Benedicamus Domino!
It has been a long time since I have taken to this little corner of the web, a long time since I have felt I had anything worth writing here. This, of course, was not due to the lack of anything worth writing about, but rather due to my own closed-off nature during the past few months. I suppose we all revert to type every now and again, and my type seems to be rather a solitary hermit, a person who can cause herself to feel alone even among crowds and who tells herself and others if they'll listen that she really likes it that way.
This of course is utter nonsense! However, I do persist in this pattern and it really needs to stop.
Ah well... What was it that I came here to write this evening, you ask? Well, Michael and I just spent a lovely evening with some friends of mine. Actually it was more like an afternoon and an evening. We had some great conversation, some fabulous food at a Czek restaurant, and just generally had a very lovely time.
The best of it was that I was able to introduce him to a friend who has been a comrade-in-arms of mine for many years. She and I are in some ways as different as night and day, but in others we seem to be linked at the brain-stem, and this is despite about a ten-year difference in our ages. I suppose what made me so happy was her assessment that I seemed to be like a different person since the last time we truly got together. I don't entirely know what that means, but I suspect that she was able to see Mike and I together and it really came home to her that we were comfortable with each other and cared about each other and such. It doesn't hurt that he is just a very special person. Anyone who meets him can see that and would remark upon it.
All I can say is that this was just a lovely evening! It made things more--well--real I guess. I can't really explain it well, but having Mike meet this sister-in-the-spirit of mine just brought things home to me that we're in this for keeps, for real! I'm just so happy!!!
Deo Gratias!
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Friday, July 26, 2013
Looking Behind and Looking Ahead
Benedicamus Domino!
Last friday, I turned 35, and today, July 13 on the Julian Calendar, is the day on which the woman I took as a patron saint at my Baptism, Amma Sarah of Egypt, is celebrated. She was a desert mother: a woman who went out into the wilderness, fleeing from cities and such, in order to come face-to-face with the parts of herself that were not very pretty. She wanted, as did all these desert monastics, to strip away all the distractions which allowed her to delude herself into thinking that she did not have to make any improvements. We don't know anything about her life prior to her dwelling somewhere near Alexandria in a hermit's cell. We know she stayed there for a very long time, and we know that there are accounts of her meeting with other monks and talking with them.
This week, I've thought a lot about her and about what lessons she has taught me over the years. The biggest lesson is found in one of her sayings which was memorialized in the Patericon, or the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which is: "If I prayed God that all men should approve of my conduct, I should find myself a penitent at the door of each one, but I shall rather pray that my heart may be pure towards all." This saying has shown me that even if people don't necessarily think that my conduct is something that they can get behind, that's not the most important thing. It's not up to me to please people, because I'll never please everyone. However, what I can do is try not to hold grudges and slowly learn to look at every person I meet as an icon of Christ.
The second lesson that she's taught me is that it is sometimes necessary to simplify one's life. Whether this means cutting back on work to make time for family or getting rid of actual physical stuff, or perhaps even finding a way to overcome an addiction, change is possible and simplifying is a good way to promote that change. So much of the spiritual life for a Christian really has to do with de-cluttering of one's thoughts and one's heart. Peace has no room to dwell in an overly care-worn soul, so I am slowly learning what a long-ago dream actually began to show me: climbing the mountain is difficult, but the going is easier if we can shed, little by little, the things that weigh us down. Why try to carry our homes on our backs when we can make wherever we land into a home? We can't truly set out on a journey if we're tied to our comforts and conveniences. Life is not really about comfort and convenience. Every so often, things come along to shake the worlds we build for ourselves into pieces, and this is why we have to learn to acknowledge all these comforts as temporary and thereby to take greater joy in them because we know that they will not always be here someday.
The third lesson is that you can't run away from who you are. No matter where you go or what you do, you take yourself and your ego along for the ride. You can chip away at the excess and non-productive parts of yourself, and God can even heal those parts. Amputation is sometimes necessary, it is true, but most of the nasty bits in the heart and the soul can be salved with the balm of His mercy if we let him. However, no work at all can be done if we do not face our demons and allow ourselves to know them. Knowledge in this case is power, because once we look our passions and demons in the face, we usually realize how pitiful and weak they really are in the light of Christ, and we find that we do not have to be slaves to them but can allow ourselves to be freed.
So, on this day, I think about my life and what has gone before and what will come next, and I find that much of my life has been spent in frivolity or in gloom. My even-temperedness has often masked these two extremes from the world, but they're there and they're a self-perpetuating cycle. Houses of cards tend to fall over at the slightest puff of wind, after all, and houses built on infirm foundations tend to crumble in the storm. It is time for me to start building my house on reality, on the pillars of charity, mercy, faith and hope, and I have to begin at home. I have to begin with myself. I have to allow myself to accept charity and to be ministered to in mercy. I have to go forward in faith and hope, if not for the future, then for God's continuing support through whatever comes. He is there in joy and in sorrow, after all, and it is my job to learn to be thankful for both things, because in a way, they are both illusions. Life on earth will eventually descend into night, but life in Christ has no evening! I have to learn to truly live that way, to both acknowledge life for what it truly is here on earth but also to look to Christ as my well-spring! There is a way to see the world as it is and yet to hope. There is a way to be in full acknowledgement of the horrors that occur in this world but also to transcend them. However, in order to transcend, we must do as Christ did, and we must descend. We have to meet life where it lives, on its own terms, and then ask God to carry us through it. Amma Sarah met life by getting rid of the daily cares of being a wife and mother. Others meet it by being wives, mothers, husbands, fathers and workers. Either way, the journey is the same and we all need the same map and the same pilgrim's staff to lean on: faith. We can't avoid temptations. We can't avoid troubles and trials. These build our characters. However, we can ask God to carry us through them. We can lean on Him. We don't have to be perfect all at once, but we have to allow ourselves to slowly be perfected, and this entails seeing the flaws which need to be smoothed out by the Master Artist's touch. Only then can the true beauty in the creation be uncovered! So, I shall try to live by the lessons that Amma Sarah has taught me, and I shall go forth into this new year of my life with zeal and with boldness!
Venerable Amma Sarah, pray to God for us!
Deo Gratias!
Last friday, I turned 35, and today, July 13 on the Julian Calendar, is the day on which the woman I took as a patron saint at my Baptism, Amma Sarah of Egypt, is celebrated. She was a desert mother: a woman who went out into the wilderness, fleeing from cities and such, in order to come face-to-face with the parts of herself that were not very pretty. She wanted, as did all these desert monastics, to strip away all the distractions which allowed her to delude herself into thinking that she did not have to make any improvements. We don't know anything about her life prior to her dwelling somewhere near Alexandria in a hermit's cell. We know she stayed there for a very long time, and we know that there are accounts of her meeting with other monks and talking with them.
This week, I've thought a lot about her and about what lessons she has taught me over the years. The biggest lesson is found in one of her sayings which was memorialized in the Patericon, or the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, which is: "If I prayed God that all men should approve of my conduct, I should find myself a penitent at the door of each one, but I shall rather pray that my heart may be pure towards all." This saying has shown me that even if people don't necessarily think that my conduct is something that they can get behind, that's not the most important thing. It's not up to me to please people, because I'll never please everyone. However, what I can do is try not to hold grudges and slowly learn to look at every person I meet as an icon of Christ.
The second lesson that she's taught me is that it is sometimes necessary to simplify one's life. Whether this means cutting back on work to make time for family or getting rid of actual physical stuff, or perhaps even finding a way to overcome an addiction, change is possible and simplifying is a good way to promote that change. So much of the spiritual life for a Christian really has to do with de-cluttering of one's thoughts and one's heart. Peace has no room to dwell in an overly care-worn soul, so I am slowly learning what a long-ago dream actually began to show me: climbing the mountain is difficult, but the going is easier if we can shed, little by little, the things that weigh us down. Why try to carry our homes on our backs when we can make wherever we land into a home? We can't truly set out on a journey if we're tied to our comforts and conveniences. Life is not really about comfort and convenience. Every so often, things come along to shake the worlds we build for ourselves into pieces, and this is why we have to learn to acknowledge all these comforts as temporary and thereby to take greater joy in them because we know that they will not always be here someday.
The third lesson is that you can't run away from who you are. No matter where you go or what you do, you take yourself and your ego along for the ride. You can chip away at the excess and non-productive parts of yourself, and God can even heal those parts. Amputation is sometimes necessary, it is true, but most of the nasty bits in the heart and the soul can be salved with the balm of His mercy if we let him. However, no work at all can be done if we do not face our demons and allow ourselves to know them. Knowledge in this case is power, because once we look our passions and demons in the face, we usually realize how pitiful and weak they really are in the light of Christ, and we find that we do not have to be slaves to them but can allow ourselves to be freed.
So, on this day, I think about my life and what has gone before and what will come next, and I find that much of my life has been spent in frivolity or in gloom. My even-temperedness has often masked these two extremes from the world, but they're there and they're a self-perpetuating cycle. Houses of cards tend to fall over at the slightest puff of wind, after all, and houses built on infirm foundations tend to crumble in the storm. It is time for me to start building my house on reality, on the pillars of charity, mercy, faith and hope, and I have to begin at home. I have to begin with myself. I have to allow myself to accept charity and to be ministered to in mercy. I have to go forward in faith and hope, if not for the future, then for God's continuing support through whatever comes. He is there in joy and in sorrow, after all, and it is my job to learn to be thankful for both things, because in a way, they are both illusions. Life on earth will eventually descend into night, but life in Christ has no evening! I have to learn to truly live that way, to both acknowledge life for what it truly is here on earth but also to look to Christ as my well-spring! There is a way to see the world as it is and yet to hope. There is a way to be in full acknowledgement of the horrors that occur in this world but also to transcend them. However, in order to transcend, we must do as Christ did, and we must descend. We have to meet life where it lives, on its own terms, and then ask God to carry us through it. Amma Sarah met life by getting rid of the daily cares of being a wife and mother. Others meet it by being wives, mothers, husbands, fathers and workers. Either way, the journey is the same and we all need the same map and the same pilgrim's staff to lean on: faith. We can't avoid temptations. We can't avoid troubles and trials. These build our characters. However, we can ask God to carry us through them. We can lean on Him. We don't have to be perfect all at once, but we have to allow ourselves to slowly be perfected, and this entails seeing the flaws which need to be smoothed out by the Master Artist's touch. Only then can the true beauty in the creation be uncovered! So, I shall try to live by the lessons that Amma Sarah has taught me, and I shall go forth into this new year of my life with zeal and with boldness!
Venerable Amma Sarah, pray to God for us!
Deo Gratias!
Thursday, July 4, 2013
The Power of Saying Thank You
Benedicamus Domino!
Today, I watched a movie called The Gratitude Experiment. It's a documentary designed to get viewers thinking in a different way about their lives. The speakers in the movie all talk about having a daily practice of gratitude and about how this has changed their lives in various and sundry positive and life-affirming ways.
The basic premise of this gratitude philosophy is that if we can learn to be grateful as we go through life, can learn to view ourselves in a constantly-receptive state and as therefore grateful for what we receive, then we will have a more peaceful mind, a more healthy body and a more fulfilling life in general. But my big question is: grateful to what? to whom? You have to have a 'you' to say thank you to after all. The movie talks a lot about being grateful to the universe. I suppose this can work if you really do feel that you are a child of that universe, but is the universe sentient? Is it aware? Is it personal? Some philosophers would have you think that it was. I, however, cannot think this way. Being a Christian, I have to believe that the universe as we know it (and even as we don't know it) is God's creation no less than we are. So, being grateful to the universe for the blessings in our lives would seem a little silly to me. The other problem about the universe is that people tend to treat it like a controlable thing. They say that we can control it and can direct it by our wills, and this is the other part of this gratitude philosophy. Be grateful for what you have on a daily basis and soon, your whole life will change. You'll get everything you can envision if you envision it with a grateful heart. Hmmm...
Another troubling part of this movie was that people tended to ascribe the gratitude we should feel to our own selves for creating the lives that we live. I think that it is important not to hate yourself or to despair about yourself, but I am troubled by the idolatry of the self which can occur if this is taken to its most logical conclusion. Basically, I don't really believe in the law of attraction. Think positively and all will be well? I agree that being more positive can give you courage and fortitude in the bad times, but in the end, that courage and fortitude has to break down if we do things on our own all the time.
I agree that gratitude has to happen. We have to, as Christians, be grateful to God for our lives and for what we have in this life. We should learn to be grateful to Him as often as we can, but it has to be organic. It can't be forced. We have to first start by acknowledging that we are, in fact, in His debt. We are the children of His mercy and not of our merit. Only then can we truly realize how great the gifts He has given us really are, and only then, in our knowledge of our own brokenness, can we begin to change our lives and begin to let Him fill us with His grace. The heck of it is that this is a day-to-day, minute-to-minute thing. It has to always be going on, even amid our distractions. It's one thing to be peaceful when we're in a peaceful place, but I think it behooves a Christian, especially one of a contemplative nature, to carry peace about with him or her. We should take the peace we find in prayer or in church or wherever we find it and learn to cultivate it, learn to recall ourselves to that place, and the quickest way to do that I've found is to say "Deo Gratias," or "thanks be to God." Take joy where you find it and let it fill you. Let it lift you and never forget to say "Thank you!" Will it change your life? Will you suddenly find your dream-job or your true love? I can't answer that, but I know that it will change yourself. I think a holy person is one who can rejoice in the Lord always and be grateful to Him for everything in life, whether it seems to be a positive triumph or a negative trial. Of course, I'm a very long way from doing this, from reaching this state, but it's something I'm aiming for with God's help. Gratitude is not about feeling happy. It's about being happy, and the difference between feeling and being is that feeling focuses on the self and is a constant struggle, while being is more about resting, more about letting go of the highs and lows of emotion and about finding a kind of all-pervasive contentment with life.
Of course, gratitude is a part of living the eucharistic life. It is a very essential part. Indeed, the offering that we can make to God which He will transform and transfigure and return to us is ourselves, our broken and bleeding selves, and the only thing that we can render to Him is gratitude, since He is doing for us far more than we are worthy of receiving. We are children of mercy, not of merit, but we can become children of grace, children of love if we let Him change us as He sees fit and not as we with our limited vision would seek to change ourselves. Till next I write, I will say:
Deo Gratias!
Today, I watched a movie called The Gratitude Experiment. It's a documentary designed to get viewers thinking in a different way about their lives. The speakers in the movie all talk about having a daily practice of gratitude and about how this has changed their lives in various and sundry positive and life-affirming ways.
The basic premise of this gratitude philosophy is that if we can learn to be grateful as we go through life, can learn to view ourselves in a constantly-receptive state and as therefore grateful for what we receive, then we will have a more peaceful mind, a more healthy body and a more fulfilling life in general. But my big question is: grateful to what? to whom? You have to have a 'you' to say thank you to after all. The movie talks a lot about being grateful to the universe. I suppose this can work if you really do feel that you are a child of that universe, but is the universe sentient? Is it aware? Is it personal? Some philosophers would have you think that it was. I, however, cannot think this way. Being a Christian, I have to believe that the universe as we know it (and even as we don't know it) is God's creation no less than we are. So, being grateful to the universe for the blessings in our lives would seem a little silly to me. The other problem about the universe is that people tend to treat it like a controlable thing. They say that we can control it and can direct it by our wills, and this is the other part of this gratitude philosophy. Be grateful for what you have on a daily basis and soon, your whole life will change. You'll get everything you can envision if you envision it with a grateful heart. Hmmm...
Another troubling part of this movie was that people tended to ascribe the gratitude we should feel to our own selves for creating the lives that we live. I think that it is important not to hate yourself or to despair about yourself, but I am troubled by the idolatry of the self which can occur if this is taken to its most logical conclusion. Basically, I don't really believe in the law of attraction. Think positively and all will be well? I agree that being more positive can give you courage and fortitude in the bad times, but in the end, that courage and fortitude has to break down if we do things on our own all the time.
I agree that gratitude has to happen. We have to, as Christians, be grateful to God for our lives and for what we have in this life. We should learn to be grateful to Him as often as we can, but it has to be organic. It can't be forced. We have to first start by acknowledging that we are, in fact, in His debt. We are the children of His mercy and not of our merit. Only then can we truly realize how great the gifts He has given us really are, and only then, in our knowledge of our own brokenness, can we begin to change our lives and begin to let Him fill us with His grace. The heck of it is that this is a day-to-day, minute-to-minute thing. It has to always be going on, even amid our distractions. It's one thing to be peaceful when we're in a peaceful place, but I think it behooves a Christian, especially one of a contemplative nature, to carry peace about with him or her. We should take the peace we find in prayer or in church or wherever we find it and learn to cultivate it, learn to recall ourselves to that place, and the quickest way to do that I've found is to say "Deo Gratias," or "thanks be to God." Take joy where you find it and let it fill you. Let it lift you and never forget to say "Thank you!" Will it change your life? Will you suddenly find your dream-job or your true love? I can't answer that, but I know that it will change yourself. I think a holy person is one who can rejoice in the Lord always and be grateful to Him for everything in life, whether it seems to be a positive triumph or a negative trial. Of course, I'm a very long way from doing this, from reaching this state, but it's something I'm aiming for with God's help. Gratitude is not about feeling happy. It's about being happy, and the difference between feeling and being is that feeling focuses on the self and is a constant struggle, while being is more about resting, more about letting go of the highs and lows of emotion and about finding a kind of all-pervasive contentment with life.
Of course, gratitude is a part of living the eucharistic life. It is a very essential part. Indeed, the offering that we can make to God which He will transform and transfigure and return to us is ourselves, our broken and bleeding selves, and the only thing that we can render to Him is gratitude, since He is doing for us far more than we are worthy of receiving. We are children of mercy, not of merit, but we can become children of grace, children of love if we let Him change us as He sees fit and not as we with our limited vision would seek to change ourselves. Till next I write, I will say:
Deo Gratias!
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Following Christ's Example
Benedicamus Domino!
I've meant to write about this for a while now, but only at this point has there been a way into this topic that makes some sense for me.
What does it mean to follow the example of Christ? We're often exhorted as Christians to follow Christ's example in his merciful behaviour or in his adherence to the fundamental commandments that we should love God with all our heart, soul and mind and that we should love our neighbours as ourselves. This of course is what we ought to do, but is there more to Christ than a really exceptionally good man who taught with wise words? Was His sole bequest to us an example of charity and good works?
People often approach Christ's miracles as merely good works, as though restoring sight to the blind man was more of a merciful act than a mind-blowing restoration of that man's fallen condition to what God had intended it to be. The Bible is a little vague about this in the English translations at least. I can't attest to the original Greek of the New Testament. However, in holy tradition, we're taught in Orthodox Christianity that Christ actually molded new eyes for the blind man who had no eyes. He did this with the clay of the earth, creating life where there was no life and removing, in microcosm, the effects of the fall from him. This is what all His miracles were about: foreshadowings of the true and universal resurrection.
However, what did He also do? First, He was with The Father and spoke the universe into existence. As part of that universe and after the fall, He became like us, did his works and taught, died and rose again. This is another way in which we must follow His example. It's not enough to be blessed or baptized and then go on our way. We have to die to ourselves so we can rise in Christ. This idea of being baptized into Christ has always puzzled me, but I think I get it now. We are to do what He did at Gethsemane. We may think the medicine that will change our hearts tastes bitter, but we have to acknowledge our fears and then take the medicine anyway. God wants us to be like Him, after all. That's why Christ came to us, to make us like God.
I read a tweet recently that stated something to the effect that Christ has always been with us and is still with us, sticking up for us with God. This idea that Christ is "sticking up for us with God" is difficult for me. It makes it seem like God is some cold and distant figure and that Christ has to keep telling God not to smite us or something. That's certainly not a God I want to believe in! No. Christ is our doorway. He is our path. He shows us what transformation looks like. He quite literally is the ordering principle of the universe: what Plato called the Logos, and He is the living Logos, the incarnate Logos who has come into His own creation and has redeemed it and is redeeming it in each one of us and will redeem it at the Last Day.
So, if we are followers of the ordering principle of the universe, we have to take it that He knows how things should be better than we do. Let's take something that is not in the least controversial like equal marriage rites for people who are attracted to members of the same sex. Not controversial at all, right? Right. Well, I have always thought of myself as a free-thinking person, a person who knows her own mind and is willing to stick up for what she believes in, and I have come to the conclusion that my church's teachings on this subject are correct, and what my church teaches is that gay marriage is not marriage. We furthermore believe that this has come down to us from The Bible and from the very fact that God first made man and woman as one being and then took woman from the man and separated them.
We see marriage as a pathway to salvation. There are many such pathways, but marriage is the most common. It comes from the verse where God says that "for this cause (the woman) shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife." A marriage between a man and a woman is viewed as the best and most orderly (though fallen) state for mutual salvation, mutual healing, mutual moving closer to God and further from their fallen and broken selves. We believe that the man and the woman have roles to fulfill: man may drive the metaphorical car but woman navigates it. Man may be called the head of the family, but woman is the counsellor to the king: Merlin to Arthur. The kind of love that we usually associate with marriage in our age really isn't all that it should be. It's a fallen love. It's a start, but should not be taken as lasting. Another kind of love has to happen, a real love based on the knowledge of and compassion for each other's brokenness and a willingness to admit to one another that brokenness and to grow from it.
The logical question then is why can't this kind of salvific thing exist in a marriage between two men or between two women? First of all, we would state that sexual attraction is not all that it's cracked up to be. We believe that due to the fall, all sexual attraction is now disproportionate as an instinct to what it was before the fall. All our instincts and emotions are turned on their heads as fallen people. So whether you are attracted to people of your own sex or gender or to people of the opposite one, this attraction impulse is rather too big for us to handle it safely. So while in our culture we still tend to marry for love, sexual identity shouldn't be seen as either normal or abnormal depending on one's preference. It's all a bit out of joint really, and no one is any more "normal" than anyone else. This is where some Christian teachers get a little mixed up. A straight marriage is defined by them as "the way God intended it" or as "normal" or as "natural," while a gay marriage is defined as "unnatural" or "wrong."
We would simply say this: a union between a man and a woman is a marriage in the Christian sense. A union between two men or two women is not a marriage in the Christian sense. If it's a marriage under the law, then it's a marriage under the law. We can't really say that it's not, but the church wouldn't recognize it or bless it with the sacrament of marriage. Is this condemnatory? I believe that any faith has the right to define how its ceremonies are performed.
I recently heard a really interesting talk about sexual addictions, marriage and the Orthodox Christian perspective on all this. It was very informative and very helpful to me personally, as I often feel woefully inferior when I hear all the reasons that I'm wrong and the rest of the "enlightened" world seems to be correct about issues like gay marriage. First, I don't believe that sexual identity should ever have become quite the civil rights issue that it has. Sexual identity is really something that we fashion for ourselves and it is, in my opinion, a mask. Don't get me wrong! I believe attractions exist within people, but it is ultimately up to us how we deal with these attractions. There are some people who have had same-sex attraction who have chosen (not because of social pressure but because their consciences told them they should) to be married to people of the opposite sex. Were they brain-washed into doing that? Most people can't be brain-washed into a decision like that, or if they are, it won't last long. The drives are very strong. The very fact that people can remain monogamous during marriage is a pretty big thing! The drives, as I said, are very very strong: any sexual drive or attraction or whatever.
The point I'm trying to make is that sexual identity can be a mask and usually is. We want to focus on the person, the joining of two persons in marriage, and again: one way follows Christ, who is the incarnation of the ordering principle of the entire universe, and another way does not follow that order. Is one moral and one immoral? I personally don't like those kinds of binaries. If morality equals following in line with the ordering of the universe, then alright, but I generally think of morality as a set of codes by which we all try to live.
So what about homosexuals in the church? Here we come again to following Christ's example. We certainly ought not to cast stones or to spread hate speech or hate literature. We always have to learn to look to the person first, to go behind the masks that everyone wears and find the truth of the human being, because God loves all human beings. The fall is the fall, and we're all a part of that fall. No one should judge another's sins. We all have to look to ourselves as the chiefest of sinners and then look out at the world. When we do that, less condemnation and more mercy and charity happens. As for homosexual attraction, we would deem that to be a passion or a sin but only amongst many other sins that we all commit every day. We're all in the church to be healed, but the healing may take months, years or perhaps our whole lives. We don't, or we shouldn't, believe that any one sin makes a person unlovable. However, we do believe that there is an order to the universe and that marriage between a man and a woman is a pathway to regaining that lost order within ourselves and within the family we create as well.
Again, however, I myself cannot see writing letters or shouting slogans asking that gay marriage rights be abolished in Canada. I believe very strongly in the separation of church and state, and while I do believe that a faith has the right to define what it means by marriage if marriage is sacred to it, I also believe that the state must do what it sees as being in the best interest of all its citizens, and if a large enough group makes a big enough noise, it is the democratic state's mandate to at least see why they're making the noise and to see what can be done about it. Our country's response has been to legalize (via the courts mind you and not via parliament) same-sex marriages. So be it. Do I think that anyone marrying each other in a same-sex context is automatically damned to hell? God forbid! I don't know their hearts or minds or lives! What I do know is what the church has taught me and what I, after many years of wrestling with it, have come to truly believe. Again though, no gay marriage in Orthodox Christianity does not equal burning people out of their homes or beating them up or defaming them or causing them to lose their livelihoods. We just believe that the sacrament of marriage exists between a man and a woman, and that any other kind of union just wouldn't be a Christian marriage. Would it be an evil marriage? Not to my way of thinking anyway. It's simply beyond the boundaries of a Christian marriage as we in the Orthodox church see it.
So, in order to follow the example of Christ, it is also necessary to look at the world and to see whether there might be an ordering of things which is more profitable than whatever our opinions of a given moment (I mean here age) might be. We humans are a changeable lot after all. One minute homosexuality is almost universally condemned and the next, it's becoming more and more accepted. But how can we trust even that? What if some cultural shift comes along and turns what we assume to be true on its head? As a Christian, my social and political views should never be about my emotions. They're changeable too, and many social and political persuaders like to use emotion to hook adherents. Another thing I've learned is that it's alright for me to be in conflict with a teaching of the church. However it's not necessarily the correct thing for me to spout off about my own opinion right away. It's often best to just be patient and let the faith deepen within you, and then one might begin to see the reasoning or truth behind a given tenet or teaching. The teachings are after all merely a road-map. I don't believe in teachings. I don't believe in anything. I try to follow Christ. I'm not a philosopher. I'm not religious. I'm simply a Christian woman trying to make sense of her world the best way she can. Take all these thoughts in that spirit therefore, and let them be as they must be.
Till next I write,
Deo Gratias!
I've meant to write about this for a while now, but only at this point has there been a way into this topic that makes some sense for me.
What does it mean to follow the example of Christ? We're often exhorted as Christians to follow Christ's example in his merciful behaviour or in his adherence to the fundamental commandments that we should love God with all our heart, soul and mind and that we should love our neighbours as ourselves. This of course is what we ought to do, but is there more to Christ than a really exceptionally good man who taught with wise words? Was His sole bequest to us an example of charity and good works?
People often approach Christ's miracles as merely good works, as though restoring sight to the blind man was more of a merciful act than a mind-blowing restoration of that man's fallen condition to what God had intended it to be. The Bible is a little vague about this in the English translations at least. I can't attest to the original Greek of the New Testament. However, in holy tradition, we're taught in Orthodox Christianity that Christ actually molded new eyes for the blind man who had no eyes. He did this with the clay of the earth, creating life where there was no life and removing, in microcosm, the effects of the fall from him. This is what all His miracles were about: foreshadowings of the true and universal resurrection.
However, what did He also do? First, He was with The Father and spoke the universe into existence. As part of that universe and after the fall, He became like us, did his works and taught, died and rose again. This is another way in which we must follow His example. It's not enough to be blessed or baptized and then go on our way. We have to die to ourselves so we can rise in Christ. This idea of being baptized into Christ has always puzzled me, but I think I get it now. We are to do what He did at Gethsemane. We may think the medicine that will change our hearts tastes bitter, but we have to acknowledge our fears and then take the medicine anyway. God wants us to be like Him, after all. That's why Christ came to us, to make us like God.
I read a tweet recently that stated something to the effect that Christ has always been with us and is still with us, sticking up for us with God. This idea that Christ is "sticking up for us with God" is difficult for me. It makes it seem like God is some cold and distant figure and that Christ has to keep telling God not to smite us or something. That's certainly not a God I want to believe in! No. Christ is our doorway. He is our path. He shows us what transformation looks like. He quite literally is the ordering principle of the universe: what Plato called the Logos, and He is the living Logos, the incarnate Logos who has come into His own creation and has redeemed it and is redeeming it in each one of us and will redeem it at the Last Day.
So, if we are followers of the ordering principle of the universe, we have to take it that He knows how things should be better than we do. Let's take something that is not in the least controversial like equal marriage rites for people who are attracted to members of the same sex. Not controversial at all, right? Right. Well, I have always thought of myself as a free-thinking person, a person who knows her own mind and is willing to stick up for what she believes in, and I have come to the conclusion that my church's teachings on this subject are correct, and what my church teaches is that gay marriage is not marriage. We furthermore believe that this has come down to us from The Bible and from the very fact that God first made man and woman as one being and then took woman from the man and separated them.
We see marriage as a pathway to salvation. There are many such pathways, but marriage is the most common. It comes from the verse where God says that "for this cause (the woman) shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife." A marriage between a man and a woman is viewed as the best and most orderly (though fallen) state for mutual salvation, mutual healing, mutual moving closer to God and further from their fallen and broken selves. We believe that the man and the woman have roles to fulfill: man may drive the metaphorical car but woman navigates it. Man may be called the head of the family, but woman is the counsellor to the king: Merlin to Arthur. The kind of love that we usually associate with marriage in our age really isn't all that it should be. It's a fallen love. It's a start, but should not be taken as lasting. Another kind of love has to happen, a real love based on the knowledge of and compassion for each other's brokenness and a willingness to admit to one another that brokenness and to grow from it.
The logical question then is why can't this kind of salvific thing exist in a marriage between two men or between two women? First of all, we would state that sexual attraction is not all that it's cracked up to be. We believe that due to the fall, all sexual attraction is now disproportionate as an instinct to what it was before the fall. All our instincts and emotions are turned on their heads as fallen people. So whether you are attracted to people of your own sex or gender or to people of the opposite one, this attraction impulse is rather too big for us to handle it safely. So while in our culture we still tend to marry for love, sexual identity shouldn't be seen as either normal or abnormal depending on one's preference. It's all a bit out of joint really, and no one is any more "normal" than anyone else. This is where some Christian teachers get a little mixed up. A straight marriage is defined by them as "the way God intended it" or as "normal" or as "natural," while a gay marriage is defined as "unnatural" or "wrong."
We would simply say this: a union between a man and a woman is a marriage in the Christian sense. A union between two men or two women is not a marriage in the Christian sense. If it's a marriage under the law, then it's a marriage under the law. We can't really say that it's not, but the church wouldn't recognize it or bless it with the sacrament of marriage. Is this condemnatory? I believe that any faith has the right to define how its ceremonies are performed.
I recently heard a really interesting talk about sexual addictions, marriage and the Orthodox Christian perspective on all this. It was very informative and very helpful to me personally, as I often feel woefully inferior when I hear all the reasons that I'm wrong and the rest of the "enlightened" world seems to be correct about issues like gay marriage. First, I don't believe that sexual identity should ever have become quite the civil rights issue that it has. Sexual identity is really something that we fashion for ourselves and it is, in my opinion, a mask. Don't get me wrong! I believe attractions exist within people, but it is ultimately up to us how we deal with these attractions. There are some people who have had same-sex attraction who have chosen (not because of social pressure but because their consciences told them they should) to be married to people of the opposite sex. Were they brain-washed into doing that? Most people can't be brain-washed into a decision like that, or if they are, it won't last long. The drives are very strong. The very fact that people can remain monogamous during marriage is a pretty big thing! The drives, as I said, are very very strong: any sexual drive or attraction or whatever.
The point I'm trying to make is that sexual identity can be a mask and usually is. We want to focus on the person, the joining of two persons in marriage, and again: one way follows Christ, who is the incarnation of the ordering principle of the entire universe, and another way does not follow that order. Is one moral and one immoral? I personally don't like those kinds of binaries. If morality equals following in line with the ordering of the universe, then alright, but I generally think of morality as a set of codes by which we all try to live.
So what about homosexuals in the church? Here we come again to following Christ's example. We certainly ought not to cast stones or to spread hate speech or hate literature. We always have to learn to look to the person first, to go behind the masks that everyone wears and find the truth of the human being, because God loves all human beings. The fall is the fall, and we're all a part of that fall. No one should judge another's sins. We all have to look to ourselves as the chiefest of sinners and then look out at the world. When we do that, less condemnation and more mercy and charity happens. As for homosexual attraction, we would deem that to be a passion or a sin but only amongst many other sins that we all commit every day. We're all in the church to be healed, but the healing may take months, years or perhaps our whole lives. We don't, or we shouldn't, believe that any one sin makes a person unlovable. However, we do believe that there is an order to the universe and that marriage between a man and a woman is a pathway to regaining that lost order within ourselves and within the family we create as well.
Again, however, I myself cannot see writing letters or shouting slogans asking that gay marriage rights be abolished in Canada. I believe very strongly in the separation of church and state, and while I do believe that a faith has the right to define what it means by marriage if marriage is sacred to it, I also believe that the state must do what it sees as being in the best interest of all its citizens, and if a large enough group makes a big enough noise, it is the democratic state's mandate to at least see why they're making the noise and to see what can be done about it. Our country's response has been to legalize (via the courts mind you and not via parliament) same-sex marriages. So be it. Do I think that anyone marrying each other in a same-sex context is automatically damned to hell? God forbid! I don't know their hearts or minds or lives! What I do know is what the church has taught me and what I, after many years of wrestling with it, have come to truly believe. Again though, no gay marriage in Orthodox Christianity does not equal burning people out of their homes or beating them up or defaming them or causing them to lose their livelihoods. We just believe that the sacrament of marriage exists between a man and a woman, and that any other kind of union just wouldn't be a Christian marriage. Would it be an evil marriage? Not to my way of thinking anyway. It's simply beyond the boundaries of a Christian marriage as we in the Orthodox church see it.
So, in order to follow the example of Christ, it is also necessary to look at the world and to see whether there might be an ordering of things which is more profitable than whatever our opinions of a given moment (I mean here age) might be. We humans are a changeable lot after all. One minute homosexuality is almost universally condemned and the next, it's becoming more and more accepted. But how can we trust even that? What if some cultural shift comes along and turns what we assume to be true on its head? As a Christian, my social and political views should never be about my emotions. They're changeable too, and many social and political persuaders like to use emotion to hook adherents. Another thing I've learned is that it's alright for me to be in conflict with a teaching of the church. However it's not necessarily the correct thing for me to spout off about my own opinion right away. It's often best to just be patient and let the faith deepen within you, and then one might begin to see the reasoning or truth behind a given tenet or teaching. The teachings are after all merely a road-map. I don't believe in teachings. I don't believe in anything. I try to follow Christ. I'm not a philosopher. I'm not religious. I'm simply a Christian woman trying to make sense of her world the best way she can. Take all these thoughts in that spirit therefore, and let them be as they must be.
Till next I write,
Deo Gratias!
A Joyous Discovery!
Benedicamus Domino!
I've been away from this blog for far too long, but I'm back now with a joyous discovery. I don't know why I haven't hit on this before now, but I suppose I'm just obtuse or something.
Today I heard a really exquisite piece of music done with only a piano in the hands of an extremely talented musician. It was his own composition and it just radiated love and intimacy and wonder! Now, it is a fact that I have noodled around quite a lot on the piano. I sometimes engage in improvisation when playing music for an event and when someone asks what I'm playing, I have to say that I really don't know, which always sounds silly. Well--and here's the obtuse part--I've never very seriously till now truly entertained the notion of composing instrumental pieces. For some reason I thought I just wasn't good enough to do that or something. Now, I'm nowhere near as agile on those piano keys as some are, because I've let a lot of my technique go to pot over the years, but today I actually began to compose what could be called a musical poem or a musical painting. I realized that I could paint in music. I can, if I want to, take a phrase of music and weave it into tapestries. I don't know why I've never tried it before! I'll tell you what though. I'm going to keep on doing it and see what happens! Here's the first feeble effort. I'm thinking of calling it "Mercy" when it's more polished.
Deo Gratias!
I've been away from this blog for far too long, but I'm back now with a joyous discovery. I don't know why I haven't hit on this before now, but I suppose I'm just obtuse or something.
Today I heard a really exquisite piece of music done with only a piano in the hands of an extremely talented musician. It was his own composition and it just radiated love and intimacy and wonder! Now, it is a fact that I have noodled around quite a lot on the piano. I sometimes engage in improvisation when playing music for an event and when someone asks what I'm playing, I have to say that I really don't know, which always sounds silly. Well--and here's the obtuse part--I've never very seriously till now truly entertained the notion of composing instrumental pieces. For some reason I thought I just wasn't good enough to do that or something. Now, I'm nowhere near as agile on those piano keys as some are, because I've let a lot of my technique go to pot over the years, but today I actually began to compose what could be called a musical poem or a musical painting. I realized that I could paint in music. I can, if I want to, take a phrase of music and weave it into tapestries. I don't know why I've never tried it before! I'll tell you what though. I'm going to keep on doing it and see what happens! Here's the first feeble effort. I'm thinking of calling it "Mercy" when it's more polished.
Deo Gratias!
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Soul-music
Benedicamus Domino!
Tonight, I wanted to write about something which I call soul-music. I don't mean here the music popularized in the 60s and based on Blues and Rock and such, but rather something more subtle. Soul-music is an experience (whether musical or not doesn't matter) that literally sings to the soul and causes it to respond in sympathy with that experience. For me, this singing has to take the form of something which leads me out of myself and causes me to look beyond my everyday life to something higher, deeper, truer.
One of the first experiences of this soul-music that I can remember is the hearing of a set of wind-chimes over my grandmother's back fence. I would stand at the fence when young for minutes on end just listening to the chimes which belonged to a neighbouring house. I found it marvelous that the mere passing of a breeze could make these pieces of metal or glass create such beautiful and unlooked-for music! It was as though the wind itself was composing its own tunes, or as though the chimes were brought to a kind of strange and momentary life by the wind playing upon them.
I recall that I never really wanted to find the chimes, to know where they were. I always wanted to just stand at the fence, knowing I could never reach these marvelous things, but knowing that their sound could always reach me and fill me with a nameless and unbounded joy, a simple happiness for which there really is no word. I have always wanted a very tuneful set of wind-chimes, because whenever I hear them they add something to my surroundings. They automatically make me feel peaceful whenever I hear them, and it is incomprehensible to me that anyone could find their sound annoying. I am sure that some people do, but for me, it is as though the world has been made just a little more magical when I hear a well-constructed and perfectly-balanced set of wind-chimes ringing. And it's never the same if some hand makes them ring either. Only the wind's touch, so unpredictable and so changeful, and yet so strangely rhythmic as well, can truly make them sound as they should. That is what makes them fall like music into my heart and soul. They seem to bid me hush and be still, to call me into some sacred and secret place where the wind has a language all its own and where I can almost begin to understand it, just as wind among rustling trees can do. It is truly beautiful and restorative to my spirit to hear, on a pleasant summer's day, the soft chiming of the bells of the wind! It is one of the most joyful noises I know!
Deo Gratias!
Tonight, I wanted to write about something which I call soul-music. I don't mean here the music popularized in the 60s and based on Blues and Rock and such, but rather something more subtle. Soul-music is an experience (whether musical or not doesn't matter) that literally sings to the soul and causes it to respond in sympathy with that experience. For me, this singing has to take the form of something which leads me out of myself and causes me to look beyond my everyday life to something higher, deeper, truer.
One of the first experiences of this soul-music that I can remember is the hearing of a set of wind-chimes over my grandmother's back fence. I would stand at the fence when young for minutes on end just listening to the chimes which belonged to a neighbouring house. I found it marvelous that the mere passing of a breeze could make these pieces of metal or glass create such beautiful and unlooked-for music! It was as though the wind itself was composing its own tunes, or as though the chimes were brought to a kind of strange and momentary life by the wind playing upon them.
I recall that I never really wanted to find the chimes, to know where they were. I always wanted to just stand at the fence, knowing I could never reach these marvelous things, but knowing that their sound could always reach me and fill me with a nameless and unbounded joy, a simple happiness for which there really is no word. I have always wanted a very tuneful set of wind-chimes, because whenever I hear them they add something to my surroundings. They automatically make me feel peaceful whenever I hear them, and it is incomprehensible to me that anyone could find their sound annoying. I am sure that some people do, but for me, it is as though the world has been made just a little more magical when I hear a well-constructed and perfectly-balanced set of wind-chimes ringing. And it's never the same if some hand makes them ring either. Only the wind's touch, so unpredictable and so changeful, and yet so strangely rhythmic as well, can truly make them sound as they should. That is what makes them fall like music into my heart and soul. They seem to bid me hush and be still, to call me into some sacred and secret place where the wind has a language all its own and where I can almost begin to understand it, just as wind among rustling trees can do. It is truly beautiful and restorative to my spirit to hear, on a pleasant summer's day, the soft chiming of the bells of the wind! It is one of the most joyful noises I know!
Deo Gratias!
Monday, May 13, 2013
Creativity and Me: Part 1
Benedicamus Domino!
I have recently begun a small course on how to master one's artistic habits, or in my case, how to create these habits in the first place. I've often heard and read about people who have such a passion for their writing or their music or whatever that they simply must spend time working on that craft each and every day. I, alas, have no such consistent drive, so when I found this course on the internet, I chose to see what it would have to offer. I am also choosing to publish my journal entries for this course here. Since this is part of my journey toward joy, I feel it to be appropriate for this blog. So, here, three weeks late incidentally, is my first journal entry for the course.
"Mastering Your Artistic Habits
Journal Entry 1
I am working on my creative personality.
This means to me that I feel that my current use of that personality is not in a good place. I am not letting it live to its fullest potential, so therefore, I am working on it, overhauling it, approaching it as a mechanic would approach a car that does not run well, or rather, does not run the way *he* wants it to run. Yes. That's it. It's not that the car doesn't work and really needs fixing. It's just that it doesn't sound right, it isn't slick enough. So I want to tune things up, to supe up my creative drive and to become, at last, a "real" artist.
I think I've always felt that I only play at my music and my writing. I think that on some level I've always felt inferior to others who seem more devoted to their crafts than I appear to myself to be. The truth is that they simply do their crafts every day. I, right now, do not, and I feel that I ought to.
Animals
I am a bit of a chemelion because I often try to please as many different types of people as possible. Rather than being staunchly myself, I wear different masks and sometimes hide parts of myself behind them. I stifle myself in this process.
I am also a hermit-crab, not so much because I steel other people's vacated homes, but simply because I tend to wall myself off from people sometimes.
I am also a tarrior. When I find something interesting, I stick with it. I won't let go even if someone tells me it's weird or strange. I am capable of going the distance to achieve a goal when I really really want to do it, but that's the problem. I have to really really really want to do it!
My Dreams and Hopes
I hope to be able to make some kind of living by my creativity, whether it's through music, writing and/or motivational speaking, or by some other creative means. I know this takes hard work and a head for the gritty details of business management and the like, but it is what I would wish to do.
I also hope to publish at least one novel or book of poetry or collection of stories. Whether this means self-publishing or publishing with a firm, that's one thing I dream of doing.
I hope to record a second album, at least one more.
I'm not looking for fame or fortune. I'm not looking for riches. I'd just like a way to use my gifts to good purpose and to let them flower rather than shutting them off as things impractical or unrealistic.
Plan for Making Creativity a Habit
I will spend at least an hour each day working on my writing and at least an hour each day working on creating more music.
Other Uses for my Artistic Side
I can use my artistic side to help shape and hone my church choir's efforts. I can also often bring interesting things into conversations with friends and family. I have often used my love of writing to help people who hate doing it, and I enjoy doing this."
So, there we go. There will likely be seven parts to this particular set of postings. I'm already finding out interesting things about myself!
Deo Gratias!
I have recently begun a small course on how to master one's artistic habits, or in my case, how to create these habits in the first place. I've often heard and read about people who have such a passion for their writing or their music or whatever that they simply must spend time working on that craft each and every day. I, alas, have no such consistent drive, so when I found this course on the internet, I chose to see what it would have to offer. I am also choosing to publish my journal entries for this course here. Since this is part of my journey toward joy, I feel it to be appropriate for this blog. So, here, three weeks late incidentally, is my first journal entry for the course.
"Mastering Your Artistic Habits
Journal Entry 1
I am working on my creative personality.
This means to me that I feel that my current use of that personality is not in a good place. I am not letting it live to its fullest potential, so therefore, I am working on it, overhauling it, approaching it as a mechanic would approach a car that does not run well, or rather, does not run the way *he* wants it to run. Yes. That's it. It's not that the car doesn't work and really needs fixing. It's just that it doesn't sound right, it isn't slick enough. So I want to tune things up, to supe up my creative drive and to become, at last, a "real" artist.
I think I've always felt that I only play at my music and my writing. I think that on some level I've always felt inferior to others who seem more devoted to their crafts than I appear to myself to be. The truth is that they simply do their crafts every day. I, right now, do not, and I feel that I ought to.
Animals
I am a bit of a chemelion because I often try to please as many different types of people as possible. Rather than being staunchly myself, I wear different masks and sometimes hide parts of myself behind them. I stifle myself in this process.
I am also a hermit-crab, not so much because I steel other people's vacated homes, but simply because I tend to wall myself off from people sometimes.
I am also a tarrior. When I find something interesting, I stick with it. I won't let go even if someone tells me it's weird or strange. I am capable of going the distance to achieve a goal when I really really want to do it, but that's the problem. I have to really really really want to do it!
My Dreams and Hopes
I hope to be able to make some kind of living by my creativity, whether it's through music, writing and/or motivational speaking, or by some other creative means. I know this takes hard work and a head for the gritty details of business management and the like, but it is what I would wish to do.
I also hope to publish at least one novel or book of poetry or collection of stories. Whether this means self-publishing or publishing with a firm, that's one thing I dream of doing.
I hope to record a second album, at least one more.
I'm not looking for fame or fortune. I'm not looking for riches. I'd just like a way to use my gifts to good purpose and to let them flower rather than shutting them off as things impractical or unrealistic.
Plan for Making Creativity a Habit
I will spend at least an hour each day working on my writing and at least an hour each day working on creating more music.
Other Uses for my Artistic Side
I can use my artistic side to help shape and hone my church choir's efforts. I can also often bring interesting things into conversations with friends and family. I have often used my love of writing to help people who hate doing it, and I enjoy doing this."
So, there we go. There will likely be seven parts to this particular set of postings. I'm already finding out interesting things about myself!
Deo Gratias!
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