Soooo… about lunch…

We were trying to come up with a new place to go for lunch. Someone suggested we try this new place where they had a great meal over the weekend. Sent the weblink ’round the office. Their website had only the above photo. So y’know how these things go….

I like the construction helmet on the bar!  Has the Health Inspector been there yet?

Your immunity should be strong since you eat Chinese carry-out at least once a week. It’s the making change and then sticking your eggrolls and fortune cookies in your bag that is so appealing…

Yes, I love the seasonings of copper, nickel and silver.

That’s actually a salad using a new kind of leaf: Hardhatula. I don’t do Arugula either. So I’ll be sticking with a burger. Maybe… even… from Wendy’s.

Yeah… everyone’s a comedian.

The Living God: On The Church

All of us have friends who wonder why we go to Church, why it isn’t enough simply to believe,  and sometimes these folks may even look back at us in the mirror.  For it seems to be natural that if we believe … and that’s enough, then it naturally follows that going to church, any church, becomes a choice, and a choice of who has the best coffee, hymns and fewest demands seems to make sense. The Comfortable Christ becomes a consumer good like any other, and why shouldn’t we seekers seek out a Walmart discount, or carefully read the Service Reports in the appended “User Surveys” to Consumer Report’s Annual April “Getting God” issue. I mean, taken to its extremes as is everything today (Xtreme Xrist!) the notion of Sola Scriptura or Sola Fide or Sola Whatever simply doesn’t require a Church. So the response outlined in the The Living God (Volume 2) that begins a rather lengthy discourse on the Church seems worth a thought of recollection… because I keep forgetting it, and keep looking it up again… and so mark it down here like a Post-it note:

Seeker: I believe in God, I believe in Jesus Christ, but I don’t believe in the Church.

Sage: Then you’re confining God to heaven. The Christian God is a God made man, God among us, God hidden among men so that He may heal them. He is a God who acts and makes Himself known through those whom He came to save, those who never cease making a caricature of Him. His Word is heard among men and it is through them that He manifests His love. His is a God born in the stable at Bethlehem, a God crucified between two criminals, “numbered with the transgressors” (Is 53:12). If you cannot recognize the Holy One hidden among the sinners of His Church and in the shame of His Passion, you will not be able to recognize Him at His glorious Second Coming.

When we say in the Creed, “I believe in one, holy and apostolic Church,” we do not mean that we believe in what we see. What a non-believing sociologist or historian can describe after studying the Church is not the object of our faith. We don’t need faith to ascertain what we see. “Have you believed because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (Jn 20:29). A stereotyped image of the Church at a certain place or time does not reflect its true essence and does not help us to define it.

The true object of our faith, what we really believe in, is God’s word or promise. The Church is defined by the creative Word of it’s Lord, Christ, and the sanctifying power of the Spirit who brings this Word into existence. That is why the Church is holy in spite of the sins of its members.”

There’s more here and there, but it’ll have to keep for now.

If I Had Three Wishes…

If I had one wish the next time my elected folks got in front of a camera or walked anywhere in public, it’s that they had to wear suits like Nascar drivers. No I’m not talking about the fire resistant element so much.. though considering the consequences of their fabrications that might come in handy. No, what I’m talking about is having each and every rep wear the patches of their sponsors over the last 12 or 18 months or so. Size would be proportional to either the effort of solicitation, or the total funds raised… I’d leave that to others to pick. I mean either way, we’d know who’s really talking. Always liked truth in advertising.

And if the good fairies gave me a second wish.. it’d be that folks would vote on the same day they filed their taxes. Kind of focuses the mind on getting something of what you’re paying for… or not. At least it would spur turnout. Better yet… maybe put the ballot form ON the tax return so that everybody would have to vote. That would sure stir up a few surprises I couldn’t even begin to wonder.

Now the third wish after these two would be for some bullet proof clothing. I mean unintended consequences being what they are, and the way word gets out… I think I’d need it.

Delay and Not

Okay… I’ve opened my trap once… so I guess I’m committed. As far as this financial crisis goes,  we need do only one thing now: Plug the hole in the ship.

We don’t need to transfer ownership, we don’t need to re-engineer it, replace the bilge pumps, re-coat the bottom, or replace the captain and crew. What we’ve got is what we’ve got, and there’s not exactly time for a lot of discussion on the perfect repair technique. And yes they did manage to blow a pretty clear hole into a ship in the middle of the doggone Ocean almost as if they were out seeking the only known hazard to navigation in thousands of miles… just to test the unsinkability of the boat. But crazy as that sounds… it’s not the first time… nor the last. And unless you like swimming with the fishes… which I don’t… we can deal with that later.

I mean, if you’ve ever once in your life seen how fast water comes through the bottom of a ship when you’re underway, you know how frighteningly important it is to be quick. Time is one thing we don’t have. So the job really is just this simple: Shove a little something in the hole and slow down the incoming water enough so that we can pump out faster than what’s coming in.

Plugging the hole involves a couple of rags, a little caulking and that’s it. We can argue about how much the captain and navigator got paid later, or whether they should go to jail or ever again have command. But we  just really don’t have time at the moment. And we don’t even care what we shove in the hole… anything will do. We might miss it later, and that’s okay. I think when we’re ready for a real fix, we’ll get the stuff back and it might even still be usable. But for now, like I said: rags, garbage, a couple of bankers, lobbyists and congressmen… you name it… just shove’em in the hole.

Jawing about the rest is to miss the big picture. Yes, we all have our plans..  least of all moi. But we’re not going to have a chance to change the ship, the crew or the direction we’re cruising in if we don’t plug this thing. And no, we don’t have the luxury of going into dry dock out here in the middle of the Ocean… we ‘re just not that lucky or that smart. But a little expeditious elbow grease does come in handy.

But if we have to wait for the jawing to be done,  especially if we have to wait to hear about who’s not responsible by those who were… and the ship begins to list to a point where… well, you shift to the bottom work of salvage and recovery. Wish it were otherwise… but there was a time we could have had these discussions… and didn’t. Now it’s time for all hands to get to it.

Let those of us who do not have a hand in the work pray for those who do.

Getting On

The difference between “Getting on” and adding the word “it” is a matter of substance. Maybe. More than likely, it’s a matter of years. After hearing more this morning about what gravity does to us all than anyone really wants to know… I think I understand.

Scanning the Irish Sports pages this morning, I noticed a face that looked familiar. Someone I think I’d met back in my Anglican days at one of the local diocese meetings. Probably not… but she looked familiar anyway: Standard issue fiftyish (in the photo), attractive, middle-height looking woman with dark hair. I read she’d had Parkinson’s and died from a fall. No, this wasn’t one of those that choked me up… you know the kind… the “memoriam” bits where the pain is still “really there” – even years and years later. She’d had two divorces, and moved away in the all-too-familiar tragedy sort of way.

No. This was simpler. There’s the question of Parkinson’s in my family. He thinks it’s a matter of time as he looks at his symptoms. And I suspect he’s right. Surely something will be the ender, but there is a change of view when the theoretical and far off becomes more real and certain… especially if the details of how the finale plays out seems less like a game we want to play… where we can somehow fool ourselves into thinking the next hand will see a turn in the cards. Here, there may in fact be a next hand, but that’s less like a turn the trend, than a shortening of the game. I mean, it’s like, this is my Dad, my partner, the guy I worked with every day, all day for twenty years… even sometimes there at the beginning… seven days a week. There’s a part in there where you cross over, or feel you do, from son to partner and confidante, someone you know even better … but not at all better… than even my mom. At least you wonder… and yet you know that’s not possible.

His outlook remains good. He’s a fighter pilot in all that it means.. both in terms of being a fighter, of facing reality, and having courage. He’s a good sailor and navigator, too. He knows where he is, and where home lies. It’s closer now… that ultimate port where we all go. And he knows one of his old salts, Charlie, who had MS in law school and never flinched but fought out a good life saying to him when he asked, “Y’know… I just never figured there was any point in wondering why I got MS… it wouldn’t go anywhere positive if I did… you just gotta do the best you have with what you the Lord gives you.” Charlie was year-after-year one of the most consistent champion sailors the Chesapeake ever knew… not because he could do it himself, but because he couldn’t, knew he couldn’t, and he became an excellent teacher. He was patient, giving and constantly learning himself.

My grandmother died of Lou Gehrig’s disease at seventy-four. She had been a Summa Cum Laude from Radcliffe… with both brains, beauty and grace. Her decline was hard on her, but she managed it well… something I wonder that we value, but we do. Yes, I’m proud of her… as if it meant something. Her dad, a college professor, had pushed her reading hard, and she was an avid reader by two. I think I didn’t get there until well into double digits. Yet if there were two things she would have had that she could never learn they were: 1) how to play, and 2) how to find a church home. Small as they are, they were large to her. So she did what she could and wandered Latin American helping schools. Not bad.

She used to read the Bible to my sister and I… and I still think of her whenever I hear the Old Testament  read aloud. Strangely she never read us the New Testament and I never thought later to ask her why. She wasn’t much of a cook or a driver either… and as I wrote once, many a flambe’ erupted whenever she passed through a kitchen… and many a lamp post or random car found a way to imprint itself on the rear of my mom’s car whenever she was left in charge. Yes, I did my own imprint – twice I think… but flambe wasn’t my style.

A practical lady she was not… unless you liked parsley juice and friendly chats with the police sent to  discuss the finer points of “the essence of being”, whether she was in fact aware the role a loud noise like a burglar alarm bell might play in it, and did she know how to turn it off. But somewhere in there as I grew up, the two of us began sharing seats at the Folger Shakespeare Library’s productions followed by dinners to talk theology, and all the rest. When she moved into a group house, took up the vegetarian life,  and stopped eating salt… I knew things were getting serious. It amuses me even to this day when she later  revealed she didn’t even like vegetables… cooked. She was always on the edge of the wave, and would undoubtedly have been a great surfer if she’d ever figured out that thing about how to play.

But of course in those days, I was rather headstrong and couldn’t teach her… ’cause like everyone else, I was intimidated by her and had to “look smart” or act wise or just be a wise guy or whatever when I was around her… and so I was probably hard to live with without even addressing the fact that I was much more traditional in these matters than she usually tolerated. And to top it off, I’d actually had a course or two in philosophy and religion and could of course try to trot out what I could remember from those afternoon lectures, or bludgeon her with some logical fallacy or other. Sometimes even Plato and Ari-somebody showed up. But she humored me with a smile.. the smile that knows when she was certain she was right and you weren’t, and you knew she was right, too, and didn’t like it, but there you are. And she was too kind to let that be that, but would suggest more than maybe the cat had her tongue. She had class… back when it meant more than school. And I did manage to gather up her apologetic books when she passed on… she had quite a collection… so I did learn just how much she must have smiled at my pretense.

And it’s to her great credit that I learned to play… mostly in my imagination, but equally on the sports fields where small size was okay and speed and agility helped out. Her insistence on play made her far less intimidating. And my mom, bless her, readily agreed with the suggestion of the Outdoor Nursery School over the others, and running ’round the bamboo stand and painting with your hands was a joy I was later grateful to share with my kids as well. Yes, we love a mess whenever we can manage it… even when we make it with words.

Now as the years advance and my kids are mostly, but not completely nor permanently, out of the house, I realize how much everyone had done and still does for me… and in spite of me… and without much or as much thanks or even awareness as I should have offered. We – meaning me – are all such babies in so many ways even if we don’t think we are, huh? But I do write the thank you letters my Mom used to beat on me to do… and even leave out the form-letter-like two-sentence fragments of “thank you for the blank” every youngster clues into… to say something if I can… which is probably not appreciated. I mean, “Just get to the point, huh? Did the sweater fit?”

But I appreciate that the years are moving quickly. My parents will not be with us much longer. A simple fall may be the end… and I think of all the steps in between. And the mind leaps to the possibility that a good rambler might buy a little time. And yes… I’m rambling again, but only for a little while… and I said we needed “a good rambler”.. but this is the best we can do.

So it was seeing this aging before our eyes, and seeing the holes in the road behind me that led me to call out the road crews… to find a way to live better, or at least to try to live closer, in love with and under the mercy of the Lord, to end the head games, to end the adolescent “I know betters” and just move on to learn what it takes to really love one another. And for as much as my love of my wife taught me that I had not even begun to love God in an authentic, full-bodied way… I have also learned in this painstaking journey to the Orthodox Church, that my learning to love of God has in turn illumined that maybe I haven’t even begun to love my wife…. let alone say what you will of my love for my family and others as well.

You can’t possibly do all you want… live all you want… and love all you’d like. Love is larger, and we are still so small in so many ways.. and  sadly proceed all too often to make it even smaller in so many ways… but through God I think we may have a way to reverse that. Anyway… the likely sacrifices in the coming years offer an opportunity to test that hypothesis, to live and love better. No more imaginary friends or imaginary “visits” … but real love of real people.. and a chance to get it right if only for a little while… that short period where God grants us breath. And it’s not a question of whether God is willing, though it may be in part, but more precisely whether I am in truth what I profess. And that would be a horse worth getting on.

Random Gleanings from the Levy Economics Institute

The Levy Economics Institute has provided something of an edge these past few years. Their adherence to Keynes coupled with the insights of Minsky… well, since the 1998 Asian Crisis that ended the greatest bull market of all time… they have been 100% on the money. Yes, most folks continue to date the bursting of the Tech Bubble two years later as the end of the bull market, but for the average stock of the American economy, it was earlier. And yes, as The Street recognizes this as the long feared Minsky Moment… you’d think the Levy folks would get a few ears. You’d think.

Given that these folks have had both the right analysis and correct policy solutions, but not the public ear given the ascendancy until now of monetarism and central bank control, the recent implosions send me back to review some of their recent material. Understand that as Keynesians, these folks are decidedly in favor of fiscal policies over the longer term, and that’s not always the right prescription – even by their own admission. But surprising to many, their disagreement with the Bush Administration over the stimulating tax cuts of the first term lay primarily in their belief that the government should run larger deficits than Bush’s cuts contributed in order to restore balances upset by the Clinton economic program and mercantilist Asian development models. Go figure. I recall even hearing an AFL-CIO economist remarking that while he’d prefer a jobs program, but in the absence of that (Democrats at the time proposed tax increases) he’d take a stimulus so long as it was scaled up about 10 times. No kidding. Sometimes the Donkeys and Elephants run in surprising directions.

So here are thoughts worth pondering for those who must:

“Over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is a large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance.” – Hyman P. Minsky (1992)

“To be exact, our economic leadership does not seem to be aware that the normal functioning of our economy leads to financial trauma and crises, inflation, currency depreciations, unemployment, and poverty in the midst of what could be virtually universal affluence – in short, that financially complex capitalism is inherently flawed.” – Hyman P. Minsky (1986)

“Implicit in the legislation which I am suggesting to you is a declaration of national policy. This policy is that the broad interests of the Nation require that special safeguards should be thrown around home ownership as a guarantee of social and economic stability, and that to protect home owners from inequitable enforced liquidation in a time of general distress is a proper concern of the Government.” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress on Small Home Mortgage Foreclosures (1933)

“This is an impressive crowd – the haves and the have-mores. Some people will call you the elite. I call you my base.” – President George H. W. Bush address to the Archdiocese of New York in December, 2000.

“The model is in trouble – and not just with respect to the mortgage mess, as the United States faces record inequality and destruction of the middle class, a health care crisis, an incarceration disaster, and other problems beyond the scope of this analysis. We must return to a more sensible model, with enhanced oversight of financial institutions and with a housing-finance structure that promotes stability rather than speculation. We need policy that promotes rising wages for the bottom half (or even three-quarters) of workers so that borrowing is less necessary to maintain middle-class living standards, and policy that promotes employment, rather than transfer payments – or worse, incarceration – for those left behind.” – L. Randall Wray, “Financial Markets Meltdown: What Can We Learn From Minsky?”, September, 2008.

Keynes is one of those great sources of wisdom and quotations, but I’ve left him out. And lest anyone get the wrong idea, both Keynes and Minsky were exceedingly successful investors. Minsky is often seen as a classic gloom-and-doomer, but in fact reportedly was very optimistic as well. In economics, the obvious limitations of the “knowns” always lead to “glass half-empty” forecasts… but the problem is not just that folks will do everything they possibly can to avoid such circumstances, but also that economies are inevitably led and dependent on exogenous variables… things as simple and at the same time obvious as human ingenuity. And these can’t possibly be quantified and modelled without sounding ludicrous. So they aren’t.

In closing, let me add that if we are fortunate to be led properly out of this crisis, the all-hallowed efficient markets theory will be unseated and replaced with the Minsky modification of the Keynesian valuation model in the opinion of this writer. Without this, it will be difficult to unseat the theories that got us into this mess. In addition, the capital requirements regulation of banking in force in recent years will also be replaced with traditional sound, counter-cyclical banking regulation on the basis of fractional reserves. I’d add that among some, there is a consensus broader than I would expect for changes along at least some of these line on the Buy-side of the Street. The Sell Side… I mean… seriously… the folks not in jail, not in bankruptcy, and not out of money… will fight this with every fiber of their being. They may even move to London… which according to the FT is equally hot to put them on trial. What’s next, Dubbai? So as Wray points out, we may find ourselves addressing an incomes policy – a traditional Keynsian concern – for the first time in the generation since average household income stalled out.

Maybe we’ll go in the right direction, or maybe we won’t. I think basically, we have a tendency to feel our way along in the dark for a while, and then stumble along in the right direction.  Sometimes we stub our toes, sometimes we fall down, sometimes we get stuck in a dark alley for a while… but inevitably, we manage to find our way out. Like I wrote earlier, I’m not sure I’m going to like it all… and please don’t misread some of these posts as political… I’m not.. and I don’t like any of the candidates. Fact is that I like some less than others… and no one is “my guy / girl / emu”.  But I think we’re at the big re-think that refocuses this nation in the right direction for the first time in a long time. And that’s good in itself.

Yeah.. if the Thickheaded Dude can figure this out… I mean… I am the last to know… who’s left to tell? Who indeed? Don’t turn out the lights.

And I Feel Better… Now

This morning, I wrote my first ever letter to a member of my Capitol Hill delegation. Ah, can’t say it’s all that good … it wasn’t meant to be.. I mean, what do you expect in 10 minutes? And yes, I tried to put it into words a Democrat might understand (I’m in a one-party state here) without too much blushing. And yes, I do genuinely feel this is important enough to get off my couch and spend a minute or two wrestling with before my industry is entirely restructured into oblivion.. and if I may, FWIW, my end of the business had no direct or indirect role in this… we’re just too old fashioned, conservative, slow and the like to go off into this new-fangled black box self-destruction. But that’s just me.  We claim little virtue in this… even if we do from time to time help a few folks stay as clear as one can of these disasters… it’s too small to make a difference. And responsibility for devolution of the present sort is not just system wide… but hard to not to lay at all our feet…. especially mine.

So since the usual reward is that when they back up the dumpster like they’re doing now, anything nearby that looks like a roach, gets crushed, stamped and sent to the same dump or laid out for the fumigator… I’m prepared. I’ve already bought the gas station attendant’s jacket with “Thickheaded” on the right side so I can begin my new career pumping gas. This is what it is. Might be a little belt tightening given the prevalence of self-service pumps… but I can squeegee, too. As David Allan Greer would say, “Wanna sammich with that?”

Does this matter? No. My expectations are realistically low. But it sure makes me feel better and that’s a start to silencing some things ’round here, and that’s good. No, for the record, I am not a socialist or retrograde anti-capitalist of some sort. I’m an entrepreneur and a capitalist… but it is an amoral system that needs rules to operate within.

And yes, I remain a political agnostic, though a technical Democrat (when the election’s over in the primary, you have to do something). But sometimes, we gotta play a role if we want the system to work better than it does, and it seems like the garden path down which we’ve trod these past 20 years or so… well.. might be worth a harder look. And no, I’m not expecting good Orthodox folks to care all that much about this… unless of course you vote, bank, have a 401K or whatever and hope to retire, send a kid to college or find a different job one day. Come see me at the Exxon!

Yes, sometimes, the world can get remade a little too fast for comfort… or at least seem so… and last I checked, the folks in charge of it this go-round aren’t exactly the ones our good Church suggests were originally or even subsequently appointed the task.

In the end, my point is that sometimes we can see these folks need our help. Their instincts may even be right from time to time..  but sometimes they may be pressured enormously to do otherwise. Without either our material input, or our voices, they can readily end up doing something against their better judgment. Ya’ think? So I suggest that if you feel strongly, you contact your elected representatives as well to express your opinion. Maybe even if you look over my drivel you’ll realize you need to quickly counter with your own. Five points for the best doggerel limerick for this crisis!  But seriously, it’s a wide world, and the give-and-take makes it work better… so have at it.

I wish to urge voting for reform of the banking and securities industries WITHOUT adding to the concentration of the industry into fewer and fewer hands.

Furthering concentration only makes the problems of “too big to fail” larger.

Since we ALWAYS end up bailing folks out, the “larger is better” approach should have run its course into bankruptcy… and not become the “hidden” reward of a bailout. I understand the emergency requires emergency measures. But restructuring the industry should also include time to consider anti-trust as well as the premise that national banking that was supposed to strengthen our system and provide additional services to local families and businesses instead has provided neither.

Every merger of the last 20 years premised on “service” let go people in the process. By any objective measure, service is not the interest… but there has been no cross-check on this. By definition, this has reduced services and made individuals into nameless, faceless “accounts” served by nameless, faceless folks in large, increasingly remote institutions. Bankruptcy becomes thinkable for both whenever ties are broken in this way. Credit quality has always relied on character and faith… and this disaster demonstrates that both have been lost.

Real people deserve real service by institutions comprised of flesh and blood people from their area.

With 30 years of my career in allied services… I find it hard to watch the freight train continuing to roll over the interests of the common man. CEO compensation isn’t the issue so much – although compensation more generally in terms of pay, fees, and interest rates could fairly be considered so.

No the primary matter is that we have to fix the industry to be competitive – so we won’t just lose it to London, but we also need to assure ourselves that these folks provide the services they were granted powers for in the first place, and reduce the consequences of mistakes when they happen. They will happen again like clockwork no matter how well we adjust.

Suggest that we don’t need new rules and regulations – though we need appropriate regulation (suggest contacting the Levy Institute of Bard College) – nearly as much as we need to enforce the regulations we have and fund the authorities responsible so that we can. And regulation needs to be freed from the lobbying interests of well-meaning constituent service legislators whose zest for campaign funds unfortunately impede the public interest. In all fairness, the current system’s complexity makes it very hard for the unschooled to understand what they are being asked to facilitate, its impact in terms of who it helps and who it hurts, and often the pressing media costs of elections have unbalanced the usual concerns for the character of those asking. The parts of our current mess are unfortunately broad, related… and all in dire need of redress.

But bottom line, our collective materialism, greed and anointing of the dollar as the one and only measure of any and all value, we have distorted many things vital to the sort of capitalism that we treasure… and all bear responsibility to fix the system. Rules are needed… rules we are willing and able to enforce.

Allowing ONLY the market to determine what’s right and wrong, what needs fixing and what doesn’t is simply a road to oligarchy I think we want to get off. The people need a voice…. even as FDR said… the capitalists must be saved from themselves. Further concentration of financial power through emergency or other measures WITHOUT a plan to subsequently unwind it seems a move which is 100% against the public interest… as well as the longer term interests of competitive capital markets.

Catechesis in the Dust

So as I think of it, two years ago somewhere in the month of September, I officially became a catechumen. We did the deal, and met Sammy the Seal in February of 2007… so this isn’t a continuing saga of unrequited love, but rather an anniversary of “going steady” if you will. My first visit to an Orthodox Church had been earlier that year in February, and the desire to “start dating” somewhere in May. Of course, I went out with the “other girls” only for funerals, baptisms and the like… like we all do…  and boy what a time that is.  No small wonder it no longer “felt right”… but there you are. They were no longer “my place”… even though we made allowances for paying our respects or joining in the celebration.  Went strictly ’cause we had to go.

But then came the moment of sink or swim, or maybe it’s sink AND swim… and the commitment to catechesis. I remember quite clearly wondering, “Can I really do this?” Yeah. Well… it’s still a question of sorts… only different. I mean… can we really step up and do it, can we really pick up the ball, carry it to the endzone and keep doing it until we’re benched and given the kickin’ bucket?  Hmmm. More later.

For now… it’s just a thought. No I don’t have pictures like so many others. Never thought about that… I mean we’re not talkin’ Brad Pitt here. And yes, it felt weird when folks in the parish said, “Congratulations!” meaning well… but I kept thinking it was like getting a “Learner’s Permit” as a 16-year-old would-be driver. “Uh.. yeah.. well, it’s a start.” And so it is. Maybe I’ll graduate someday from imaginary driverhood to actual NASCAR-nuttiness… but for now, I’m just a geezer of a beginner behind the wheel of a big whoppin’ 500 horsepower Mustang full of Incarnation.

“Whoah! Dude! Sweet!”

As an Orthodox Christian… I still have to shake myself from that dream…  I am still a beginner and will probably always be. I am indeed just some old geezer who’s run through the a guardrail on the Protestant Road, who found himself on two wheels instead of four and just couldn’t make the turn…  and my car’s run way back up into the woods on some old dirt trail… where I left it. Could have gone further… over the hill and on to the a small village, but I didn’t. Didn’t need to.

Oddly, a few came along to look for me… even called out my name and I called back… but the interest, was sadly less than one would have hoped. I mean… it’s not like we’re playing Sardines or anything… but you’d think, huh? I mean, maybe they didn’t hear me, or couldn’t find their way through the thicket… but sheesh… talk about giving up easy… I’d even washed, put on my best and all…  but yeah.. that’s not sayin’ much, huh. We try for the “silk from a sow’s ear thing… but y’know how it goes… what we got is what we gotta change.

Now the next thing I remember was a visit from the engineers… like they planned to fix the guardrail or re-lay the curve so no one else would go off the road, but nothing seems to have come of it. I hear more than likely, “One day” they’ll replace the old two-lane where I ran off with some new Interstate, but for now it’s just a lot of talk. Still seems like fixin’ things is the last thing anyone has on their minds… like maybe running off into the woods is okay for a few. We aren’t really worth the trouble. To their credit, they did come back and put up a “Slow” sign, but I’m not sure that really gets it done. The old twisted guardrail  still sits there… like it’s gonna stay rusting away right where it is until they really do put that Interstate in and the traffic shifts. That’ll be the day!

We’ve all seen it before… just like Route 66 was replaced and became a series of dead-end destinations rather than routings… and now there’s a dangerous confusion that this road I took no longer goes anwhere. Yet it does. You know it, I know it… even the traffic engineers know it.

And every now and again, someone else does wander along, pull over to look at the broken guardrail and look around. Some even start up the dirt trail, up the hill and find my old heap with the door still ajar, and puzzle over the keys in the ignition. No, it doesn’t start anymore… y’know how a battery runs down. But it does gives a crank or two… and where there’s a crank, there’s hope as they say… or at least a joke or two. But more than that… it’s kind of gotten sparse. Yeah… a few’ll come and wonder what the hurry was, where the driver went, and maybe just want to know what sort of accident happened here. But I mean it doesn’t look like an accident does it? Leaves them shakin’ their heads. Yep… since then, the hubcaps went .. and then the radio and a few other parts… but the hulk’s still there. Soon that’ll either rust away or get hauled by collectors… and then who knows what happens…after the marker’s gone.

But for all that, a few have stopped…  even listened closely… and it’s like they knew what was going on. A car in the middle of nowhere… with a full tank of gas… a clear road, and keys in the ignition. Something happened. And after the head scratching starts… some even hear the lilt of the choir on the wind of a Fall evening light… and a few even start up the hill as I did… and find that Gladsome light.  And we give them our best welcome… and no one goes home when you’re already there.

So as I wonder that this is how it happens… but for now…

Let me thank any and all out there whose websites and blogs I’ve bothered, clogged, and disturbed, or whose emails I’ve jammed like some over-eager child trying to gain admittance past some forbidding sign; to all priests – especially my own Fr. Nicholas – who have assisted me in the course of my journey both here and beyond (Orthodox and before that Anglican, Catholic, and elsewhere); to all who have answered and for especially those who may have thought or prayed for those of us who have wandered through our mini-dark nights of the soul here and there and gotten lost in these woods; to the Theotokos and all the Saints, for the intercessions of my ever patient patron saint, Holy St. James the Persian,  and all the other St. Jameses whom I hope I didn’t offend by not picking you directly (like you needed another Dirty Job); and for the Grace to find my way into this Church; and for the Grace that may one day enlighten those who don’t end up here but simply stop by the road.. but are nonetheless changed.. even if imperceptibly; for all your hospitality, your notes, you kindnesses, and your prayers of encouragement that have meant much to me; and even to all those who steadfastly fix me with that “Oh? Really? Are you kiddin’ me?” look and assure me that I have lost my mind for this Church in ways that only convince me all the more so… I cannot thank you enough. I have  indeed lost my mind in this Church. Oh… but that’s maybe even the point of Baptism, huh? Oh… and forgive me, too. Lord have mercy.

Archimandrite Zacharias Video

Courtesy of Diakrisis (Thank you!) here is link to a video of the good Archimandrite Zacharias delivering a talk that highlights much of his meatier material. This is a brief introduction, and hardly does justice to the collection of his insights. This contributed link was hidden in the comments here a week or two ago, and seemed worth highlighting for those who may have missed it.

FWIW, I find more in each of Archimandrite Zacharias’s books every time I look. And unlike many other texts, I rather expect that what seems fresh now will be dwarfed by what seems fresh later.

Let me add that Diakrisis’s blog appears to have much material of interest of its own.

“Old Man: Fade to Black”

In Archimandrite Zacharias’s “The Hidden Man of the Heart” a passing note on The Fall refocused my mind on a way of seeing I had passed over:

“Adam’s exile from Paradise precipitated the catastrophic divide into the visible and the invisible worlds.”

This stood out of course for its tie-back to the Creed, and because in many ways, it makes sense.  The darkness in early Genesis is the well from which Creation is drawn  … and may perhaps comprise the “unformed stuff” with which God creates…. but that speculation I leave to others.

We don’t have to get too complicated. We don’t even have to presuppose that the invisible refers to the 99% of dark matter that comprises the universe. More simply, we may consider this the divide between that which we choose to see and that which we cannot or will not. Blindness is a choice. And while our Creed  doesn’t deny existence of the unseen, we do seem to rush acknowledgment of its creation and its goodness, and move on to other matters. Yet when given time, this seems to form the well of our desire to know God… whether we gaze into it with our hearts, or reverently bow the knee.

For in the context of the Garden, the Scriptures suggested our blindness to the presence of God began with aversion of our eyes, or at least the eyes of faith, and silencing the prayer of our hearts. And this is continues at our election interrupted only by the singular sightings of the infrequent Prophets and holy mothers and fathers whose witness attests – even before Christ – to the truth that our blindness remains a choice for most but not all… and so underscores the continuity between the Old and New.

But here is this trick: the Good News is that this blindness is supposed to have ended with the Incarnation and Revelation of God’s Truth in the New Creation. The Herculean challenge, the exceptionalism and grant of this “knowledge” to only the few is ended… and the hidden teaching is made universal and open to all whose hearts look anew into the well.

As the Archimandrite Zacharias elaborates much further along:

“We have been created for the sole purpose of showing forth the virtues of God: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9).”

And here at last, the physicality of a chosen people is transformed into a heritage beyond genes and as simply a gift of Grace.  So much lies between these two. And the puzzle of how opening our eyes could instead become tunneling of vision and a focus solely on ourselves divorced of the context of God – even before His voice is heard is revealed as the moment, and a vision of God wherein both are lessened and our awareness transformed from serenity to suffering. Thus the intended path of ascent to the godhead has proved literally a dead-end where our fears stop us cold.

This same path might have ended otherwise. Christ’s following this path without breech of prayer, without averting His gaze, and without stopping in his tracks turns the whole upside down, and inverts the pyramid as Archimandrite Zacharias refers to it. For Christ follows this descent, pushing beyond our fears, unafraid to suffer as a servant even beyond the point of death, even through the gates of Hell and back… so that the will of God, the vision of God, and the true light… even our very lives… though darkened for a pace, are  re-illumined. And more than that, it is both the same and a different Christ that is deified on the other side.. even as a promise is held open for us as well.

But in contemporary director-speak, I imagine we’d begin writing this: “Old Man: Fade to Black”.  And I guess that’s something to think about.