One of those (Holiday) things…

In his brief stint as a “talk show host”, Arsenio Hall used to reference “One of those things that make you say…Hmmmmm.”

I live with a wonderful woman who suffers to remind me this time of year of the quip that the stereotype man struggles to wrap a key ring in ten yards of wrapping paper while the typical woman manages to wrap the Goodyear blimp in about 6-inches and STILL have left over. So this year’s reminder was accompanied by today’s story from the Washington Post:

“The advent of the holidays has caused the following to occur:

A British e-tailer is offering to wrap gifts bought by its male customers in such a way that they will look exactly as if the gift-giver did the unsightly job himself. The service costs about $6 and includes unevenly cut paper and lots of brown parcel tape, but no ribbons or bows.

The wrapping is done by 20 of the Firebox.com’s male forklift drivers and warehouse assistants. They have been given no instructions other than to work as fast as possible. Just like at your house.”

As one of my office mates enjoys saying, “I resemble that remark.”

So with this rather off-topic note, let me wish all of you and yours the very best for you  Nativity, Christmas, and Yule tide feasts. No we’ll never be “ready”… we’re Orthodox! after all… but the feast comes all the same. This year’s season offers a real chance… a welcome respite from the hustle, bustle and bother… the news of one bad thing followed by another… and a chance to simply focus on those things closest to us, our hearts, our family, and most of all… our Lord. And as fast gives way to feast, as preparation yields to Incarnation, and as Christ is Born… Let us Glorify Him!

And even wrap quickly … with lots of paper…brown tape and all…  if not well. Merry Christmas!

Tux, Flipper, Lego and the Church – Part Two

Tux

Found the images I couldn’t back in Philly… so you can at last see who and what I’m running off at the keyboard about…. for (yipes!) more words than I thought.  This second installment may be the last… or may be the last for a while.. leaving sometime for Nativity and the like.

In the last installment, I tried to convey my sense that converting to the Orthodox Church has something of the thrills of converting to Linux. Yes, it’s “better” if we know that by “better” we mean adapted to the particular needs of the user’s desire to walk the ascetic path towards salvation… but this isn’t the whole.

Let me explain something of my Linux experience before moving on. Before getting things actually up and running… it was a real bear. Tried it once, failed; tried it again, still failed. And so on… but I kept at it. There was even a time that I quit it altogether as impossible… as unready for the real world. And then I stumbled on a new “friendly” distribution. “Distros” as they’re called are like jurisdictions in Orthodox Christian America… they’re all basically doing the same thing in their own way and each has its champions as the one, the true, the only one for whomever… but everyone knows at the end of the day… we hold the same faith, and commune with the same God.

So eventually I got things running. I got my music files transferred out of Apple’s proprietary DRM format and into ubiquitous MP3 and OOG formats I could drop on to my music player… and life was good. Got the photos, spreadsheets, Word documents – all of that handled without a hitch. I even found a package similar to Quicken… but in classic Linux virtue… “without the bloat”. First managed this on Mepis, then switched to Ubuntu… and now am moving on to Linux Mint as a polished, dummed down Linux. Yes, the true believers are convinced I’m a slacker… and in truth… I am, but you already know that. I’m one of those folks the true engineers sneer at and call “a user”, and dismiss with a wave, but we’re a small but growing lot… and the engineers love and need us as much as they’d pretend otherwise.

And here’s the Linux difficulty. It’s paradigm remains so committed to open source kernel orientation, and it’s experience so rooted in the user-as-builder that it finds it difficult to loosen up and allow either commercial software, or finished packages of Linux to get promoted as anything more than (add sneering and contemptuous drip to the voice) “packaged”. There are a few out there thinking and working to make life “do-able” and “less hard” for the novice user… but to many, this smacks of all the wrong things… something only the wrong sort of people would want.

Now there’s nothing wrong with this machismo user bravado. It is indeed a faith of its own, and serves to keep things focused on the winning ways of its origin: commitment to putting “power” in the term “power user”, and keeping it lean and light wherever possible. There is also a keen awareness that add-on power risks bloat, risks compromise to the integrity of the core design… and so a hesitancy to embrace it. Linux is nothing if not concilliar in its management of the code it runs on: The code can be reviewed and revised by anyone… subject to blistering critique and approval of the user base. It is a literal trial by fire approach to software, and distinguishes its contributors as real “somebodies” in the world of coding. And there is in this a real testament to the virtues of software whose integrity depends on its lay users – where the “body” of knowledgeable friendly (helpful) users provides the lure.

And yes in many ways, Orthodox should warm their hearts to these sounds as a sort of tech world laboratory re-proving the ecclesiology of the Church. There is joy in this sense that a disorganized concilliar body can out maneuver, out-think and out-evolve a highly concentrated, corporate organization embedded on every desktop by default. Linux users aren’t born… but come by choice. But there is also joy in the simple user base of folks like me who see the development guided along and remaining true to its principles. It works… not without effort… but it works.

Lego

And this is where the Lego analogy comes in. Because Linux isn’t the only option, and it is uniquely poor in serving particular needs of some users… at least for now.

Consider for a moment a kid who wants to play with a toy car. There may be at least three ways to get the job done: 1) roll a Matchbox Hot Wheels car, 2) build a kit model from Revell or some other company, or 3) build a Lego car. The first two options focus on cars that are complete and recognizable… they conform to images seen and known everywhere. The first allows even the youngest to start rolling those wheels immediately, while the difficulties assembling and finishing the second may require more advanced skills – even waiting until the child’s teen years – the so-called years of reason. But then, with a little glue and paint, this second option results in something special: there’s a 1937 Ford Model A Roadster or a 1965 Ford Mustang or something very unique.. a real collector’s item the builder can reasonably feel proud to have built with their own hands.

Lego is completely different. To the child that thrills to the first two courses alone, Lego may seem just incomplete and crude… like what’s the point? I mean whatever you build is still kind of crude looking, dimpled and angular and all. But its unfinished nature is precisely the point. The completion is left entirely to the builder’s ability to match the image formed in their mind’s eye. And what emerges is unique to that child at that moment. No incarnation will ever match it. Cars powered by sails, equipped with wings and sometimes propellers, and armed with canon were quite common in our house. Of course you could elect to see this as some sort of temptation to individualism… but the fact is… Lego keeps you at the core… and the outer appearance is only in the mind. The core is what you have.. and looks remarkably the same… every time and every where.

And then there’s the well-known Lego “scrape”… the hand of a child searching through a bucket of thousands of pieces looking all alike to a disinterested parent… but clearly distinct and unique to the intentions and memory of the builder. Yes, what emerges may be oddly reminiscent… but at the same time it is truly unique.. and the search and build itself are actually just so much a part of the play… just as the virtue of the parent-annoying sound (and mess) may be equally pleasing to a child’s sense of the moment and perverse wonder.

Like Lego, Linux lets the user assemble precisely the packages needed for a job. You (but not me!) can strip out from software and indeed from the operating system itself… only the pieces needed to give a user precisely what they need for the job. This is the core of the DNA. This is a building block process that allows the linking together of parts into a whole that through the activity of the mind’s eye to create exactly what you need. Nothing more, and nothing less. Just the essentials. This is its beauty.

Similarly, the Orthodox Church’s beauty seems to me to lie less in its icons, vestments, and churches… because for many, these are indeed intimidating and off-putting by their unfamiliarity.. and “incomplete styling”. While this isn’t the way I see it, I’m only using my own operating system… but if your experience is different… you’re not alone. We’ve been there, too. This changes… only if you are energized by its challenge.

So I’d suggest we might consider instead that the beauty of Orthodoxy lies in the unique adaptation of these building blocks to being put together into each user’s spiritual formation and life… a spiritual operating system for the “user”… to get them “home” to salvation. It doesn’t assume you start out as a “power user”… but it’s designed to move you inexorably along in that direction. And in the saints, their lives and writings… we have one of the greatest user forums ever assembled to help us along the way. You just have to post something in prayer when you get “stuck”… and wait for the reply.

And here’s where I wonder whether we aren’t better off to seeing ourselves joined as Legos into the “kernel” of the Church with Christ at its core and the Trinity deeply embedded. This body… completed mystically… allows each their independent uniqueness, but rounds off the hard edges, the incomplete unity (even the dimples), into something much more than the sum of its parts and unified with each of the others. This “something more” is of course not just beyond the certainty of the visible, the here and now, but focused on the image and likeness given by a loving God whose energies… “play” in our creation. What a wonder it is to see each other… the core of our spiritual being… yearning for completeness in the image and likeness of God rather than just the face that looks back in the mirror! If only…

So then if only we could let these same energies of God play in our lives… and instead of running off the LiveCD each Sunday morning…and going back to the same-old, same-old operating system after a “nice” trial… we’d choose something different… select to install the whole system to the hard drive, remove the disk, and reboot to the “new” op system. While it’s never easy… it really could be as simple as that. Oh.. and don’t forget, you’ll get prompted at the logon… the password’s of course “Kyrie_Elieson”… but you’ll have to give it your name… your user-id first.

Tux, Flipper, Lego and the Church – Part One

In some places, I wonder that discussion might be enriched through better metaphors and analogies to describe our apophatic faith without judgment or attitudes unbecoming to its warmth, beauty and heart. Stumbling upon Dominic Humphries  (http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm) writing seems to offer promise, and so I’ve endeavored a first cut at adapting it here. As no analogy or metaphor is perfect and these could equally be taken in different directions to describe a different approach… I offer these with caution as well that the limits remain clear as an understanding of transition  and overview between paradigms rather than taken as the whole.  Equally, I’d offer this more as a working paper rather than a finished piece. But the legs seem evident enough to me to offer it all the same – for comment. Note – I am on the road in Chile Phile today and unable to upload links and photos… and will add those later.

Tux of course is the Penguin logo for the less than ubiquitous Linux operating system. Elegant, cool where you are not, and fish breathed. Yes… Linux is an operating system unlike any other… and it is deeply similar to the Orthodoxy in some respects… probably the less compelling ones like “Orthodoxy is Christianity only harder”. So in a sense it’s your op system… only harder.

Conversion stories abound in Linux… and mine began with a dying Windows “Dell” and a dead iPod. One of the technicians I’ve subscribed to over the years led the way down this road suggesting Linux’s lean and light architecture was particularly well adapted to making the most out of less powerful machines. And true to the resurrection’s promise, there is life after Windows… and though good in the sense that you’re operating again…it’s maybe not all it’s cracked up to be.. unless you’re prepared to do things differently. So I keep wondering about how much longer it’ll be before I follow the advice I gave my kids and “Just get a Mac”… but for now I persist. Yeah. “Cause it’s better here somehow.” The annoying red drive light no longer spins for hours and keeps me waiting “for no reason”. But I’ve still a long ways to go to get the hang of it… I mean it’s been a long time since I put CPU’s together, “bashed” and recompiled programs…

Which brings me to Flipper… everybody’s favorite porpoise. Think of it: You’re slick, you’re smooth, you look good in the water, you laugh, you play… and you’re even a movie star with a girl friend (“Carolina Snowball”) and you’re very being suggests “poise”. Everybody wants to be you… or at least I do… and if you’re ever anywhere near the water and spotted swimming by… well… everyone feels they have a friend. So there I am, trying to figure out how I got started with Tux… I mean, yes, he’s cute and all that…but fish breath is still fish breath… and along comes Flipper.

Flipper shows up, ’cause as I’m wondering about the joys of self-administering this two-by-four to the side of my head, I stumble on this article, “Linux is Not Windows” in which the friendly porpoise is contrasted with the rather ravenous shark. Both swim, breathe air, have dorsal and guide fins, swim through the propulsion of their tails, and eat fish. Yet of course, one’s a mammal and the other’s a fish; one’s friendly and the other a predator. From the surface or from a distance, they may initially be difficult to distinguish from each other, but the way they move through the water, their social behavior, and their demeanor are so distinctive, it quickly becomes clear which to trust… and which to be wary of. Thousands of years of marine eco-system evolution brought completely different species to a remarkably similar place.. and yet their DNA remains entirely distinct.

The author’s point was that operating systems follow the same course. Thus Windows paradigm of one-user-one-desktop together with its reliance on commercial software doesn’t make just for the integration of an industry behind the behemoth, but distinguishes it wholly and completely from the network kernel-centric user-designed “free” open source software environment of Linux. This is key… ’cause for all the fit and finish of Windows programs, their design is seldom from users… and so “beauty” and “breadth” substitute for the understanding of the user that makes for the real sort of utility often wanted. My industry’s premier provider is a case in point: After 20 years they’re FINALLY beginning to make useful software that you can actually work with rather than using simply as a core around which you build the real analytics.

So some of the difficulty lies in the fact that operating systems look similar at this point, but behave completely different on a fundamental level. Of course, using programs like MS Word or OpenOffice , one sees very little actual difference… but this is like watching sharks and porpoises chase fish… the underlying reality is more than an mouth-open fish insertion experience… the internal processes are fundamentally different by design.

And this is all worth dwelling on a bit here for the simple reasons I’ve tried to ladle out along the way… because it seems to me the differences between Orthodoxy and other churches are equally hard to discern and explain; and because becoming Orthodox seems to me to be less about changing churches, less about changing theologies, hymns and prayers… and more about fundamentally changing and upgrading our spiritual operating system to one evolved from different DNA.

But we have to be fair. There is much that other churches still teach and teach quite well and much of this is quite Orthodox. In many cases, they not only do a good job for many, but they succeed in conveying the attitude and approach that from many failed accounts, finds our own inadvertently sidetracked away from by minutia of a different though well meant sort. I wonder that just as “the best is the enemy of the good” (old engineering dictum), so the whole can be over-emphasized to the detriment of its parts… key parts that may be necessary to feed to just keep the system running.

So like Linux… we have to be aware that proselytizing does no necessarily do others any special favors and may in fact risk serious spiritual harm to many in the process who may be unprepared or uncommitted to living an Orthodox life. And yet there is a job to be done, a job to which Orthodoxy is uniquely well adapted to guide its “users”. And yes, you can still get the job done with a kludge, a virtual machine, or whatever… but as any Tux supporter would ask, “Why use a 24-colors-in-one pen when a simple pencil will do?”

Why indeed.

But that’s about enough for this installment. I promise to get to the Legos… And yes, that’s Lego as in the toy…not “Leggo my Eggo”… although that’s always another thought.

Experiencing God – Part 2: Mysteries of the Church

This continues the second part of excerpt promised from the lecture series: “Life as a Mystery” by Archimandrite Meletios Webber (full attribution follows). From a discussion of “Called and Gifted” Workshop” over at Koinonia effectively cautions on the meaning we give to experience… but I think that in the examples offered here in this excerpt there is little confusion of this sort. Rather, at least to me it seems rather clear, and consistent with the notion that the “theologian is one who prays”… where prayer depends less on our own emotions and will, but engaging in union with God in the whole of our person… not just our emotions, not just our passionate desires, but the whole… the Nous… that annoying Noia thing the good Archimandrite goes on to discuss immediately after this excerpt… but you’ll have to grab that one on your own. As you’ll see at the end… I’m at my limit when we hit Greek words… and it’s not just the inadequate keyboard! either.  So I’m quitting with the first two Greeky kind of words, phrases and the rest to go off to work. But at anyrate… this excerpt seems to offer an engaging viewpoint.

In Orthodoxy there is very little said about thinking about God. Now other churches may do things differently, but in Orthodoxy, thinking about God, if we’re in fact thinking about anything, isn’t given any great kudos. What matters in Orthodoxy is the experience of God. This sort of (claps hands) immediate encounter between you and God that is very, very specific to… very personal to your situation… but in which God actually chooses to enter into your life in order that you can transform your life in the direction of his life.

And that’s true in baptism; it’s true in confession; it’s true, most, most true, because it happens most often, in the Holy Eucharist. We can think about Jesus all that we like during the week, but when we come on Sunday morning and stand here and actually receive him within our own bodies, we are experiencing a level of intimacy that the world can only guess at. This is an intimacy so profound that it is difficult to say where you stop and where He starts. This is a meeting which is so personal that your entire being is for a few seconds completely filled with the presence of God. And of course by the time we turn round and come away, (and) we go, we gently lose that. But for that one moment, for that eternal moment when there is a definite here and a definite now… and it is experienced in this very specific and particular way… you are experiencing nothing less than the Kingdom of Heaven… right there, and right then.

He comes to us in the marriage service… Now I have to say I’ve been a marriage counselor all of my life, and goodness knows why anyone would come to a monk to ask about marriage guidance, but it does happen, I’m afraid it does. And my wisdom about marriage is all from books. I can only guess at what it is like. I have a great feeling that if God isn’t present in the marriage it isn’t going to work very well. I sort of get that hint… and that it is tough sometimes. The monastic profession is also tough sometimes, but I think marriage is probably tougher

God has chosen specific natural ways in which to encounter us in this immediate… I want to say eyeball to eyeball… that sounds a little… impious… but I don’t… but I … it’s really… it’s when God stares us in the face… He’s right there…

And He comes to us in water; He comes to us in wine; He comes to us in bread… just ordinary things. And He says to us, “I’m going to be there; I’m going to be in that bread on Sunday morning. All you have to do is to show up.” The invitation is always there.

Most of us can’t remember our own baptisms because they took place in childhood, but at that point God said to you, “I’m going to be there in the water, meet me there.” And you went, and something… indelible… indelible change occurred in you at that point. Not necessarily something which is obvious to the rest of the world… because it obviously isn’t… but somehow you’re… even at the anatomic level your encounter with God changed something within you, so that it lifted your relationship with Him from being that of simply creature… which is true and marvelous anyway… to that of person…. with a name.

“We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

If our relationship with God is nothing more than an idea or a thought, then we might as well give up and go home. It’s not something we have to prove to the rest of the world. It’s not something we can demonstrate. And it’s certainly isn’t something we have to defend. If we have to defend something we’re in our egos. That’s by definition; that’s almost a maxim. I can’t philosophically explain how that works; but if you’re defending something, the chances are you’re in your ego. And you don’t need to be in your ego when you’re in the presence of God. You can put your ego down; you’re safe.

So you don’t need to defend God – ever. Nor do you need to defend your faith in God – ever.

Sometimes I get the feeling in the West in particular, and I think this is a Western… not a fault exactly, but a tendency in the west which makes life difficult… is where people believe… especially here in the United States… I hear the expression I believe in something.. And then I believe in whatever. And what they actually mean is that I have a very strong opinion about something… it’s as if God… I believe in God means I have a very strong opinion about God and I’m going to defend it to the death. Well, I’d say you’re back in your ego again. I doubt if that’s very much to do with faith at all.

In Greek we say, you know in the Creed, “I believe in one God.” In Greek it’s _______ {Greek Phrase (sounds like: “Pisteboenisthebion”)}. I only use Greek because its the original language. Not that there’s anything particularly fancy about Greek, but it was the way it was first written down. And the word _______ {Greek Word (sounds like “Pistebe”)} and _______ {Greek Word (sounds like “Pistebes”)} – faith – is the same. And so it means not “I believe in one God” but “I have faith in one God”. And I think that’s a little nearer what we actually say in terms of what it means to have faith. Belief looks like a mind thing to me; Faith belongs to another part. And that’s the part I’m going to talk about next.

Please forgive my mistranscription here – especially the Greek – from Fr. Meletios Webber’s lectures on “Life As A Mystery” from a seminar given at Sts. Constantine and Elena Orthodox Church in Indianapolis, Indiana in May of 2008, and available on Ancient Faith Radio.

Experiencing God – Part 1: Confession

Yes, Confession isn’t supposed to be the first part of experiencing God… but whenever you meet one of those Noia things… you never know… it just might end up handy. And come to think of it… seems we do something like this even before Baptism if the old noggin rightly recollects what passed by the eyes and ears last time. At any rate… found this particular excerpt from the second part of the lecture series: “Life as a Mystery” by Archimandrite Meletios Webber (full attribution follows) offered such insight into the mystery of confession as part of our experience of God, that couldn’t help but transcribe it as best as I might here for the benefit of those more pressed for time. And there’s of course a Part 2… if I can figure out  an end to “the really good stuff”… which I can’t because the whole lecture is just that good (go listen to the whole thing!)… but it should follow in a couple days.

We express our brokenness most clearly when we go to confession. Confession is to do with who we are on the very outskirts of the life of the Church. Confession assumes we that are excommunicated, that we are cutoff, that we are aliens in the Kingdom and it brings us from that place of alienation back into the fold.

So in our experience as Orthodox Christians, its not unusual then to experience both complete alienation, being outside the fold, and communion with the body and blood of Jesus which is so much within the fold that you can’t actually express how deeply that is within the center… on the same day. And then we can go the next day and we’re back outside again.

Orthodoxy has never been too keen on talking about ultimate goals. Western Christianity often talks about heaven and hell. Frankly Orthodoxy doesn’t talk about it very much at all. And salvation has a role to play in our hymnography, but it is not a theme which we talk about a great deal in our preaching. The question of “Have you been saved ?” or “Are you being saved?” is just not the right question for us.

We’re in a process of transformation and salvation depends on that transformation… changing ourselves. And if we’re absolutely determined to stay as we are, which of course the ego wants us to do because otherwise the ego isn’t in control, then this transformation doesn’t happen very easily.

But our brokenness is most experienced when we go to confession. And you can stand there in front of God… remember in our system the priest is there simply as a witness, he’s a bystander, you’re talking to God, and he’s there to listen and perhaps to give you some help, and he will be there as the agent of God then to read the prayer of forgiveness… but he’s not there to judge you… he doesn’t sit in judgment upon you… that belongs to a different theological system .

And when we can be completely honest in confession… when we can say this is who I am right now… not who I was yesterday, or who I want to be tomorrow, but who I am right now… then we are in a position to receive God’s forgiveness… because God says, “I know who you are. You don’t need to tell me.”

There’s something very, very important about the fact that God always wants to meet us where we are, and yet our egos always want to meet him where we want to be. “Not now”, says the ego, “please not now… anytime but now, anyplace but here. I want to wait until… I’ve graduated; I’ve got married; I’ve had three kids; I’ve got my second Cadillac; I’ve got the house on the hill… and then I’ll be ready. And God says, “No.” God says, “I love you with an intensity which you can only just imagine, but that love is destined for the person that you are, not for the person that you think you want to be. I love you just as you are.” And the ego says, “No! That can’t be! That can’t be! How can this possibly be? This is so horrid!” “No,” says God… “That’s the person I love.”

So if you happen to be lying drunk in the bottom of a ditch somewhere, God will find you there. Or if you’re in a hospital bed dying of AIDs, He will find you there. Whatever situation you’re in, that’s where God will meet you there. He wants to meet you in your brokenness He doesn’t want to meet you in some fantasy of false wholeness.

So we have to get really serious about our brokenness, but we don’t stop there. If we stop there, then we’re likely to fall into that victim-hood trap and that’s not where we want to be.

From there we’ve got to move on, and I’m going to use the second step of AA to illustrate this, and then to talk about Orthodox sources which help us understand that… and the second step is: “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity”

It’s interesting in this case salvation and sanity are seen as the same sort of thing. We tend to think of illness as some sort of breakdown… as physical whereas in our whole life’s story our spiritual illness is more to do with a moral breakdown. That we have given the chances we’ve got and the choices we can make, we have made some bad choices. We’ve taken that which does not belong; we’ve acted with less than kindness to people; we’ve cheated; we’ve told untruths; and so on. This is the sickness that we need to be healed from and “Coming to believe that there’s a power outside ourselves that’s can restore us to sanity” is absolutely crucial to this purpose.

Transcribed from Fr. Meletios Webber’s lectures on “Life As A Mystery” from a seminar given at Sts. Constantine and Elena Orthodox Church in Indianapolis, Indiana in May of 2008, and available on Ancient Faith Radio.