Elder Zosima’s Insight

“The world has proclaimed freedom, especially of late, but what do we see in this freedom of theirs: only slavery and suicide! For the world says: “You have needs, therefore satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the noblest and richest men. Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even increase them” – this is the current teaching of the world. And in this they see freedom. But what comes of this right to increase one’s needs? For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder, for they have been given rights, but have not yet been shown any way of satisfying their needs. We are assured that the world is becoming more and more united, is being formed into brotherly communion, by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air. Alas, do not believe in such a union of people. Taking freedom to mean the increase and prompt satisfaction of needs, they distort their own nature, for they generate many meaningless and foolish desires, habits, and the most absurd fancies in themselves. They live only for mutual envy, for pleasure-seeking and self-display. To have dinners, horses, carriages, rank, and slaves to serve them is now considered such a necessity that for the sake of it, to satisfy it, they will sacrifice life, honor, the love of mankind, and will even kill themselves if they are unable to satisfy it. We see the same thing in those who are not rich, while the poor, so far, simply drown their unsatisfied needs and envy in drink. But soon they will get drunk on blood instead of wine, they are being led to that. I ask you: is such a man free?”

Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Dos sounds a contemporary complaint in this note. Substitute a few more current luxuries (BMW’s, nannies and immigrant labor, private jets, etc.) and vices (cocaine, meth, etc), and you have a fairly cogent description of the present milieu rather than late 19^th century Russia. Clearly there was a pivotal moment in Russia where a different future might have played itself out. The moment passed, and the bloody course of the 20^th century took its place. One wonders whether the mix of “celebrating diversity”, celebrity culture and our own revival of the Gilded Age will turn out better, or devolve into a similar toxic result.

More than that, turning the thought in a different direction, I wonder that the whole of the efforts to dis-establish and in some cases undermine the role of faith in public life – the real result is not precisely opposite of that which many supporting this movement suggest. For surely as religion is unseated and decoupled from its role in state oppression – whatever that role may be perceived to be (good or ill), surely in this process the state becomes the clear sole agency of power aided by the brutal indifference of the marketplace, and the preference of elites for unchallenged to rule. And in this, the Church is finally freed to be herself.

An American Church freed from the tethers of our Revolutionary Deism, freed from ties to a decadent Protestantism lit more by memory of faded glories and powers than the authentic faith that once fired the zealous Reformers, freed from the confines of consignment to the back pages of the Metro Section and nearby Obituaries of many newspapers, True Faith might emerge. And in this, the Church might fire the imagination and threaten change at a such a fundamental level the current election year dialog would be revealed as the drivel of political legerdemain that it is. And contemplating this prospect, were I an agitated atheist rather than an Orthodox Christian, I would tremble and reconsider. And I would tremble and reconsider – not because the Church has political ambitions or agendas, but because it would challenge me in the core of my being… as it does.

For a Christianity untethered by a “supportive” and “loving” state comfortably directing and controlling its domain – well there’s no telling what might happen. “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the humble and the meek.” As The Dos’s Elder Zosima and many real life monks and priests have attested in so many writings over the centuries, it is a fearsome thing to find oneself in the presence of The Living God, for “Aslan is not a tame Lion.”

A Contrarian View: Through a Dark Glass Brightly

Roughly a month ago, in that thing I do next to the parking meter that looks like my desk, I struggled through the usual incantations and recitations I smoke over in putting together the quarterly epistle to clients. Always seems that to be a lot more in the discard pile rather than the keeper column as I work through the “stuff” that’s driving the Borg’s latest passions to whatever edge it’s on.  And  like Lake Woebegone where all the children are above average, we somehow seem to think we can all  be on the cutting edge without getting cut, but in truth, someone’s got to get the worst of it. Now may be our time for a while.

Yes, those of us who still do those things “no one wants to do anymore” -  like work – often find ourselves wondering whether we’re lunch meat from a prehistoric age… just some Raptor’s leftovers; or whether there really is a future for us as more than lighter fluid.  ‘Course we’d prefer to think of ourselves as Premium Grade or Jet Fuel… but it’s more like “cheap gas from the Quickie Mart” . Least that’s how we sound once the  power and budgets of the large institutional machines have driven  home their messages in long hard campaigns aimed at our prospective customers, governments, and anyone else who will listen… at times it even seems as if they’re right and we ought to throw in the towel. Many have decided that Kevin Brownlow’s note of the silent film era applies more generally…  perhaps the “Parade’s Gone By”.

So in a word or nine hundred, times have been lean though most wouldn’t know it: Borrowed money, borrowed time, and borrowed lives have covered the cost. The smoke and mirrors have helped make it seem as if we’re livin’ large rather than largely beyond our means. More than that… our meaning, our moral fiber, and virtual reality has been discounted, depleted, offshored and – bleakest of all  – our seed corn  sold for feed.  Like Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her family’s stay in the north country as they neared startvation… well… this is serious. I can tell you… I have never contemplated writing a darker letter in my life. Checkov read the first draft and shot himself four times. Okay, he always did that or let someone else or was just trying to wing me one… but…never mind.

The key is I tore it up and went with:

Notwithstanding Chicken Little and a sky ’bout six inches off the ground, we tend to believe the news is set to change for the better. Surely the current run of gloom and doom has served someone’s purposes, but it’s starting to get on our nerves…

Besides the fact that it hasn’t gotten better yet, the dark energies seem stoked, and  I actually had to explain to my partner “who the heck was this guy Chicken Little.”… I mean… uh… I dunno…. what can I say other than that I believe sincerely at a very deep level and beyond the tenor of the economic and market sense in which I was writing, beyond my time here and now in the smallness of my life… that “things” really are going to change for the better… and not just modestly, nor just for a while… but an extended period, and in a very big way. And my reasoning is… well … as simple as this: If everything is as dark as it seems, it can only get better. And frankly… I can’t imagine worse. Okay I can… but mostly “worse” involves short-term stuff like wars, mayhem, and not breathing . These sorts of things tend to hasten reversals. And as my grand daddy used to say, “Smart money never bets against the American people.”

So while I know this sounds incredibly naive, pie-eyed and in fact like the vapidness of Time Magazine 1990’s article decried in Peter Kreeft’s “Winning the Culture Wars” as short on specifics…  and without differing from Kreeft’s earlier criticism, I simply see among our young precisely what he suggests as the source of renewal. So I’m increasingly confident our path is shifting on to the right track.. and would even extend the notion to include suggesting that the whole bother about secularism, moral decline, and what-not is over-wrought as well. Yes, it’s 100% on the mark and valid in terms of its observation and in measurement, but not in terms of expectation. Trends do not continue indefinitely in one direction. There is only one unstoppable force… only one immovable object… and last I checked, this ain’t it. These factors are not history, but part of history.

“This hot spell will pass, in the meantime, I’ll just chill off next to this glacier” said the Wooly Mamoth.

Bear in mind that any trend’s momentum still carries a blow-off well beyond the point of maximum thrust as it decelerates before reversing course. So there could still be plenty of exposure to risk, damage, and loss in the interim. We are not out of the woods. But the build-up is over. The unknown base is increasingly visible. And on this ground and from this level, we can build for another day. And build we will…. if we begin to work for it rather than bemoan a day so long gone no one remembers what we’re talking about.

Fact is, I’d suggest the building has been going on for some time through our ignorance and inattention. The foundation has been laid a long time ago. And though much continues beneath the surface, the future will increasingly see a different day. It will be far different than those celebrating what they think is the triumph of a God-free future … and it certainly won’t be free from oppression and all the ills they mistakenly assign to a God-soaked past. It’s important to hear the silence. It literally thunders… but many prefer not to hear, and will not easily yield without a fight. Surely there is no guarantee that the new era will indeed be an Orthodox Christian era… but it may well be amenable to it if we do our part. That part hasn’t always been “fun” or pretty, but it is still our part, and an honor to have the chance.

And though the chance may already be here, it remains for now, unseen. Think positive, and hang in there… and be ready to step up to the plate.

Reading “The Dos”

Yes, I’ve broken down and begun reading “The Dos”. And no, that’s not Dos as in Dos Pasos or in MS-DOS, but Dostoevsky. Yep. Dostoevsky as in “Are you kiddin’ me? it’s a thick Russian book?” “Puttin’ on airs again? Gonna paint yo’self as some sort pointy head?” As if. And I’m not sure why he’s “The Dos” other than that “The Toe” or “The Odor” just didn’t seem right.

Note that this absolutely goes against so many of my mottoes about thick books and sets so many potential dangerous precedents that I had to say something. Could mean I have to read all those other thick books misguided folks have given me to flatter my ego and fatten my head… or maybe I’ve got that backwards. I’m not really serious enough as a person to read these things… really. Could mean I’ll have to start looking for some new doorstops, or stop pleading inwardly every time I get one. Job’s hand written list of “My Trials” included “Thick Books” right there at pole position number four (maybe you missed his rough draft).

I remember when my Mom was pleased to start bringing me books to read, I was equally sure something had gone horribly wrong. “What happened to the pictures?” She explained good books had fewer and fewer and as I’d get older and better at reading I’d start reading books without any… and like it. Like that’ll happen. All I knew is that it sure didn’t look that way. Words. Indecipherable letters. Blocks and blocks of them. No one even knew what they meant. No one. Least of all me.

Kind of like vegetables every night – cold by the time I’d get to them – all lumped together and scarey looking. Just like the words lurking in her books. No one could explain what they were doing on my plate. Especially me. “I think these were meant for you.”‘ “No… and you aren’t you finished, either.” “Sure I am.” “Doesn’t look like it.” “Does to me.” “The vegetables?” “Look fine right where they are.” “Hmmmm. Y’know there’s no dessert if you don’t…” “Yep.” Henry Kissinger dropped by a few times just to add gravitas, and date the situation, but mostly, this was a style of negotiation I could handle. But then she’d slide in the closer: “Doesn’t matter. We’ll wait right here ’til you do.” “This century, or next?” “Right.” Cold. Nasty. “Would’ve tasted better a half hour ago.” “Not in my book.” “But what about ‘The Dos’s’ book?” “Ah… too thick to tell.” “Punctuation’s could be a little sketch, there bub.” “As if.”

So like eating your vegetables, making the bed in the morning, or cutting the grass – there were things you did that first time as a surprise, to please someone, that only seemed to backfire into sudden responsibilities. You didn’t know it at the time… you just wanted to make someone happy. But there’s a catch in that… it’s a formula that can’t be reversed… like crossing the streams… or Kelly in Nantucket…and you’re stuck before you know it. Folks get expectations, requirements get handed out, and protesting the inhumanity of it all or lack of union representation just doesn’t seem to cut much slack. “This is all just a big misunderstanding.” “No sir. This is not a democracy.” So autocratic… so momish. Ever notice how slack was something “they” were decidedly against… and “they” were always right when “they” were your parents, but somehow always wrong when “they” were your buddies? Yeah… just another one of those axioms that still doesn’t work out right. Nevertheless, the fun was gone, the dream “got died”, and the “Nightmare on My Street” morphed. Yep.. those were the days.

Fact is, in one of my more cantankerous moments of protest over who knows what, I ran away. I guess I was about five at the time. Packed a sweater in my toy “Little Handyman” tool box and went up the street for a few minutes. Possibly two. Might have been different if it hadn’t started raining as I trotted down the front walk. And Mom probably watched from the kitchen window when I left, but I couldn’t see her… sure didn’t want to either. What I remember is that she sure didn’t follow the game plan. ‘Stead of racing after me like I figured, she played coy. So while I thought about going to California.. that seemed like just a “statement”. Some place closer would have to do. Besides, my 25 cents wasn’t covering much in air fare, and the cabs weren’t exactly stopping on my dead end street for many short guys like me. By then it was looking more like a tee storm, a metal tool kit seemed a bad idea, and a nice dry house a better. Thankfully, Mom tried not to look when I came back in. Peeled a carrot in the sink or something …like nothing was going on.

“I see you’re back.”

“Yeah, it started raining… and I couldn’t figure out where to go.”

“Will you be sticking around?”

“Maybe. If I don’t go to California first. What’s for dinner?”

“Carrots and peas.”

“Tommy’s got grilled cheeses next door…”

“Might find some chocolate pudding…”

“I could be home for dessert…”

Dinner remained a negotiation until high school when the ravenous teenage thing hit, and even the boxes looked good. Vegetable still tasted.. which is not to say bad… but better would have been not at all… like when you were too hungry and tired to notice… the way your folks liked you best. Still, the category of safe foods was expanding. And of course by that time, Pizza had been invented and I’d learned from my Dad to eat defensively: PB&J’s, cereal, chocolate milk, or whatever could immunize the system from the worst dinners on the planet. Grandma was w-a-a-a-y worse. Fire in all its forms was a frequent side dish. And yes, “way” has to be an adverb ’cause “worser” isn’t a word. Yet. And I do know my grammar even if my spelling’s sometimes inaccessible.

Not like “The Dos”. He’s always on his game. The guy writes for the heavens; I’m strictly pro bono, a guy favoring the simpler places. Maybe I’m still altitude challenged. He likes to deal with the big ideas; even writes books without pictures. Okay… I know I’m a little thin here on the site with the multi media bit, but it’s not ’cause I’ve got ideas. It’s just that I can’t find my collection of etchings. Been too busy trying to duck the Broccoli at dinner parties. I mean, like my father-in-law put it, “When I was a kid Broccoli hadn’t even been invented.” Man knows what he’s talking about. Food from some freak horror show. Just what we need. Bio-engineering gone bad. The first and only real Franken Food. No, George Bush, Sr. wasn’t kidding: “Real plague on a plate.”

So let me say this about “The Dos”: The boy can write. Sure, a picture wouldn’t kill him here and there. But it’s not nearly as bad as P.G. Wodehouse makes it out. In truth, I suspect P.G. positively loved the stuff:

“No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi’s Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day’s work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only to find the vodka-bottle empty.”

and:

“If he had been a character in a Russian novel, he would have gone and hanged himself in the barn. As it was, he merely sat staring before him and keeping perfectly rigid.”

and most of all:

“Mr. Devine,” replied Adeline, blushing faintly, “is going to be a great man. Already he has achieved much. The critics say that he is more Russian than any other young English writer.”

“And is that good?”

“Of course it’s good.”

“I should have thought the wheeze would be to be more English than any other young English writer.”

“Nonsense ! Who wants an English writer to be English ? You’ve got to be Russian or Spanish or something to be a real success. The mantle of the great Russians has descended on Mr. Devine.”

“From what I’ve heard of Russians, I should hate to have that happen to me.”

One could go on. Two would think of something better to do, and three… well… that’s higher math for most of us. But “The Dos”… even with a first name that would doom an American boy to a Russian future.. I mean seriously… Fyodor? What were his parents thinking? Dogmeat USA? No wonder they go around shooting themselves. But did I say the boy can write? Even after the shooting?

‘Round ’bout now, if this were a school book report I’d be checking the page counter and turning off the “Sweat It Out Zone” sign. Probably switch the margins or line spacing back to normal now that I’m “clear”. Better, let me apologize for running the babbling brook a bit and try to wind this up. Fact is, I’m simply not finished. Indeed, I’m no further than the Grand Inquisitor. But P.G. had it right: English folks don’t write like this. They don’t even think like this. All I can say is that if thinking like “The Dos” and having a Russian soul is what it takes to be Orthodox… I’m in deep trouble.

But I keep slogging…

Vladimir specialized in grey studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page three hundred and eighty, when the moujik decided to commit suicide. It was tough going for a man whose deepest reading hitherto had been Vardon on the Push-Shot, and there can be no greater proof of the magic of love than the fact that Cuthbert stuck to it without a cry.

The story of my life. So you’d think this has got to attest to a love for this ancient church… or just sheer lunacy or something. I mean… I have my “issues”, and if it were cold turkey… I mean reading this without 150 years of acclaim and all that… I might have thrown in the towel about page five-oh. But something did happen about page 125 where we finally finish the introductions… but maybe it wasn’t in the book but on the other side. And then all of a sudden, there’s too much all at once and you’re carrying the phone book with you everywhere you go. Like maybe you can’t dial information? Anyway… it’s enough to get a dude into some serious image problems. The truth is, through vignettes of Russian life, “The Dos” nails things right and left about our faith… but fairly, he doesn’t paint a Norman Rockwell portrait of it either. And there is far more disbelief and out-right hostility to the Church, more drunk and disorderly despicable and petty behavior, more outright late 20th century American-style depravity than I expected. So maybe some of us regular folks have a shot after all…

But don’t tell anybody. And especially don’t tell anybody that I’ve actually bowed to the icon that says we must read Russian literature if we’re going to understand what it is to be Orthodox. Well… maybe they have a point… and…. maybe it helps. And maybe… I should make clear that yes, I actually like this stuff. But not everyone is wired up the same… and it seems like it’s sure gonna make for an awful small church if this is really what it takes! And maybe… maybe we could get by with just the Cliff Notes or the Classic Comic Book version.

Summer Sports Flicks

Went outta town. Sat on a beach. Got a little sun. Maybe the sun fried what was left of the brain. Dunno. Anyway, I found something worth sharing. It wasn’t “Jaws”, it wasn’t “Bees”, and it wasn’t even outside. And yes, I know it’s the heretical thing to do with the Olympics on and all, but I can’t understand why in this day and age we don’t have an ESPN-1, ESPN-2 and ESPN-3 type of coverage of these things by now so that we’d have a reasonable chance of seeing what we want… all of it… and without the blather I keep muting. So as always, I had to do something else…

I watched a good sports flick instead. I share it with you here.. because I guess that’s what we do. And especially since I’m NOT a baseball fan and it’s a baseball movie… I mention it because… well… I liked it. It’s by the director of one of my favorite all-time family sports movies, “The Sandlot” (1993)…. also a baseball movie. Yes, we played a fair amount of baseball in our time. Everybody did back in the bad old days before we had choices, before lacrosse, and before we started playing football 365 days a year “’cause we could”, and soccer the rest of the time… er… uh… y’know… whatever! And “The Sandlot”… well… seemed in so many ways like the story of my life… the story of so many lives… how I could I do other than enjoy it? Really… if I had a nickel for every rec’ I’ve given of this puppy…

All of which means I came predisposed… which contrary to rumor, doesn’t mean I live my life in a trash can awaiting Monday’s pick-up. Pick-up’s Friday in my ‘hood. No, I’m simply suggesting I’m not your most unbiased man alive. But you knew that. I mean, did I say I played football 365 days a year? Neighborhood football… touch-but-it-looks-like-tackle ball? With warm-up photo-op pass-and-catch “for the front page”? Right after delivering the evening paper with all the guys and until dark or whenever “Mom” called to “get home”. Sometimes she’d ring a bell, but when she did a “drive by” – it was worse. Others sent out the Italian grandmothers… worse still. And then of course the “maximum end of the world” could occur if any home deployed the ISSSDKRO (“In Some Serious Stuff Kid Retrieval Object”) known colloquially as “The Dad”. ISSSDKRO was guaranteed to make someone “disappear” and upset the team picking process for a couple of days.

Anyway, the movie I’m recommending is ‘The Final Season’ (2007) . It’s about a small town high school baseball team in Iowa that’s won the State Championships something like 18 times beating schools many, many times its size in the process. It’s a true story, a study of character, and the type of film that while telling a story you can figure out… still makes it interesting with a number of turns here and there that makes it worth watching. In truth, I almost put it aside when I got it home and on looking more closely saw that Tom Arnold was in it… but fortunately he only plays a small cameo role. I think you’ll like it.

Breaking the Covenant

“This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear toward me is a commandment of men learned by rote” (Is 29:13 and echoed in Mt. 15:8 )

In reading “The Living God”, discussion of the broken covenant of Israel sticks with me (pp 107-109)… or rather sticks on me like a post-it note, falls off, gets mislaid and ultimately forgotten until uncovered in the midst of one of those millennial “clean out” events I am so good at avoiding. And so I post it here before I forget.

There’s this covenant… I’d prefer to think it applied to another people in another place… to the Hebrews, to those Old Testament types, to the Muslims, to the “Oh my gosh” folks in that temple over there… the one I used to go to. But no, the truth is that it applies to me here and now. I have broken this covenant; I have followed the commandments “of men learned by rote”; and I have been content. No one made me do it: I did quite fine on my own.

So this is not another post about someone else or something else or someone else’s covenant, but about the stilling of my own ardor and love for God. It’s how I came to stand in this ancient Church. And like the darkened soul of a man blown in like a tumbleweed from a bad Western, I remain. Were someone to ask me what I’m waiting for… I don’t rightly know. Could be for the game over in the corner to end, the liquor to run out, or the sheriff to ride into town… can’t tell.

Yeah, and the image is replete with the rest of the usual bad cliches: My family’s done holed up “somewhere in the hills” waiting for “stuff” to blow over; and my “neighbors” here next to me lay back wondering whether I’ll “stick” or turn out just another scarecrow …more dead inside than the last “deputy”. Though I try to look laid back, in truth, the tension sometimes gets me snapping; but it could be it’s just the rest snapping back at me. Don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve got no place to blame anyone… more than likely, they have me pegged for putting on airs ‘bout setting things right or whatever. Seems the only badge I’ve earned is their disbelief; and the only words come to their minds… they’re just too nice to say.

Wish I could say it were better, but like a laser whose light skips a track on a smudged CD… I make this game every Sunday …as if making my way back might make a different ending. ‘Course it doesn’t. But I try… honest. Still each trip I wonder, “As long as I’m not going to get it done, as long as I’m gonna fall short… what’s the dang deal… what’s the bit about making the road as hard as possible? Can’t we lighten up somewhere?”

Yeah… it’s not an existential thought so much as a chuckle or a grumble before stumbling and falling to my knees that maybe we shouldn’t take ourselves …much less our rituals.. quite so doggone seriously. And maybe we could make a little room in here at the bar for refreshing some of those dry mouthed folks outside. Still, as I look both ways and cross, my shoes take me up the steps inside; back before the altar; back within a puff of the swaying, heated incense; serving and singing; and for at least a while these thoughts fall from my mind.

Maybe it’s the smoke…. Maybe it’s ONLY smoke… and maybe not. Maybe as I descend back outside once more, I wonder whether my forgetting is just the hardness of the ride; or whether forgetting is the reason I came… whether I am doing the right thing or whether this is precisely the wrong thing. Maybe I’m not sure… maybe I can’t admit which it is that I’ve come for… so I need these folks next to me. And maybe figuring this out’s just a touch above my pay grade.

And yet what it seems to me is that the short take on the Great Commission is more a measure of my “great” failure than anything more. Maybe my sacraments are broken or incomplete in this way – even here – for it seems as if peace is bought at such a price.. a price that leaves those most loved without, behind, and beyond these doors… then maybe there is no peace. Seems no mystery of this sort… no matter how right the “glory” in other respects… cures the cries I’ve ceased hearing… much less the cries I shake off for not knowin’ how to answer.

My heart knows were this overcome, there’d be a Prodigal’s ring and feast somewhere; but my fingers are bare, and my plate’s still empty. Clearly I misread the part where we were already part of the “family”, mourned over, and no others objected to our coming. We weren’t; they didn’t; and I suspect this is far more in keeping with “what’s right” than I’d wish to grant. Perhaps where we do not mourn those who do not, cannot, or will not hear… perhaps there it is that we have left not just someone else, but something of ourselves behind as well. And perhaps one day…

But for this day… for now, “The Living God” gives hope that the impasse is not yet fixed or set, and there is still time. Where Hosea tells the story of infidelity, and there is a similar descent into wanton ways amidst an abundance of riches, wayward worship, and a time strangely familiar… even here… even now… that is not just a personal journey, but a journey of her people and our journey of faith as well…. here in this story is an answer. For here, the patient husband like the Prodigal’s father returns a portion far richer than “earned” and offers instead that which is granted by Grace:

“I will betroth you to Myself forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Myself in righteousness and justice, and in mercy and compassions. I will betroth you to Myself in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. It shall come to pass in that day,” says the Lord, “That I will listen to heaven, and it shall listen to the earth. The earth shall listen to the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall listen to Jezreel. I will sow her to Myself on the earth, and will love her that was not loved, and will say to that which was not My people, “You are My people!” And they shall say, “You are the Lord my God!” ( Hosea 2:19-23 )

And I can pray that this may be my portion as well, and it will be enough.

Looks Like George Got it…

George Friedman of Stratfor, “the private CIA” that supplies condensed intelligence to Wall Streeters and others, offers a view of Solzhenitsyn’s impact that exceeds any I’ve seen. Seems to understand or at least be more sympathetic to his spiritual perspective as well as offer a promising outlook for Mother Russia. Here’s an excerpt:

“From Solzhenitsyn’s point of view, Western capitalism and liberalism are in their own way as horrible as Stalinism. Adam Smith saw man as primarily pursuing economic ends. Economic man seeks to maximize his wealth. Solzhenitsyn tried to make the case that this is the most pointless life conceivable. He was not objecting to either property or wealth, but to the idea that the pursuit of wealth is the primary purpose of a human being, and that the purpose of society is to free humans to this end.”

And another:

“He viewed freedom of expression in the same way. For Americans, the right to express oneself transcends the content of the expression. That you speak matters more than what you say. To Solzhenitsyn, the same principle that turned humans into obsessive pursuers of wealth turned them into vapid purveyors of shallow ideas. Materialism led to individualism, and individualism led to a culture devoid of spirit. The freedom of the West, according to Solzhenitsyn, produced a horrifying culture of intellectual self-indulgence, licentiousness and spiritual poverty. In a contemporary context, the hedge fund coupled with The Daily Show constituted the bankruptcy of the West.

To have been present when he once addressed a Harvard commencement! On the one side, Harvard Law and Business School graduates — the embodiment of economic man. On the other side, the School of Arts and Sciences, the embodiment of free expression. Both greeted their heroic resister, only to have him reveal himself to be religious, patriotic and totally contemptuous of the Vatican of self-esteem, Harvard.”

Not bad for a bunch of civilian spooks. Of course, I’d encourage you to read the whole thing… but most are probably far more familiar with his material than I… and don’t need to!

And while there are those who discount Stratfor as offering no particular insight… my son among them… as a long time subscriber, I’d say, “..yeah, but it’s handy, pretty decent, and not too pricey for those of us who don’t always have time to dig.” As to his conclusion, as pie-eyed as it may seem, there are reasons Stratfor continues to make the grade with a tough audience. See what you think.

Big Al… Down for the Count

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s repose has been written up and off by many. I loved the Harvard address. The rest… I leave to those among the Russophile literatsi. He was a man of courage, an Orthodox Christian, and he changed the face of Soviet Russia – even as his own grooming seemed challenged enough to leave his agent confused over which … a “cough drop brother” or the lion king… that he represented… or as it turns out… resented.

Today’s Financial Times has two remembrances. The first by John Lloyd and Arkady Ostrovsky mentions details seldom observed elsewhere:

“He said that for all its misery, Russia retained a soul the west had lost. Some 20 years later, he returned to his country, flooded with McDonald’s, Mexican soap operas, quiz shows and little obvious sign of “soul”. His books, such as his great historical cycle, The Red Wheel, on the end of tsarism and the birth of communism, were available but largely unbought.”

He was of course a big fan of Putin’s… and Putin returned the favor. Few others did:

“After a short spell of honors and greetings he became another object of mockery on whom the cynical young could look down and at whom the compromised elders could sneer. He was given a television programme on the main state channel and every other Monday after the evening news, he would discourse at first with guests whom he largely ignored, then in a monologue that was full of anguish, complaint, demands and warnings. The television show was axed. A curt message from the management spoke of falling ratings. The country heading towards a “global market” had no time for the “old fool’s” sermons.”

Wow. Rather makes the puzzle of post-apartheid Nelson Mandella’s description of his dance with the Spice Girls as the “most wonderful experience of his life”… far more understandable. The article quotes Joseph Brodsky from 1995 saying of Solzhenitsyn that “It is another country; you cannot step in the same river twice…” and comments that he did, but “the river had flowed past him”.

The FT’s editorial page has a far kinder view, and a corresponding balance to this first. Here, the editorial writers also offer the first evidence I’ve seen that anyone assigned to the task actually read the Harvard speech.. and quotes specifically mentioning the “destructive and irresponsible freedom of western life, including the excessive burdening flow of information from the media.” Hmmm. On second thought… I’m beginning to recall why they don’t like mentioning this speech.

But more than this, the explanation gives account of his post-Soviet character as fully consistent:

“It takes an obsessive personality to be a brave and constant critic of cruel dictatorships: Solzhenitsyn certaintly fitted that mould, as did that other towering figure among the Soviet dissidents of the 1960’s, Andrei Sakharov, the physicist. Their refusal to compromise made them ill-suited to any post-revolutionary role.”

“Yet Russia under Vladmir Putin has moved back towards the world Solzhenitsyn believed in. He was a nationalist, a fierce defender of the Russian Orthodox church, and convinced of the unique cultural role of Russia in the world.”

We would all have had him our own way. He was his own man. Memory Eternal!