, little by little, to what I had always wanted but had never seen clearly.
Now, I am having a similar time of realization and I am again planning a trip, but this time, it is a trip not to a church, but to someone's house. I am going in a few days to see someone who has very rapidly become important in my life, and our connection seems equally God-inspired and circular. I have long held a belief about my life that there are things in it which conform to its true pattern and there are other things which are just not right. This doesn't always have to do with whether the events are positive or negative, for there have been some negative events which I cannot help but view as being right and proper for me to have experienced. Well, just as Orthodox Christianity showed up in a very right and proper way, so this man has done, and to whatever end our new connection will lead, I feel it necessary to explore it to its fullest potential. For me to say this takes a great deal of courage, especially since there is a long-distance aspect to things which can be a little problematic, but I do find that being online allows for a more ongoing contact than used to happen when one only had the phone.
I'm writing about this here because it was my intention when starting this journey toward joy to open up more and to connect with people, to allow people to impact on my life in a more meaningful way rather than closing myself off to all drama and all danger while at the same time closing myself off to happiness. I have lived a rather solitary life even among crowds, and I know that this is pretty much all my doing. The time has come to fix that, to venture beyond the narrow limits of my money-changing hole, as Marley's ghost would have it, and to make mankind and certain members of that strange and wonderful collection of personalities my business once again. While I hope I could never become so jaded and cynical as Scroodge, I certainly have been known to walk through the crowded paths of life with my eyes cast down, but that is not what I'm called to do as a Christian or even as a person living among people in this world. So, here goes nothing! I'm lifting my head and looking about me, and you know what? Even with all its sham and drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world, not least due to the fact that Mike wishes to see me just as much as I wish to see him and that we are both completely open to the possibilities that life may afford for a deeper and more lasting connection. For this and for so many things lately, I say:
Deo Gratias!
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Surrendering to Divine Synurgy: The Art of Saying "Amen!"
Benedicamus Domino!
In Orthodox Christian thought, much is made of the word "synurgy." God's working in the world is called "synurgistic" by many of the great philosophers and thinkers of the church, by which they mean that He requires a response from us in order for His will to be accomplished in us and in the world. This word literally means "working together," and when compared with some of the more recent ideas posited about God, say in the last three or four hundred years for instance, it presents a radical paradigm-shift when encountered by the modern western mind, or at least it did when encountered by this modern western mind. There was a time when the notion of submitting to God's will was abhorrant to me. It seemed to mean that I had to lay all the most interesting parts of myself aside in favour of a very narrow and circumscribed existance. I was to be a good little child and do what I was told. I am uncertain as to the origin of this idea in my life, but it stood there, stark and unmoving, like a gaunt and terrible spectre which sought to cast its shadow over my dreams, hopes and imaginings in a manner which would render me nothing more than a simple and dutiful pawn in some game of cosmic Chess. Indeed, God was for me in those days something of a tyrant, a guardian of moral absolutes which seemed untenable in the world in which I found myself.
These thoughts were with me at the time when I was rediscovering my need for Christ while at the same time being repulsed by what seemed a necessary act of submition in which I must cut away parts of myself simply because they seemed not to fit the ideal model of Christianity that I saw around me. A part of the reason for this repulsion had to do with the fact that I was returning to a faith which I had abandoned out of a sense that I was unworthy of it. I had left Christianity in favour of earth-based spirituality because I felt that I was unable to conform to what God was asking of me. I felt that perfection of belief was imperative and that if I doubted too much, then I obviously was doing something wrong, and therefore I had to find another way to live in this world. I knew that God existed on some level, but I felt that He was too high and far away for me to reach. How I could do this given my belief in Christ is unimaginable to me now, but we shall come to why it is so unimaginable later. Suffice it to say that I am now a committed Christian and cannot--simply would not be able to--change this commitment for anything!
So, there I was, a woman caught between two seemingly opposing forces: myself and what I perceived as God's will. It is true that there are times when our selfish desires do oppose God's will. In fact, this is the story of fallen man and the reason why Christ was needed to help us find our way home. However, what I had failed to take into account was the notion of synurgy as expressed in the teachings and worship of the Orthodox Church. To reiterate that notion then, I will state that before God's will can truly be accomplished in us and in the world, there must be a willingness on our part to assist and to say "amen" to God's desire, because that is what His will is until we agree to allow it to prosper: a desire, a wish, a hope that we will go in the direction that He sees will be right for us. He, of course, is quite willing and capable of letting us have our own desires. He can bring good out of those as well, but what He seeks from us is an openness, an acceptance that He is wiser than we are and sees more of us than we can see at present. Of course, there is fear which comes with this kind of acceptance. What will He turn us into? Will we lose ourselves? Will be become unrecognizable to our family and friends? Should we not be cautious and careful, preserving ourselves whole and intact before the consuming fire of God's love and transforming power?
I've had all these thoughts and continue to have them, but I have come to a realization, thanks to the concept of synurgy, that God does not want robots for His people. It is true that our initial response to Him is something like that of a servant, but He wants His servants to learn in their servitude to be more like Him and to eventually participate fully in His unique and boundless being. This does not mean being subsumed into a vast ocean of consciousness, but it does mean waking up to the cosmic reality that we are not separate and individual beings. "No man is an island, entire of itself," wrote the poet John Donne, and this would seem to be true from my experience, so that my journey toward God must necessarily affect others, even if it does so on a quantum level which I am incapable of perceiving. For an explanation of this, I turn to the example of Mary, the Mother of God. She was a simple girl who, according to traditional lore, spent much of her life secluded in the holy temple at Jerusalem and was betrothed to Joseph, a widower much older than herself and with children of his own. His thought, presumably, was that she would be an excellent wife to him and could bear him more children, but before this happened, an angel appeared to Mary and told her that God's will was for her to miraculously conceive and bear Christ, the incarnate Word of God. In a sense, we might say that Christ is the incarnate Will of God, since through God's word, His wil is enacted. Now, Mary had two options. She could have said no. She could have gone on her way and refused the angel's summons. However, being who she was and being open to God's presence in her life, she was able to say: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to Thy Word!" She was, in fact, saying "amen," which in Hebrew simply means: "So be it." This set in motion a chain of events which led to Christ's death and resurrection, which in turn had a profound effect on the entire world, whether people see it or not.
I had often read the passage in Luke's gospel which recounts Mary's meeting with the angel Gabriel, and I had always simply looked at her action as a submissive and meek bowing to circumstances beyond her control. However, after I learned of the importance of synurgy, I reexamined this passage and realized that Mary had no idea what would be coming from this assent, whereas she knew quite well that if she had said no, her life would have proceeded presumably normally as most womens' lives did. God would have allowed her to have her desire, but it was only at her agreement and by her consent that the conception took place. She, therefore, was not a victim of spiritual rape, but a willing participant in something unknown and wonderful. In short, she was a very courageous woman who allowed herself to be the mortal mother of immortal Truth. She gave Christ the way to descend from His own mode of existance and to be with us. She is revered therefore in the Orthodox church as the uniter of earth with Heaven, the reconciler of humanity to God, the vessel containing the Creator. She, in essence, can be called in poetry the Holy Grail, because through her flesh and blood, Christ gained His flesh and blood and was able to show us the pathway to salvation.
This is another point on which I would like to touch. I spoke before of the perceived need to remain a whole and intact person in the face of God's demands upon us. I felt this very strongly at one time, but through the notion of synurgy, I realized that God's very purpose is to make me whole. It may take a lifetime and beyond to do it, but His ultimate plan is to mend me and to repare the broken and scattered bits of my soul, so that eventually this newly-healed soul may take its rightful place as sovereign over my brain and my body. The mind is a very wonderful thing, and it must be nurtured, but it can very easily be led astray and assume too much power over the whole person. This is also true of the body and its senses. I perhaps have less cause to fear my senses, since I lack the sense of sight and it seems to have the most immediate affect on one's moods and perceptions of all the senses, but my senses are still scattered and give me conflicting information, while the ideal is that all the senses should act in concert and under the direction of a soul in which God's will is freely flowing in synurgistic accord: a soul which perceives itself as a willing and glad handmaid of the Lord.
As God chose Mary to bear Christ, so He will cause to be born in us something wonderful and beyond telling if we are able to lay ourselves open to his guiding influence. As C. S. Lewis writes in The Screwtape Letters, "He (God) cannot ravish. He can only woo," and this is what God does. He whispers to us in a thousand little ways and in a million voices, and at every turn, we have the choice either to accept what He gives and what He wishes us to do, or to deny His will and to go our own way. But I believe that though parts of God's will for us may seem arduous and difficult and even incomprehensible, and though the imperfect world in which we live will continue to trip us up, God's will for us is that we experience the fullness of His boundless joy, a joy which cannot fade and which is not based on mere pleasure. Having tasted the tinyest bit of that joy, I know now that I cannot go back. I cannot view Christianity as something for the mind to wrestle with and to pin down in some logical framework. It is a thing which seems as lovely and as delicate as gossomer to the casual observer. It seems easily assaulted and brought to its knees, but to me, though it entered into me as beauty and wonder, it has stayed and grown into something strong, so that even if I fall, I know that God is there. Even if I doubt my faith, I know there will be a way out of that doubt. This is precisely because I know that I am unworthy of God's gifts to me. I cannot ever repay Him, but I know that He loves me, even as I am, and that His love demands that I scrape away the dust and debris of sin and self-satisfaction which clouds my soul from understanding Him. I know that my Redeemer liveth, but if asked how I know it, I cannot readily give an answer which would satisfy the human mind. I can't even satisfy my own mind as to how I know of God's presence, but I do know it. It is not a story I tell myself. It is a truth which I have come to see. It is not only the way that I make sense of a crazy world. It is not a mere sociological experiment or necessity. It is simply and solely true. God is God. I've seen nihilism. I've been through post-modernism, and that way lies madness and despair for me. Some say they find solace in the randomness and meaninglessness of events, stating that everyone's individual interpretation of what they see around them is always valid, simply because it is held by one person or group or culture. However, the world does not work like that. If it did, we wouldn't care that oppression went on. We would respect it as a valid way of living in the world and we would defend others' rights to practice it. Of course, most people don't defend what they perceive as injustice, and the moment they draw that line in the sand, they are imposing their sense of the world on another group of people, thereby defining what they think should be accepted and what they hope will become universal truth.
So, don't talk to me of post-modernity and the need to break the chains of some outmoded system or other, because in breaking those chains, we invariably create new ones. We are who we are. We have egos and are prone to passions which make it very difficult to truly accept each other as we are. Even those who talk about accepting homosexual people as they are and not trying to change them can at times be guilty of hypocrisy when a homosexual person or couple chooses to be less vocal and to simply live their lives without putting themselves on display to make a point. (I chose that example at random.) The point is that I have discovered that I need God in some fundamental way which has nothing to do with conforming to the standards of any societal norm. Indeed, my being the kind of Christian that I am makes me anathema to the prevailing culture, because while I do not believe that other faiths are simply evil for not being Christianity, I do believe that Christ is the fulfilment of all the truths I have learned during my life here. He is the clarification of everything that has gone before for me, though it would be impossible to convince anyone else of that simply by saying it. It is simply something that needs to be experienced, needs to be known as one might know the voice of a friend, and it can only be known by surrendering, by participating as wholly as possible in what God wants for us. Our lives must be a continual effort to say "amen" at every moment. That is what people we call holy do. They have developed an intimate relationship with God so that He is not now the angry and terrible moral guardian of the universe. Neither is He mushy and gushy, but they have learned to see Him as both mighty and power but also as a person, as a loving and just person who cares about the world which He has made and who weeps when injustices are done, and they have been able to put their trust in Him, to give their hearts to Him in a true and unreserved way. For the rest of us, there is a long way to go, but it can start with the simplest turning of the soul outward to help our neighbour, for if we cannot learn to see Christ in our fellow men, then we will never see Him truly as He is. Till next I write,
Deo Gratias!
In Orthodox Christian thought, much is made of the word "synurgy." God's working in the world is called "synurgistic" by many of the great philosophers and thinkers of the church, by which they mean that He requires a response from us in order for His will to be accomplished in us and in the world. This word literally means "working together," and when compared with some of the more recent ideas posited about God, say in the last three or four hundred years for instance, it presents a radical paradigm-shift when encountered by the modern western mind, or at least it did when encountered by this modern western mind. There was a time when the notion of submitting to God's will was abhorrant to me. It seemed to mean that I had to lay all the most interesting parts of myself aside in favour of a very narrow and circumscribed existance. I was to be a good little child and do what I was told. I am uncertain as to the origin of this idea in my life, but it stood there, stark and unmoving, like a gaunt and terrible spectre which sought to cast its shadow over my dreams, hopes and imaginings in a manner which would render me nothing more than a simple and dutiful pawn in some game of cosmic Chess. Indeed, God was for me in those days something of a tyrant, a guardian of moral absolutes which seemed untenable in the world in which I found myself.
These thoughts were with me at the time when I was rediscovering my need for Christ while at the same time being repulsed by what seemed a necessary act of submition in which I must cut away parts of myself simply because they seemed not to fit the ideal model of Christianity that I saw around me. A part of the reason for this repulsion had to do with the fact that I was returning to a faith which I had abandoned out of a sense that I was unworthy of it. I had left Christianity in favour of earth-based spirituality because I felt that I was unable to conform to what God was asking of me. I felt that perfection of belief was imperative and that if I doubted too much, then I obviously was doing something wrong, and therefore I had to find another way to live in this world. I knew that God existed on some level, but I felt that He was too high and far away for me to reach. How I could do this given my belief in Christ is unimaginable to me now, but we shall come to why it is so unimaginable later. Suffice it to say that I am now a committed Christian and cannot--simply would not be able to--change this commitment for anything!
So, there I was, a woman caught between two seemingly opposing forces: myself and what I perceived as God's will. It is true that there are times when our selfish desires do oppose God's will. In fact, this is the story of fallen man and the reason why Christ was needed to help us find our way home. However, what I had failed to take into account was the notion of synurgy as expressed in the teachings and worship of the Orthodox Church. To reiterate that notion then, I will state that before God's will can truly be accomplished in us and in the world, there must be a willingness on our part to assist and to say "amen" to God's desire, because that is what His will is until we agree to allow it to prosper: a desire, a wish, a hope that we will go in the direction that He sees will be right for us. He, of course, is quite willing and capable of letting us have our own desires. He can bring good out of those as well, but what He seeks from us is an openness, an acceptance that He is wiser than we are and sees more of us than we can see at present. Of course, there is fear which comes with this kind of acceptance. What will He turn us into? Will we lose ourselves? Will be become unrecognizable to our family and friends? Should we not be cautious and careful, preserving ourselves whole and intact before the consuming fire of God's love and transforming power?
I've had all these thoughts and continue to have them, but I have come to a realization, thanks to the concept of synurgy, that God does not want robots for His people. It is true that our initial response to Him is something like that of a servant, but He wants His servants to learn in their servitude to be more like Him and to eventually participate fully in His unique and boundless being. This does not mean being subsumed into a vast ocean of consciousness, but it does mean waking up to the cosmic reality that we are not separate and individual beings. "No man is an island, entire of itself," wrote the poet John Donne, and this would seem to be true from my experience, so that my journey toward God must necessarily affect others, even if it does so on a quantum level which I am incapable of perceiving. For an explanation of this, I turn to the example of Mary, the Mother of God. She was a simple girl who, according to traditional lore, spent much of her life secluded in the holy temple at Jerusalem and was betrothed to Joseph, a widower much older than herself and with children of his own. His thought, presumably, was that she would be an excellent wife to him and could bear him more children, but before this happened, an angel appeared to Mary and told her that God's will was for her to miraculously conceive and bear Christ, the incarnate Word of God. In a sense, we might say that Christ is the incarnate Will of God, since through God's word, His wil is enacted. Now, Mary had two options. She could have said no. She could have gone on her way and refused the angel's summons. However, being who she was and being open to God's presence in her life, she was able to say: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to Thy Word!" She was, in fact, saying "amen," which in Hebrew simply means: "So be it." This set in motion a chain of events which led to Christ's death and resurrection, which in turn had a profound effect on the entire world, whether people see it or not.
I had often read the passage in Luke's gospel which recounts Mary's meeting with the angel Gabriel, and I had always simply looked at her action as a submissive and meek bowing to circumstances beyond her control. However, after I learned of the importance of synurgy, I reexamined this passage and realized that Mary had no idea what would be coming from this assent, whereas she knew quite well that if she had said no, her life would have proceeded presumably normally as most womens' lives did. God would have allowed her to have her desire, but it was only at her agreement and by her consent that the conception took place. She, therefore, was not a victim of spiritual rape, but a willing participant in something unknown and wonderful. In short, she was a very courageous woman who allowed herself to be the mortal mother of immortal Truth. She gave Christ the way to descend from His own mode of existance and to be with us. She is revered therefore in the Orthodox church as the uniter of earth with Heaven, the reconciler of humanity to God, the vessel containing the Creator. She, in essence, can be called in poetry the Holy Grail, because through her flesh and blood, Christ gained His flesh and blood and was able to show us the pathway to salvation.
This is another point on which I would like to touch. I spoke before of the perceived need to remain a whole and intact person in the face of God's demands upon us. I felt this very strongly at one time, but through the notion of synurgy, I realized that God's very purpose is to make me whole. It may take a lifetime and beyond to do it, but His ultimate plan is to mend me and to repare the broken and scattered bits of my soul, so that eventually this newly-healed soul may take its rightful place as sovereign over my brain and my body. The mind is a very wonderful thing, and it must be nurtured, but it can very easily be led astray and assume too much power over the whole person. This is also true of the body and its senses. I perhaps have less cause to fear my senses, since I lack the sense of sight and it seems to have the most immediate affect on one's moods and perceptions of all the senses, but my senses are still scattered and give me conflicting information, while the ideal is that all the senses should act in concert and under the direction of a soul in which God's will is freely flowing in synurgistic accord: a soul which perceives itself as a willing and glad handmaid of the Lord.
As God chose Mary to bear Christ, so He will cause to be born in us something wonderful and beyond telling if we are able to lay ourselves open to his guiding influence. As C. S. Lewis writes in The Screwtape Letters, "He (God) cannot ravish. He can only woo," and this is what God does. He whispers to us in a thousand little ways and in a million voices, and at every turn, we have the choice either to accept what He gives and what He wishes us to do, or to deny His will and to go our own way. But I believe that though parts of God's will for us may seem arduous and difficult and even incomprehensible, and though the imperfect world in which we live will continue to trip us up, God's will for us is that we experience the fullness of His boundless joy, a joy which cannot fade and which is not based on mere pleasure. Having tasted the tinyest bit of that joy, I know now that I cannot go back. I cannot view Christianity as something for the mind to wrestle with and to pin down in some logical framework. It is a thing which seems as lovely and as delicate as gossomer to the casual observer. It seems easily assaulted and brought to its knees, but to me, though it entered into me as beauty and wonder, it has stayed and grown into something strong, so that even if I fall, I know that God is there. Even if I doubt my faith, I know there will be a way out of that doubt. This is precisely because I know that I am unworthy of God's gifts to me. I cannot ever repay Him, but I know that He loves me, even as I am, and that His love demands that I scrape away the dust and debris of sin and self-satisfaction which clouds my soul from understanding Him. I know that my Redeemer liveth, but if asked how I know it, I cannot readily give an answer which would satisfy the human mind. I can't even satisfy my own mind as to how I know of God's presence, but I do know it. It is not a story I tell myself. It is a truth which I have come to see. It is not only the way that I make sense of a crazy world. It is not a mere sociological experiment or necessity. It is simply and solely true. God is God. I've seen nihilism. I've been through post-modernism, and that way lies madness and despair for me. Some say they find solace in the randomness and meaninglessness of events, stating that everyone's individual interpretation of what they see around them is always valid, simply because it is held by one person or group or culture. However, the world does not work like that. If it did, we wouldn't care that oppression went on. We would respect it as a valid way of living in the world and we would defend others' rights to practice it. Of course, most people don't defend what they perceive as injustice, and the moment they draw that line in the sand, they are imposing their sense of the world on another group of people, thereby defining what they think should be accepted and what they hope will become universal truth.
So, don't talk to me of post-modernity and the need to break the chains of some outmoded system or other, because in breaking those chains, we invariably create new ones. We are who we are. We have egos and are prone to passions which make it very difficult to truly accept each other as we are. Even those who talk about accepting homosexual people as they are and not trying to change them can at times be guilty of hypocrisy when a homosexual person or couple chooses to be less vocal and to simply live their lives without putting themselves on display to make a point. (I chose that example at random.) The point is that I have discovered that I need God in some fundamental way which has nothing to do with conforming to the standards of any societal norm. Indeed, my being the kind of Christian that I am makes me anathema to the prevailing culture, because while I do not believe that other faiths are simply evil for not being Christianity, I do believe that Christ is the fulfilment of all the truths I have learned during my life here. He is the clarification of everything that has gone before for me, though it would be impossible to convince anyone else of that simply by saying it. It is simply something that needs to be experienced, needs to be known as one might know the voice of a friend, and it can only be known by surrendering, by participating as wholly as possible in what God wants for us. Our lives must be a continual effort to say "amen" at every moment. That is what people we call holy do. They have developed an intimate relationship with God so that He is not now the angry and terrible moral guardian of the universe. Neither is He mushy and gushy, but they have learned to see Him as both mighty and power but also as a person, as a loving and just person who cares about the world which He has made and who weeps when injustices are done, and they have been able to put their trust in Him, to give their hearts to Him in a true and unreserved way. For the rest of us, there is a long way to go, but it can start with the simplest turning of the soul outward to help our neighbour, for if we cannot learn to see Christ in our fellow men, then we will never see Him truly as He is. Till next I write,
Deo Gratias!
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Dreams and Desires
Benedicamus Domino!
This night I find myself sitting solitary and pondering the dreams and desires we build for ourselves. Whence do these airy castles of gold and silver come to us? Do we construct them brick by brick and tower by tower, or do they somehow exist already and is God, who knows all things He has made, simply point them out to us? Well, as with most things, I believe that it is both. There's a saying in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings which states: "Go not to the elves for advice, for they will say both 'yes' and 'no'." I, in a lot of ways, tend to think very elvishly. Usually, my answers to life's questions involve a 'both-and' construction rather than an 'either-or.' It's just how I'm made. Perhaps it's because I'm a Canadian; I really don't know, but this kind of elf-think is a part of me from way back and is not likely to leave me any time soon.
So, getting back to the subject of our dreams and desires in life, I believe that there are some that we construct for ourselves, but actually, I believe that our dearest and deepest dreams and desires are shown to us by God, and when he shows them to us, we know them for our own because they were made specifically for us by Him. For instance, I used to dream of a very special place. It was a meadow in which a swift stream flowed and where the grass was soft and the air was cool, and it was very peaceful. Why I would dream of such a thing, considering I had never been in a meadow of any sort, I really don't know, but that place has come to represent rightness and goodness and purity in my life. The dream was that of a child, and I no longer have it as an actual vision of the night, but in another way, that dream is still a dream. The land has become a metaphor for something grand and beautiful, but also something simple and dear to the human heart. It is, in short, the peace that passeth understanding.
However, let's take the kind of dream I am really talking about here: the kind of dream that we build for our future selves. When I was sixteen, I felt what I thought was a very strong vocation to the religious life; I wanted to become a nun. This persisted and has continued to persist even till now, so that last November, I took three months to test out what it was like to live in a small womens' convent attached to a men's monastery and church in Hamilton. I love the Benedictine life. I think that I will always be a Benedictine Christian in some way. I loved the prayers we did there and I still pray them in my own life. I loved the philosophy upon which Benedict's monastic rule was built, and for me it seems a sure and steady way to follow that straight and narrow path which we as Christians are all called to follow. However, what I chiefly loved was the communal aspect of things. We shared meals. We each took turns cooking. We helped each other as and when we could. We were not alone, even though great emphasis was placed on private reading, prayer and study. The whole monastic life is built on charity and mercy, and is based on a mutual self-offering to one another and to God. It is the Christian life in microcosm but also intensified by this minuteness. The little day-to-day things become tests of our character and lessons for us, but all the while, there are others with us doing the same things and following the same process.
In the spring, after some time back here to reflect on my experience, I had every intention of returning there at my earliest convenience. I thought I had found what I was lacking. I thought I knew at last that I had a vocation and that I had to answer it. Of course, there were circumstances which intervened and which were beyond my control. To go into them here would take too long, but suffice it to say that it seemed very clear that God was letting me know that this life was not possible for me at this time, if indeed it would ever be possible. So I began questioning again. I began wondering if I really wanted to be a nun or perhaps just wanted to belong somewhere, to be needed and useful. This particular monastic community is really the only option for Benedictine monasticism in Orthodox Christianity, but there are other monastic houses of a more Greek or Russian or Romanian or Serbian (etc) stripe, and they're still Christian and still monastic, so why was I not willing to keep investigating? I felt this very irresistable pull to remain in this part of the world. Many of the women's houses I might have considered trying out are in the US. I felt a certain affirmation that I would know what all this was about in time.
You see, I had come to a suspicion that my monastic desire was more about beating back a certain emptiness I have felt in my life for some time. I live with my family now, and I am not physically alone very often, but there is still an aloneness which lingers and will not let go. I am a Christian in a household whose basic attitude to my faith is that it's something that they don't understand, and I have built a life here which is based primarily on my creative pursuits and not a whole lot on social interactions. In other words, I live in my head more often than not, and this can be a very strange place to be. We're not meant to live in our heads, to build castles in the air which block us from our fellow human beings: and it's this sort of dream or desire that I feel comes from our egos, our unsatisfied and ravenous egos. We wish for money, so we get a high-paying job that forces us to work insanely-long hours and we forget our friends and neighbours because of this. We wish to accumulate status-symbols for ourselves and we begin to alienate people who do not have these hallmarks of 'the good life.' I wish to create something truly beautiful, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but there are times when this wish becomes an obsession so that I block out anything or anyone which might distract me from it.
What I have to come to terms with and to accept (and this is very difficult to do!) is that I was never happiest than when I had a partner in life: a man to love. I find myself minimizing this fact at every turn. In terms of my late fiance, I do this so that I don't rose-tint what was a very human and very falible relationship between two very human and very falible people, but even if we lived in separte houses, I knew that he was still with me. I knew we each thought of each other all the time. I mean, I would record a track for my album and I'd be thinking: 'what would he think of this?' It was glorious! It was also difficult, because anything worthy the winning is difficult, but it was all worth everything. We did offer ourselves to each other. We were, of course, two separate people, and had no intention of blending into each other to become one non-entity, but it was the dynamics of the interplay between our personalities that was so fascinating. So what am I really saying? I guess I thought that if the vocation died, there would be a hole where it had been, and now, well, that isn't the case. I have renewed confidence in myself because I tried to live a dream I had, and now, I think that the true dream that lay behind what may have been my own need to be different, to be someone out of the ordinary, may finally be surfacing. It may be that love--a thing both simple and yet in some ways beyond comprehension--is what I'm truly seeking, or what I am being told to seek. All I know is that if this blog has helped me to sift through all the debris which has kept me from seeing this truth, then glory to God for all things! There is a way that I have to go. I've known that much ever since I can remember. There is a right pattern to my life and some reason why I did not simply give up the ghost when I was a premature baby. I've had incredible bounty as well as unbelievable pain to sift through, and I'm not through living yet. It's time to go and see where life is going to take me, and I intend to do that! Perhaps it will not be 'the road less traveled by' that I take, but the worn and well-peopled road has its advantages as well. Still, it's in the yellow wood I stand and gaze at the choices before me, and while I stand thus musing, I will send up a grateful prayer to Him who knows all our roads, and say:
Deo Gratias!
This night I find myself sitting solitary and pondering the dreams and desires we build for ourselves. Whence do these airy castles of gold and silver come to us? Do we construct them brick by brick and tower by tower, or do they somehow exist already and is God, who knows all things He has made, simply point them out to us? Well, as with most things, I believe that it is both. There's a saying in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings which states: "Go not to the elves for advice, for they will say both 'yes' and 'no'." I, in a lot of ways, tend to think very elvishly. Usually, my answers to life's questions involve a 'both-and' construction rather than an 'either-or.' It's just how I'm made. Perhaps it's because I'm a Canadian; I really don't know, but this kind of elf-think is a part of me from way back and is not likely to leave me any time soon.
So, getting back to the subject of our dreams and desires in life, I believe that there are some that we construct for ourselves, but actually, I believe that our dearest and deepest dreams and desires are shown to us by God, and when he shows them to us, we know them for our own because they were made specifically for us by Him. For instance, I used to dream of a very special place. It was a meadow in which a swift stream flowed and where the grass was soft and the air was cool, and it was very peaceful. Why I would dream of such a thing, considering I had never been in a meadow of any sort, I really don't know, but that place has come to represent rightness and goodness and purity in my life. The dream was that of a child, and I no longer have it as an actual vision of the night, but in another way, that dream is still a dream. The land has become a metaphor for something grand and beautiful, but also something simple and dear to the human heart. It is, in short, the peace that passeth understanding.
However, let's take the kind of dream I am really talking about here: the kind of dream that we build for our future selves. When I was sixteen, I felt what I thought was a very strong vocation to the religious life; I wanted to become a nun. This persisted and has continued to persist even till now, so that last November, I took three months to test out what it was like to live in a small womens' convent attached to a men's monastery and church in Hamilton. I love the Benedictine life. I think that I will always be a Benedictine Christian in some way. I loved the prayers we did there and I still pray them in my own life. I loved the philosophy upon which Benedict's monastic rule was built, and for me it seems a sure and steady way to follow that straight and narrow path which we as Christians are all called to follow. However, what I chiefly loved was the communal aspect of things. We shared meals. We each took turns cooking. We helped each other as and when we could. We were not alone, even though great emphasis was placed on private reading, prayer and study. The whole monastic life is built on charity and mercy, and is based on a mutual self-offering to one another and to God. It is the Christian life in microcosm but also intensified by this minuteness. The little day-to-day things become tests of our character and lessons for us, but all the while, there are others with us doing the same things and following the same process.
In the spring, after some time back here to reflect on my experience, I had every intention of returning there at my earliest convenience. I thought I had found what I was lacking. I thought I knew at last that I had a vocation and that I had to answer it. Of course, there were circumstances which intervened and which were beyond my control. To go into them here would take too long, but suffice it to say that it seemed very clear that God was letting me know that this life was not possible for me at this time, if indeed it would ever be possible. So I began questioning again. I began wondering if I really wanted to be a nun or perhaps just wanted to belong somewhere, to be needed and useful. This particular monastic community is really the only option for Benedictine monasticism in Orthodox Christianity, but there are other monastic houses of a more Greek or Russian or Romanian or Serbian (etc) stripe, and they're still Christian and still monastic, so why was I not willing to keep investigating? I felt this very irresistable pull to remain in this part of the world. Many of the women's houses I might have considered trying out are in the US. I felt a certain affirmation that I would know what all this was about in time.
You see, I had come to a suspicion that my monastic desire was more about beating back a certain emptiness I have felt in my life for some time. I live with my family now, and I am not physically alone very often, but there is still an aloneness which lingers and will not let go. I am a Christian in a household whose basic attitude to my faith is that it's something that they don't understand, and I have built a life here which is based primarily on my creative pursuits and not a whole lot on social interactions. In other words, I live in my head more often than not, and this can be a very strange place to be. We're not meant to live in our heads, to build castles in the air which block us from our fellow human beings: and it's this sort of dream or desire that I feel comes from our egos, our unsatisfied and ravenous egos. We wish for money, so we get a high-paying job that forces us to work insanely-long hours and we forget our friends and neighbours because of this. We wish to accumulate status-symbols for ourselves and we begin to alienate people who do not have these hallmarks of 'the good life.' I wish to create something truly beautiful, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but there are times when this wish becomes an obsession so that I block out anything or anyone which might distract me from it.
What I have to come to terms with and to accept (and this is very difficult to do!) is that I was never happiest than when I had a partner in life: a man to love. I find myself minimizing this fact at every turn. In terms of my late fiance, I do this so that I don't rose-tint what was a very human and very falible relationship between two very human and very falible people, but even if we lived in separte houses, I knew that he was still with me. I knew we each thought of each other all the time. I mean, I would record a track for my album and I'd be thinking: 'what would he think of this?' It was glorious! It was also difficult, because anything worthy the winning is difficult, but it was all worth everything. We did offer ourselves to each other. We were, of course, two separate people, and had no intention of blending into each other to become one non-entity, but it was the dynamics of the interplay between our personalities that was so fascinating. So what am I really saying? I guess I thought that if the vocation died, there would be a hole where it had been, and now, well, that isn't the case. I have renewed confidence in myself because I tried to live a dream I had, and now, I think that the true dream that lay behind what may have been my own need to be different, to be someone out of the ordinary, may finally be surfacing. It may be that love--a thing both simple and yet in some ways beyond comprehension--is what I'm truly seeking, or what I am being told to seek. All I know is that if this blog has helped me to sift through all the debris which has kept me from seeing this truth, then glory to God for all things! There is a way that I have to go. I've known that much ever since I can remember. There is a right pattern to my life and some reason why I did not simply give up the ghost when I was a premature baby. I've had incredible bounty as well as unbelievable pain to sift through, and I'm not through living yet. It's time to go and see where life is going to take me, and I intend to do that! Perhaps it will not be 'the road less traveled by' that I take, but the worn and well-peopled road has its advantages as well. Still, it's in the yellow wood I stand and gaze at the choices before me, and while I stand thus musing, I will send up a grateful prayer to Him who knows all our roads, and say:
Deo Gratias!
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Thoughts Upon the Passage of Time
Benedicamus Domino!
November is a month for reflection and taking account for me. It was on November 11, 2005 when I found myself suddenly open to Christianity again after years of looking elseware, and it was on the same day in 2006 that I was baptized as an Orthodox Christian. The strange thing was that we had scheduled the baptism originally for another weekend entirely, but circumstances beyond our control conspired to make it necessary that the service should be performed on November 11.
November has traditionally been a spiritually-active time for me. It was in November several years ago that I found myself beginning to embrace Pagan beliefs. It was in November of last year that I went for a three-month sojourn to a small Benedictine Orthodox monastery in Hamilton to test what I thought might be a vocation to the religious life, and it is in November of this year that I have come to a decision, and that decision is that I cannot hide myself away any longer. I can't just sit on the shelf. I have to have friends and intelligent conversation in my life. I have to commune with people where possible and to develop relationships of depth and meaning.
I have often defaulted to a strange and solitary existance throughout my life, but this is just no way to live if one can help it! To isolate is harmful most of the time. To consistently be alone and to disengage with life can cause very negative results. It is true that my occupations (writing, blogging and music) can draw me into solitude and that this solitude is necessary for the doing of said occupations, but they need not take up my entire life. I just had a lovely late-night conversation with a friend whose voice I'd never heard though we had talked on and off for about ten years via the internet. This led me to wonder why I am so reticent and reserved. I mean, this friend and I have shared many intimate thoughts via our blogs and such, but for some reason, I never took her up on several invitations she made to converse. This is a failing of mine, because I love conversation!
In fact, during another November, I recall a very memorable conversation between myself and a friend. This friend and I had not spoken for years, but as soon as I knew her number, I called her and we talked and talked and talked! I'm sure that some of the news I told her was less-than desirable for her to hear, but we just talked as though we'd never stopped. That's really the definition of a true friend. If you can just start talking after a long dry-spell as though you'd never ended the former conversation, then you know that you've got something special and that you are, as Anne Shirley would say, 'kindred spirits.'
I have been fortunate to have a few of these kindred spirits in my lifetime, and the best part is that I'm still meeting others! I maintain a wonderful relationship with the Abbot of the monastery where I went last year, for instance. We both share a similar outlook on life, and we're forever trading interesting Youtube finds or poetic things or the like. It's lovely!
I really don't know where this entry is going, and I ought to get some sleep. So, as Rachmaninov's Vespers (Vespers and Matins really) wends its musical way onwards, I suppose I'll bid those who read this experiment in introspection adieu for now and give my tired body and soul a rest.
Deo Gratias!
November is a month for reflection and taking account for me. It was on November 11, 2005 when I found myself suddenly open to Christianity again after years of looking elseware, and it was on the same day in 2006 that I was baptized as an Orthodox Christian. The strange thing was that we had scheduled the baptism originally for another weekend entirely, but circumstances beyond our control conspired to make it necessary that the service should be performed on November 11.
November has traditionally been a spiritually-active time for me. It was in November several years ago that I found myself beginning to embrace Pagan beliefs. It was in November of last year that I went for a three-month sojourn to a small Benedictine Orthodox monastery in Hamilton to test what I thought might be a vocation to the religious life, and it is in November of this year that I have come to a decision, and that decision is that I cannot hide myself away any longer. I can't just sit on the shelf. I have to have friends and intelligent conversation in my life. I have to commune with people where possible and to develop relationships of depth and meaning.
I have often defaulted to a strange and solitary existance throughout my life, but this is just no way to live if one can help it! To isolate is harmful most of the time. To consistently be alone and to disengage with life can cause very negative results. It is true that my occupations (writing, blogging and music) can draw me into solitude and that this solitude is necessary for the doing of said occupations, but they need not take up my entire life. I just had a lovely late-night conversation with a friend whose voice I'd never heard though we had talked on and off for about ten years via the internet. This led me to wonder why I am so reticent and reserved. I mean, this friend and I have shared many intimate thoughts via our blogs and such, but for some reason, I never took her up on several invitations she made to converse. This is a failing of mine, because I love conversation!
In fact, during another November, I recall a very memorable conversation between myself and a friend. This friend and I had not spoken for years, but as soon as I knew her number, I called her and we talked and talked and talked! I'm sure that some of the news I told her was less-than desirable for her to hear, but we just talked as though we'd never stopped. That's really the definition of a true friend. If you can just start talking after a long dry-spell as though you'd never ended the former conversation, then you know that you've got something special and that you are, as Anne Shirley would say, 'kindred spirits.'
I have been fortunate to have a few of these kindred spirits in my lifetime, and the best part is that I'm still meeting others! I maintain a wonderful relationship with the Abbot of the monastery where I went last year, for instance. We both share a similar outlook on life, and we're forever trading interesting Youtube finds or poetic things or the like. It's lovely!
I really don't know where this entry is going, and I ought to get some sleep. So, as Rachmaninov's Vespers (Vespers and Matins really) wends its musical way onwards, I suppose I'll bid those who read this experiment in introspection adieu for now and give my tired body and soul a rest.
Deo Gratias!
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