Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the (Bass) Boat

Spend much time on the water and you’ll learn a thing or two about what those Galilean’s knew. My wife says the first rule is that if you’re on the boat…whatever it is you need… it’ll be on shore. And if you’re on shore… whatever you need will be on the boat. And just to make this game work better… it usually takes about 10 to 20 minutes plus to get from one to the other… at which point it will be come clear you need something else entirely. The second rule is that however long you thought it was gonna take to do something… anything on the water, you’ve underestimated by a factor of at least two and probably more like four. And of course the “you” in this probably ain’t you… as it tends to mean me. So is it any wonder that when the boys finally get back from fishing on the lake of Gennesaret (Luke 5:1-11), things don’t go like they planned? or that the immediate tendency of the crew is to scatter, to head for the hills, the beer… anywhere but back out “with that guy.” Duh. Sounds like my kids… my dog… anyone with a good excuse.

And maybe here these guys were really planning on a decent breakfast… one of those Waterman’s breakfasts that seem to include about half the farm but oddly enough no fish. Or maybe they’d planned on catching some Zebedees…So when Peter, code name “Simon”, gets asked for a boat ride, yu can bet this one went over well. Whatcha gonna say when the Boss says He wants a boat ride? “Sure! Just what I was thinking…. let’s go back out. But hey, gonna half to watch out for the Coast Guard… so maybe you better put on this Life Preserver…. oh… right… my mistake… forgot about Matt’s swimming test. Just use it as a seat or something.”

Acoustics being what they are on the water… if it’s as still as it can be on a Wisconsin lake where the likes of Buddy Melges used to take his shirt off just to feel the wind come up… you can bet it’d be a perfect place to speak to one of those multitudes…. the “extras” always showing up. The folks just want to be together. But Pete might be forgiven for feeling on the spot, and under the pressure of a very public “ask”, even a little irked as if rebuked for not catching anything. Of course that’s not it at all… the Boss just obviously had more important mission-type things on His mind… like lunch… and this time we’re actually on the water and not in some stinkin’ desert… so no need to multiply a leftover fish stick… He just leans over and says, “Hey Pete… how’sa ’bout you throw the nets over?” Really… it’s low key stuff.

Unfortunately for Pete… had just had my luck with lake fishing. I mean… it’s like lake fish don’t quite get the message like on a normal stream or Bay where the currents make more sense. These skittish little critters literally swim in circles… laughing at whatever you throw at them and move on as if to say, “Yeah, we looked it over… but y’know if you want us… we’re gonna be hanging out over yonder. Ciao!” Half the world could haul these babies out by the bushel as easy as one-two-three… but not today. Nope. Today the boys are picky eaters. And yesterday…  is yesterday. Anyway whatever it is, it ain’t today, and if today they’re just not in the mood for gettin’ caught… that’s all there is.

So of course Pete is not only dealing with rule two and the inevitable demoralization of a crew who’s likely in big trouble with the Powers that Be, their “She’s Who Must Be Obeyed”… but Pet’s also dealing with rule one… I mean the nets aren’t even on the boat. And surely someone’s even calling home, sayin’ “Yeah…I know…I know… You’re right… I know I said I’d only be an hour or two… but you know who couldn’t find fish in a bath tub. And of course he wasn’t gonna let us go home either. Even made one of the boys hang his head over the side and try calling them… yeah it was that bad… like it was Flipper. Yeah. Where do they get these guys? Anyway… I’m on shore… at last… but it’s not lookin’ good. I mean you wouldn’t believe it… we’re finally putting everything away… and the new Division Head’s here… yeah… looks like he wants us to go back out… again.”

Oh… and distracted as ever, Pete’s probably mulling the whole name thing … I mean what’s he gonna put on his new fishing toga? Y’know… the one he’s gonna get from the Galiliee Fishing League when Team Simon catches all the fish they’re about to haul on shore… ’cause like God is on their side.? And how’s he gonna tell the Boss… “‘Y’know…everyone calls me Simon… but you can call me Peter.” Maybe another time? So whenever we hear this story… I’m obviously thinking about all the things packed in there, but usually what we hear about it seems to focus on the fishers of men bit.. which of course it is.

But today, we’re hearing it as the Fathers taught, that we’re supposed to be unafraid to go out into the deep and let down our nets… seeking new depths in the spiritual life. No doubt we’re warned as well in this that there can be plenty of times we’ll come up empty, or come back tired, frustrated, and down right unfocused, and it’s the last thing on earth we want to do.. or even our family wants to let us do… to go back out. But there it’ll lie before us. We might even think all we need’s an equipment change… and like “fixing a net” and we might even be tempted to try some other gospel, some other prayer, some other church or word. But that’s not really going to work is it? I mean that’s not the problem.  Seems the point of the story in this reading is that unless we make sure Christ comes with us… or supposing that He does, unless we trust and follow His word… then we’re just doing this on our own… and our labors will come up empty. But when we throw Him on board, when we take Him where He tells us He wants us to go…then the whole of it tends to be not just fruitful… but easy. Yeah… and it’s hard not to miss that we’re likely gonna do this only AFTER we’ve tried everything else first, right?.Because… that’s what my wife calls rule number three and why I love her.

Ecclesiastical Polities

No, this is not what you’re thinking, but yes, there was once a guy named Richard Hooker. Once long ago in galaxy far, far away, I even thought he wrote a few things of value. By many measures, his standards… though perhaps wobblier than Orthodoxy, were certainly far more sure than much of what passes muster these days. But I have no intent to write as he did on Ecclesiastical Polity, but rather something more modest to unload.

I have only a sigh for the state we find ourselves this summer as we approach the season of conferences and conventions… even the celebration of our independence. For these days, my ecclessial home lies in Antioch, and given circumstances where our Patriarch has seemed to stretch his hand to help sort out our situation, I think I find the notions of “autocephaly” and “self-ruled” American Orthodoxy far less compelling, and the “threat” of rule from abroad less ominous or unacceptable than might once have been the case. For that matter, all the bother of whether the whole of the Diaspora should be under the EP seems secondary as well to whether such rule would be good, unify, and evangelize. Maybe I’m just a new guy… but it seems as if there are far too many assumptions, presumptions, and suspicions running around for me to feel comfortable that “goodness” … though always a part… is kept as the core focus in these doings.

And I like Fr. Mel’s notion that we seem inevitably to reach for the the escape clause that allows us to continue “as if” we were about anything other than God’s business “until”… and that’s until any number of subsequent events take place. So in whatever length we can stretch out of the meantime, we go about our business as if we weren’t required to change, or to include God’s purpose as part of our own. It’s handy.  And yet I’m worrying even now where taking this sort of notion seriously is really going to take me… eventually.  I’m not farsighted enough to see it yet., but yes,  I do know that eventually someday it will take me somewhere, and I’m sure I’ll love it, but likely it’ll involve stress, costs, and considerable “give up”. Thankfully, the Holy Trinity in its goodness keeps it hidden from me… so I can keep working on it “as if” to come full circle! Right.

I have enough shame to admit that when I first became Orthodox, I went for the “pure as the driven snow” jurisdiction.  These were the friendly folks who didn’t ask too many questions, demand too many “things”, or spook me with too many-meanies. I mean, I’d already fled a protestant denomination where we’d all gone positively wobbily…  and the warring parties made the Thirty Years War look like a walk in the park. So there seemed no sense in climbing into the middle of a food fight right at the start, or for that matter signing on to an endless do-list as if it weren’t something to contend with. So at least I can claim to have respected the challenge more than my ability to meet it…. but perhaps that’s a weak excuse for a plea for leniency or mercy or oeconomia. These days… I’d be happy to just plead for an economy… somewhere… anywhere… but that’s another story. What I will say is that I thought I’d found precisely the sort of Downy Soft flakes I was looking for: “Pure as the driven snow.”.. and I’d avoided the hot bread war of the folks next door throwing rolls with the best of them down at the Drones Club… only with an “edginess” more commonly associated with the likes of Spode rather than the Code of the Woosters.

And then like Monsieur Rick’s claim in Casablanca’s where “I came for the waters” meets with the resignation of “so… I was misinformed”, I’m finding maybe I fell into the wrong movie. The one thing I do know is that like Dorothy and Toto.. “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”  And of course,  P.G.’s  Brits might respond, “Oh!” and “Indeed!” and of course, “Quite!” I’d throw King Kong and Faye in here, but I think it’s getting crowded.

And my guys are already throwing bread (and reaching for the heavy artillery)… while the other guys seem to have shifted their tune, and instead busying themselves “Putting Woolite… in their machine”.  It even looks like their new Metropolitan’s non-stop activities have seen a late substitution of Downy Soft with something more like “New & Improved Super Tide XK!” Yar. I think we’re starting on a case of bona fide “jurisdiction envy”.  Maybe. maybe not.

And so the slogging begins, and I’m given to wonder whether this isn’t some sort of test. Yes… a test of our Holy Synod, of our Metropolitan, our bishops, our clergy and laity… which of course means “moi”, too. And off on the sidelines, it seems more as if there’s a cheer of wonder reminiscent of an old campaign: “Big Boy…. will he stay or go?” And no… I’m not talking about our venerable  Metropolitan, but more like “moi”… or each one of us… I mean… the pond’s pretty small… and the silence is deafening.

And falls the afternoon’s thunderclap of a question:  “What does this really have to do with my salvation?” And I’m thinking that frankly… it doesn’t have much at all to do with it,  or that riling up the folks as some would seem to do is a good thing or likely to assure a more Orthodox spirit among the faithful (an irony, fairly,  not altogether lost on  the part of those agitating for this sort of “action”). And on this I can only pray that those who would lead us to and ostensibly through these Red Seas are as certain about the destination as they seem to be about the passage.

Fairly,  I have no doubt that this test bears in many ways on the salvation of our hierarchs, and by reflection on our own as we are part of each other. Only I don’ t know exactly how these parts fit together or how they bear… it’s simply beyond my ken. But I can and do care… about  each of them, as well as pray for the leadership of godly men and for the repentance and salvation of those who are not… and all that.  But I’d make no pretense at reversing the course of spiritual fatherhood as if we could positively contribute more than presumption without attending first to ourselves. And in this, it seems the gift we might give… and the sort perhaps most needed and required… might not be adulation,  nor revolution… nor even the rise of a “champion” so much as the witnessing of the progress of their flocks continuing to move in love toward salvation… and one another together… and toward them as well. Maybe that’s too mawkishly sentimental… or  too tall an order… but if it is, I’m not sure what else it is we’re supposed to do.

I could no more choose sides without a lot more information than I could presume to read into the heart of another person.  No, I’m not ducking jury duty… I’m just saying that maybe jury duty isn’t what we’re about so much as using the gifts God has given us to discern these things in their course. And it would seem that one of those gifts is time, and God given leadership in our bishops, our Holy Synod and the rest. Maybe at least for now, giving the progress of things, we could and should allow more time to pass for these to work their magic. Pray, and trust God to work out his purpose. If we’re called to play a role, play it. I’m not hearing that call just yet, but perhaps it will come. In the meantime, it seems there may be more wisdom in simply praying that the grace of the Holy Spirit illuminate the hearts of His loving and faithful hierarchs in their time together and apart.. that they may find a solution well pleasing to God.

Crawling Out from under Deadened Belief

The other day I wandered into the dead end where folks argue over their belief in the existence and necessity of God, and the corollary opposite view favoring the non-existence of and freedom from God. Here, words and ideas were not so much argued as thrown out like hand grenades as if by teenagers wondering whether in fact the potential mayhem would look as “cool” as the movies where blood and gore form a new genre of pornography. With no Socratic syllogisms, no high principles or well-formed reason or even well-read discussion intruding on the raspberries from both sides, there is little point to attempting a discussion and more fruit found in escaping.

Sadly, I am less impressed that we as believers in the True Faith offer folks on either side of these places a point where recognition of  the futility of these sorts of discussions is overcome by our own models  of  decorum and engagement with each other…but that’s another story. I speak for myself… and here I have only to think of my own failings in those moments when tested to know how close this hits home. The fact is that it is indeed all too easy to carry within ourselves an idea of who we are and who those around us are that is at complete variance with the truth. It is after all, only a fool who would choose to live with the reality within and change it through grace rather than seek to change the subject, the circumstances or their projection.

And so it is hard to resist thinking that a word of peace might be injected… and make a difference to  one person somewhere, as if the world had been waiting all these centuries for our viewpoint. Right. And of course, equipped with the wonders and insights of Orthodoxy as opposed to the false religion around us… well… these nuggets are just the trick, just the forgotten truth folks have been thirsting for. Uh huh. Maybe… maybe somewhere… else. And so a stab here, a dab there… and first thing you know… you’re sucked into the vortex, tempted by an over-preening pride in “having figured it out”… that missing, “one thing lacking” that illuminates the world for those caught in this darkness. No kidding. Light a match and move on.

And as I stopped myself as increasingly I endeavor to do these days, it was once again Fr. Meletios Webber’s words  that came back to me .  “I wonder that belief… especially in America…. might be something more of a mind thing.” I’ve thought of these words over and over as the start but not the whole of the thought…. and that by the way is probably a far more effective form of engagement that he has mastered as an invitation rather than a pronouncement… and so I repeat it here. And I’ll expand that I’m not sure exactly what it is that belief is… but perhaps as Fr. Mel also suggests…. that perhaps asking this is simply to raise a matter that “is simply not the right question for us”.

I think he’s on to something. Maybe it’s not what belief is… but more what it looks like that is where we need to begin. Here  of course, it is easy to go wrong and mistake a beginning, and with an Orthodox “look” to it at that, for the goal rather than something more of a jumping off point… but maybe it is that belief is a set of actions, postures, attitudes, feelings, thoughts and intentions the whole of which infuses our person as if the very breath of life itself and forms the entry into a way of being. Thus, belief is not so much something rational to be argued as it is something which is to be entered into and “done”. It is The Way and an engagement with the Life of Christ as part of the Divine Trinity… and always new and more filling than we can possibly think or imagine or explain to those on the outside – even and especially in those times when those outside are us. And if that looks more like love than a simple or even elegant perception of the mind… then maybe we’re getting somewhere.

And so it was that perhaps thanks to Fr. Mel that I’ve crawled out from the deadened notions of the blathersphere, pushed back from the keyboard, breathed deeply… and found an image that fills far better… at least for a little while.

Falling through the NETS

Don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been coveting a copy of one of those NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint) Bibles. Not sure why… or that I want to admit why, but I do. Followed the discussion here and elsewhere. Just one of those things that makes you say, “Hmmmm”.

So with the recent passage of 52-card-pick-up day… I kept thinking someone would give it to me… I mean it’s easy to order on line and everything. But no dice. Now I sit around pondering pulling the trigger myself. I mean I am so a sucker for these things. And I’m sympathetic both to the spirit and challenge. And yet as I think about it… the difficulty in searching for the perfect text is that it can carry us away from “good enough”. Yes, “the best” is the enemy of “the good” as the engineers say… and brings the whole of it down. So I wonder whether this search for the perfect Bible isn’t like the search for some sort of absolute certainty and a manifestation of some sort of sickness itself.(And if so… I’m in trouble!!!)

So….while the case for wanting a text that really is all things to all people…and 100% spot on…. I wonder that we don’t have to bear in mind that somehow old St. John Chrysostom managed to get by with far inferior texts to even our worst gender-washed PETA approved versions. Oh… maybe not THAT bad… but we do know that somehow many saints either didn’t have the whole of the Gospel texts… or suffered from non-canonical texts, or worse. And yet somehow they got it done. And acknowledging this just pretty much convicts me dead in my tracks.

Yet I keep coming up excuses, huh?

So why is this? Are we just so text oriented, we can’t give up eye contact with the text and instead engrave it in our hearts… so we can really let it soak in? Is the Gospel to us… just really a text and nothing more? Probably. I don’t know about you… but my brain’s throughput don’t retain so much… let alone whole Psalms or passages from the Bible. I must have read the stick version or Etchasketch version of the Bible. Yeah… that’d be it.

Or maybe I’m just too afraid of pushing my prayer along to where I could see things like St. John sees in a crummy text? So instead I keep complaining about the text and “gittin’ the words right… and then I’ll get started.”. No, don’t think so.

There was a story once about Suzuki playing a violin to a standing ovation, and then he slammed the instrument across his knee into hundreds of pieces as the crowd gasped. They all thought it was a Strad. It wasn’t…something more like a $15 dime store instrument and his point was that technique counts for something… maybe even more than folks think. In fact, most music teachers who recite this story will tell you it’s technique that feeds the heart that plays the music. The audience hears it at a level of expectation…and we either measure up or we don’t… but so much of the rest is simply what their brains are telling them… not their ears. The problem is of course that we don’t really believe this… we get nervous and we choke… and we flub up. But that’s another story… My sub-point is not just that I’ve always felt the parallel between music and prayer is close… and maybe that’s why Orthodoxy speaks to me, but that there’s a lot going on here… and worrying about the text can get overwrought… which is more my problem!! than that of the author here linked!!

Yep. So I don’t know about you guys.. but my tecnnique stinks. But go ahead… gimme a better text so I can more precisely measure how short I fall.   And in truth, I do keep collecting them… but then I’m still the same old sinner… only better read. Go figure.

The Musical Synodman

Monday night we will have services to pray for our Holy Synod. Between our synod and all the rest, the mess and doin’s of recent years, between the Ecumenical Patriarch and all the others… there’s just a lot going on, and it seems these prayers are needed. As Fats Waller used to say, “This Joint is Jumpin”. I realize there are a lot of folks who’re gonna git up in arms about one thing or ‘nuther. Not going there… thank you. I’ll just stick with the program and mosey on down to the parish…

“‘Scuse me, Bub..Comin’ through….”

Tap, tap, tap….

“Orchestra ready? Everyone?”

Like I said there’s a lot goin’ on.

“Whaddya talk… whaddya talk”

“Hill’s his name..”

“What’s his game?”

“Doesn’t matter what’s his line…”

“… sells musical instruments…”

“Whaddya talk… whaddya talk”

Yeah the usual gibberish. And me… I’m trying not to talk. But it’s… not…

And that’s when the chorus started in, and I realized I just might be in the middle of more than I bargained for:

Oh, there’s nothing halfway
About the Byzantine way to treat you,
When we treat you
Which we may not do at all.
There’s a Byzantine kind of special
Chip-on-the-shoulder attitude.
We’ve never been without.
That we recall.
We can be cold
As our falling thermometers in December
If you ask about our weather in July.
And we’re so by God stubborn
We could stand touchin’ noses
For a week at a time
And never see eye-to-eye.
But what the heck, you’re welcome,

Join us at the picnic.
You can eat your fill
Of all the food you bring yourself.
You really ought to give Orthodoxy a try.
Provided you are contrary…

Tough crowd around here… but they do enjoy singing… some kind of Music Kind of a Dude bit… I think…but like I said…I’m just an observer. Don’t got no oar in these fights, and kind of just wish it’d all go away…

Well, either you’re closing your eyes
To a situation you do not wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of an Orthodox Bishop in your community.

Ya got trouble, my friend, right here,
I say, trouble right here in River City.
Why sure I’m an Orthodox Christian,
Certainly mighty proud I say
I’m always mighty proud to say it.
I consider that the hours I spend
With a prayer rope in my hand are golden.
Help you cultivate horse sense
And a cool head and a keen eye.
Never take and try to give
An iron-clad leave to yourself
From a thirty-three-knot rope?

But just as I say,
It takes judgment, brains, and maturity to score
In a Byzantine game,
I say that any boob kin take
And shove a Bishop in a pocket.
And they call that sloth.
The first big step on the road
To the depths of deg-ra-day–
I say, first, eucharistic wine from a teaspoon,
Then prosphora bread from a basket!

An’ the next thing ya know,
Your son is playin’ for money
In a pinched black suit.

And list’nin to some big out-a-town Jasper

Hearin’ him tell about a spiritual-race.
Not a wholesome stand-up place, no!
But some place where they set down right in a pew!
Like to see some stuck-up jockey’boy
Sittin’ … I say… sittin’ like he’s on Dan Patch?

Make your blood boil? Well, I should say.

Friends, lemme tell you what I mean.
Ya got one, two, three, four, five, six rungs in a ladder.
Rungs that mark the diff’rence
Between an Orthodox and a bum,
With a capital “B,”
And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pew!
And all week long your River City
Youth’ll be frittern away,
I say your young men’ll be frittern!
Frittern away their noontime, suppertime, choretime too!
Gettin’ the Bishop in their pocket,
Never mind gittin’ altar linens cleaned
Or the candle stands filled or hymns sounded out.
Never mind pumpin’ any water
‘Til your monks are caught with the Cistern empty
On a Saturday night

And that’s trouble,
Oh, yes we got lots and lots a’ trouble.
I’m thinkin’ of the kids in the velcro Nikes,
Tee-shirt young ones, peekin’ through the
church hall windows after school, look, folks!
Right here in River City.

Trouble with a capital “T”
And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pew!

Now, I know all you folks are the right kinda parents.
I’m gonna be perfectly frank.
Would ya like to know what kinda conversation goes
On while they’re loafin’ around that hall?

Well, actually Professor…… no, I don’t. It’ll have to wait. Maybe some of the out-of-town Jaspers can git it figured out… and send me a memo. Yeah. That’d do. I like that they’ve decided to put some speed on it, but yeah… maybe they could try sparin’ the dust up… so we don’t have to worry ’bout our “yeut’s” frittering away their time somewhere else…. like someplace with a pew. Works for me.

Now I could definitely stick around… I enjoy a dust-up as much as the next guy. But just in case they’re planning to (as they say in West-by-gawd Virginia) “thow” some Greek fire…  even in a friendly direction… splitsville seems like a better idea, so’s I’m gonna bolt leaving the imprisoned journalism gig to those poor young women in North Korea. But  stick around if you like, the show does go on…and ya never know what’ll happen next.

(Apologies to Meredith Wilson, Robert Preston, the Chorus, and the Holy Synods everywhere)

Cable Mystery

Last night was one of those that got away. The office literally refused to regurgitate me until about 9:30pm. Crawled into the house, amazed as usual that my better half had still waited to eat, and we grabbed a couple of plates. With the darling daughter occuppying the couch in the family room with one of our favorites of her friends watching a good flick (’rents watched and enjoyed it Saturday night), there was more peace to be found in front of the den TV than the nearby dining room. Yeah… and we were tired. So this isn’t exactly blog material is it? Just pretty much ordinary everyday life.

But once ensconced, the channel surf washed up something on St. Catherine’s monastery and the life of the monks there.  My wife works as a librarian at Dumbarton Oaks, so she was eager to see more… because she catalogs monographs and serials on this stuff all the time… as she said. I’d thought I’d have to change the channel… but instead I got to watch. Yipee! It was fascinating to see that the life lived between the monks and their protectors and fellow servers, the Bedouins. They showed a document signed by no less than Mohammed himself offering protection to the monastery – forever – in recognition that the monks and Moslems lived peacefully together. There was footage of the bread making with both folks working side-by-side. There were interviews with some of the monks… particularly a young monk. And there were shots of the divine liturgy being offered. The whole looked to me like it might have been out-takes from Fr. John McGucken’s upcoming film… but that’s another story. In short, it was a real treat. Oh, they had more on Byzantine history… with stories about icons and iconoclasm… but this was the best part of the whole and fit into their treatment of the 6th century icon of Christ… the famous Christ of Mt. Sinai.

So where was this broadcast? That’s the mystery. It was shown on something called Wealth TV. Yep. One look at their charter… and you’ll likely feel your stomach starting to turn. So it must be filler… which means it will probably turn up somewhere else soon enough… or never.  Looks like the only way they managed to give it air time was to focus on the gold treasures used in Byzantine artifacts… and of course the plunder and looting of the 13th century. Anyway, my guess is you won’t be finding yourself turning into much of the rest of their material… but this might be worth checking out. Maybe it’s played elsewhere before? I have no idea. Anyway… thought it might be worth noting. And at least it’s not showing on a channel whose programming is worse than this, but perhaps Fr. Vasiliy over at the Onion Dome will be happy it was close to the Russian news channel.

Behind the Screen

Behind the screen is the sanctuary. This holds not just for the Church, but also for the home. Fact is that it’s kind of hard to think what other reason there would be for having a screen. Open windows almost always seem to have screens, and when they don’t, somehow the windows don’t feel right… it’s kind of like they’re undressed. Once out in California, we stayed in a hotel with no screens. I remember trying to distract the bellman from this idea of what a tip should look like by asking what we would do if the Killer Bees showed up… but that’s like trying to distract a dinner-bowl oriented dog into thinking that dinner comes in a bag not a dish. The bellman of course said not to worry, we would just phone the desk and for the right tip, he was sure they’d send someone over with a can of Raid, and for another tip, they might even let me squeeze off a couple of rounds at the intruders. I told him I believed in Wellness, Jogging, and Preventitive Medicine… even preventitive screens… but it didn’t make much impression, nor did it seem to convince him that a ten-spot was enough for the moment.

Down in the Lobby, talk among those in the know soon shifted to the fact that in all our days there, no one actually saw any bees.

“So how do you think they manage to pollinate all the flowers, vegetables, and stuff?”

“Yeah. And what about all these kids?”

“I don’t think the kids seem to be having any problem… but the rest, I dunno. Maybe they do it with eye droppers?”

Back here in the East where men are still men and the bugs grow as plentiful as bamboo in the jungle steppe of the Gobi, we may not know much about anything that matters… but we do know our screens. Mostly, we know that there are two sides to a screen: there’s the good side, and the outside. And in case you’re new to these things, the key thing is that if you rely on them and you haven’t carefully washed, cleaned, pressed, and prepared your screens, they might let you down. Like they say in the Marines, “Get to know your screen. One day it may save your life”… meaning from bees. On the otherhand if you can, just make sure you’re on the good side, the inside, and close the doggone window, why heck…. you’ve broken the code. Turn on the AC, take a load off  and just forget about it for a while.

“Nature… that’s for the other guy. Who needs it?”

“Yeah that’s what I be talkin’ ’bout. Get back to the land? I say, you get back to the land, I’m gettin’ back to the AC”

“Right. And it better not be global warming in my living room. More like Ice Station Zebra.. without the submarines.”

So you get the picture.  We’re… correction… I’m… not exactly Mr. Environmentalist. I’m not sure how we got on this, but the point was that in my house… the purpose of opening windows and using screens seems to be something I’m still baffled about. My wife opens the windows in the winter…. “to air the house out”. Me? Winter time, I’m just fine with warm and stuffy… unless we’re talking noses… which we’re not. But the other trick about the screens… is that they’re wired. I’ve always wanted to hear Beethoven through them and pose like that guy in the famous speaker commercial with my hair blowing back… but then my hair did blow back, and I can’t find it any more.

Actually… these things aren’t wired for sound, and they’re not electric. They’re hooked up for vibration… which sounds like we’re weirdos or something…. but means only that if a bad guy shows up at our house and wants to get in, he’ll touch the screen and set off an alarm. Of course, they caught maybe exactly one guy once this way in Omaha… but it’s good for sales. Sure, we all know everyone else in Reform School took the same “shop class” where they teach them how to remove an engine from a car and fold it into a lunch box in three-and-a-half seconds with the police watching through the hole in their donut.

“See any evil?”

“Nah… just this Krispy Kreme here.”

“Hey… they only thing evil about it is you’re thinking about taking that last one… and it’s meant for me.”

“Correction: I’m not just thinking… and by the way, the only thing evil is the hot-hot-hot light.”

And even if these wired screens are something of a joke…  has that stopped us? No, and it hasn’t stopped us from inflicting these things on ourselves either.

For reasons that I’m still not clear on, my folks put in a burglar alarm back when I was in middle school and I was still skinny enough to slip my arm in through the mail slot and let myself in after school. Mom was never home, so the house would be locked up tight when I walked home. She meant to be there, but it was more of a theory… like she was on her way, or on the phone somewhere… or something… and what’s twenty, thirty or more minutes in the life of a kid anyway? I mean as a parent, I’ve been there. But of couse as a kid, it was clear she was either operating on Grand Theory # 3 (ignore him, he’ll go away and somebody else will pay for college), or  she’d obviously forgotten that time in kid brains passes either at light speed, or freezes entirely -  with no in-between. And adding a kid’s need for sugar to this combo is like removing the control rod from a nuclear reactor.

So somehow she missed the clear and present danger presented to her well-stocked cabinets and whacked out nutritional theories by the gaping  opportunity her “lack of presence” posed.  Y’know what I mean… or used to… back in the good old days before nutrition really got scarey… back when it still meant cookies, crackers, chips, cheese, peanut butter, English muffins, chocolate milk… all the good stuff . And if you managed this program rightly… you wouldn’t actually be hungry after a few seconds, or find yourself puzzling over dinner, “Do I eat that green thing… or can I last ’til breakfast?” That’s a window on salvation that slams shut when she-who-must-be-obeyed  arrives. And since they didn’t trust me enough to give me a key…I had to get in somehow. And of course when my arm filled out and that didn’t work anymore, I moved on to the old credit card trick I’d read about in the newspaper. Now why they didn’t trust me with a house key, but somehow I had a credit card, I’m just not sure. Might have had something to do with my Dad’s comment when he gave me the card.

“Here’s a credit card. If you ever get in trouble, use it… but you better be darn near dead… or you’ll wish you were.”

I’d say he was a kidder…. but jokes were for other people. On the other hand, he had a highly developed twist to his sense of humor, that meant tweaking Mom whenever he could, and having me demonstrate my skill to the cocktail set seemed to work.  Of course in her turn,  she did what all Mom’s do… and called in the hired gun. She arranged a visit from the local PD to discuss “security” while  giving me the evil eye. And soon enough we found some pre-NASCAR types crawling all over the house wiring up for a burglar alarm my Dad grumbled was costing him an arm and a leg. Those guys wired everything: pencils on desk, coins on Dad’s dresser, the cookie jar -  all got wired without even a hint of caffiene or controlled substances.

From that day to this, there have been few years I’ve lived any place without one of these things… and I’m ashamed to say that’s a lot of living. But the truth is… the only part that seems to work about these systems is the fire alarm. Now how do I know this? Good question. The way we determine whether any alarm system is working is simple: If it doesn’t go off – it’s working. If it goes off… we get it fixed. Electricians love this … it’s the gift that keeps on giving.  I think they came up with the idea when houses stopped burning down whenever the light bulbs burned out.  I mean we caught my grandmother… a bunch of times… trying to get outside to snitch the newspaper. Then of course we caught that infamous ruffian, A.  Thunderstorm, who notoriously and repeatedly soaked the wiring to compromise security for the perfect break-in. And of course my Mom and the local PD got a lot better acquainted… through all those false alarms when she was heading out to the grocery for more threatening food. But mostly we find these things will be real handy if we’re ever worried about the sound of a cork coming out of a wine bottle, a high pitched dog bark, a sneeze, and especially… high winds.

Like the other night: We were sleeping, and then somehow we weren’t. Out of the fog we grasped the notion that somewhere there was this emission… like the sound of someone’s car alarm going off for the third or fourth time. I got out of bed, turned on the lights… and looked out the window…

“Funny… shouldn’t the headlights be flashing?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Well… it’s not happening…”

“This is just really annoying ?? !….”

“Yeah… I mean… “

“Hey… did ya’ hear that….that voice saying it’s a break in…”

“Yeah… and so the annoying thing is … it’s our house.”

“Duh…look at the panel?”

I guess it’s fair to say we weren’t operating at full wattage. But of course squinting at 1:30am with a blaring noise in your ears isn’t all that easy for being at your best. So then the fun begins: Try to find the phone number…. it’s in the top of the dresser… no that’s the old one. Try the back of the calendar. There. Now call the alarm company, try to remember your password… no not the old pet’s name…. or the boat’s name…. or the old car model…. or the maiden name… but that first date was… it the twenty-seventh or the twenty-eighth of February?  or what is it something else altogether? No that’s for the email.

“The cops are coming?”

“Oh no!”

“Actually… they’re… here.”

“Unh!!!”

Now that’s the thing that seems to be the point of these alarms. We hate these false alarms so much… that… okay… maybe it’s not true in your house… but in  mine, if my wife never had to turn it on, she’d sleep better. Does it make any sense that she’s more afraid of the alarm than a break in? Uh… given the record…. maybe it does.

The cop was nice, and offered to check around back with his flashlight. I guess he spends a lot of time practicing on the range with that thing, and it’s good to give the guy a chance to use his skills, so I said, “Sure”. I thought they wore brown, but either they switched to blue, or I just wasn’t up on the latest fashion make over. Of course he knew and I knew he’d not find anything, and he didn’t. And he didn’t seem intimidated about waking the neighbors… or asking sensitive questions… like “the age of  my system”, but I knew it wasn’t personal. Fact is… at least he was interested when no one else was. I mean… think about the last false alarm you heard. Like that Koan about the tree…. “If an alarm rings in a neighborhood, and nobody moves, does it actually ring?” No one listens let alone worries about these things anymore. It’s like….either we’re already dead, or it’s false… and if you didn’t actually hear a gun shot or see a police helicopter… then nothing’s actually going on.

Only it is… because the alarm companies have a secret weapon known as “the call list”. This is the list of folks who the alarm companies call up to annoy after they annoy the police… because they know that no one is actually going to pay attention to the bells, the lights, and the flares and fireworks…. but no one misses a phone call. So when these things go off at 3:00am…. and they’re stoked on coffee…  they go into action. They even have a set of trivia questions to throw at you like “Can you say the alphabet… backwards?” I remember once when my folks alarm went off a few years ago at about that time. The alarm company called and wanted me to go over there.

“Did you call my parents?”

“Yes, but they didn’t answer.”

“Did you call the police.”
“Not yet. It might be a false alarm.”

“So if there IS someone….what do you want me to do…go over and get shot if it’s real, or report it’s false to the police so they don’t have to check it out?”

“Uh… I guess. But what if your folks are dead?”
“Like..  shouldn’t you call an ambulance?”

“No… they’re not on the I’ve-Fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up service.”

“Then they’ll just have to be just as dead in the morning as now.”

“So you’re doing nothing?”

“Yes…  I’m going to try to get back to sleep.”

“But….y’know we’ll be calling you back in thirty minutes if it’s still ringing.”

“Oh… and I’ll be answering. Hey… do us both a favor and take me off the list.”

The call from Mom the next morning was… shall I say “testy”. Turned out of course that my folks were in fact out of town, but despite the fact that it was  a false alarm, Mom wasn’t happy with my ‘tude. And like any Mom worth her salt, she was incensed… something her generation knew how to make work for her. Anyway she wanted to know what my problem was, why I didn’t love her, and why I wouldn’t go over there and get shot like a good boy. My protest that I loved her but of course I knew it was a false alarm somehow didn’t slay the savage beast. She wasn’t buying it. More to the point, my being shot if I went over there and it was real… just wasn’t one of her pressing worries. I mean… the police would be there to pick up the body… and she was out of town anyway… so she wouldn’t be first on my alarm company’s call list.

And that’s the other thing I like about these lists. Going to work the next day to pick up the voice mail telling me there’s a possible break in at my house. Do they ever say, “There’s possibly a really crummy alarm system at your house with another… go figure… false alarm. What do you pay these people for?” No, of course not. Could they get work if they replaced clock radios with these guys? Doubt it. We’d all be late on work days, and waking up at the crack of whatever on our days off. And I already do that anyway.

But we do have an answer here. My alarm company guy is an ex-CIA guy. I know… they all say that. But this guy really… I mean he used to take his kids to play paint ball…. in the jungles of Nicaragua somewhere. Serious… “M-kay”. “M-kay” is a technical term at the CIA… I mean “the company”. Guy did work for the Chinese Embassy, the Russian Embassy… all his old contacts. After the Wall came down… all his wiring guys were… suddenly… Russian. Sweetest guys you’d ever meet. Probably had fourteen advanced degrees in fields of study I can’t even pronounce. And if you needed anything fixed, you didn’t even have to call. You just went over to the corner… the one on the stairs… and whispered, “I think there’s a problem with the nuclear launch codes….” and next thing you know… the door bell would ring. Literally… I kid you not… thirty seconds.  I mean… how long does it take to walk from the Ice Cream truck parked at the bottom of the hill in December to the front door anyway?

So I whispered to the steps, the steps whispered to the truck, and the truck whispered to the  guys… oh… the Russians are gone… so it’s gonna take a few days. And we’re sleeping with the alarm off. If you want to pick up some valuables, we’ve decided to save folks the trouble and left them outside. But as for these wired screens, I’m hooking up my iPod. So long as no one plays with matches and starts fooling the fire alarm, my wife’s happy as a clam. Me… I’m depending on the dog… ’cause he never barks at passing squirrels, people who might be thinking of coming by, the trash truck, nearby airplanes… or whatever. Fact is, the dog and the alarm company have a lot in common – only dog biscuits are cheaper and the dude doesn’t have a call list.

Larger meaning. Oh..yeah. Let’s try this: “I guess the larger meaning is that there really is a lot more peace and happiness in  ‘going without’. Like the old song says, leave your troubles on the doorstep. So your sanctuary behind the screen is preserved only when your treasures are safely on  the other side.” Some might say this holds whether we’re talking about the home, the Church or anywhere… but others might not. You make the call… but don’t put me on “The List”.

Psalm Wandering

As I write this update, I’m a bit overwhelmed by a project I undertook, work, and other schedules. In particular, I’m not getting all that far on my project as there just seems so much to do. The project began during the course of Lent when reading through the Septuagint’s version of the Psalms from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, I stumbled on a phrase I’d missed on previous visits:

“The way of Thy commandments have I run, when Thou didst enlarge my heart.” Psalm 118 (119)

Archmandrite Zacharias’s, “The Englargment of the Heart” gives an account of the Theology of Saint Silhouan the Athnonite and Elder Sophrony of Essex as inspired by the admonition in 2 Corinthians 6:13, “Be ye also enlarged”. And so I guess my confession here as someone who devoured Archminadrite Zacharias’s texts with an eager heart… is that I am also geek enough to have been thrilled to see something of the same echoed here.

I began to wonder where else in the Psalms these references to the heart lay. Thus my May project became tracking down the other utterances in a subsequent review. This now done, I am of course humbled to report that between the explicit and implicit references, my originally narrow line of inquiry has expanded… almost beyond reasonable limits. Whoops!

Nevertheless accepting the limitation of explicit utterances, premature though it may be, it looks as if the following explicit references ought to be a decent start: 4, 63, 77, 83, 84, 103, 104,106, 107, 111, 118, 130, 138, 139, 140 142, and 146. There’s a lot to be garnered here, and as much as I thought it could readily be excerpted and studied, that’s something of a lark as I quickly found it difficult to get the sense from a short passage alone. And of course taking the words out of context seems to rob them of much of their power to say nothing of the other changes of perspective and sentiment within the same and other psalms. I mean… do I ignore the places where without using the word “heart” specifically the Psalmist seems to convey a change of heart? Moreover, the closer one ponders through these things, the more one begins to discover and understand that there are whole traditions to their reading that I am in danger of skimming over. Thus I end the month admitting to have gotten through the psalms again… but that I’m to another beginning rather than closing in on the end.

So I confess to being weighed down. Fr. Patrick Reardon wrote of his own studies searching for the person of Christ in the Psalms. But as helpful as this may be, no doubt he scarcely intended to suggest that his effort was either comprehensive or exclusive. And naturally I have no ambition to write a book… only to “git it”. I came to  the Orthodox Church for many reasons…. but mostly it was my  sense of care for tradition, and the sense of searching through it to find and soften the heart that seemed the sort of voyage of discovery worth attending to. I’m just too old to re-invent the wheel… So if anyone knows a bit from the Fathers that would jump start this endeavor… I’m all ears. I have no pretense to originality! And in fact I’m reading Athanasius’s Life of Anthony… an edition with the Letter to Marcellinus as well… which I haven’t gotten to yet… and as hopeful as I am that this will provide a key… other leads would be appreciated as well! Thank you.

Epistle of Mathetes to…

While folks like Steve Robinson have been off being useful, some of us have been off on post high-season vacation in Florida… the first in a long, long time… being somewhat less useful. Okay… we actually were useful in unintended but not unfamiliar ways: We made repeat appearances in Sanibel in the guise of Rain Gods. Yes, for the second time, we single-handedly ended a long period of drought, bringing a week’s deluge sufficient to cause NASA to redirect landing of the space shuttle to California. Local growers, flora, fauna and especially our favorite amphibians (Frogs and Toads!) loved us. Local hotels and fellow touristas…. well… let’s just say we had to hire some beefy types with “heaters”.

At least this time, we weren’t traveling with small children so the re-direction of our time to our books, DVD rentals, beach walks, etc. was unconstrained by the need to de-energize (de-bean) a set of rambunctious kids with ideas of their own and no means to  pursue them other than running roughshod over the nerves of their frazzled parents. Yeah… those were the days when a vacation was not a vacation unless you could wear the little crazy nuts out in time for a reasonably sedate dinner. Twenty-something kids having absorbed all the “rest and be quiet” lessons of those years… seem to need no encouragement and will readily sleep all day… and it’s the ‘rents that seem to need to invent ways to de-bean.

So finding myself alone on what my wife refers to as one of my Bataan Death Marches – this one to the Lighthouse at the end of the island, I turned on a podcast from Deacon Matthew Steenberg on the Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus. This familiar passage of uncertain  provenance is nonetheless pretty good stuff. As a frame to recent tussles between and within our jurisdictions, the epistle offers a worthy vision of the Church and her people in an apologetic revealing the paradoxical attraction of counter-cultural christianity of that – or any – era. It is nothing short of a challenge we could more faithfully embody individually… and as the Body of Christ.

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers…. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed…and…persecuted; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.

(Note: I’ve editted this to more or less approximate Deacon Matthew Steenberg’s reading of the text).

The Bother of Blogging

The bother of blogging is that there are limits to what you can or will say. And there are limits to another’s interest as well. In the world of Orthodox bloggers, the monks, priests, and nuns have the advantage of street cred, and actually tend to show that… yes… it makes a difference. This of course leaves many of the rest of us enthusiasts to get by trotting out something from the Fathers and Mothers. Been there, done that, and probably not finished either.

I, for one, remain awed by the anonymous faithful, both lay and otherwise. But especially, I am awed by the folks whose lives were filled with the spiritual warfare amongst the distractions of ordinary life. I mean, this is good, right? And that’s about the best I can hope for. A star among the saints is probably not in the cards – not even remotely possible! nor necessarily anything in the middle, or even on the bench…. and sometimes, it even seems a worthy ambition just to not end up on the opposite end of the pole – as a star sinner… though that seems one of the more reliable tracks for ending up on the other end of the spectrum. But that presupposes a lot… and I tend to doubt that there were many who set out to be saints through a via negativa of this sort…. banking on a mid-life conversion somewhere, and a slew of chances to even the score.

No, that seems a high stakes gamble I suspect few of us are willing roll for, and even fewer likely to succeed at.

That leaves us with the fact that we know all teams have role players, and angling for one of those lesser roles on the team. Some of us are even “bit” role players… like hockey players in for face-offs and back out. By definition, this means we fit into a function, and we step on to the field, stage or whatever to follow through, but in all cases and all times, there is more to our characters than the roles we fill. The same is true of both our anonymous saints… and those we know better. And in pondering this, clearly we stand on the threshold of the unwritten part of a hagiography… the sort we’d all like to read.

The perspective from the sweep of history seems to be that all ages are equally in decline as the “last age”,  yet this seems in fact more a part of the hubris of the present, this thinking that no age has been worse. The tendency toward silence, toward contentment in anonymous disappearance of the Spirit seems unbecoming to the needs of a church that may in fact be shaking off the slumbers of mere survival to the needs of spreading the Gospel beyond its walls. Whatever trials or tribulations we see today, surely worse may come tomorrow, and thus, there is work to be done,  and souls to be prepared – least of all, our own. While it may not be our role to spread the Gospel in word, it may be enough and it may be of value to offer something of how we live our lives and record the value we attach to the Gospel – that others might sense as we have, that yes, this is something even normal people do, people like whomever we think we are… good and bad, and with all that we are. We come as whole persons to be healed… not just in part… but warts and all. And some of us will be healed in whole, others in part… but we may find healing all the same.

And while we may likely remain anonymous… we won’t appear content to be alone as if uncaring about the others round about us. The next person remains a critical part of our own path… whether the next person comes with us today, tomorrow, or long after we’re gone. Whenever the heart cools, this seems worth remembering… or at least bothering to give a blog a word or two.