Crawling Out from under Deadened Belief

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

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

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

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

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

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

Falling through the NETS

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

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

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

Yet I keep coming up excuses, huh?

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

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

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

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

The Musical Synodman

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

“‘Scuse me, Bub..Comin’ through….”

Tap, tap, tap….

“Orchestra ready? Everyone?”

Like I said there’s a lot goin’ on.

“Whaddya talk… whaddya talk”

“Hill’s his name..”

“What’s his game?”

“Doesn’t matter what’s his line…”

“… sells musical instruments…”

“Whaddya talk… whaddya talk”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make your blood boil? Well, I should say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cable Mystery

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

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

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

Behind the Screen

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

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

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

“Yeah. And what about all these kids?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“See any evil?”

“Nah… just this Krispy Kreme here.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Well… it’s not happening…”

“This is just really annoying ?? !….”

“Yeah… I mean… “

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

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

“Duh…look at the panel?”

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

“The cops are coming?”

“Oh no!”

“Actually… they’re… here.”

“Unh!!!”

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

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

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

“Did you call my parents?”

“Yes, but they didn’t answer.”

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

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

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

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

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

“So you’re doing nothing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Psalm Wandering

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

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

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

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

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

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